No end to trouble with the package I installed on May 30th.....superceded the package queen the new queen killed all of the other supercedure cells and kicked the old queen out...and then proceeded to not lay at all and disappeared either on a mating flight or shortly thereafter. ...so colony had capped brood and maturing larvae from "old queen" but no eggs young enough to turn into emergency cells.
Drove up to Pt St Lucie yesterday and WOW....great people at Florida Queen Bees & Honey....Dan was awesome and got me a new queen for my queenless package hive and sold me a boomer of a NUC that was so full it was amazing....brought the queen home and gave it to the queenless colony along with a frame of brood from the NUC and all seems to be right with the world.
Bottom line...I paid 5 dollars more for the "package" than I did for yesterdays NUC which was a 5 frame deep full of bees, fully drawn comb, and 2 full frames of stores and three crazy full brood frames......I wont buy a package again if a NUC is an option at anywhere close to the same price.
Wow!
Wish there were good nucs for sale around here! Mebbe I can change that... :cool:
'Glad to hear things worked out. I hear you on the packages!
I opted for 4 local drop packages this year (4/25). 2 made it, 2 didn't. The first one to fail ended up making 2 nice nucs, after I gave them each a frame of eggs. Both reared queens which ended up mated & laying. I just robbed them of enough brood to make up a single split each. The other failed nuc is still struggling to get going. I just gave them a frame with 4 capped queen cells, but they have dwindled to the point that I'll be nursing them for the rest of the summer.
I bought the packages with the hope they would provide extra brood for the batch of Ferguson queens I just got. They did that, to a degree, but are certainly the most troublesome batch I've ever had. After 2 months, I was able to build ~6 splits out of them and still leave them enough to keep going. With a little luck, I'll have reached the minimum "sustainable apiary" needs. Just in case, I have another batch of Ferguson Buckfast on order for next year.
Key, superseding the package queens must be a norm. I lost all (4) of my package queens last year very early on. I also lost most of my overwintered/split queens. Two friends of mine got two colonies each. One had two packages one had two nucs. Both lost one of their queens, one lost the whole nuc, and the other would have lost the package if I didn't give him a fix.
I think your only hope for a package surviving the winter is that they supersede or you requeen with local stock...
What MB said...
I've never had trouble getting Texas Buckfast packages to survive & prosper. At $160 a pop - they'd better. Now, having 1-2 out of 4 turning hot, well, that's almost as unacceptable as superseding or dying...
Ive had a package a year for the last three years, the previous 2 supersceded. And, died in winter. The one I got this year is amazing. I got it in May, and I just put the 6th medium on. Pretty astounding really, maybe not, but for what Ive seen around here it is to me. I fed them for a week, haven't fed them a drop since. All foundationless, and no introduced drawn comb. I would consider requeening, but something does not seem right about axing a queen this productive. I have built my hive count enough now that the Lord willing, I wont have to buy any packages from here on out. The rest of my hives are mite resistant, VSH, and just added some Buckfast, I guess, worst case scenario, If I don't requeen, and do lose this georgia stock to the mites/winter, The drawn comb to me will be well worth the cost of the package. Will make spring splits explode having that extra drawn comb handy. G
Overwintering hopefully wont be a huge issue for me down in the semi tropical Florida Keys where we have forage year round and the absolute lowest temp in history is 36 and that is like once every 30 years for one night before its back into the low 40s for lows and 60s for highs....but one never knows with bees :-)
Yeah, in Key Largo you shouldnt have an issue with winter.
Last year I bought ten packages... I had an argument with a few folks, who ganged up on me, stating that ANY bees will survive ANYWHERE if wintered correctly... Having started about a dozen packages at different times and in different years, I had a bad attitude about their survival rate, but it WAS only half a dozen packages...
So I bought TEN packages... Hived them, and began watching them.
by September of last year, NINE of the packages had superseded their queens..
I did NOT aid the packages in any way, IE; giving them extra brood etc...
ALL hives were treated for mites via OAV in late August
Six of ten packages looked GOOD going into winter, four of them were STILL small, and they went into nucs to overwinter.
All of my hives were overwintered the same way; http://www.outyard.net/wintering.html
Considering that the queens had been superseded, which means they mated locally, I expected half of those hives to survive the winter.. My expectations were too high.. Two of ten managed to pull through the winter.. one of those succumbed to spring wetness, and the last of them managed to start rebuilding.... They were still small by July, and were re queened. I could have helped them along with brood and feeding, but did not wish to give them any advantage the local hives did not have.
My queens have returned to being dark and tiger striped.
I DO advocate packages. They are a great way to get started or replace a loss, as long as you either replace the queen, or get the packages without a queen and buy a local queen to introduce.
I am done arguing about how any bees can survive anywhere if wintered correctly.. I suppose I could have "heated" the hives, wrapped them with thick insulation etc... but why would I want to do that? the bees I have winter very well.. most of them made the 2013/2014 winter which was excessively harsh, often reaching 55 below with the wind chill.. Bees that can handle 4 months of 0 degree to 55 below temps.. those are the bees I want to proliferate.. So when I stand in my front window, coffee in hand, and look out across the fields, with the waves of blowing snow rolling across them.. I can feel confident and content that I will come into spring with live bees.
So it's a waste of time buying a package? Why do they always supercede? If I want to try some Russians for example my only choice is to drive to Ohio or somewhere to buy some nucs? Or will the nuc supercede a month later? Is it hopeless?
