Production colonies back to 5/5 nucs for winter. скачать в хорошем качестве

Production colonies back to 5/5 nucs for winter.

Here in Wisconsin I overwinter most colonies in a 5 over 5 frame configuration. This is one way of breaking down a post-production colony to that format. The brood gets donated to "understaffed nucs" that benefit from the additional force. The queen is left on the original site with all the foragers and many nurses - as someone pointed out - in essence this resembles a package of bees. One important factor, if this is to work, is to have the mites under control. If they are not controlled you are "bombing" the understaffed nucs with mites. In addition to having colonies headed by queens that have some mite-resistance, I choose to use a version of the Dutch/German drone brood method in the spring which combines a swarm controlling split and mite control by trapping mites who have no brood to enter except for drone brood. You can read about that method here. https://garybees.cfans.umn.edu/sites/... The drone brood method produces a parent colony and a daughter split. What I did this year was use the parent colony to capture the spring honey flow whilst the daughter colony was requeening. Then I switched it up - I used the daughter colony to catch the main flow and increased its strength by giving it sealed and emerging brood from the parent colony. The parent colony's last contribution was to be divided into two to be used as mating nucs for July queen's who will head two-thirds of my colonies going into winter. So in summary, each overwintered colony entering production underwent the drone brood method which provided a parent and a daughter colony (both mite depleted); The parent gathered spring honey, and then went on to donate brood for both the daughter colony and then July nucs; The daughter colony was expanded up to gather the summer flow and then was reduced down to a 5/5 colony for wintering by donating its brood to the understaffed July colonies. Going into winter with smaller colonies gives you more chances at overwintering bees successfully and has enabled me to keep off the colony buying treadmill. This is a very intensively managed process which requires planning and sticking to a timeline. This intensivity is offset by the off-season (October to late March) where nothing is required by the bees other that winter-wrapping. I have remained chemical mite treatment free. It could be made simpler by purchasing queens, but as I am part of a loose collective of people who are convinced that northern beekeepers need to be more self-sufficient/sustaining I am loathe to do that. Although I will buy queen cells from time-to-time locally.