It was a bee club meeting yesterday so I had the chance to ask a few questions and get some opinions on what I should do with the Parent Hive.
I did a 48 hour "sticky board" count for Varroa mites before the meeting and I found only 3 mites. So this is very good news and means I won't need to treat this hive. The added bonus is that if I did have to treat the hive, then the queen would not lay well for a month, plus I could not feed the bees either! So without applying the mite treatment the queen has a chance to lay more strongly into the later Autumn and the bees can feed, feed, feed! The downside of the sticky board inspection was that I saw quite a lot of what most people thought were Wax Moth larvae faeces, as well as some live Small Hive Beetle larvae. But we think there were not enough to be a real concern.
There hasn't been much going on in the top hive body i.e. little in the way of stores have been put away and there are few bees 'living on the comb'. The lack of bee numbers might explain why wax moths might be present. Normally if there are enough bees around they will chase the moths out and destroy the larvae. So, after a lot of discussion I decided that I would remove the top hive body and consolidate the bees in a single hive body. This should increase the bee numbers on the combs and will help the bees fend off any intruders and pests. I will also install a screened bottom board to help ventilate the hive and will try to intensively feed them over the next month or so!
With luck, in a couple of weeks, they will have filled out the bottom hive body and I can then consider putting back the top hive body and carry on feeding. Maybe there will be enough honey stored away by the middle/end of October and the bees will have a really good chance of over-wintering!
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