In message <000701c340ed$dd07ab40$63ac58d8@BusyBeeAcres>, Bob Harrison
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Now I see a percentage of bees which swarm and old hive never raises a new
>queen. Myself and other beekeepers which have noticed the problem are at a
>loss as to why the problem has became greater. We do however drop those bees
>from breeding programs many times in case genetics is the problem.
Is varroa part of the problem. If the swarm times itself so most varroa
are in the brood, it will have a good start with low varroa. I had a
large swarm reswarm this year before any brood had hatched, so it might
have had no varroa at all!! It was big enough to lose bees dying
normally, and still leave enough bees to cover the brood (8 frames). It
did leave sealed cells so it is not the same problem. I did give it 2
deeps and 2 shallows to draw which it did and fill most of them. I
suspect my decision to keep them in one deep after 1 week and 5 frames
of brood caused congestion and she ran out of room in spite of my
intuition to run them on 2 deeps (remember in my area of the UK most
colonies run on 1 deep most of the time and 1 "demaree" split or at most
2 does the trick in spring).
--
James Kilty

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