Hi All

Peter Edwards wrote:

> I would urge caution here.  Roger Patterson has managed to gain 
> considerable publicity for his claims, but little actual support as far 
> as I can see from beekeeping organisations (amateur or professional), or 
> from the National Bee Unit 

Although I have no experience of the last two seasons, I have done a 
considerable amount of queen raising in the timescale covered by Roger 
Patterson's report.

I have not experienced any of the problems that have been raised, 
although I have had some poor matings...

I do not consider even the poor matings to be in any way unusual. One of 
the reasons for raising excess numbers of queens is to take care of 
those that fail or are culled.

However, my breeding work has been with stock that had a higher native 
content than occurs in the more southerly parts of UK. It may be a 
consequence that my stocks were better suited to the conditions that 
they were kept in.

Peter also said...

> Something that might help would be the keeping of proper records
> (both of colonies and the weather) so that beekeepers could look
> back and, with just a little effort, see that much of what happens
> today could have been predicted some time ago.

I echo that... It is pointless trying to compare seasons without having 
records for reference.



Regards & Best 73s, Dave Cushman, G8MZY
http://website.lineone.net/~dave.cushman or http://www.dave-cushman.net
Short FallBack M/c, Build 6.02/3.1 (stable)

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