Great video. I will be referring to this often this season, so thank you! Also, great job editing! The visuals are so helpful!
@jakebark23
5 ай бұрын
Thank you so much!
@handsburyhoneybees893
5 ай бұрын
For some new beeks . Can you clarify . A couple times you said boosting up( weak) colonies. Maybe you can explain the difference between weak colony compared to boosting up a small colony. Or maybe explain the difference between a weak colony, or a small colony
@jakebark23
5 ай бұрын
Great question/point. I don't really make a clear distinction between 'small' and 'weak' colonies, in my vernacular they are just different adjectives for the same condition: a colony that just isn't growing or with a smaller population that their neighbors. With these, you 'Robin-Hood' from the rich colonies and give resources to the poor. That said, we can and probably should note some distinctions among these colonies: WHY those colonies are weak, and if/how to address those problems, and certain contraindications for boosting! (I omitted these because this is a video about swarm control as opposed to being a video about boosting weak hives. Good subject for a future video though! Might literally be the next one I make, would be timely.) There are fundamentally 3 things that cause a weak colony with a small population in the spring: current disease, bad queens, and 'everything else.' We can call 'everything else' 'myriad population issues.' Lets work through that list backwards. 'Myriad population issues' are those caused by something OTHER THAN bad queens or current disease. These are colonies that respond really well to resource boosting. The colony might have just entered winter with a smaller population due to feed issues or a poorly-timed requeening late in the summer. They might have had higher overwinter-population-losses due to a disease vector that is no longer present, like a late bad varroa hit that was stopped with a winter oxalic application, but the past damage inflicted is still playing out. It might even just be a colony that was hit by winter weather worse than their neighbors: within any apiary, there are worser spots for weather exposure and colonies placed there will (to an extent) have worse winter losses. All of these are relics of PAST problems. The 'boost' these colonies receive is often enough for them to 'break out' and start growing independently and recover without further inputs. Weak colonies with bad queens respond well to resource boosting, but will start to go backwards again afterwards. Boosting these colonies doesn't lead to a permanent fix, because the fundamental cause (the bad queen) remains. To get these colonies on track and independently successful, the queen must be replaced. Lastly are colonies that are sick right now/currently. There are several potential disease conditions this time of year, particularly EFB and Vairimorpha (what we used to call Nosema). In my opinion these are colonies that shouldn't be boosted. The disease is either treatable and should be handled first, or it is terminal and you're throwing away resources. When a colony becomes sick enough to show Vairimorpha symptoms, they have a 100% mortality rate in my experience. Vairimorpha is here and killing colonies, but most beeks don't recognize it/it frequently goes undiagnosed. Around 1% of my colonies get Vairimorpha, so I expect similar for other apiaries in my region. That also means an apiary with 10 hives would on average see it once every 10 years, so it gives little opportunity for most beeks to become familiar with its signs (unlike Varroa kills, which are readily found in most apiaries in the spring). Theoretically a frame of capped brood will spike up this colony's population and buy them time to recover, but I just don't see it paying off. I think you're throwing good money after bad here. With EFB, the disease condition tends to persist until either treatment with increasingly-hard-to-source terramycin, or a brood break and/or requeening breaks the infection's reproductive cycle and the colony shakes off the disease. This is another case of throwing good money after bad: the colony is either weak enough it will fail, or the queen can be caged or something to instigate recovery from EFB FIRST. A colony in recovery is a fine candidate for boosting, but a colony that is still sick just ends up with more sick bees after boosting. You need to handle the disease first. I hope this hits the question you were asking! And if not, fire away!
@handsburyhoneybees893
5 ай бұрын
@@jakebark23 . Well said Jake . Couldn’t have said it better myself. Lol. I think we have both seen people that keep dumping good brood frames on bad/weak colony’s
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