Hi from southern New Zealand 👋 Tough break, that's unfortunate. It's easy to shoot yourself in the foot after the fact because hindsight is always 20/20 about what you could or should have done or not done. Queen surprises week this week. Queenless hives seem to be going around, I've got a hobbyist who lost two queens in winter, requeened both for him, to help him get back on his feet, gave him one year old mated queen and the other one I drew a queen cell for him and dropped in, this week he's lost his new queen😬 she started laying and then, bang, queenless. I suspect spraying from a nearby orchard is responsible because he's had a massive population drop in the other colony. United both hives, no point requeening if there's spraying killing bee's. My own personal queen 🎉surprise was receiving a mated queen for breeding in a nuc, I've had terrible results just buying queens off this breeder, not the breeders fault but because it's got to travel 600 km to reach me and three different couriers, I get 5 frame nucs off him to protect the new queens as much as possible, got them set up, popped the protector on the cage and no fondant in it😂 queen bolted straight out into a queenless combine I'd prepared🤦😃
Thanks for the comment. Yes we had a bad year for mating queens this past year. Less than 50% mating sucess in our nucs. Our production colonies were strong at the end of the year, and are all bedded down for winter now. We'll try again next year.
But I did not shoot the Drone!
Clapton lives on!
Hi from southern New Zealand 👋 Tough break, that's unfortunate. It's easy to shoot yourself in the foot after the fact because hindsight is always 20/20 about what you could or should have done or not done. Queen surprises week this week. Queenless hives seem to be going around, I've got a hobbyist who lost two queens in winter, requeened both for him, to help him get back on his feet, gave him one year old mated queen and the other one I drew a queen cell for him and dropped in, this week he's lost his new queen😬 she started laying and then, bang, queenless. I suspect spraying from a nearby orchard is responsible because he's had a massive population drop in the other colony. United both hives, no point requeening if there's spraying killing bee's. My own personal queen 🎉surprise was receiving a mated queen for breeding in a nuc, I've had terrible results just buying queens off this breeder, not the breeders fault but because it's got to travel 600 km to reach me and three different couriers, I get 5 frame nucs off him to protect the new queens as much as possible, got them set up, popped the protector on the cage and no fondant in it😂 queen bolted straight out into a queenless combine I'd prepared🤦😃
Thanks for the comment. Yes we had a bad year for mating queens this past year. Less than 50% mating sucess in our nucs. Our production colonies were strong at the end of the year, and are all bedded down for winter now. We'll try again next year.