Hey, I would really like to thank you for posting these videos. Of all the gurus out there I respect Palmer greatly, and feel that there is not a massive amount of information on his systems. Being a Canadian hes in the same climate so its very important to listen to people that live in a similar climate. Thanks! Keep em coming!
Delighted to hear you enjoyed these videos. I aim to keep producing them when I find people like Mike. He keeps things simple and understandable, yet fully reflective of years of experience.
I was an attendee at the Ohio Beekeeper's Conference on Nov. 1, 2014 and wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed both of your sessions I attended. I wanted to meet you, but you were always surrounded by other admirers. Thanks for coming to Ohio and enlightening us.
swarms have a belly full of honey to build with,and desire to build comb , different than a package , Plus Palmer your the man thanks for your teaching
I have been saying this for the last 3 years and people just ignore me when I point the facts out to them. But I tried packages and they never make it through the first season. So thank you for pointing out this issue.
Michael you are right on point about packages! I live in NJ and bought two GA packages in April. One package went queenless after about a week despite my best efforts. I found about 7 queen cells in week 2. In week 3 they were all chewed open and I saw eggs and brood. In week 4 I found a disproportionate percentage of drones (laying workers?). On the second package everything seemed to be going along well until week 3 when I found about 5 queen cups. In week 4 I found two queen cells and two queen cups with larvae in them. They were both fed 1:1 syrup throughout. My conclusion is I got a bad queen in each of them which is probably the usual scenario nowadays. I should have went with nucs from NJ or New England. By the way, the packages were driven up, not shipped.
Generally feeding 1:1 syrup for extended periods is going to simulate a honey flow. The bee's will pack in nectar till the queen feels she is running out of room, and will start swarm cells. It doesn't matter how small or large the hive is. I learned this from my father who lost numerous hives when he first started. Give them the can they come with and when it's gone, it's time for them to get out and forage. Over feeding kills hives. They will take as much as you can give them, pack it in. The queen feels compressed by all the nectar coming in, and the hive starts preparing to swarm regardless of how many bee's are in the box. End result you get 1 swarm and your hive is left empty.
WoW. This is my 4th year bee keeping in Ohio. A novice I am. This was a great vid. I'm going with 3 deep brood boxes and no excluder with my 2 hives this year. No splits, no honey taken from the hives.
I bought packages and they do great, it depends where u get them from. also the mail people can not lose the bees in the mail. u are right on the queens if they are no good your packages does not have a chance
Depends on unit product. Time of year.weather.location. Bee keepers savvy moxie resources. The help and beneficial advice available. The interventions the lead to success. .......... What could go wrong !
On Mike's theory on nurse bees in Packages: Nurse bees can't fly. So when a hive swarms there are no nurse bees in the swarm. Applying Mike's theory, it is impossible for a swarm to establish and start a new hive due to the lack of nurse bees. However swarming is the method nature has chosen for bees to multiply. A package essentially an artificial swarm, only better because it predominantly contains nurse bees... The inability of them to fly is exploited to get them into the package.
I've had others raise your point as well. I think the issue as it applies to a swarm is that I would suspect ( can't prove this) that the swarm has a different makeup in that all of the bees in a swarm are all daughters of the swarming queen. In a package, none of the bees has any genetic link to the queen or the other bees in the package. Why this would make a difference is unclear to me, but it is a plausible explanation.
Brad morrill-cornelius a swarm is on a much shorter time table. if the bees are harvested for a package and shipped within 24 hours and Priority Mail takes three days best case scenario and you install them the next day that's five days much much longer than a swarm in nature takes. there are other factors involved as well like the bees in a natural swarm choose to be a member of the Swarm as opposed to staying, swarm bees are generally completely engorged with honey, package bees have a can of sugar usually not even honey. the timeline here is the best case scenario we have had Priority Mail take as long as 12 days before.
From everything I have read in a natural swarm the queen does indeed abscond with the nurse bees. They leave behind a swarm cell(s) and the field bees revert to nurse bees until there are enough nurse bees.
Hey, I would really like to thank you for posting these videos. Of all the gurus out there I respect Palmer greatly, and feel that there is not a massive amount of information on his systems. Being a Canadian hes in the same climate so its very important to listen to people that live in a similar climate. Thanks! Keep em coming!
Delighted to hear you enjoyed these videos. I aim to keep producing them when I find people like Mike. He keeps things simple and understandable, yet fully reflective of years of experience.
