Promoting sustainable beekeeping and genetic diversity through drone comb trapping

Promoting sustainable beekeeping and genetic diversity through drone comb trapping

Summary

I would like to request an extension on my farmer rancher grant FNC13-904.

As previously reported the winter of 2013/2014 was one of the worst on record for bees in Indiana. It was terrible because not only was it much, much colder than normal but the cold lasted a very long time and later into the year than typical. This atypical weather resulted in a large loss of the hives which I had purchased for this NCR-SARE project grant. However, I felt like I could continue the project and possibly finish in the original time constraints. Therefore, I purchased additional stock as replacement and continued with the project during the summer of 2014.

The project results would be much more meaningful if there was at least one full year for the bees – I was hoping for 2 but at least one is needed. This means that I would need to see how they fared over the winter of 2014/2015. My hopes were that I would be able to evaluate the bees sometime in March 2015 prior to sending in the final report. Some years, we are able to check bees in March. However, just about the time I think it might be possible this spring, the weather doesn’t cooperate. Using a Growing Degree Calculator, our plants are still 5 days behind where they were at this time last year. This past weekend the temperature went down below freezing and I still could not look extensively into the condition and health of the bees.

Therefore, I am requesting a one year extension. Not only will an extension allow for a complete year evaluation of the project bees, but it will hopefully allow for an additional season of results which will more accurately reflect what I was originally trying to accomplish.

Thanks for the consideration of the extension,