1st time fogger

[beesandy]

Hi, I've been reading about everyone using foggers for mite control so i went and got a black flag fogger and fogged last night. checked my hives this morning and i have quite a few dead bees this morning. i held the fogger about 8" from the entrance till smoke came out the inner cover. i did'nt continually pump smoke in all at once. Is this the proper way? Also i have 1 hive I started this year, It has just about 2 brooders that i thought were just about full and i was going to set a super on, I checked a few frames and all i could find was honey, no brood or pollin. Should i rotate my boxes or leave them the way they are? the way it looks the queen has never came up into the upper box. any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks, bob

[Michael Bush]

From my experience I never noticed any increase in dead bees after fogging. There are always a few dead bees (fogging or not) because of foragers working themselves to death or dying of old age.

I'd take careful note before and after and see if there is any significant difference.

[beesandy]

do you think i should of rotated my 2 brooder boxes to try and get the queen to start laying in both boxes? thanks

[Michael Bush]

I never bother unless one of the boxes is empty then I move the empty one up. Some people do it all the time to prevent swarming. I think it just disrupts the bees all the time, but it probably does help discourage swarming when they have to rearrange the brood nest all the time.

[dtwilliamson]

>I checked a few frames and all i could find was honey, no brood or pollin. Should i rotate my boxes or leave them the way they are? the way it looks the queen has never came up into the upper box.

I'm not sure I understand completely but it sounds like the queen is in the lower box and not in the upper box! ???

If that is the case it seems to me like you should have put a super on earlier. They had nowhere to put honey except the upper box and filled it up limiting the queen to the lower box.

[This message has been edited by dtwilliamson (edited August 06, 2004).]

[beesandy]

from what i could see the queen has never come up into the top box, so i thought if i rotated them she would go down and start laying.