Untreated feral hives, what they can do

[Finman]

I've assumed they were existing colonies given one started in August would probably die anyway. I could be wrong.

My point would be there is no benefit to misrepresenting them dying because if they all lived it wouldn't change the results.

You should read more carefully the tex.

There were heavily contaminated hives
Then there were 10 mite free hives at the distance of 1,5 km.

They want to see, how fast pure hives get mites from heavy loaded neighbours or heavy loaded environment.

As described, each hive got 84 to 444 mites. In total, 2,029 mites were found in the 10 receiver colonies.

So, at the distance of mile so much mites were transfered to pure hives. .....during 2 months....

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What we can learn about this... even pure hives, which you cleaned with oxalic acid, may get a serious amount of mites during summer and reason is not the beekeeping. It just happens. You may get a good load in autumn too after thymol treatment.

what else we can learn......... if you loose a hive, not loose your night sleeps. Keeps so much spare colonies that you need not to cry.
Dead colonies are very normal in beekeeping.

If you have one hive and you loose 100% out of them, trust on rumors, that feral hives will soon fill you empty hive, and if you are lucky, your feral survivor may have a marked queen.

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[lindalinda]

I have no idea about hives but When I join the forum and read post I like all the posts so much.

 

[For want of a better word]

If you have one hive and you loose 100% out of them, trust on rumors, that feral hives will soon fill you empty hive, and if you are lucky, your feral survivor may have a marked queen.


With a number on her back.... nice one!

 

[Into the lions den]

With a number on her back.... nice one!

lol.....I know exactly what Finman is getting at. Over the year we have had several swarms from feral colonies that were in house roofs, chimneys etc, that, according to the owner had been there for many years.

Once caught, turned out to have a marked queen in them. At least once it was undoubtedy one of our own from the season before!

'Several' will mean maybe 20 in my lifetime. Captured swarms from these situations will be at least 20 times that number. We used to get at least 10 a year from one single country house, so many that we left bait hives there at the owners request. All the ferals in the roof were gassed when it was converted to a prep school.

 

[For want of a better word]

All the ferals in the roof were gassed when it was converted to a prep


school.



School dinners... too many beans!