Not that my Italian queens are bad I simply want them for varroa control.I
You do not mind about honey yield?
You should know that Russian bee is not varroa tolerant.
Russian bee has not get much favour in beekeeping because its yields are small. Varroa and bees destroy so much brood that foraging capacity is lower than in chemically treated hives.
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Finski sure I want to have a good honey yield. But first I have to get drawn comb. as you can figure I got some pretty small colonies. a few of the larger ones may give me some honey.
as for the Russians being mite resistant. I'm going to give it a try what if I got to lose. I can always get new Italian Queens. they are plentiful and relatively inexpensive.
yeah, it works better if you go to bed.
do you have varroa problems? my hives came from two different beekeepers and a cutout. geographically they were pretty spread out. i almost hate to say it because it'll bite me in the arse. i have yet to see a single mite on any of my bees and i do some random larva/pupae inspections too.
Rob I know I had some earlier in the year but I haven't seen any on any the bees yet. I'm going to wait till after the honey flow then I'm going to treat with oxalic vaporization. all of my colonies look pretty vigorus right now. I have only seen a few SHB. Come to think about it now would be a good time to treat. I don't have any honey supers in place yet.
You may like this
http://youtu.be/qIYz65Vquxg
BEE HAPPY Jim 134 :)
Yeah Jim I'm kinda a fan of Mel's. I don't mention it much I especially like his method of preparing the comb for building queen cells. A lot easier than the Miller method.