supersedure in July??

[pembroke]

so I'm reading this article in the Bee Culture Magazine about re queening by the supersedure cell method in July. Helps to control Varroa Mites. Anyone else read this and are you going to try it and see how the mite population goes down or not. Maybe you have already tried this. How did it turn out for you. All comments appreciated. Pembroke

[caticind]

Seems to me there is no difference between doing that and doing a split in which the queen goes with the split.  Which I just did a couple of weeks ago.

So far it's going fine - the bees put together about 15 "supercedure" queen cells, and one has hatched, and offed her sisters.  Some old capped larvae left - the last will have hatched by Sunday.  We should begin to see eggs within three weeks if the Princess doesn't get eaten by a bird.  The nuc-sized split that took the queen is performing well also, as she continues to lay like crazy.

Now, my varroa counts were quite low before doing the split, but it may well be that as a side effect they will get knocked down even further.  We'll see.

I think that this is a good method in theory for knocking down varroa - although it would be a waste to pinch a perfectly decent queen instead of setting her up in a nuc.  But I think it works better if the broodless period is leading up to your local dearth (as it does here in central NC) so that your foraging does not suffer for a lack of new workers.