After BA died things pretty much went to pot at Buckfast no idea of the details or truth behind the stories. I think they effectively licensed and flogged on the stock. The best person to have asked on this forum would be Pete little(Hive Maker) rather gone missing recently and I’ve not spoken to him on the phone for a while, there’s no such thing as a short chat
Basically and from my point of view there a mongrel and a mix of many races that’s been line bred or perhaps in bred to fix the desirable traits, there not a race but a strain. For me personally the name is irrelevant some do appear to get hung up on it for good or bad. The bonus for beekeepers is there’s a group of dedicated and good breeders carrying on breeding and improving this strain, with very large numbers of colonies/resources. Europe also have various carnica associations and both knock the socks off the vast majority of breeders/groups in the Uk. For me it’s not about what race makes up strain or the name rather it’s qualities, and the fact that as jo blogs beekeeper I can lay my hands on them. There’s one or two groups in the UK that have failed over the years to actually make stock availableFor the technical minded there’s also this. But I’ve no idea the original source of theses Irish buckfast or indeed what line they could have been. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23802359.2018.1450660...............The buckfast in my picture above are island mated from Buckfast - Home.... I have another line from them that are very dark. So there is variations. Ian
...flippin insulation...they never got isolated and just scoffed everything in sight. I can't have left them enough...stopped feeding to soon for "ideological" reasons. I've changed my tune now.
) but the colony was motoring away.
Just been watching Ged Marshall's talk about wintering bees and thought of you. He mentioned a colony which had expanded to 4 frames of brood very early in the year (on 14x12s) and was on the verge of eating itself out of house and home.
He doesn't insulate (I know, anathema to the forum
Link here at about 34 mins in.
Good vitality, fecund queen, generally favourable conditions; do bees respond to increased light as some other creatures?
True, 20°c blue skies forecast this afternoon.☀
As a beekeeper of 30 years all my colonies are AMM and living in central Ireland I see winter feeding as one of the most important undertakings during the bee year. I have come to the conclusion that strong colonies of bees going into the winter make high yield colonies the following year. Because spring can arrive between early March and the middle of April the larger colonies build up quicker. The downside of this is that you have to ensure they have adequate stores. To this end the feeding regime which I use is as follows.Being a bit of a smartarse, (what do you expect? I'm a beekeeper!) I've been quite selective in the range of accepted beekeeping practises I have adopted. This has resulted in the demise of my colony of Buckfast.
They went into winter with an eleven-frame, BS deep with a matching shallow of honey stores above. There was a bit of brood on a couple of those shallow frames at the last time I checked inside, which was late September/early October. I have been hefting them quite frequently but I think I've been deceived by inexperience as the hive has felt heavy throughout winter; now dismantled, it feels very light.
I had since decided that feeding was not one of my gambits (mind now changed @Earthboy
A couple of days ago I had a pile of dead bees in front, showing symptoms reminiscent of CBPV and my suspicions were increased when I had a quick peep into the top and could see bees with shivering wings. By this morning they were dead. Between the lot of you, if I'd listened properly, you could have saved me from this. But the problem is that I put together the jigsaw of advice and experience in a way that looked right from the back, but turned over.....the picture didn't! There was zero brood, pollen or honey...this had been declining for ages.
Conclusions:
1. Buckfast are very hungry and although I feel the loss, now I will stick to my "locals" and caught swarms.
2. Maybe it's not so smart to let bees build up as much as I did by going excluderless with double brood or brood and a half; in future it will be one deep with a QE.
3. The worry I have about having sugar in next season's honey is probably over-concern....there'll certainly be no sugar in it now!
4. If they can starve, even without removing honey stores, they obviously benefit from being stuffed with sugar in the Autumn and maybe during winter.
5. My bees are very insulated; going back to a thread the other day, I think it was @gmonag who said he believed insulated bees consumed more stores...that seems to be the right assumption. I think the bees carried on multiplying until very late in the season and consumed a lot of their stores.
6. I'm staying positive, using some dirty old frames which came with the original nuc as the basis for bait hives. I also now have some drawn frames for nucs and honey supers.
If you've read this far you'll see that I have learned something from this disaster so I would appreciate not being beaten up. But any addditional observations or advice are welcome.
How old are your queens please?
About 60% of the Queens would last 2 seasons. A further 30% would last 3 seasons and 10% would either be swapped out or not survive their first season/winter
