2013 Post Mortem

As of 3/17/14 I have two surviving hives.  It was a long winter, and very cold.  The lowest temps and most snow we've had in decades.  Lots of schools cancelled 10-15 days when they are allowed only 5 cancellations.

The nuc had no chance and the weakest colonies failed.  Surprisingly, so did the strongest colony I had as rated on Dec 1 2013.

I ordered 3 each 3lb packages from Waldo Apiaries.  This is my first time trying Waldo, I went with them because I could get a 4/16/14 pickup and they offered "Buckeye Belle" queens, supposedly from Ohio survivor stock.  This article from OSBA on 1/11/14:

Dana Stahlman is announcing the sale this year of OHIO BUCKEYE BELLE QUEENS. I will be going to Georgia in January to begin the process of building nuc’s for the production of Ohio queen stock that was described in the Walter T. Kelley Newsletter published in June, July and August of 2013. 

The queen stock has been further enhanced with Artificial Insemination with selected drone semen. The mother queen survived in an abandoned bee yard (a hive that had not been managed for a number of years) and upon examination, the hive during the period it was not managed did not have wax moth or a long interruption in bee population which would have been indicated by rebuilt comb in the hive. In July the bees were inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture with both bee and comb samples sent to USDA for inspection and report. The report from USDA found no disease or mites. 

If you are interested in purchasing queens or wanting to sell some of these queens, email me at: stahlmanapiaries@aol.com. Buckeye Belle and Buckeye Reb queens were produced by me during the 1990’s and early 2004. I am bringing them back into production.

I am hopeful that this queen stock will do well for me.  I have had repeated mass deaths of Italians and Carniolans.  The hives that overwintered for me in 2013 all came from swarms or cutouts and may be related to survivor stock.   Also hoping I don't get small hive beetles in my bee packages, which will come from Georgia.

UPDATE 4/16/14:
No Buckeye Belle queens were available from Waldo Apiaries.  Reportedly the breeder experienced bad weather when queens should have taken mating flights, so there were no mated queens available at the time of package production.  If I get small hive beetle from GA bees I will be PISSED since the reason I got GA bees was for the survivor stock queens.  Instead I got more Italian queens.