Tag Archives: drone

2015 Survey Q & A – Swarming

Q-My hive swarmed in late March if that is of any interest to you. A few days after that swarm, there was another swarm that landed on the exact same place on my house as the first one. Both were collected and homed in new hives off site with friends. Both are doing well.

A –This survey is getting at losses overwinter. Early swarming means a strong colony that survived. It is not unusual that the swarms landed on the same spot – they do leave powerful odor clues behind. Good to hear you have captured them and they are in hives – we now need to hope the mating of the virgin queens (in original hive and in one of the two swarms -the 2nd most likely) goes well (weather adequate for flight and enough drones in neighboring colonies for the virgin to mate with). It is very early for matings – hope for the best.

2015 Survey Q & A – Apiary Practices & Deadouts

Q-I cycled out drone comb through August. Screen bottom board colonies got 4 or 5 powdered sugar treatments. Solid bottom boards got ApiGuard. I gave 3 Apiguard treatments in a row. Some of each died and some of each survived. All dead-outs happened Oct, Nov, and Dec of 2014. One looked like it would make the grade for almonds 10/19 but on 11/25 it was a dead out?!

A- Thank you for sending a survey. The details on use of different control materials depending upon configuration of the hive (sold or screen bottom boards) is useful and we will seek to capture it in our data analysis.