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Sun, 10 May 2020 09:24:31 -0400 |
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Another trouble met with by the queen-rearer is the loss of
virgins with mating swarms. These swarms are rather difficult to
prevent in very hot weather when the nuclei have become too
strong, for they are prone to hang out in bunches from their
entrances. Now if a virgin should fly while such a cluster is hanging,
the whole lot will sometimes join her and form a cluster on
some bush nearby, in which case the bees never return to their
hive, and if not found quickly, will eventually fly away as a small
swarm. The way to stop this little game is to see that the nuclei
do not become too strong.
Here we come up against that greatest of all stumbling blocks in
swarm control, the mating swarm. When a virgin queen is left in
a strong stock, mating is most uncertain. Virgins always take
longer to mate in strong stocks than in weak ones, and when they
do fly out to meet a drone, it very frequently happens that the
bees come out with them as a swarm, never to return. This means
the complete ruin of the colony if the swarm gets away, for no
brood being left, the bees cannot, except in very rare cases, produce
another queen.
Here we are up against another of those snags so often found
when we are dealing with bees … the risk of the issue of virgins
with mating swarms, those bugbears of all bee-farmers
MANLEY, R.O.B. (1946) HONEY FARMING. Faber and Faber Limited
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