I search in my spare time, all over the world for information that hopefully will help lead me to become a better beekeeper as I'm sure many of you also do. I found the following form a South American channel. This was a comment at the bottom after the video. This was written in Spanish. I translated by Google translate to English
I found it to be interesting and a different twist for someone who gave it it their best shot, to save a small colony.
This guy claims to have caught a small swarm, he says with 50 bees and one queen late fall in his Argentina. He built a special winter place for them, along with heat to help the small colony survive and thrive. The heat was used to keep the eggs at the right temperature as there were not enough bees to cover the brood witch the queen would lay during the colder times. Supposedly two years later, with effort and hard work, this little 50 bee swarm grew, through split and queen rearing to become a 30 hive apiary. The queen explanation, at the bottom, was just a description of how he raised his Queens for the next 29 hives which was not done during the winter but during the regular bee season from what I could understand.
Something different and kind of kin to your (Arcos) situation?
This is from: Camino al Agro
Youtube channel
May 10, 2016
This comment is by: Jose Alfredo Salvatori
Someone of the best beekeepers, can do the next feat if they have a little bit of intelligence?
Can at the beginning of autumn without having anything more than a queen and no more than 50 bees obtain at the end of the second year 30 strong beehives, plus several cores for sale and have it not in the field but in a city. And with the winter of Buenos Aires Argentina?
Think for a while before going ahead reading and find a way to do it.
If you can achieve this, as a beekeeper you could achieve anything.
In any subtropical climate. Almost without food, because in a large city with fields far away there is no food.
This question is not a joke.
I mean it.
Think.
Think.
Think.
Can not think of anything?
A few blows of their heads against the wall to see if something comes out.
I know that no good beekeeper would think of anything. But kick that little handful of bees with their queen.
About 20 years ago, living in the city, I saw that there were no bees in a single hive that I had left. I opened it and it was empty, without bees, without young, without honey. But I found in the excluding fence a handful of bees with their queen that would not spend 50 with much effort.
Remove hikes. I housed them on an empty square. Feed with sugar syrup and sugar protein paste, soy flour, brewer's yeast and I do not remember what else because I did several tests. Accrete camera.
I took a 220 volt transformer to 12 v. ((([I pricked them a bit and told them that if they did not reproduce they would continue picking to learn]))) I took those old laparitas from Christmas trees to filament, and I tried them until they shone weakly so as not to burn, and I placed under the bees. That little bit of bees could never warm the eggs that the queen put.
Put less than 10 eggs and in autumn
I took a metallic resistance from an electric heater and I tried different lengths until it warmed up well. I wrapped it in a stick and put it under the bees to give them more heat.
The new bees had already been born.
I took two phenolic platelets from the electronic printed circuits and put them in a sandwich with more resistance and added them. In the middle of winter I was filled with honeycomb on both sides.
Take another phenolic plate of something more than 7 cm x 25 cm, putting several resistances. At the end of August the nucleus was filled with bees. In the spring fill the drawer. Divided into three drawers, always feeding everything and heating. That year I got 8 to 9 strong beehives. In the second season I got 30 strong hives that I took to the field to collect honey. More several nuclei that I sold.
Transform tens of kg of sugar and a few kilowatts in 30 hives and several nuclei.
They must use their own ingenuity and not copy others. Because the one who uses his genius always takes the lead before the one who copies.
Haaaa .... I forgot the queens ....
I took a pot of one kg of empty ice cream, those styrofoam ones and I had it inside my bedroom.
I put a temperature regulator, a transformer also inside because it also heats up. A resistance screwed on a stick. A small can of water with a cloth protruding from the water to give it moisture. The groves sealed inside plastic rollers for the hair lodge in the pot and wait to be born. Then perfect, before they were born, I put some nurse bees with honey to feed the queens when they were born in case I could not immediately install in nucleus
Topic: Promoting brood during winter (Read 2360 times)