Thanks for your advise earlier on other videos. I had something new to pick your mind on. I have this mini-nuc that is so weak and small that I doubt it will survive, and no queen. If I want to say I have zero failed hives I could newspaper combine it and that could make the numbers look good, after all it was prevented from having population go to zero. And I did catch it in time. If I go numbers game like that I can say it didn't really fail because I combined it with another. That's one option. But the other option is thinking, well its a possibility that varroa in there could be higher than normal not because I have a lot of varroa, I don't, but because its population just dropped fast, and in theory that should mean higher varroa than normal. (Although I don't think I have high varroa population normally.) If its like this, maybe its a good idea to not combine it instead and purposely let it go. People have shown that if a population drops fast the varroa will hop to other bees etc. PS; wasn't a full hive but was a purpose 2 frame nuc. But the queen failed. And then the second queen somehow left. Now its population is so very low... Wondered if you had any thoughts.
If you know you had queen issues for a while already, the bees are probably just dying of old age and there's no young bees to replace them. If that's the case, the old bees aren't really worth much and may not be worth saving. I would not count that against your numbers though, mating nucs like that aren't normally included in your colony count as their purpose is to mate queens, not be a colony.
That is correct. Before we took action, we had a very weak hive with a queen we liked, and a decent swarm with a completely unknown queen. In order to save the queen that we know and liked (gentle, survived a winter, etc) we needed to remove the queen from the other hive so that those bees would accept the other queen as their own. Unfortunate for the queen, but beneficial for both of the hives and the beekeeper as well - the needs of the colony outweigh the needs of any of the individuals, including the queen.
Man what an education. This helps me allot. I getting there
Glad you found it useful!
Thanks for your advise earlier on other videos.
I had something new to pick your mind on.
I have this mini-nuc that is so weak and small that I doubt it will survive, and no queen. If I want to say I have zero failed hives I could newspaper combine it and that could make the numbers look good, after all it was prevented from having population go to zero. And I did catch it in time. If I go numbers game like that I can say it didn't really fail because I combined it with another. That's one option.
But the other option is thinking, well its a possibility that varroa in there could be higher than normal not because I have a lot of varroa, I don't, but because its population just dropped fast, and in theory that should mean higher varroa than normal. (Although I don't think I have high varroa population normally.) If its like this, maybe its a good idea to not combine it instead and purposely let it go. People have shown that if a population drops fast the varroa will hop to other bees etc.
PS; wasn't a full hive but was a purpose 2 frame nuc. But the queen failed. And then the second queen somehow left. Now its population is so very low...
Wondered if you had any thoughts.
If you know you had queen issues for a while already, the bees are probably just dying of old age and there's no young bees to replace them.
If that's the case, the old bees aren't really worth much and may not be worth saving. I would not count that against your numbers though, mating nucs like that aren't normally included in your colony count as their purpose is to mate queens, not be a colony.
Did u just kill the queen without being attacked by any bee ?
That is correct. Before we took action, we had a very weak hive with a queen we liked, and a decent swarm with a completely unknown queen. In order to save the queen that we know and liked (gentle, survived a winter, etc) we needed to remove the queen from the other hive so that those bees would accept the other queen as their own. Unfortunate for the queen, but beneficial for both of the hives and the beekeeper as well - the needs of the colony outweigh the needs of any of the individuals, including the queen.
@@HiddenSpringApiaries yes
But i mean why aren't the bees stopping you from kilking their queen ?
It happens too quick for them to know what is going on