This was posted to BeeL some time ago by one of the largest Bee Farmers in the UK who keeps an open mind.
"We have tried this on a few occassions, indeed it was discussed here
some time ago, I reckon about a year or so back.
Sounds fine in theory, and is quite easy to do, but it has one huge
drawback.
The stress causes latent nosema to kick in badly, which does not appear
initially to have caused a problem. It only really manifests itself in
the winter ahead, when losses are sharply higher in the colonies from
shook swarms than from normal splits.
The last experiment we did on this was about 5 years ago, when we made
up an apiary of 20 shook swarms and 20 normal splits. All was fine
throughout the season, and the swarms roared ahead, but were soon caught
up on by the splits. (It is just the same as for another version of the
same, packages. They roar off quickly but then drop back as attrition
accounts for adult bees before the first brood hatches.)
In the winter which followed we lost most (16 out of 20 if I recall
correctly) of the shaken swarms, and the rest of them were small, but
only two of the conventional splits died, and most of the survivors were
strong.
I can almost hear the chorus of 'why didn't you feed fumidil'. Two
reasons. In our part of Scotland your window for doing this operation
inevitably coincides with a honey flow and supers are on, and secondly
we really wanted to see how it affected the bees (hence the decent scale
experiment). Thus we did not treat them in autumn either.
I am very interested in the link between nosema and stress, as it is
undoubtedly the problem most economically damaging factor to our
enterprise, resulting in too many small colonies in spring (and a fair
number of empty ones). In these days of mite problems, and hysteria
about resistant mites etc, everyone seems too keen to blame the new(ish)
pest for all their ills, and many forget about this old favourite which
is still lurking out there.
This is a post to the BeeL list from one of the biggest Bee Farmers in the UK who keeps an open mind and experiments.
"I have no doubt that, in areas without a pronounced winter, shook
swarming will be fine, and in many other areas a spring and autumn
fumidil treatment for at least the first whole year will help. After 50
years of experience between my father and I of experimentations with it
we can safely say it is not an option we will take again without a
seriously good reason.
I know this does not answer your question about the practice of this
method in the US (although the package trade is an equivalent) but our
experience is probably slightly more relevant to English conditions. If
you get a hold of the directions for dealing with packages, particularly
the bit about feeding fumidil on hiving, you should be able to do this
with fewer troubles than the untreated way.
Murray"
PH
