2016 NJ Honeybee Queens

This summer we will offer 2016 NJ Honeybee Queens including Carniolan and VSH Queens for sale from June through early August. Mary normally begins her grafting operation usually the 1st week of May. We let our young queens open-mate and make certain they have a good laying pattern before we sell them. …

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Help your new queen get accepted

This is a good short story on why you may need to be prepared to help your new queen get accepted. Last week we knew our new Sue Cobey NWC Breeder (#4) was expected any day, but were waiting for the tracking info, so we could be prepared in advance for …

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Honeybee Survival

Coming out of the 2012-2013 winter we experienced our worst bee loss in 17 years. It was a blow to us – our operation’s honeybee survival was at stake. Coming out of the prior 10 winters our average winter loss was always between 10-20% and that was with bees which …

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New World Carniolan 2014 Breeder Queen

We confirmed last weekend that our New World Carniolan 2014 Breeder Queen will arrive the 1st week in May. This will be our sixth year that we will be bringing in a Carniolan Breeder queen from Sue Cobey. Mary has grown quite fond of the New World Carniolan queens; she …

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Shipping Honeybee Queens

SHIPPING HONEYBEE QUEENS Our queen rearing season has finally gotten into a rhythm. Coming into the spring we grafted our 1st session in April only to have the evening temperature drop to 28 degrees on the day we put out our 1st queen cells. Then we had a lot of …

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Queen Rearing Season at Full Speed

We are into our queen rearing season full speed now that the daily temperature is consistently warm and our mating nucs have larger populations since several brood cycles have passed. Our 4th grafting was completed this past Friday.  We once again we grafted from our Sue  Cobey (Cobey11-40) Carniolan breeder queen …

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New World Carniolan Stock Maintenance Protocol

In May 2003 Ed completed Sue Cobey’s Queen Rearing course at the University of Ohio. At the time Sue had uploaded her New World Carniolan Stock Maintenance Protocol to her web site. Sue is now at Washington State University.  I think it is important that new beekeepers see this protocol. …

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Better Bee Genetics with Local Honey Bee Queens

Guest Post – Len Klinker:  Past President, Central Jersey Beekeepers Association Before I give a few thoughts on long-term solutions for honeybee problems in NJ, I’d like to introduce myself.  I am Len Klinker and have been a backyard beekeeper since 1997.  I don’t have any degrees in Entomology, formal training, …

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Raising Honeybee Queens

We began raising our own queens after we discovered our bees had mites which had developed a resistance to both Apistan and Coumaphos in 2002. The option at that time was to use an even stronger chemical to kill the mites. It seems that no chemical will kill every mite …

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Honeybee Instrumental Insemination

After completing two courses at the University of California, Davis Mary devoted a full year to mastering instrumental insemination – while still managing 100 plus hives and 15 out yards. We decided to sell our instrumental insemination equipment after we discovered the effort required to master instrumental insemination was taking …

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Beekeeper donates Nikon Microscope

We took our 1st instrumental insemination course at the University of California, Davis in 2007. In 2008 Mary went back to California to complete the advanced instrumental insemination course with Sue Cobey. Back at home we had setup a really nice lab in our guest room with all the required …

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