Jurnal apicol

[Eugen B]

Nu stiu daca ati vazut la stiri ca stam prost cu bugetu pe 2015, cred ca de asta ii s-a facut rau lu Ponta. Cred ca iar va creste ceva impozite :(.
E clar ca numarul teoretic fata de practic este diferit. Oricum eu sunt ceva mai pesimit decat tine in primavara.

[D006]

Au mai fost momente grele pentru apicultorii romani si au trecut peste ele , sigur vom trece si peste calamitatea numita Ponta.  Dupa al doilea razboi mondial Romania era la pamant , la fel si apicultura . Comunistii au mai pus si impozit pe albine , in cativa ani Romania practic nu mai avea stupi .  Cand PCR a vazut ca din miere se obtine valuta nu numai ca a desfiintat impozitul ci a si subventionat aceasta ramura.

[D006]

atentie la tipul de stup .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npSzVAFgvx0

[Kiwi Bee]

atentie la tipul de stup .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npSzVAFgvx0

E Marin din Serbia. Nai vazut bratara pe mina dreapta?

[dan sebastian]

Rama aj, cum ii spune el, stupul e unul de-al nostru orizontal, in pat rece modificat de el in pat cald la tipul lui de rama care se trage in pricolita pe orizontala.

[D006]

mai uita-te odata atent cum sunt dispuse toate ramele in respectiva lada !

[TDI]

in Romania sunt 1,4 milioane colonii de albine

Dn. Dragos chiar crezi asta?

In anul de gratie 2014 sigur sunt 1.4 milioane, in noiembrie - in martie o sa fie sensibil mai putine. Cel mai bun indicator e productia de miere exportata.

[claudiu_tgv]

Felicitari pentru stupina ! daca ii scoti pe toti in primavara treci botezul apiculturii. Tine minte ce am spus mai sus, nu te lua dupa ce vezi in mediul on-line ca in realitate e mult mai greu si productiile mult mai mici.

Multumesc. Sper sa reusesc in primavara cu stupii. Eu zic ca le-am lasat hrana destula - 4-5 rame cu miere capacita. Si poate o sa avem un an mai bun pentru apicultura.

Iernare usoara tuturor!

[marian sima]

Salutari.
Care va pricepeti la o traducere mai buna a acestui text,e destul de interesant dar treducerea data nu este prea buna.



Mongrel Bees

In the last couple of years I have read many, many articles on the 'disappearing bees' now called CCD or Colony Collapse disorder and the numerous suggestions as to the cause of so many hives dieing off. From micro waves and cell phones, to a variety of viruses, Varroa and Trachael mites, to pesticides and insecticides, but nowhere do you see anything about queens, rearing and strain mongrelisation. By that I mean taking two different strains, mixing the two by breeding, then expecting a pure strain in return. The rules of genetics apply to bees the same as anything else on the planet.

When trying to discuss this point with other breeders the immediate reaction is for them to try to justify what they're doing, and the common reaction is that one is trying to undermine their efforts, a failure to discuss the overall problem, and the ultimate error in defending their particular bees. A case in particular, one beekeeper I know runs aggressive bees and justifies their actions by trying to explain that his angry mongrel bees are good foragers, from my experience it means they are good robbers.

Having kept bees going back to the 50's I can report numerous changes we as bee keepers have made, often to the detriment of the bees, the major one in my estimation the mixing of strains in an attempt to produce the super bee. It can't be done! Years ago there was no importation of bees, we managed with the stock we had and bred our own queens when needed. Looking around there have been numerous attempts over the years to breed a super bee and I would venture they have all failed. Have a look they have all disappeared into oblivion.

The 4 major strains of bees, Italians, Carniolans, Caucasians, and the European Dark bees are or were separated by large geographical regions, it's only man's interference which has joined these bees together, I believe to Mother Natures dismay.

We now know from DNA testing that queens mate with up to more than 17 drones on a single mating, which could lead in theory to 17 different families within a single hive. We also know from the same source that when a hive swarms it will swarm on family lines. Does it also follow that various 'families' might not be co-operating in a cohesive fashion? Perhaps this might account for the difficulty of re-queening some hives with a different strain of bee? For example the difficulty of re-queening with 'Buckfast' and 'Russian' queens when they were first tried in the Province.

I can only describe the results of the last 20 years of my keeping bees, the product of my observations and leave it to the reader to determine if there is value to my theory that the problem of CCD is created in part by mongrel bees. .

In the early 80's we intensified our bee keeping, our life had become a little simpler. This involved buying a semi-isolated bee yard complete with 15 hives of an unknown variety, about the time that Dr. Medhat Nasser and the Ontario Beekeeping Association was introducing Trachael mite testing. I was one of the first to help by supplying him with 15 hive samples for testing, of which 10 proved to be resistant and 5, which we removed from the stock yard, were susceptible. No point is starting with a suspect strain of bees.

These 10 hives formed the basis of what was to follow. We had relative success breeding our own queens, they started producing bigger hives, more honey and we didn't have too much winter loss, but a problem, aggressive bees. I have nothing against aggressive behaviour, but it makes for better bee keeping when they're easier to handle, and I certainly couldn't sell angry production queens.

