Failing 2011 Queens

[Tdf]

I have had to revise my posting as I regretted my choice of intemperate words to describe my opinion of the above post. Suffice to say I am not on the same planet as the poster it seems, and their post is full of weasel words.

The 2011 duff mating effect was pretty well uniform, even in areas with no OSR at all, and actually marginally the contrary was true, the OSR areas tended to be better, bar Aberdeenshire. Last years problems were due to ONE effect. Weather. Aberdeenshire was worst because the weather was worst. The variable pattern of good and bad years for queen matings and subsequent performance long predates neonics, and probably even beekeepers........ we have, father and son, seen much the same variation since the 1950s. No serious degradation in queen lifespan either, and we have been practiacally swimming in neonic treated crops since they first arrived.

2011 queens bad here as well, very little tillage around us

 

[Tom Bick]

They had awful weather. No queens mated with our chosen suppliers for several weeks. When they DID come available to us they were the equivalent of October mated here. No thanks, would not buy them for myself and would not sell them on to others.

Some of the breeders of the Italian type stock were in better areas, but not long off the phone with a guy who worked here for us last year and whose parents have a large outfit south of Christchurch. They have had their worst season in 50 years.

Rotten weather, protracted cold wet spells, no matings worth the name, and the new seasons queens failing even before their winter set in.

Wonder how many thousand miles the neonic spray drift had to go to hit them so badly? No neonics in their area btw........

Thanks the queens in question are Italians and I dont know what part of NZ they are from but what I do know is they are failing at an alarming rate given reports.

 

[Stromnessbees]

Watch your bees and the crops around you

This is interesting as I am right on the OSR - these hives produced 147 lb of OSR honey despite the failing queens

These pesticides cannot be detected by the bees in small concentrations, so your bees can still collect a lot of nectar and pollen from the contaminated plants.

But after the OSR flowering your hives might go down in strength and the next generation of bees could be underdeveloped. If winter bees are affected they might be shortlived and you could even get Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Failing queens is only one of the sympotms of sublethal neonic poisoning.


Re. the claim that bad weather matings cause queens to fail:

It's not impossible, but I am keeping keeping bees and breeding some queens in the North of Scotland on the Orkney Islands. - Believe me, the weather here is not very kind in the best of years.

Not all our Orkney queens get mated successfully, but those who succeed to get mated usually lead a productive live of at least 3 years without supercedure.

Anybody claiming that queens frequently fail because they were mated during bad weather should come up here and check.

I don't know if it's jsut the queens that are affected by neonics, it could be the drones as well. But it seems that most scientists are reluctant to ask the relevant questions.

 

[Into the lions den]

Not all our Orkney queens get mated successfully, but those who succeed to get mated usually lead a productive live of at least 3 years without supercedure..

Whats special about that? I would be VERY surprised if it was any less up there. Your seasons are so short that the queens do not 'burn out' at the rate they do in areas with long intense seasons where the egg laying demand is high. If we did not requeen here as a management strategy four, and sometimes 5yo queens would be more common in our outfit than they are.

I would not expect one of MY queens to go more than 2 seasons, possibly occasionally 3, in the southeast for example. About a year less than up in Scotland. And thats WITH neonics in their breeding/mating areas.

There is a great Scots word, made nationally famous in a song by the Proclaimers. 'Haver'........................I think PH will have used the word quite commonly in his past too.