My apiary update

[Charlie Garrott]

On Thursday, 6/11, I inspected my 6 hives in my home apiary. I put in oxalic acid strips in all hives. I inspected my 6 hives in my "away" apiary yesterday (Friday 6/12) and put in OA strips.

 

I have been putting in slider boards at night and removing them in the day. I accidentally left out the slider in hive 3.

 

I found HUNDREDS of dead mites on the slider board in hive 2. I only found 1 or 2 dead mites in the other hives at home. I have been seeing the occasional live and moving mite on the slider boards. Hmmm....

 

I will check the "away" apiary today. I left the slider boards out of those hives last night but will put them back in today for the sake of data collection.

 

Seems to me it is time for alcohol washes and aggressive treatment. Out of my 12 hives, 4 are making new queens and don't have eggs but still have capped brood from splits. It will be a while until they make new brood. I am thinking of giving more time for the capped brood to emerge and then hitting them with OA vapor before they rebuild massive quantities (I hope!) of new capped brood. I am considering formic acid to treat the hives that have active queens and are building brood.

 

There are still a very few flowering plants in the neighborhood with the exception of blackberries. Blackberry patches are large and bounteous. I stopped off at a patch near home and saw large numbers of honeybees and native bees.

 

I am going out of town next week and the following week for 5 days, so I will have plenty of time to fret about mites, swarming, adequate nectar, and climate change.

 

I am planting grass seeds for our alpacas this weekend and am going to include phacelia. I've been told it is a good summer bee forage.

 

Our club had an amazing presentation last week by the Northwest Native Bees Association. The speaker choked up several times during the meeting at his sadness over the reduction in native bee species and populations. He said the best thing us Apis mellifera keepers can do is to do everything possible to protect and create bee habitat. I'm on the task!

 

I ordered the book Queen Spotting by Hilary Kearney in hopes it will improve my terrible ability of finding queens.

 

BTW - Annie Mae is doing great but don't get too close or you will be spat upon by her demon eyed mom.

 

 Charlie

[Kristina T]

Great update! 

Jordan suggested doing an OA treatment during a full brood break. That way, no mites are in capped cells, where OA can’t penetrate.

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