Mite Count

I put a couple of home made sticky boards (Correx board and Vaseline) under the OMF (Open Mesh Floors, or Screened Bottom Boards for my US friends) on Friday afternoon and pulled them on Monday afternoon i.e. 3 day counts.

Now here's the interesting bit...

The swarm hive I caught last year and combined with another swarm a few weeks ago had a 3-day count of 133.  I noticed several bees with DWV in this hive so was expecting some mites and a daily count of about 45 is a bit high. The following link is quite useful.

National Bee Unit - Varroa Calculator

The older established hive (that Dave has never treated or done anything with - EVER) had a 3-day count of just 13.  Wow!  There's something in this hive!   Bees with good strong genetic traits perhaps?  I know Dave thought of them as aggressive and I have heard anecdotal reports that aggressive bees (particularly Africanised bees) have greater resistance to Varroa.  Well these bees aren't Africanised, but I can hope their behavior promotes some good mite control!  I can but hope.

So what to do?  Well I have some MAQS I can use to treat, but the weather looks a bit on the chill side for treating over the next couple of days.  So I may just wait until Thursday and then treat just the swarm hive.  The other I will leave alone.

If I am unlucky with the MAQS (I have lost queens in the past, but then the treatment was done in some very hot weather) I can think of worse things to do than take a frame of eggs and larvae from the established hive and pop this in the swarm hive!  With luck I'll get their good genes passed on.

STOP PRESS:  I added MAQS to the swarm hive on Wednesday evening.  It wasn't too cold and the next few days seem to be good in respect of day time temperatures.  I wanted to treat sooner rather than later.

Regicide!

I went to the hives yesterday to release the new Queens and I got a bit of a surprise...

The new Queen in first hive I opened at home had been killed in her cage.  No messing about!  Queen and attendants all killed.  The residents were clearly unhappy with my proposed coups d'etat!  But why?  I took a look through the hive and sure enough I found some young larvae present, but not what I would call a lot, but young enough and sufficient enough I supposed for there to be a queen already present.  And sure enough I found her.  Clearly alive and kicking and in control enough for the workers to dispatch the new Queen.  Bit of a waste that! Not much dense brood in the hive though.

In the second of my hives at home the new Queen was still alive in her cage along with her attendants.  Much more promising!  There wasn't any candy plug on the end of the cage so I just popped the cork and encouraged the Queen to leave, which of course she didn't! So I lifted the mesh from the top of the cage and let her crawl out, which she did, right onto the top of a frame where she sat around and allowed the workers to attend to her.  All good so far!  Just to make sure she didn't get it in her head to fly off I moved a couple of frames apart and sure enough she thought yep, now it's time to head down into the hive.  All very controlled and very calm.  Good Girl!

Down at the Botanical Gardens it was the same situation as the first hive.  The residents didn't want me foisting a newcomer, with no right to succession, on them so they snuffed her out as well.  Again I saw the resident Queen.  She looked a little thin so she might be new and for the life of me I was totally convinced I saw a second new Queen in the hive on the same frame.  I know this can happen in a hive, with an unmated queens (that aren't giving off pheromone) and it is possible they were unmated but I reckon I was just imagining things.  Anyway I let this resident Queen get on with things.

So what's going on?  And can (or indeed should) I do something about it.  Well, to answer the second thing first; can/should I? I think it would be very difficult for me to locate another new queen right now form a breeder so I might as well go with what I have, even if the laying pattern is suspect.  Perhaps in the spring if there isn't any improvement (and if the bees make it that far) I'll make splits or get new Queens.  That said, I think there is enough in the way of stores in the hives, or there will be by the time the bees stop foraging for the bees to get through OK.  I just hope the Queens have good enough, warm enough, weather to let them lay prolifically and produce bees for the winter.

But why the relatively poor brood pattern?  Well I think it may well be down to the after effects of thee MAQS treatment.  It wasn't long after I completed this treatment that I looked into the hive and decided that maybe a new Queen was needed.  But I think the resident Queen was there all along, just not laying.  Maybe she was knocked back by the treatment? I have heard this can happen and I think this probably best fits what I saw.

Overall the good news at the official start to Fall is that I have 8 hives all with Queens and all with good levels of stores in them.  At least good enough for me not to worry about any feeding for another couple of weeks.  I'll go around and check the hives in early October and see if I need to put anything on. But the way things look the hives look well set as they are.  There are SHB about (aren't there always?) and I will pop a trap or two in the hives as I check them next time.  I saw more beetles this last weekend than I have all summer long!.

Last Treatment of the Year?

Well, at least I hope it is!

With the final harvest complete it made sense, given the cooler weather that is forecast, to get into the three hives that needed further mite treatment i.e. the two in the backyard at home and the hive in Ladue.  I didn't go through the hives very thoroughly today but I did go through the top boxes to make sure I saw what I wanted to and to install some MAQS between the top and bottom deeps.

All three hives look in pretty good shape.  There is some solid capped brood in each hive and plenty of young larvae present.  I'm also very happy with the quantity of honey stores that are already in these hives; several frames in the top boxes are already full!  I'll leave the hives for a week before I remove the treatment and I hope (I really hope) that temperatures remain low and that the treatment doesn't effect the brood and Queens like it did last year.  Next week I'll take a closer look at the nests and stores present and maybe even take a look at what is going on in the lower hive boxes.

I figure that if there turns out to be a need to feed I will still be able to feed syrup into October.

