Fall Housekeeping and Reenforced Rules...

[Rod Weakley]

Both of my hives have had 2 OA treatments (with crack pipe) so I guess they will be good to go for winter now as far as MITES are concerned. I tore my first hive down to 2 deeps from 3 deeps a couple weeks ago. Today I tore my 2nd hive down to 2 deeps from 3 deeps. This is where the RULE comes from... Don't give the bees more room than they need. This deep hasn't been touched since probably June and was on the bottom. There was very little honey maybe 5 or 10 lbs through out VS probably a darn near 90lb top deep. First frame out of the box had 1 wax moth larva on the bottom of it and I found 1 other when I got the box inside. I'm just glad I forced myself to do this, before the damage got too bad. Deep went in the freezer and then in a couple days I'll take it out and spray it with the BT.

[tecumseh]

I have suggest on this forum that this is something that is rather common to most of my established hives. At this location the bottom box gets stuffed with pollen and the cluster moves upward. For some reason the bees feel that guarding the lower box of pollen is not so essential. On those hives with split bottom bars in the lower box this achillies heel seems to be where wax moths tend to gain a foothold. The other problem (which you have suggested) is that there are almost no nectar stores in these bottom boxes which can certainly confuse the beekeeper in his effort to leave enough store for the hive to make the winter.