Did your bees receive the Darwin Award this Winter?

[Garry Grube]

For those too young to remember the Darwin Awards, it is named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution. The Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it. I think I have a potential candidate just to make a point. But they aren't of the human kind.

 

I received an email from Marcin Matelski, head beekeeper at the Garfield Conservatory, explaining an interesting behavior of one of his colonies. The quote is lifted directly from his email dated Wednesday, April 15. The attached file is a snapshot of his brood frame

 

"At last night's meeting Garry talked about, among many things, about IQI and the idea of getting local queens. He mentioned that out-of-area queens are not used to our climate, blooms and generally tend to raise brood when they maybe shouldn't.

I'm attaching a picture of GPC 2lb package that was installed on March 31st that was inspected for the first time today. It was installed in a 10 frame deep box with an open screen bottom. All frames were drawn, and there were 2 frames of honey/nectar and 1.5 frames of pollen from last year. This colony was not fed, other than what was in the frames. There are almost 2 frames of capped brood already and probably about 6 frames with brood in all stages of development. I don't know how that's possible. None of the other packages are that far along in their progress. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw some chilled brood, maybe even chalkbrood, at some point in the near future. Then again, we've had cool nights and I couldn't see any evidence of brood disposal. I looked hard. My point is maybe Garry has a point. Maybe local is better. 

There's no doubt that I will re-queen this colony before winter with a queen raised from overwintered GPC hives, but I won't dispose of this queen. Still though, very cool to see that much brood on a 2 week old package."

 

We still have some cold nights ahead. Does this queen have enough nurse bees to keep the brood from getting chilled? I wonder. Is this a queen who's DNA is expressing breeding for almond tree production in California. I suspect so. Is this a queen you would like for the spring flow? Probably. Is this a queen you want for an over wintering hive. Probably not. I think this queen is Darwin Award material in the Mid-west. I think she will be great for making what Michael Palmer calls "Bee Bombs" for other hives. She is so productive that she could provide a bee population to other hives just by taking out capped brood and putting in other hives. But the question is "Will she slow down in the Fall or will her workers rip through all the gathered honey and then starve?"

 

I just wanted to share this as an extreme example of what one can get with package bees from outside sources. Do I want California bees that take cleansing flights in the middle of Winter only to die in the snow or do I want bees from Northern latitudes that have their first cleansing flight in April. Do I want bees that consume all the honey they have collected or bees that cluster and are conservative on consumption. The only way to change the outcome is to requeen after the 4th of July holiday before Labor Day.

 

The Illinois Queen Initiative holds queen rearing workshops throughout the state. These courses are appropriate for beekeepers with 2 or more years of beekeeping experience who want to learn to raise their own queens or for those who want to sell queens to other beekeepers. The IQI does not have enough queen producers to meet the need of the state for local queens. We need increased beekeeper participation. Consider the workshop at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.on May 2 if you are at all interested and want to get connected with other producers to help solve a serious problem.

 

The workshop is a co-sponsored event between the IQI and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Follow this link to the Illinois Queen Initiative class May 2 which will take you to the registration page. All registration via PayPal for this class handled by the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Accepting candidates that have 2 or more years of beekeeping. This is not a beginner course. $90 for non-members, $75 for IQI members. Join as a member and get the class at the reduced rate. You can pay your dues at the class.

The Illinois Queen Initiative is a non-profit education organization teaching beekeepers how to produce quality queens that will survive and thrive without chemicals to battle the influx of the Varroa mite.

Send your questions to Garry Grube at garry...@gmail.com

Garry Grube
Chicago Director
Illinois Queen Initiative