 |
Iowa Honey Producers Association |
The Buzz Newsletter August 2005 |
 |
|
Summer Field Day Report Approximately thirty beekeepers attended the summer field day at the plant Introduction Station in Ames. Gerry Reynolds, Glen Stanley and John Johnson were the speakers. Glen shared his beekeeping knowledge with us and John talked about how beginning beekeepers could remove and extract honey and also how to prepare colonies for winter. Gerry had a good presentation on Russian bees and also on small hive beetles. He has thirty years of experience with bees and at one time worked for Howard Weaver. He is currently president of the Mid America Honey Producers. After questioning him, I found out this is his first year of working with Russian bees in a commercial situation. He bought some breeder queens and tried to raise queens in Oklahoma. The weather was against him and they only would up with about 300 colonies, half of which are headed by Russian queens. I am well acquainted with failure. The thing that dismayed me was that Gerry was promoting Russian bees without having used them in a commercial setting. Until Kirk Webster had articles in the bee magazines extolling the virtues of Russian bees, I had not talked to anyone outside the program who could make these bees work. They sure didn’t work for us. I would be interested in knowing what Kirk’s production figures are. I’ll bet they are pretty low. We got somewhere around 100 nucs two years ago. They were great nucs. The guy who provided them did a great job. It was admittedly a bad year in out area. The honey supers were empty until the last week of July when the soybean flow started. The Russians never came out of the bottom. Our other bees came up and made a crop. The second year was similar although we had a great flow in June and the Russians did put on some honey. July and the first three weeks in August were very chilly. It warmed up nicely at the end of August and there was a great flow that lasted into September. Again the Russians stayed in the bottom while our other bees came up and started filling boxes. I realize that these are different bees. They winter with very small clusters and are very frugal. My problem is that I have to make some money on them. A small crop means a small income. The Russians we had left did build up enough to split this spring but the early weather was unusually good. The work with Russian bees is very important but I think the capability of these bees is vastly over rated. We do have two colonies left out of the lot we bought that we have incorporated into our breeding pool. Success in beekeeping boils down to what will work for you in your location. Russian bees may be the thing for you. I would suggest approaching them with caution, however. Submitted by Phil Ebert
|
|
|
 |