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I had to remove a lot of burr comb from a hive today. It has a good bit of drone brood in it. I removed quite a few and only found 2 mites, so that's ok. However, I was wondering if I can melt this...

Update:

I gave the queen in the failing split another week to sort things out, just in case.

This morning I went into the hive to discover nothing had changed. I found the queen on the next to...

I completely left out one very important thing:

In the failing split, there is a queen cell started, one and only one, with larva and RJ. I don't know that I trust it though. Would the bees know...

I discovered another option while inspecting a swarm I caught back in May. I'm not sure why, but they are superseding their queen. She has a great laying pattern and seems to be doing fine as far as...

It doesn't look like DWV. The wings are not shriveled/malformed as you would expect in DWV, but rather are damaged on the ends. They are fully formed, but are torn. I should have taken a pic of her....

Looking for some advice here.

Back on May 22nd I split a strong hive that was making swarm preps. I divided the frames with swarm cells into two 10 frame deeps and moved them to another part of...

First the mite problem:

I know there are mites in the colonies. I saw two of them weeks ago on a sticky board. But since then, I haven't seen a single one. Sugar rolls turned up nothing. So today...

I don't even use hot tap water, just cold. I used to heat it but the wife made a very good point. She said she mixes sugar with cold water all the time and it always dissolves. She says thousands of...

Here's the results:

I stopped feeding for about 9 days. They still did not use the pond I set up, nor did they come to the swimming pool. The queens in both hives are laying in the upper deeps as...

Yesterdays inspections went very well. But, once again I saw something new. On the outside of one hive, on the handle, I saw some black "stuff", for lack of a better word. On the sticky board, I saw...

I'm so tempted to agree with you J. I would love to have some excess drawn comb, but not to the detriment of the hive. I'm going back in tomorrow. If they are still drawing frames and filling...

I make my own stuff. I use an Incra iBox jig on the table saw with a dado blade, or I can use it on the production router table. It blows through a lot of boxes in a hurry. It isn't any cheaper than...

Both hives are taking a gallon of 1:1 every 3-4 days. I've added the second 10-frame deep to both hives. On Sassy Peach, I added the second deep about a week ago and pulled up 2 frames of brood...

During the last inspection I saw three pupae in the purple eye stage with no capping at all. Why would the bees uncap them? They were in a tight group of adjoining cells. They looked perfectly normal...

After the latest inspection, I've decided not to treat...yet. The 72 hour sticky board revealed zero mites for both colonies. I'm not naive enough to believe there are zero mites in the hives, but...

During my latest inspection I didn't have the debris on the sticky board that I would expect. How often should I clean the SBB, and what's the best way to do it?
I should have looked at it while I...

I'm still figuring out what a lot of the debris is. I do believe I have discovered cappings from hatching brood. My next inspection will tell the tale. I have taken the habit of seeing what's going...

OK, so here's a question:

Since I appear to have low numbers, would it make sense to treat with Apivar now and take a shot at eradicating the mite population until the fall brood break then hit...

I was actually starting to think the same thing J. Low sticky board numbers and a zero sugar roll coincide pretty well. I've just read so many horror stories about mites, I thought I would see them...

Saw a lot of these, what I believe to be, new wax flakes on the sticky boards today. Because of an inspection a few days ago, I know these were under a frame they are actively drawing out. It's so...

Thanks JW. This was from the hive I believe started as a package and has a marked queen.They are covering about 5-6 frames currently, taking 1:1 and eating pollen patties like mad. Should I treat...

In another thread I was concerned about seeing zero mites in a sugar roll test. I was asked (in all honesty, a very fair question), had I ever seen a mite before. As I said, it's a fair question, and...

No sir, I have never seen one in person. They are visible to the naked eye right? Even in the macro shots I took, there is nothing that even resembles a mite. Maybe I'm missing something here. I'll...

I did the test exactly as you described Nancy. I even add a bit more sugar and performed the test a second time on the same bees. I got zero mites from either hive. I may do an alcohol comparison...

During the last inspection I notice some very small larvae. I took a close up of them, but that image was too blurry to see anything. However, I also took several shots of the sticky boards to look...