After some sympathy

[madasafish]

First year for a decade - so far - with no winter losses.
Don't know why... lousy summer after June.

 

[hemo]

Not saying losses on here are down to poor varroa treatment timing or lack of stores as it is well and truly dealt with many times on here with us beating the drum about timings.
But generally LBKA reports may well be down to too much fussing and fiddling amongst BBKA teaching staunchists and simply not timing things correctly. I see my LBKA rota for monthly to do jobs and they don't take in to account weather, conditions or forage , each year I see the same thing treat for varroa by end of August and feed heavily before September.
Heavy feeding to early is one factor to poor bee numbers and if a colony superescedes as often may occur without the beek havng a clue later on then they also may never have much of a chance if feeding has left little laying space.
I don't think enough beeks give too much thought about later milder conditions where often one can delay varroa treatment ( if numbers aren't too high) by a week or two by using vaping and feeding can easily be delayed well in to October not forgetting a lot of areas will see significant ivy flows in milder weather windows.

 

[hemo]

Having written the above I'm not perfect or immune to colony losses but those losses are usually accountable for and the reason often known. Last winter into spring I lost three out seven but know the reasons why and posted about them.
Two ended up as DLQ's so either late SS Q's or failing Q's going in to winter, one failure due to CBPV and not strong enough in numbers to help the Q with increase. Another colony had CBPV but was very strong and pulled through and had good numbers going into this winter. Time will tell if they make it.

 

[enrico]

Having written the above I'm not perfect or immune to colony losses but those losses are usually accountable for and the reason often known. Last winter into spring I lost three out seven but know the reasons why and posted about them.
Two ended up as DLQ's so either late SS Q's or failing Q's going in to winter, one failure due to CBPV and not strong enough in numbers to help the Q with increase. Another colony had CBPV but was very strong and pulled through and had good numbers going into this winter. Time will tell if they make it.

Understand what you are saying Hemo but in 40 odd years I can honestly say I have only ever lost maybe three mature colonies. To suddenly lose two came as a bit of a wake up call.

 

[Antipodes]

the combination was done by paper but the queen I removed was from the more stroppy hive so they may have sorted out the remaining quieter queen

Do you ever leave them to decide which queen to keep, ie. don't remove one?
Were there quite a few dead bees being thrown out after the combine, indicating perhaps a "bad" combine?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Do you ever leave them to decide which queen to keep, ie. don't remove one?

I think Murray routinely does that with combines

 

[Antipodes]

I think Murray routinely does that with combines

I checked four today that I did last week and all are fine. I did have a small screen between the colonies (only the size of a feeder hole) so that may have helped. I don't think there was much if any fighting (didn't use newspaper or air freshener).
I quite like letting the colonies decide which one to keep as I reckon they can tell lots of things about a queen that I can't. I remember reading from a study that they generally (over 90% of the time) keep the youngest one.

 

[enrico]

Do you ever leave them to decide which queen to keep, ie. don't remove one?
Were there quite a few dead bees being thrown out after the combine, indicating perhaps a "bad" combine?

No I dispatched the queen I didn't want and there was no fighting at all. All as normal, never done it differently. The only thing different was that It was followed, a couple of weeks later, by a fairly cold snap so I couldn't check to see what was going on.

 

[enrico]

I think Murray routinely does that with combines

Thats fine as long as you are not trying to keep the queen of your choice.

 

[Antipodes]

Thats fine as long as you are not trying to keep the queen of your choice.

True. Particularly when you wan't to keep the calmer one like in your case. I noticed this afternoon with one of mine, that the bees had kept the older queen, which wouldn't have been the one I would have chosen. The older one still looked ok though. Not skinny or anything.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Do you ever leave them to decide which queen to keep, ie. don't remove one?

I've done it a few times and it's worked fine

 

[Niv]

Its reassuring to read that its fairly common practice to let the bees decide which queen to keep. I have often thought it was a good way for some of the reasons mentioned in this thread but had been put off it by some saying that the surviving queen can get injured then both get killed off.