Jose Thayil

Second generation carniolan queen from this season. Grandmother is a pure daykel carniolan. Still have all three generation queens laying well. All three hives are pretty gentle bees. Open mated in Hamilton, Waikato.

A breeder should be able to look for and find desirable qualities in a group of hives where he or she is able to enhance those qualities and add it into the general population by breeding from those lines and producing a consistent line off bees. Sometimes a group of average hives may be used in a breeding program where the breeder might see a good quality in those bees which he or she may add into his line of bees to enhance his bees. I do not think being able to do AI is to be considered a defining factor to be called a breeder. There were and still have god bee breeders who do not use A

As long as the Honey prices stay this high, the prices for Nucs will also be very high. With the bad season this year,there will be winter losses which will be more than the usual numbers and there will be people wanting to expand by buying in more hives. I think its more profitalbe selling nucs and queens unless you are harvesting manuka honey.

Finding that none of my hives have swarmed after getting back from holidays.

Good flow of nectar in Hamilton area with bees drawing out new comb and storing well in honey supers. A few hives has swarm cells about to be capped. Made a few splits of one hive and added more boxes with drwan comb as under super for the other hives. Hope that gives them enough room to keep going without thinking about swarming.