Buy a package and re-queen with the genetics you want is the jist of what is being said I think. 60 days later they will all be hers. G
>So it's a waste of time buying a package?
No. It's a waste of money if you don't requeen them.
>Why do they always supercede?
Because their instincts tell them it's their only hope to survive.
>Or will the nuc supercede a month later?
They probably won't wait a month...
>Is it hopeless?
Why do you say it's hopeless. They are doing the right thing...
I'll replay my story again in a shorter version;
I've only had one package "not" requeen itself. However the next spring she was gone but left about 6 or 8 swarm cells. No luck with package queens. Would I ever buy a package again? Only if I couldn't find a nuc.
I come down on packages pretty hard, but they are an excellent way to get a hive started, as stated many times, just give them a good well mated local queen once they are up and running.
You have to think about the package producers and how many queens they are trying to get mated. Thousands? All within a week or two.. How do you insure that many queens are well mated? Even if they have dedicated drone yards thats still a LOT of queens to insure 15 ish matings each.. and then there is weather to deal with.. if they get a bad stretch of weather while those new queens are supposed to be on mating flights it gets worse.
By all means, buy packages. Get your hives started. If the bees want to supersede the queen, LET THEM.. At the very worst you get a better mated queen that is at least partially from local stock, and MAY have a chance at overwintering if your in a northern climate. At best, they have brood and eggs and are building up when you remove their queen and introduce a new one.
Buying a local nuc is the better option if possible.. the price of packages is going up like crazy, and in some cases you can find a nuc for the same price or even cheaper. Nucs are not always easy to get, and I have seen prices on some nucs that startle me, and make me a little sad... I know how hard it is to make up a nuc, and to overwinter them.. so when I see prices nearing three hundred dollars for a nuc I feel like shaking the POO out of the person.. person, not beekeeper, a beekeeper would have a little honor.
Two or three frames of brood and bees a frame or two of resources and a queen cell.. A few weeks later I transfer those frames into a box provided by whoever is buying the nuc.. Yep, i had to make the queens, that didnt take any more work than making up the nuc.. In total, I have a couple hours involved of "actual" prep to make the queen AND the nuc, its the bees that do the work, I just provide the right circumstances. I cant justify three hundred dollars. I find it HARD to even justify two hundred dollars... Prices of 120 to 180 dollars are the norm, and in that range I do feel comfortable...
As stated, the price of a package is already there.
Nucs can also be deceiving.. There are keeps in the area that BUY queens from Cali or the south and make up their nucs with them. Dont confuse them with local nucs. If possible, buy an overwintered nuc, then you know what your getting has what it takes to survive, the disadvantage is that you have a queen that is turning 1 year old. So you will need to replace her in a year or two, instead of two or three. SO back to packages... buying the package, and giving them a local queen means you KNOW what you have. Is that important?
Getting that nuc.. I have seen mouse chewed antique frames that should have been tossed at least five years ago.. spotty brood etc with a queen that has tattered wings.. and in fact it looks like this nuc was made with a queen that was about to be superseded.. I cant even count the times I have seen this with a "new" beekeeper... an experienced keep knows better, but a new keep doesnt, and they get burned. Again, the "person" that sold them such a nuc doesnt usually last long. Thats the advantage of a club. The members can warn the new member who to stay away from... with the package, you KNOW what your going to get. Bees. Bees that will get you up and running. Bees that will start building fresh new comb. Bees and a queen that will get the ball rolling, and give you time to find the "perfect" new queen.. preferably one that is mite and disease resistant.
So in consideration, a package is a SURE bet, not a hopeless case.
Sorry for the ramble... Had a full mug of coffee...
Thanks Oldmech, you explained what I was missing perfectly. Do you think that buying queens from a dealer several states away is hit or miss as well? And how soon should I requeen the package? As soon as I get it, two weeks later, a month? Or just let them handle it themselves?
I would add to what oldmech said about nucs/packages. I got 2 nucs this spring and 2 packages. The nucs came from a local big operation commercial beek that overwinters in the south. I am not a member but I believe that the local clubs get their bees from the same operation. The bottom line for me was the nucs were a few dollars cheaper and it was less travel to get them. I am going to requeen all 4 and put the old queens in nucs for the winter and hope they all survive. At any rate I have twice the chances.
Quote from: HillBilly2 on August 05, 2015, 01:11:05 AM
Thanks Oldmech, you explained what I was missing perfectly. Do you think that buying queens from a dealer several states away is hit or miss as well? And how soon should I requeen the package? As soon as I get it, two weeks later, a month? Or just let them handle it themselves?
Several states away... it depends on which direction. several states south may be a problem, east or west less of a problem, and bringing bees down from the north shouldnt be a problem, but its hard to tell. Bees from Vermont dont have to worry about the winters in Texas, but they do have to worry about the heat, and about the hive beetles, so either way there are considerations. Bringing bees from Maine to Iowa wouldnt scare me even a little bit... Vermont to Iowa, Michigan to Nebraska, or even Seattle Washington to Maine, i would think that the bees would be capable of adapting to the minor differences. Does that answer the question?
As far as re queening... You want the bees that are going to be going into winter to BE OF the new queens genetics. I would try to re queen no later than mid August (in this area) to allow for the turn over, and insure the winter bees were from proven overwintered stock.
hope that all makes sense.