Starting Fall Management

I spent time this last week or so in my apiaries removing supers.  Yes, there is some more honey out there (I am guessing at possibly as much as 45 kgs (100 lbs), but the main reason for running around the hives is to start my Fall Management. I managed to remove all but a couple of supers from all the hives and they are generally now down to just two deeps.  The hives where I left supers on had some brood in them and I want to have this emerge before I take these off too.

So why remove the supers with honey and why not leave this on for the bees in the winter?  Two reasons. The first is that a super of partially full honey is a lot of empty space for the bees to keep clear of beetles and other possible infestations. And secondly, in the depths of a cold winter the honey will be harder for the bees to get to. The super is not in my view the best location in the hive for honey to be kept in over winter.

So I have taken the honey off and I plan to extract it this coming week.

So what else does Fall Management mean?  To me it is the the start of the effort to winterize the hives.  I have done mite counts on the hives already and I have treated some hives and not treated others.  I tested a couple of weeks ago and this last week saw me do a second round of tests/counts to see how effective the first was.  It looks like the MAQS worked well this year, but the jury (my jury at least) is still out on caging the queen. this has the potential to be a good system but unfortunately for me it was pretty inconclusive as she escaped! So here is a summary of where I am:

MOBOT Hives and Diane's Hive:  After the initial treatment, mite counts were low and so I think the treatment was successful.  I have not yet been into the hive to look through the brood, but I plan to do that later this week.  I hope there will be some good brood and that these mature hives will get through the winter.  If the queens are OK think I will re-queen them in the spring after once more testing and treating for mites.

Backyard Hives: Mite counts remain high so I plan to use MAQS but only after the weather cools off a little.  This week (the last in August) is proving to be quite hot with temperatures forecast to be in the low to mid 30s Celsius (well into the 90s F).  Which I think is too hot to treat.  Last year I am convinced the high temperatures effected and possibly killed off the queens.  As with the MOBOT hives I hope to re-queen these in the spring, possibly after some further mite treatment in or around March.

Ladue Hives:  These continue to be strong.  I looked in the hives over the weekend and there is a lot of good brood pattern in all the nests.  I anticipate these hives to be quite productive next year. The mature hive (the one that came through last winter) has a high(ish) mite count and I think I will treat here, once it cools down.  Again I will check on mite counts in early spring and I hope (if needed) I will knock the mites back using MAQS or drone comb.

One final thing.  Tonight I collect 10 gallons of High Fructose Corn Syrup the club obtained from a food company.  I intend to use this as winter feed, if this is needed.  The late summer weather has been good and I hope this means there has been a decent nectar flow on.  I know some honey has come in and many of my hives have deeps with nectar and honey where last year they had none.  So I'll leave the hives to do their thing for a couple more weeks at least.  By mid September I think I will know if I need to feed any hives. The weather by then should still be mild enough for the bees to take this syrup.

It's been a busy couple of weeks and will remain so for at least another month!

Chalk and Cheese!

Well I'm convinced the aggression is linked to MAQS. I went back to the hives today to put on a super. The bees were calm and not at all aggressive. This despite the fact It was humid, overcast and rain is forecast for the afternoon. Ok so I smoked the hive but that was only light and I was in the hive straight away.

So beware bees with MAQS!  Mind you, I suppose if you lived in an acid environment for a week you'd be pretty pissed off! 

Mite Treatment Continues.

That's it! It's the last week of July and the first round (and I hope only round) of treatment is now underway on all my hives.

The Botanical Garden hives have "Mite Away Quick Strip" on them. The Ladue Hives, as they all had mite counts <30, have no treatment. Diane's hive has MAQS and in my own back yard one hive has no treatment (it had a count of 27) and in the other hive I managed to cage the queen.

So I have lots of things to consider once the treatment period is over.  I plan to do another count, most likely at the end of August. Then I'll decide if I need to do anything more before the winter.

Interestingly, all of the new season hives needed no treatment but the ones that came through the winter were in need of a lot of attention.  Doubtless this means early season treatment is the most efficacious thing to do. So I think I will try to treat all my hives in late March or April next year. I'll have to see whether I think caging the queen or using MAQS is more effective. 

I am due to start pulling the first treatments on August 1st, and the other MAQS on August 4th. I'm going to cage the Carniolan Queen for 10 days. Watch this space for news!

Mite Testing

Now the harvest is over it's time to start testing and checking for mites.  I put sticky boards under all 8 hives and in a couple more days I'll pull them and do a 24hr count (i.e. take the 3 day total and divide by 3).

I hope that mites won't be a major issue as most of my hives have had a break in brood rearing either as a result of swarming or queens being superseded. 

However the  actual counts were as follows:

MOBOT existing: >80

MOBOT swarm: 72

Backyard west: 18

Backyard east: >80

Diane's yard: >66

Ladue east (existing): 27

Ladue nuc south: 5

Ladue nuc north: 1

So that's really mixed!  I'm very pleased the two nucs are in great shape although I'm surprised (but happy) that the other existing hive in Ladue is also good. I wonder if this us because they are aggressive and prodigious propolis producers? In any event I reckon there will be no need for treatments here at least for now. I will but test again in a month or so.

As for the other hives, well the mature hives that came through winter have been hardest hit which I guess is no great surprise, so I'll have to treat these. The garden hives both came through the winter and have the heaviest mite loads.

So how to treat?  I really want to cage queens, but I think I have a great set up for trying no treatment (in Ladue), Queen caging (at home and in Diane's yard) and soft chemical treatment (MAQS at the gardens). It will be interesting to see how they all do.

STOP PRESS:
It looks like cooler weather is on the way (26C to 30C as of Wednesday July 24) for about a week - MAQS treatment to start then I reckon!