Club Apiary

[Sung Han Lee]

In 2025 we were able to utilize club apiary for many occasions. 

Split Demonstration, What the hive do up to swarming,  Hive dives by mrmbers.

Sep 25th was a winter preparation session.

Hive 1 was used for most inspections and demonstration. 

Coming into last spring Oxalic/Glycerin pads were placed throughout  the year.

The colony superceded to new queen. 

It was up to 1 deep and 3 mediums.  Boxes were manipulated through out the season.

After we made split demo bottom deep box was no drawn combs and no brood. Then i moved bottom deep box to top to force them to draw and lay eggs. After all the frames drawn and full of broods then moved down to bottom position. Hatvested two times about 60 lbs. 

Sep. 25th during the winter preparation session we did sugar roll test for mites.

It came up 68 mites. Already colony has less bees ended up down to one deep.

Found new virgin queen. I even opened a cell and pulles out a dead bee that heavily deformed wings and found first i thought 2 mites then Duncan said 3 mites. Later replayed video we took showed 4 mites. In a one cell?

Here you can check it out too.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ROW0fHvMd4A?si=g119N3muf2Z4PBYT

So then what happened? What caused down with number of bees?

This is my observation. When OA/G pads were placed mites were affected to reduce the infestation.  As the time wears on bees were started propolizing the edges and underneath of the pads instead of chewing them off. There  were 5 pads placed.

One time i replaced them to new pads. Again they all propolized. 

There were deformed wing bees. 

This colony is bound to doomed. 

Nov. 1 

Counted  app.1820 mites.

No sign of queen, no eggs.

Nov. 8 

No sign of queen, no eggs, 28 mites on the bottom board

There are still 6 frames worth of bees.

Take away.

Even we place mite treatment in this case OA/G pads we have to monitor what they do with this pads. When the bees chew off the pads and every hive opened up if the pads were getting smaller then usually mite counts are low side like under 3%.

When the bees are propolized and build burr combs around it then either clean up the edge of the pads and cleanup combs underneath or, and replace with new pads.

Again each colony does different metbod to avoid this kind of obstructions.

I will continue to monitor Hive 1 where it is gonna be ended up.

I know the answer to that. 

Again we have these hives to study, examine and demonstration. 

Next report is on Hive 2 and 3.

Sung Lee The Bee Charmer