[Drones]

Free mating: only 66% mating success due to poor weather and lack of good quality drones.
Inseminations: combination (mix) of drones from hives 6, 82, 92, 143 and one other.
When doing insemination work drones with mites on their backs were not uncommon to see and some drones had only meager amount of sperm.

In year 2016 all hives and nucs raised their own queens and according to Josef Koller ROOTs system with free matings was used.
The most severe problem in this system is that in the beginning of treatment free management there is not enough drones to ensure good quality free matings. Especially here in north when summer weathers sometimes are very poor, cold and rainy. Therefore the use of the ROOTs system was stopped.
Three summers in row, years 2015, 2016 and 2017, the weather has been cold and rainy, which has made normal matings unsure. The poor weather together with low number of good quality drones has made both queen rearing and beekeeping in general very challenging.
Inseminated queens had better egg laying results than free matings in year 2017.

In year 2017 graftings were used again, in 2016 bees raised their own queens, some of them were inseminated (B58).

Inseminations were done by Juhani Lundén in Peltola manor.

Best breeders got to raise drones also. Drone frames were transfered to one single "drone nursing" hive and drones for inseminations were collected from this colony. It was kept queenless all summer. Some capped brood was added to keep it strong enough.

The new beematerial from Heimo Kangasaho we got year 2015 has shown different system of survival than our normal stock. They make more brood and stronger hives than our standard stock. There has been great variation in their disease resistance, some daughters have died because of mites, some even got brood disease. But remembering and considering that normally no bee material taken from outside has survived in our beekeeping, the Kuortane bees have done excellent job.

There was no varroa treatment in year 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 or 2009.
The last treatment was 2008 with 3 ml oxalic acid, which killed about 10% of the mites.