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Date: | Fri, 30 Aug 2013 17:05:22 -0700 |
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>I wonder how much ofthe 'winter' loss is due to poor queens.
And this brings up yet another subject--what do we mean by a "poor queen"?
When I start a bunch of colonies from sister queens in "identical" nucs, I
get a full bell curve of performance from the resulting colonies. A few
queens will also disappear in the first couple of months.
One can easily blame the problem on the queen--either directly due to her
egglaying, or her pheromonal output. I do not dispute either. Or perhaps
she did not get mated to enough of a variety of drones to form a good
"team" of patrilines in the hive.
However, what I find of great interest are the number of colonies that
stage a complete turnaround, without replacing the queen (I saw yet
another just today). Perhaps she gets into a pocket of better spermatozoa,
but I suspect that the colony has simply cleared itself of a debilitating
infection of some sort.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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