There's of course another reason why your bees might fail:
sublethal poisoning with systemic neonic pesticides.
If you are within foraging range of fields that have been planted with neonic treated seeds then your bees might bring home contaminated nectar and pollen from either the crop itself or plants growing in the verges.
If the contamination is quite low, you might not notice any direct toxic effects, but the colony could stop thriving and the queens might fail.
Early supercedure seems to have become a hallmark of areas with high rates of neonic treated oilseed rape: the bees bring in a lot of OSR honey, but soon after that the colonies stop developing (Thats called the June gap in my book, and has always happened) and could even try to replace their queens.
If you have any chance, track down the farmer growing the stuff and investigate what he has planted, if you explain the problems you are having with your bees he might reconsider re. using those pesticides again.
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.
I have been dealing with crops with neonics for years and there is no serious issue I can see. Life is better with them than with the stuff that went before, and MUCH better than back in the hostathion days.
Pray tell.........if you or one of your associates persuades a local farmer to revert to a more toxic pre neonic chemical on his crop, and it then gives a serious spray kill to MY bees, partially as a result of your activism............are you happy to share in settling the damages claim? ( I HAVE sued for spray damage before btw, and won.) Its a serious question, because if it happens and outside persuasion has been a factor in his/her choice of chemical, the person doing the persuading, be it an agonomist or an activist or whoever, WILL be named in the action.
I suppose I had better go cash my fat cheque from Bayer now.........lol. No doubt while I am there I will meet Gavin et al cashing theirs too. I may have a long wait as the potential queue seems to be a long one. Everyone anywhere who declines to condemn neonics seems to be in the pay of these companies.
