Beekeeping Masterclass!

Susan and I had a Beekeeping Masterclass this afternoon with Eugene!

Susan noticed varroa mites in her hive on Wednesday and was quite understandably concerned. She discovered them after some drone brood cells got uncapped when she lifted a frame in her hive during an inspection.  Eugene kindly offered to help do an inspection, demonstrate a sugar roll test and really just give some reassurance to us this afternoon.

We first looked over my hive.  I seem to have about 2 fullish frames of brood in my middle box and about 2 in the bottom box.  There was not too much capped brood, but there were a lot of larvae and grubs.  So things have moved on, in the right direction.

Susan's hive however is "humming", literally!  She has tons of brood comb in both middle and lower boxes; at least 2 full frames of capped brood in the top box and probably more in the bottom box.  Terrific stuff.  As for the varroa, well, although the sugar roll test produced about 12 mites (which is high), Eugene said that it was likely with the bees expanding so quickly now they would likely out-pace the varroa at this stage in the season - this would be a different story if this were the Fall.  The bees are clearly well and thriving.  But how to deal with the mites? Well we didn't add any Apiguard, but we did add powdered sugar on the top of all the frames. With repeated use this may help to dislodge the mites. She will do this again in a couple of weeks time. I also have mites, and I will also do a powdered sugar treatment. I think we will both get some drone comb and try that out.

In fact the biggest potential problem Susan has, is too may bees! The comb in her top hive box has not been built out, so the bees will have to work hard in here, but there are two weeks until the new queen arrives, so there may still be time.  If her hive looks to be getting too full of bees we could always transfer a frame of brood to my hive! It's not that they are doing badly and need more brood, it's just that Susan's may need more space! I wouldn't complain if I had some more brood as right at this moment I feel I may be pushed to make a split.

We will see what happens.  Many thanks go from us to Eugene for helping at short notice and for providing a calm head!

The next big thing will be to do an equalisation on 13th April and a split on the 16th April; the day before the new queen arrives.