Denmark. Actually, we already did 2 weeks ago. We did sample in 4 apiaries this season. It became 10 samplings. Between the lines some had 11 sampling, and even more between the line in one Danish apiary we continue to sample 13 times, just to have that number in our records. It has been very exciting to belong to one of the 4 pilot countries in this project. Samples were taken every 2th week very regular during the season. In total this gave 604 samples of pollen, beeholdtubes, apistrips, beebread and a single time honey sample as well.
There have been some few occasions where especially it was difficult to sample beebread in our colonies. Since we could choose between 4 sampling days each time, we very often got pollen one of the days. The later in the season, the more difficult, but not impossibly. What we have found out is the bee continue to collect pollen for quiet a long time. One of the surprises is actually that we could see some apiaries had very good pollencollection in the spring and then poor collection in the fall. We believe that a definition of a good apiary is the supply with enough pollen in the springtime and fall to give good protein supply for the build up the colony, but also to produce good and strong winterbees.
Since our samples had to be distributed to 3 university labs around Europe for analysis, we did sample in total 604 samples. In Denmark we did ship them with express and it took only 24 hours for Athens in Greece and Almeria in Spain and 24 to 48 hours for Braga in Portugal. It is important that the samples are transported fast and safe.
Colonies looks good and are ready for good overwintering. At the same time, we did replace the old queens in the colonies, so that we have the same types of colonies next year.
Flemming Vejsnæs