About this time there was a major push in the Province to 'Buckfast' bees, there were a number of breeders with this strain and I succumbed to the advertising and bought some, as being assured they would add a calming effect to my stock. That was the worst advice and information I could have received. The offspring of that strain mating were the worst bees I had handled in over 50 years. My original breeding were thought of as being aggressive, but nothing like the latest round. Impossible to handle, they had that disgusting habit of following after a manipulation sometimes to a distance of 500 yards or more, adding more smoke in an attempt to suppress them just made them worse. We had to suit up before entering the yard and any bare skin and ankles was subject to attack, not at all a pleasant experience. In the end I just killed them, washed them out of the hive with a spray of soapy water, first time in all my bee keeping I had to do that.

Now I had a major problem. I had added a dark bee, mongrel at that, as that is what Brother Adam had done. He had taken not just one but a variety of different strains, mixed them all together and called them 'Buckfast', still mongrels, regardless of the name they were given. Looking through all our hives we found numerous incidences of the mixing, most had dark and black drones and overall grey bees. Nothing like the bright Golden brown striped Italian I had grown up with and used for many years, Italians are relatively easy to spot due to their colour, even the drones are different, striped with the same colours of the workers. I am not one to wax lyrical, but have found that a clean Italian strain to be delightful to work with. These are normally a quick, non-aggressive, hard working honey producer with large hives that do well in a warm summer and will winter over well with large hives early in the spring.

About this same time I became interested in Morphometry and fell in love with the idea of creating a cleaner strain, trying to eliminate the dark genes being a priority. The more we worked with the bees the more we became convinced that the mongrels were producing the effects we didn't like. Once we really examined the hive numbers we could see quite plainly which had more dark genes, that led us to observe the more dark genes the more aberrations. At one point we had a hive which would not produce wax, another that was a useless forager, others that over produced pollen, excessive propolis, and so on, seemingly infinite problems. But as we found hives with a purer strain, so the results became much better. I am not trying to blame all dark bees, all I'm attempting is to explain our findings, hives with a mixture of strain colours do not do as well as a purer bee. It is highly possible a purer strain of dark bee might have the traits we demand, I don't know, it would require others to experiment.

The rationale became that, if I wanted to stay in bee keeping, breeding good production queens, I had to 'clean' my strain of these unwanted genes. So I spent some time learning how to use Morphometry, discovering the necessary methods of wing measurement to determine what bees I had, how many out of a sample were on 'the wrong side of the blanket' and selecting the best queens for use as breeder mothers. This whole business of selection was tricky, not only did we have to select for all the best traits, health, brood viability, wintering capabilities, cleanliness, foraging ability, aggression, we had to add the best Morphometry numbers. Quite often we found too many numbers on the wrong side of the scatter gram, or we would pick the wrong criteria, so it was not an easy task we had set. A look at our web pages on Morphometry would be helpful at this point.

About this time Tracheal mites really moved into our area, but we were unconcerned as we believed we had T mite resistance, never having treated for T mites. As the T Mite infestation moved across the province there was a move to test hives, by the bee inspectors, of all queen and nuc producers in the province for T mites. During one early test it was determined we had T mites in our yard. The inspectors had found one mite in one bee and that meant we were written up as having an infestation of T mites in our bees. Even a protest and appeal to the Provincial Apiarist didn't achieve anything, we had T mites, end of story, most unfair, but nothing could or would be changed. I believe this was strictly political. We instigated extensive testing and didn't find another mite in any of our hives, nor did we lose any hives to T Mites, so we shrugged our shoulders and carried on.

As we were on a path to 'cleaner' bees we kept records of a variety of points we needed so we could check our progress, noting in particular the state of winter ability. During this whole process we didn't lose a hive to winter, not one over the 20 year period.

Now we were in our 'happy place', good bees, still not as 'clean' as we would like but very, very close. Our Morphometry numbers were getting better every year, no mite problems of either sort, good wintering, our average honey crop, and I'm stressing 'average' was 215lbs per hive in a good weather year. Our queens were selling well, with lots of good reports and testimonials from satisfied customers. One point to note, we never had a problem with superscedure complaints. Too good to last? Sure enough, the USA decided to close the border to Canadian bees. To be precise they didn't close the border, but made matters extremely difficult to get queens across the border to individual customers which we were accustomed to servicing. This spelt the death knell to our commercial queen rearing, we had to close it down.

During one foray into the hives I suddenly noted a dramatic colour shift. The bees were changing colour, the workers were taking on a grey look and black drones had appeared, I even had winter losses. Panic ensued, we stopped selling the queens we were making for our friends, we pulled all the hives apart, checked each one, most had changed, they were mongrels again. I went back through the stats from previous years, the numbers for the queens we had last used were good, there should not have been any change, but there it was, a major shift. Our mating pattern had been compromised and changed, drastically.

