Winter Merges - No Newspaper Method for Merging Commercial Honey Bee Colonies скачать в хорошем качестве

Winter Merges - No Newspaper Method for Merging Commercial Honey Bee Colonies

This video may be graphic in nature for some viewers. This time of year in North Texas. We have huge temperature swings. With many nice days we aren't afraid to get in our hives and work to prepare for the bad days and night that still lie ahead. When we are conducting our fall and winter inspections we routinely cull weaker hives. It was a hard practice to start, but in has paid huge dividends in the overall quality of our emerging stock each spring. These weak colonies have little chance of surviving until spring so we would rather sacrifice the queen and put her colony to boosting another hive that is marginal, but not failing. In the past we merged weak hives to weak hives. That is a failing mission, most times we would end up with another weak hive that would die anyway. Therefore wasting both hives. When we have time we identify the weak hive and pinch the queen, then wait 48hrs. After that we take the hive and place it on top of another queen right colony. The queen-less colony joins right up. Their brood is above the larger hive giving them heat. Any foragers that were out join up with a surrounding hives. We will do this though February, most hard freezes are gone by March then we can start grafting and preparing for splits to replace what we lost with new queens. If we don't have the luxury of two days to wait, we use the newspaper merging method.