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RE: How to Help Save the Bees: Building Resilient Honey Bee Populations

in #homesteading6 years ago (edited)

One caution about collecting local swarms. If you live in an agricultural area that imports honeybees for pollination, there is a good chance swarms caught are not local acclimated stock. Farmers are paying big bucks per hive for pollination and want to see full hives of bees. Once these full hives hit the crop and start bringing in large quantities of pollen/nectar they get cramped and go into swarm mode. The beekeeper is managing 100s of hives under contract and does not have the time to waste chasing swarms. I have one customer in Georgia that collects 100s of swarms a year from the pollinators.

The other thing to be aware of is recently we are seeing more hives abscond due to heavy varroa mite infestations. So although you may thing you are getting a swarm from a strong colony you may actually be getting a sick colony that has abandoned it's previous nest to try and get away from the bad environment.

Do to these reasons I would strongly suggest evaluating each swarm and consider re-queening.

I have done quite a bit of work on swarms that can be found here -> https://beevac.com/swarm-traps/

I'll do a post in the future and share the plans for my swarm trap design that has evolved through my experience.

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Thanks for these thoughts! Definitely important considerations. I look forward to your more extensive post on this.