I was an attendee at the Ohio Beekeeper's Conference on Nov. 1, 2014 and wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed both of your sessions I attended. I wanted to meet you, but you were always surrounded by other admirers. Thanks for coming to Ohio and enlightening us.
swarms have a belly full of honey to build with,and desire to build comb , different than a package , Plus Palmer your the man thanks for your teaching
I have been saying this for the last 3 years and people just ignore me when I point the facts out to them. But I tried packages and they never make it through the first season. So thank you for pointing out this issue.
Michael you are right on point about packages! I live in NJ and bought two GA packages in April. One package went queenless after about a week despite my best efforts. I found about 7 queen cells in week 2. In week 3 they were all chewed open and I saw eggs and brood. In week 4 I found a disproportionate percentage of drones (laying workers?). On the second package everything seemed to be going along well until week 3 when I found about 5 queen cups. In week 4 I found two queen cells and two queen cups with larvae in them. They were both fed 1:1 syrup throughout. My conclusion is I got a bad queen in each of them which is probably the usual scenario nowadays. I should have went with nucs from NJ or New England. By the way, the packages were driven up, not shipped.
Generally feeding 1:1 syrup for extended periods is going to simulate a honey flow. The bee's will pack in nectar till the queen feels she is running out of room, and will start swarm cells. It doesn't matter how small or large the hive is.
I learned this from my father who lost numerous hives when he first started. Give them the can they come with and when it's gone, it's time for them to get out and forage. Over feeding kills hives. They will take as much as you can give them, pack it in. The queen feels compressed by all the nectar coming in, and the hive starts preparing to swarm regardless of how many bee's are in the box.
End result you get 1 swarm and your hive is left empty.
WoW. This is my 4th year bee keeping in Ohio. A novice I am. This was a great vid. I'm going with 3 deep brood boxes and no excluder with my 2 hives this year. No splits, no honey taken from the hives.
You're absolutely right. About to package bees in the Northeast. NYC
I bought packages and they do great, it depends where u get them from. also the mail people can not lose the bees in the mail. u are right on the queens if they are no good your packages does not have a chance
This is Mike Hopper was that Ronnie's be meeting and you come to it like the video
Yes, Mr. Palmer, in 2010 I bought 5 packages, in two months ,all die, next year I bought 2 packages ,they die too.
Depends on unit product.
Time of year.weather.location.
Bee keepers savvy moxie resources. The help and beneficial advice available.
The interventions the lead to success.
..........
What could go wrong !
I keep hearing this , after being with the bees for days why would the queen bees not be instantly excepted?
Added mine and had drawn comb with eggs in 4 days.
On Mike's theory on nurse bees in Packages: Nurse bees can't fly. So when a hive swarms there are no nurse bees in the swarm. Applying Mike's theory, it is impossible for a swarm to establish and start a new hive due to the lack of nurse bees. However swarming is the method nature has chosen for bees to multiply. A package essentially an artificial swarm, only better because it predominantly contains nurse bees... The inability of them to fly is exploited to get them into the package.
I've had others raise your point as well. I think the issue as it applies to a swarm is that I would suspect ( can't prove this) that the swarm has a different makeup in that all of the bees in a swarm are all daughters of the swarming queen. In a package, none of the bees has any genetic link to the queen or the other bees in the package. Why this would make a difference is unclear to me, but it is a plausible explanation.
Brad morrill-cornelius a swarm is on a much shorter time table. if the bees are harvested for a package and shipped within 24 hours and Priority Mail takes three days best case scenario and you install them the next day that's five days much much longer than a swarm in nature takes. there are other factors involved as well like the bees in a natural swarm choose to be a member of the Swarm as opposed to staying, swarm bees are generally completely engorged with honey, package bees have a can of sugar usually not even honey. the timeline here is the best case scenario we have had Priority Mail take as long as 12 days before.
From everything I have read in a natural swarm the queen does indeed abscond with the nurse bees. They leave behind a swarm cell(s) and the field bees revert to nurse bees until there are enough nurse bees.
No problem with packages today 2020.
The problem is how do you start out if you have no bees at all? You need something to go on....
+Noah Riding You need to buy a nuc not a package.
I guess they listen to this, 2021 people are flooding Craig’s list and even amazon in the first months of this year.
I think if you need to buy bees, you should buy them from someone as close to you as possible.