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  • From: Cole Rizki <colerizki AT gmail.com>
  • To: Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com>
  • Cc: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>, LeAnne Silver <silvergrl AT rocketmail.com>
  • Subject: Re: [ocba] Package success
  • Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2015 19:11:57 -0400

Hi Brad et al,

I also had a likely starvation issue with one of my two packages; upon inspection after 3 days, both queens were out but I had about 1.5 lbs of dead bees on my screen bottom board in one of my hives. Don also came out to inspect and suggested it may have been due to starvation. The syrup can that came with this particular package was also relatively full suggesting that perhaps the holes in the can were not sufficiently punched for the bees to have access to sugar water during travel and prior to installation. Both hives also had access to full top feeders immediately upon installation, so the starvation likely would have occurred in transit before they were installed. 

Did other people experience losses like this?

-Cole

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 4, 2015, at 7:58 AM, Hamsiba Family <hamsibas AT gmail.com> wrote:

I am curious about how everyone has faired with their spring package installations. This year we had conditions of cool wet weather.

Two of us in our mentoring group successfully installed multiple packages. Two others are either getting nucs or waiting til later.

One family had some difficulty. Two of three packages ended up starving for some reason. They lost one queen to starvation and combined them after a couple of days, but prognosis its not good. Their third package is just fine.

Don visited and saw no disease issues. The bees may have been too weak on installation to feed, perhaps the holes in the feed can in the package were small. Beekeeper error its always possible, but it is strange that one package is fine while the other two are not.

We are just curious about experiences of the rest of the group.  Hopefully we can all learn something about installing packages in fickle spring weather.

Thanks, Brad Kosiba

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