Time for something radical

[Doug R]

Hive #1 had a sugar roll count of 4. Hive #2 had a sugar roll count of 54. Yikes! By all acounts of everything I've read on this site, this hive is doomed. I was thinking of pulling the honey and reducing the hive to one empty super and freezing the two brood boxes overnight in the deep freeze and treating with Oxalic acid while broodless. If they won't make it anyway, how can this hurt? Yellowjackets are everywhere. Those stupid traps do't do a thing. I squash about 15 - 20 a day with a shovel before work and do about 10 - 15 more each evening. My neighbors think I'm nuts. Tonight, before dark, there were moths flying around the hive.

I have some time to consider my options because the oxalic acid is apparently unavailabe in my area so I had to order it online. Ordered Certan online too... backordered 2-3 weeks.

Doug

Doug

[2rubes]

Yellow jackets, last year we had a huge amount of these wasps. Turns out, they were taking away the poor bees with the deformed wings that fell out of the hive. Our traps didn't work well either, I think because the wasps were focus on these disabled bees. We had such a huge infestation and realized the reason we were not seeing more 'walking' bees was because the wasps were removing them almost immediately. We were able to save all of those hives and this year the wasps are not around the bee hives. Our bigger problem are these bald face hornets. They were attacking the bees when we put our cappings out. The hornets would push the bees into the wax where they were defensless. I haven't seen them around the hives, but they are all over in the garden. They don't seem to be able to trap the bees while they are in the blooms. We removed the cappings.
When you take apart your hive, count the DWV bees on a frame of brood. Last year, on a very infested hive, we averaged 6 on each frame. That was a lot.
If if you are waiting for your OA and stuff to arrive, you might want to take a minute and dust the super with 1/2 cup of powdered sugar. It won't hurt and will remove most of the phoretic mites. It will help stop part of the cycle. Do you have screened bottom boards? If not, leave the bottom open or remove the sugar after a few hours and then clean off your bottom board the next day.
Sincerely,
Janet

[Tia]

Put on some robber screens and move those yj lures as far away from the hives as you can. The lures are working, it's just that they're luring the yjs right to your hives. Lure them someplace else! I've been there, done that--a triple onslaught. First the baldfaced hornets, then the yjs and then the moths, each appearing in sequence as the hives got weaker. Lost four of my six hives that year and learned my lesson well.

[Finman]

Doug, you may try dutch method to clean you hive so that you get healthy wintering bees in you hive. You have time for that.

http://bees.freesuperhost.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1145632073

Don't kill you brood frames. Let bees come out, clean them.

But if you have healty hive you may add 2 frames of emerging brood and supportthat flying swarm hive. It will work for winter.

[2rubes]

Here’s a picture of the hornet attacking the be http://www.countryrubes.com/informationpage3/picturesmisc.html
I’m thinking, if you are noticing a lot of wasp and hornet activity near your hives, watch for a while and notice of bees with DWV on the landing. They fall off and the wasps are there to grab them. That’s why you don’t notice it until you are in the hive, there are not a lot of disabled bees walking around the hive, and they were getting snatched too quickly. The wasps are attacking weak hives. If you notice, you might want to open your hive and see what’s going on there. Look at your brood frames and see if there any bees with chewed up wings. If you even see a couple, you might have a varroa problem.
We are having no wasp problems by the hives this year, but out in the garden, a lot more activity around the water and squash blossoms. I’ve been doing a walk around. Hornet was noticed by a 16 year old, who has just discovered the diversity of insects. I had wax cappings in the garden for the bees to clean up. He showed me the hornet catching the bees, holding it down in the wax and killing it. We watched it happen 3 times and I moved the cappings. Now this is scary, we haven’t had tomatoes worms in 3 years. I always thought it was because of our intense hand picking to feed to our chickens. We’ve picked 100’s of them. It was just reported at our Bee Club, there is a wasp or hornet eating caterpillar worms like the tomato worm and it’s invading our area ….and…. they are worried about our native butterflies becoming the way of the bees. This probably has already been posted, but I just found out.
Drone brood is a great idea, we have all of ours in the freezer and the reason I’m excited about you bringing it up, we have one hive, that’s been in morning shade, has a higher count than the others and we are not ready to extract honey. I’ll just pop in a couple frozen frames in the brood area and remove it in 2weeks. 7 of our hives counted 2 to 7 mites/24 hours and one at 19/24 hours.


Janet

[Doug R]

Well, my 36 hour mite count was 203 for hive #2. I dusted with powdered sugar and checked about two hours later and counted 101. The hygenic behavior is amazing! I watched as a couple of bees groomed themselves like a cat giving themselves a bath. I wish I had my camera. It would have made a great video clip.

