>> I don't need to each year.
>
>Beats me why you keep requeening - we routinely have queens going into their
>4th or sometimes 5th year.
>
>Also beats me why you pay out for queens - why not raise them yourself?



One big complaint of North American beekeepers...the queens don't last as long as they used to, many being superceded in the same year as introduction, or early the following year. How can we select for queens that will last the three and four years they used to, if we re-queen every colony every year?

While I agree that swarming is, in some colonies, a requeening method and hence a possible trigger for production colony swarming, I feel strongly that much of the uncontrollable swarming we see is the bees not the management. A high propensity to swarm can be controlled through proper selection in the queen rearing process. Selecting breeder queens from stocks with a low propensity to swarm will give you bees with a lower propensity to swarm...to swarm at the drop of a hat while you were away from the apiary, or in church on Sunday.

Bees like this respond well to management like broodnest reversal and proper supering to maintain overhead nectar storage. They respond well, even if the colony isn't split in the spring to avoid swarming.

Will we ever get a non-swarming strain of honey bees? Of course not.

"Among the first things a beginner thinks he has learned is that destroying queen-cells will prevent swarming, and then he is sorely disappointed to find that he is mistaken about it. But I must confess that I have a good deal more faith in it than I formerly had. Not that I would for a minute trust to it as a sole means to prevent swarming. But I do know that in a good many cases it is efficient. Perhaps one cause of my change of view is the change in my bees. Breeding constantly for improvement in storing, and at the same time giving preference to those least inclined to swarm, it is possible that destroying cells has more effect than it formerly had. Miller, Dr., C. C., Fifty years among the bees, 1911, The A. I. Root Co. 191-192




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