Emergency queen survival?

[Millet]

Torpor,chill coma, doing the conga on the radiator or whatever - a teaspoonful of bees and a possibly dud queen is going to achieve the far side of f........
If you hadn't opened the hive they would have been dead within a few hours anyway.
Seems that everyone is now believing the ramblings of one beekeeper in Scotland who seems to have discovered, after all this time that bees go into a winter suspended animation.
We don't need PIR hive bonnets - just hive sized freezers we can pop all our colonies in for the winter - no need for feeding, worrying about isolation starvation, nosema or anything. Just wake them up in the spring and start again

I cull things on a daily basis and sometimes a pooch, which really hurts but needs must with my past way of life.
Even though i do them things i still feel sympathy for the bees... Mad eh .

 

[ShinySideUp]

I'm not experienced in the way of things yet but the idea of a micro-nuc appeals to my sense of animal rights. What harm can it do if the only alternative is to let them all die. Imagine you get them through the winter by feeding and it builds up into a decent colony, what a sense of achievement you would get...and if they don't make it, hey, you tried.

 

[oliver90owner]

Hivemaker is likely right about the queen being infertile if chilled to that point. The centre of the cluster is generally maintained at around 20 Celsius or above while. Not brooding.

Now, whether that is to maintain sufficient heat to be transmitted to the outer layers of the cluster, or to maintain the queen’s fecundity, i know not.

But HM is usually right on the money.

 

[Finman]

.
It is only one Queen, and you may buy a be mated queen in spring. A Queen is not the end of the world.

A Queen needs too a good gang of bees that the colony can be productive in summer. At the beginning of January... A half dead Queen.... Let it be dead. You may take workers from another colony and then you spoil another colony.

 

[Erichalfbee]

You or this thread?

Not me. I’m alive and kicking
There’s a lot of rubbish talk around this winter if bees going into torpor and hibernating.