Hawaiian Carniolans

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rix

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Hi,

Do you have experiences with Hawaiian Carniolans? I know, that Peter Kemble imports and sells them: http://www.kemble-bees.com If they realy are NWC, they ought to be good.

Look forward to reading your comments
 
Small Hive beetle? Are they still being imported? Extremely bad news, if they are.

If they are, I would not touch them with a barge pole!

RAB
 
Imports into the EU from Hawaii are currently stopped due to discovery of Small Hive Beetle there. A few years ago I caught a swarm which came from an Hawaiian queen. They were extremely gentle but made a lot of propolis and when they crossed with my bees the results were a nightmare. It took me a couple of years to breed back to nice bees again.
 
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Due to the finding of Small Hive Beetle in Hawaii this year, the importation of Queen bees has been banned.
I have had New Zealand Carniolan Queens from Peter Kemble this year, they are docile and have done very well and have lower Varroa levels than average.
 
Only the II breeder queens they use are NWC,the queens they export only have a % of NWC ,not pure.
 
OK, New Zealand Carniolans are from Germany and Austria. It makes sense to buy directly from there. They are a bit varroa resistant.
 
OK, New Zealand Carniolans are from Germany and Austria. It makes sense to buy directly from there. They are a bit varroa resistant.

The most important is "winter resistancy". If the bee genes make a tour via NZ and Hawaiji, they may loose they ability to winter in Cenral Europe.

Like rix says, it is better to get them from Germany or Austria.

Just now some bee stains are in the European country test and there are huge diffrencies in those strains. They reseach varroa tolerancy, wintering, spring build up and what else ???
 
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Yikes! Our queen is a Hawaiian Carni! Extremely gentle colony, hard workers. We are new beekeepers and some of us have done some pretty heavy handed things with them and they take it all in their stride. Look good for going through winter my mentor said, but I don't know yet. I really like this colony though, so easy to work with as a beginner.
 
Docile or not, if not suited to the climate and unable to adjust to the northern hemispere timings (the natural clock), there can be problems.

Your natural clock (there is a scientific term for this) - think of people changing from day shifts to nights and back again, or jet lag - if we get problems there is no reason to believe the bees don't too.

Regards, RAB
 
That did concern me when I was told what they are, but I trust in my mentor, he knows his stuff so who am I to argue? Would the bees born from the queen be ok though, as they have never known any difference? Also, she was a mated queen so never comes out and the temp in the hive is kept at a constant temp isn't it? So does the climate really affect her that much? Could you please explain to me how the difference affects them please? It may be discussed in my Hoopers, but I have only got as far as swarm control lol.
 
Hooper . . . but I have only got as far as swarm control lol.

Good section of the book to familiarise yourself with, given you have a Carniolan queen. Be prepared early next year to split your colony, putting your queen and shaking the flying bees into a new box of foundation on the site of the current colony and give them a feed. This should probably have them peaking at the right time, instead of thinking of swarming before they have had time to store honey for you.

Give them plenty of super space, early and have that spare box (the third one) for when you find your first queen cells when you least expect them at the end of June, or early July.

Meanwhile your non-flying bees should be bringing up all the brood and looking to make a new queen. If you had split these into two nucs, because of reducing size, the imperative to make a queen is that much more and so, even if one goes awry you still have a good plan and could unite them into one. Single up to one open queen cell carefully, choosing the biggest and juciest to go forward. Once the queen cells are sealed, have patience
Bear in mind that there were few or no foraging bees in the nucs, so initially feeding them with a frame feeder is a good option, A six frame nuc, with five frames and a feeder, dummy frame or sixth frame later on gives slightly more flexibility than a standard five frame, but either is equally good.

ALWAYS have a spare hive of some sort available ready to press into service without delay.

Seek out an alternative apiary site for bees, so that your alternatives for contingency are wide open should you need them.

My personal history: two Carni colonies with clipped queens April 2009, swarmed due to late equipment availability. Four went into winter and survived into spring.

Four quickly became eleven, increased to thirteen and finally settled to eleven going into winter 2010. Most of my honey crop came from an early shook swarm. Swarms, gained one and lost two.

