5/8 gone

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i'm still trying to figure it out rio, but i'm guessing after a couple of weeks or so, most of the brood should have emerged thereby exposing the mites. i still don't have a good number for how many is too many mites, but those colonies with the highest counts will be the first to get busted up.

[Oldtimer]

Just, if doing that, bees that have been queenless for that amount of time are more likely to reject the new queen (silly of them that may sound).

Their chances of a successful introduction will be greatly increased, if a comb of eggs and young unsealed larvae is given to them a day or two before introducing the queen, this will increase the successful introduction % greatly.

AND, another important thing, if the hive is left queenless 4 weeks, that will be about when laying workers start developing. So timing is everything get it requeened asap after last brood hatched.

And I guess the other obvious thing is after dequeening the hive, if the intention is to requeen with a caged queen, 7 to 9 days maiximum after the queen is removed have a good look through all brood combs which includes shaking off the bees, find and kill all queen cells. Leave it longer than that and some of them could hatch if the bees used older larve. They won't be the greatest queen but they can certainly mess up your attempts to introduce the one you buy.

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good points ot. what i wanted to try was pinching the queen in the highly infested hive, go back in one week and destroy any emergency cells, go back in another week to sugar dust or apply an organic acid, and then requeen a few days later.

so the requeening would be 2 - 3 weeks after making them queenless, meaning any brood left would be sealed. i was also thinking about introducing virgin queens to these nucs. would the acceptance be any better or worse with virgins?

do you think i should just focus on the requeening and forget about dropping the mites beforehand? or perhaps do the mite drop sooner?

[Oldtimer]

Success with introducing virgins will be around the same, but bear in mind you'll lose some during mating so actual number of resultant laying queens will almost certainly be lower.

If the hive has been queenless 2 - 3 weeks, ie, still has hatching brood, you should get pretty good acceptance of the queens. But the catch 22 is it's not going to have much effect on mite population.

Dropping mites, well that's something I do, don't discuss in this forum though.

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understood, thanks ot.

i guess you are about mid summer down under, how is your treatment free yard faring?

[Oldtimer]

A few of them got some concerning mite levels, this coming winter will be make or break time I'm pretty sure.

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yep. what measure do you use and what level do you consider 'concerning'?

[Oldtimer]

I use the eyeball method.

I don't look for mites, other than in uncapped drone brood, but I'll look for DWV, PMS, and mite feaces in newly hatched cells

I don't recommend this for nubees though, you'll miss them, until it's too late.

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understood, and thanks for the feedback.

[rhaldridge]

Rio, if I read you correctly, your only survivor was a top bar hive? Do you have any thoughts about why this would be?

[RiodeLobo]

Rio, if I read you correctly, your only survivor was a top bar hive? Do you have any thoughts about why this would be?

No idea the only difference is that it is all natural comb instead of small cell plastic. All three of the first year colonies were from packages from the same supplier, with Caucasian queens.

I finally completely opened up one of the other two hive that died out. The cluster was about volleyball sized, in the upper deep. They starved, and there was over 20lbs of honey left in the bottom deep. It looks like they moved straight up, and would/could not move laterally to get to the honey. They were clustered on a patch of brood about 2.5 inches (6.35 cm, just for you Oldtimer) across.

I still have not completely opened the final hive, just popped the top and there were quite a few dead bees in the super and no activity.

[Davidnewbeeboxbuilder]

Dont feel bad a usda russian breeder lost 150 hives allready plenty of stores and same story with a friend of mine who lost 18 total loss. I hope it dont go through mine.

[RiodeLobo]

IT ALIVE, ITS ALIVE!!!! (barely). I was doing the PM on the 7th hive and low and behold there was a small cluster in the bottom deep. I quickly tossed some candy board (I was feeding the other surviving hive) on and closed up the hive. I have little hope of its survival, but who knows.

[minz]

We had a sunny day and all the hives were flying but one (#4) on Saturday, pulled it apart to do a ‘post mortem’ and had some bees coming up from between the frames at the back of the hive, top deep. I did the same thing, pushed some sugar close (condensation made it hard) and put her back together with little hope. It does have a SBB and it is by the heat pump. I am wondering if there is too much air through the hive (non laminar air flow)?

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had the first good warm and sunny day in the past 2 weeks today. 12 out of 12 hives in the home yard were flying like crazy!

11 out of 12 were packing in some unknown pollen and nectar with almost every single bee coming in loaded.

#12 wasn't bringing in anything, and was acting more like it was guarding the entrance, but there was no fighting going on at lunch. at sunset however, and after all of the other hives had gone in for the night, i discovered #2 and #7 were robbing #12!

i closed up #12 and will have to check it out tomorrow. my guess is that it is queenless.

[RiodeLobo]

Very nice. Out of curiosity how much of a problem are SHB for you in Alabama?

[katring]

I'm really in no position to reply to this, as I am such a new beekeeper, but here in California where we live, there is quite a movement towards natural, treatment-free beekeeping. On successful way, I have been told is to let the bees draw their own comb. That way they'll build to suit their needs. They generally build cell to small for the varroa mites. You could check it out at Backwards Beekeeping on YouTube. I'm so sorry about your bees. I hope this will help you in the future.

[RiodeLobo]

They generally build cell to small for the varroa mites.

My understanding it is quite a lot of work to get bees regressed to small cell natural comb. I know that the foundationless frames I run (50% for brood chambers) are far from the "idea" 4.9mm. That is the reason the other 50% is small cell Man Lake PF-105. My personal feeling is that small cell is likely to be a minor benefit as far as varroa, with acclimatized mite resistant genetics being more important.

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well it looks like #12 was indeed queenless, and apparantly has been for some time, there was zero brood.

the robbing must have been going on for a while as well, there were no stores at all, and most of the cluster starved.

i saw a few mites and a little frass, so mites could have been a factor, but i think it was mostly queenlessness.

i shook them out and i'm freezing the one deep and two mediums of good comb.

[RiodeLobo]

7/7 so far. I installed 4 packages and 2 nucs today and have one that survived the winter. The dandelions and willows are in bloom, and all the hives have honey from the dead outs to hopefully build fast. When northern queens, from Olympic Wilderness Apiaries, become available they will be re-queened. I have 3 more nucs from old sol coming next month.