Spring was very cold and wet in this part of the country.  The transferring of the larvae started to be successful in June.  The transferring of the larvae and the building up of the populations were not the mayor problems.  I had most problems with cutting out capped cells due to the very cold spring.  In 2000 I finished the spring stimulation in June and in 2001 I was ready on July 17!

This year I had no colony losses at all.  Just 4 of the 20 brood hives were empty.  In those four hives I chanced the queens in September while the populations were actually too small.  I wanted to keep these queens over the winter for the breeding of next year, but I could have known it: when a population is too small, the queen and her population will not survive the winter.

I expended my production colonies from 25 to 50 in August.  This year I have replaced Queen JP9945 by Queen JP0198.  This year I used the line breed of the JP0011 because this queen is a collection of all the Varroa resistant lines.

This year the number of Varroa mites was neglectable.  Most populations stayed completely free of Varroa mites.  I had just a few at some populations.  It looks like that the selection method on Varroa resistance has been very successful and useful.  This is the fifth year that I did not use any Varroa mite control products to kill these mites.

The JP0011 is easy to handle and was responsible for the above average production of honey.

This year I got some new breed lines, such as the Egyptian Lamarkii witch I purchases from the Breeding Group Marken in the Netherlands.  Piet Verkooijen had the Lamarkii mated and it is called the PV0012.  I also got some Iranian material (the JP0155) from the Breeding Group Fiveldal.  This Breeding Group received this material from Christian Salau.  Paul Jungels and Günter Behrens did use this line for breeding purposes for more then six years know.

These new lines won’t get any winter treatment.  In spring we’ll see if they’ll get a chance in the following selections.  You’ll find a pedigree of the most promising lines elsewhere on this site.  I’ll test and possibly use these lines this and upcoming year.

Joost Peschier.