I work with a busy bee farmer who is a font of knowledge (thought you would like that!) and get to shake a stick at more bees than you can see - or something similar.

Always probe your mentor's knowledge. The phrase, "who am I to question my mentor's knowledge" doesn't really wash. By having him explain his reasoning and discussing concepts that you are coming to terms with you will understand them better and could even cause your mentor to review what he knows and occasionally come up with an improved or alternative course of action that he might not have thought about. After all, he probably doesn't review his beekeeping knowledge with peers on a regular basis, so discussion with you could be a major part of his expressing, and reviewing, his knowledge.

You will already know that being a teacher is a great way to learn, because you don't want to be found lacking in essential knowledge when a pupil asks you a question. If you were certain that pupils wouldn't ask, would you yourself have to be quite as clever in the first place. The difference between a teacher and a lecturer I guess.

Sorry for the lengthy response and having probably gone way off track, but I hope that the advice is of some use. Doubtless we can both review both the advice and your experience this time next year. I'm always prepared to sit in the corner with a big "D" hat on if needs be.
 
Even better would be to get a non-swarmy queen, well suited to the area, and increase at your leisure - rather than by the dictates of some unsuitable bees producing more unsuitable bees and finishing with lots of unsuitable bees and no honey.

Regards, RAB
 
Even better would be to get a non-swarmy queen, well suited to the area, and increase at your leisure - rather than by the dictates of some unsuitable bees producing more unsuitable bees and finishing with lots of unsuitable bees and no honey.

Regards, RAB

well said RAB
 
Good section of the book to familiarise yourself with, given you have a Carniolan queen. Be prepared early next year to split your colony, putting your queen and shaking the flying bees into a new box of foundation on the site of the current colony and give them a feed.

Meanwhile your non-flying bees should be bringing up all the brood and looking to make a new queen.

I too take hooper as my starting point. I want to increase from 1 to 2 or 3 hives next year, but thought it wasn't a good idea to drive them to make emergency queens. My plan (in brief) is to get them onto double brood then divide the boxes with supers to make the bees in the top unsettled enough to raise queens, but with the weight of the full colony behind them.

Am I giving myself uneccessary trouble?

Incidentally, my queen is the daughter of a hawaiian carnolian. The bees are not nasty but not pussycats either- I describe them as 'businesslike' They gave me a decent crop of honey this year, but boy do they like propolising!
 
Morris board method of queen rearing

This link might be of interest to you Skyhook. It all starts making real sense on the last page.
 
Skyhook,

without reading the link, so kindly offered by Hombre, I will say 2 things.

1) You have not read many books because
2) That is the standard method of inducing queen cells prior to a follow-up artificial swarm procedure. How many splits you make is chosen at your leisure, taking into consideration, strength of colony; honey crop desired?; spare kit available; wish to sell on nucs; your target number of hives; etc,etc.

Go to it. It is a simple proven method for anyone to follow in their own time too, as long as the parent colony is not of aa particularly swarmy nature.

Regards, RAB
 
I had an Hawaiian Queen and, later, a new Zealand Queen from Peter Kemble this year and both have been going great guns.

The Hawaiian was put onto the only three remaining frames of an ailing (badly mated queen last year) colony of savage bees in May. She built the whole commercial box out and filled two supers with honey (all on new foundation), and gentle bees in the following months of the season.

The NZ Queen went into a four frame nuc much later on and produced a full 14x12 brood box bursting with bees and is going into the winter in great shape, also very gentle.

So far, so good, and we'll see how we go through the winter, but currently more than happy with both the bees and KBS.
 
Docile or not, if not suited to the climate and unable to adjust to the northern hemispere timings (the natural clock), there can be problems.

Your natural clock (there is a scientific term for this) - think of people changing from day shifts to nights and back again, or jet lag - if we get problems there is no reason to believe the bees don't too.

People only get check lag for a very short time, so even if bees did get jet lag (which they don't), how could that possibly have any long term effect on the performance of the colony?

The climate argument isn't really valid either. The climate in NZ, particularly the South Island (which the NZ queens I know of come from) is very similar, and certainly within the climate range that Europe has.
 

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