This hive now has 4 drone combs to fill. They seem to be making swarm cells along the bottom of frames. At least that is what it appears to be. They always, even on strong hives, make what looks like a diving bell-shaped cone.

Here's a picture: http://www.sendpix.com/albums/06081721/cpi0riwjb3/

This is no time for a swarm. This gets back to my earlier question: If it is likely that I'm going to lose the hive to mite or mite-related disease ANYWAY, why not freeze ALL the brood, dose the bees with OA and give the comb back to them so maybe they can have a chance of rearing some brood before winter. They should have plenty of honey to make through.

Doug
Doug

[Dick Allen]

Here's a drone trapping method to try next season:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jtemp/dronemethod.html

[ August 18, 2006, 01:13 AM: Message edited by: Dick Allen ]

[Dave W]

Doug R . . .

Yep, that looks like a swarm cell. The good news is it is not capped yet (when photo was taken).

My first question would be, "Is brood nest loaded w/ honey"?

You really need to be doing something to KILL a LOT of mites, quickly.

[Doug R]

Actually, the brood nest is not loaded with honey. It is two mediums of just brood and maybe two frames of honey total. I have always seen bees make the beginnings of queen cells and never take them to completion. There were no eggs in any of them and they never seem to make them any bigger. I usually knock them off when I see them, just in case, but I have ignored them too with no consequences. This time, there were quite a few of them.

I counted 435 mites, 4 bees and 1 moth on my sticky (oily) board after the powdered sugar treatment. Yesterday I pulled a frame and found a hole through the center of the frame about the size of a quarter. I the center was a cocoon with a foundaion wire running right through it. I saw no evidence anywhere of wax moths in the hive, but obviously they are there. They must be what gives formerly straight comb that wavy, irregular look.

I bought some Thuricide (Bacillus Thuringlensis subspecies Kurstaki) to try in lieu of B401. I ordered B401 and they said it would be two to three weeks before the expected to get any in. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I'm waiting until next Thursday for OA to arrive from the chemistry store.

On Hive #1 I counted 32 for a 48 hour total and 12 on hive #3. Not too bad. I wondering if I should requeen when I do this. I'll dump some more powdered sugar in, in a few days.
Thanks,

[Axtmann]

Doug R

OA is one of the best mite killer but don’t use is liquid this time of the year. You should use only a vaporizer because there are hatching mites every day and you will need several OA treatments to get as many mites as possible.

It is August and the first winter bees hatching, several liquid OA treatments shorten there live and bees will never reach the next year. OA liquid is hard on bees; they have to clean each other to get dry and therefore the acid in their stomach.

To all liquid OA users….. treat your colonies in late fall or beginning of winter when bees have less or almost no brood one time only.
Working with liquid OA in spring or early summer several times is a different story, because summer bees live only up to 6 weeks.

With a vaporizer you can treat the colonies as often as necessary without any harm to your bees.

[Doug R]

I was planning on using a vaporizer. Good thing the OA hasn't arrived yet because I'm having trouble putting together a suitable OA vaporizor. I wanted to make one that goes in the entrance rather than one that screws into the super because I mix my supers up all the time. Using copper means I have to solder it together which I don't want to do because I will be heating it with a torch every time I use it. Brass screw together nicely, but is way more expensive and there isn't a good fitting that is long and narrow enough to make it reach back into the hive. I know I am making this more complicated than it has to be. The people in the store probably think I'm making a crack pipe!

Doug

[Mike Gillmore]

Doug,

I feel your pain....went through the same kind of situation myself last year. I think that it is still early enough in the season that you would not need to freeze all of the brood frames. Just do 3 treatments of OA vapor about a week apart and you will have most of them knocked out. OA is very effective and it may surprise you at how well your colonies will bounce back... no guarantee, but there is hope.

I decided to go the vaporizer route and bought the JB200 unit... $80.00 .. but it saved 3 of my 4 hives last year that should have all been doomed - paid for itself already. It is so much safer for the operator to use than the pipe method, and you are sure the acid is heated at the correct temperature. Just my 2 cents.

I wish you the best on your hives... sounds like you are on the right track.

[Ishi]

Some times hives with a heavy mite losd will think that the queen is no good and will raise another one i have had 2 laying qoeens in the same hive in this situation.

[Ishi]

Should have read the post before I hit send.

Some times hives with a heavy mite load will think that the queen is no good and will raise another one I have had 2 laying queens in the same hive in this situation.