There are different ways of producing queen cells. It’s always good to have a number at hand, especially during the beginning of the season, but also in the middle of it. Most of the queen cells are needed for early
The best queen cell starter?
Drone Congregation Area
I lifted off the roof from the hive and saw at the same time how the dead drone on the roof slowly began to glide off it down into the grass. During a fraction of a second I saw that
My first VSH-test
As I wrote in my previous post I did my first test with a good result. I was somewhat surprised. It seems also this colony I tested is my best one. A little embarrassing as I’ve been breeding and selecting
Every breeder bee colony should be VSH tested
VSH-trait VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) is a trait in worker bees. Worker pupae with Varroa mites that have offspring are cleaned out. The fertile female mite survives, but all offspring dies, as well as the worker pupa. Worker pupae with
Double Queen
We’ve all heard a bee colony only has one queen. We read it in bee books. But bees don’t read our books. So they don’t know. Mostly it’s the correct description, with one queen ina bee colony, but not always.
Quick and cheap to small cellsize
Do you want to regress your bees back down to a more natural cellsize in the broodnest? It can take some time and sometimes it’s a little bit tricky. Most often they fail to directly from what’s been most common
The Bee colony that refused to die 2
Two weeks after the first check after winter ( a week ago) I visited Karin again and checked the colony. See the first post on this subject for a background. But this colony has been on its own on
Buckfast breeding 1
This is a too long story to be told in one post here. But I have to start somewhere. I first visited Brother Adam and Buckfast Abbey in 1983. I was allowed to look into his pedigrees for his bees
Resistant Bees on Canary Island
Stephan Braun on the island La Palma in the Canary Islands shows us how he has aquired resistant bees against the Varroa mite. Read his website and learn how he is doing. He works with the native Canarian bee, which
The bee colony that refused to die
In 2007 Karin worked on becoming a commercial beekeeper. She wintered 30 bee colonies. She invested in honey extracting facilities. In spring 2008 she had 2 colonies left. In the county where she lived Varroa had just arrived and the