It was only after talking to a friend about the changes we had seen that he called one day and said "Did you know there are hives close to the mating yard? I have just noticed them." He explained where they were and rang off. I immediately drove down to have a look, sure enough hives placed so they could hardly be seen from the road, about 1/2 mile from my mating yard. I walked down the field and watched the entrances for a few minutes, sure enough, mongrels, and what a mixture. After questioning the locals I determined who owned them, my nemesis, so I then called the bee inspector for my area and the answer I got was a total waste of time. Nothing could be done, the damage was done.

That winter the hammer fell, total failure, 9 out of 10 dead. The remaining hive was so weak as to be a waste of time and we had to nurse it back to health. The remaining hive was tested, it had a case of T mites and suffered badly from Nosema, both of which had killed the other 9.

We were devasted and demoralized, 20 years of work down the drain, much gnashing of teeth and shaking of fists at the beekeeper Gods, we wanted revenge, but it was all a waste of effort, revenge was not forthcoming.

Now we had to make a decision. Either to stop keeping bees completely as we had nothing left or to make a fresh start and just keep a number of hives, for our own enjoyment. Starting again was the answer, just for our own interest and pleasure. For the next two years we drove around the Province looking at hives, with the owners permission, looking for the very illusive 'Italians'. They don't exist. I was promised 'Italians', they said they bred 'Italians', but nowhere could I find pure 'Italians', all I found was mongrels. Even advertised bee breeders couldn't produce anything like a clean Italian, most were just buying in queens from Australia and other places in spite of advertising themselves as breeders.

I have now arrived at a starting point. We have 5 hives, 4 quite strongly Italian and one black mongrel. These will all be tested in the spring, if they survive, and from those we are hopeful we can breed some purer strain of Italians. At least we have a starting point again.

So what can the average bee keeper do to improve their stock? The first thing to do is to establish what strain of bee they really want to keep. Examine their bees carefully and note any variation in overall colour, ignore young bees as they will change colour slightly as the bees age. Best to look at mature bees, noting the abdomen carefully for banding colours. Then examine the list of characteristics listed on our Morphometry pages which should give you a good start point in establishing which bees you have. Then select those bees which have the traits you want, plus the colour you need, and use them as queen mothers. Selecting drones is just as vital. Beware, black drones fly faster than the larger Italians, just a point to bear in mind. In other areas of our web site you'll find information on restraining unsuitable drones to prevent them flying and mating with those virgin queens you've raised. Then when you start seeing better results you publish the results, get others involved in re-starting a cleaner healthier strain of bees.

This has been a long article. I can only hope it was worth the read?

[D006]

Un tabel foarte interesant de unde am inteles ca reginele mele sunt cele mai bune .

[oroles]

Si cand te gandesti ca unii au vrut sa aduca la noi albina rusa si nu impresioneaza la nimic. Si lingustica e tare slaba, desi unii o lauda.

[D006]

Uneori ma gandesc ca poate este o greseala ca s-a batut atăt de mult pe denumirea de "albina carpatina" cand in fapt in Ro avem carnica (carniolan) . Puteam lua exemplu slovenilor sau a austriecilor care acum au o carte de vizita buna pe aceasta rasa .
  Cand vezi datele din teren coroborate cu cele din practica intelegi ca mult laudata buckfast nu este decat un mit in coparatie cu ce face carnica . Am spus mit pentru a nu folosi termenul de " cioara vopsita "...
  La nivel de 2014 a mai visa la buckfast este ori dovada de incultura apicola ori de probleme in percepția realitatii. BK a fost adus si folosit in Ro de catre niste băieti despeti care au facut o caciula de bani pe seama pinguinilor. Cred ca a venit timpul sa punem lucrurile pe fagasul normal.

[oroles]

Pe orice piata o strategie de marketing buna este sa te "rebranduiesti" continuu. Dupa ce va disparea BK vor iesi pe piata cu un alt "produs". Orice produs are urmatorul ciclu de viata:

- introducerea produsului pe piață (sau lansarea);
- creșterea;
- maturitatea;
- saturația;
- declinul.

Cand a intrat in faza de declin trebuie sa vii pe piata cu ceva nou. Asa e si cu Protofilul. Cand au vazut cei de la ICDA ca nu mai merge asa de bine au scos Apifitofort care este ceva asemanator. Apple si Bill Gates numai asa au stiut sa faca bani prin reinventarea unor produse care se aflau deja pe piata. Si STARTOVITUL, cand a intrat pe piata era mare bataie pe el. Trebuia sa gasesti pe unul ca Marian Sima sa iti faca rost de la bulgari. Acum il gasesti la orice magazin apicol si foarte putini se mai apropie de el.

[D006]

Asta strategie de marketing :


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAweub8osSQ

[cornelioandanciu]

Da bine le mai zice! Asa vorbe mari doream sa aud demult! De exemplu la minutul 4.05 daca ati fost atenti , acolo spune tot schepsisul ! Dragos, daca vrei sa traduci ti-as fi recunoscator, ca stii, sint unii pe aici pe forum care nu stiu asa de bine limba asta asa cum o stim noi doi!