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Finding Mite Resistance - The Journey

72K views 110 replies 36 participants last post by  NUBE 
#1 ·
Greetings everyone!

I've been encouraged to create a post to share with everyone on some of what I've been attempting to find and stabilize some mite tolerance and resistance in bees here in Central California. Given the time of year, it seems like a good day to start the discussion and start sharing what I've seen and garner the discussion on developing a pseudo breeding model that might be effective in a high density area of commercial bees. I'll try to keep it as chronological as I can and detail as best I can what's been done and what bees have been tried. I will preface, I will name names, describe my personal experience with said bees, and be as truthful and honest as to what I saw or am seeing. I also do not mean any disrespect to anyone I've gotten bees from as most or all of them have been good bees as far as typical commercial/hobbyist traits go but the main point of discussion will be how well they fared with mites.

Secondly, I will describe our landscape, it's fairly heavily used for mainly agriculture. I do have a few hives in an urban setting which fare somewhat better as far as forage goes. Typically though, our dearth can start as soon as almond bloom is over if there isn't much wild mustard or radish blooming. Where I keep the bees there isn't much fruit tree production either, so no cherries, plums or citrus, mainly almonds, walnuts, and pistachio, with almonds the only one being any value to the bees. Mustards and radish will carry into April if they're not sprayed out but then farmers start working their fields and planting. Mainly it's tomatoes, field corn, alfalfa, hybrid sunflower seed production, and some safflower. The alfalfa is rarely of any use to the bees as it's cut 6-8 times during the season and doesn't get to bloom very much or for any extended period of time. If I'm lucky, vetch carries into May somewhat and then hopefully I get some starthistle in June/July but it's getting very dry and hot by then as well. After that it's pretty much a dearth August - December depending on the weather and area, but where my bees are at, it's pretty slim pickings. Also keep in mind, there's 3 commercial yards within a quarter mile area with 30-40 pallets each yard. They are moved in and out for pollinations so they're not always around during the season, but typically they show up at the end of July and stay through January and might be around sporadically March - June.

In the end though, what's the goal of all of this... I'd really love to find some genetics that work well here in Central Valley California for resisting varroa mites. So far it's been very challenging as our mite pressure is very aggressive in terms of growth and virus pressure. Part of it has to do with lack of quality forage throughout the year though. I think the stress from robbing pressure, the heat in the summer, and nutrition take their toll, especially on the longevity of the lives of the worker bees. I do think there's a light at the end of the tunnel though, it may take some time to get there butI'm always up for a good challenge.

I'll post more as time permits, I'll give a little detail on my background and education then move right along into the bees of where I started and where I'm at now.
 
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#28 · (Edited)
So, beginning of summer 2013, hives are looking good. My strategy for housing new queens and splits was pretty much to use 5 frame nuc boxes, let them build up and overwinter as a single 5 frame or 5 over 5 if they got strong enough. My mite strategy was still in development though and my main approach was I still wanted to evaluate all the new bees I had so I pretty much kept them untreated up to this point. At this point though, I'm noticing the mites are building up nicely and are getting very noticeable, especially in the older splits and established hives.

Here's a hive Summary:

Elk Grove:
F1 Kona Daughter hive, superceded - failed to requeen - now a Honey-4-All queen
Kona Queen #2: Built up nicely, but mite population noticeable
F2 Daughter queen split from supercedure: 5X5 nuc, building up nicely

Weimar:
Queen from TF Russian breeder: 3 deep hive, full of bees and honey, mite population healthy

Woodland Location #1:
Relocated testy swarm from house to here
Italian WSU Queen: Looking good, strong nuc
Carniolan WSU Queen: Looking good

Woodland Location #2 (main yard):
Kona Queen from bought hive #1: Very prolific queen, 2 deeps and 3 medium hive. mites building up
Nuc with Ray Marler queen: Nuc that virgin queen failed after losing the original F1 Kona daughter that got superceded
Nuc with F2 Kona Queen: Nuc made with second batch of supercedure cell from Kona F1
Swarm from work: I called her the Monsanto queen, 5X5 configuration, looked good, mite levels seem ok
Cordovan Swarm: Swarm from co-worker with Cordovan queen. 1 deep and 1 medium, drew all frames, looking good, mite levels seem ok
Split from Russian queen from Weimar: Nice little prolific black queen, walk away split, 5 frame nuc full of bees, mite levels very noticeable
Caucasian WSU queen: Looking ok, slow build up compared to Italian and Carni WSU queens, feeding sporadically, ant issues as well

Home:
Second queen from Honey-4-All: Strong 5X5 nuc

So not too bad, took 4 hives, turned them into 12 and captured 3 swarms and the year wasn't over yet.
 
#31 · (Edited)
We'll start this one off with a pic, here's the Kona queen that I had in Woodland

She was a third year queen, so it wasn't surprising in June or July I found her being superceded. I took the opportunity to remove her and to nuc her, and I pulled 4 splits from the hive and leaving it as a single with cells to requeen. Ants got the better of two of the splits. The main hive requeened successfully and two splits also yielded laying queens, one of which had acceptance issues after mating, and ended up getting her wings chewed off but was accepted after I caged her for a day.

This pretty much sums of the hive situation for 2013, so now we're at about 18 hives entering fall. 2013 proved to be a difficult fall as well. The main yard was having ant issues and some robbing. Ended up shutting it down and moving everything to the other location anyways as the landowners decided to sell it. I moved the hive from my house containing the second queen from Honey-4-All as well as I set up the Pol Line breeder at home. The fall dearth took it's toll though, the year before must've been an exceptional year for forage, but as I never had bees before that I didn't know it. Also, the mite PMS really started to set in come September, and I even caught another swarm on September 1st. A small swarm a little bigger than a grapefruit probably, but it had a nice laying queen and it took to sub and syrup readily and grew fairly steadily in the fall and even winter. As a desperate attempt to salvage some hives, I tried a little OAV but since most of my hives I set up on the 3/8" bottom board it didn't quite work out well so I probably only tried it on 2 nucs, one was the old Kona queen now in a nuc and they weren't too happy about me sticking the gadget in there.

The first casualties started rolling in though. The first was the daughter queen from Weimar. I was a little hurt over this one as she was my only black queen at the time and was by all standards a decent queen. I made the split in early May and you can now do the math, it took it all of 5 months to mite out, probably due to the fact that the parent hive had a growing population of mites at the time of the split. Second casualty was the queen I moved from the house to Woodland, mites had hit them pretty hard as well as the transition from a good forage area to a poor one. The third casualty was the Caucasian WSU queen who had just kept on struggling and finally gave into the lack of stores and mite pressure they were under. The 4th casualty was the other remaining Kona queen I had in Elk Grove. The 5th casualty of the year was the hive in Weimar, they had shrunk down due to mites and decided to supercede the queen in October, they were not successful. The 6th casualty of the year was the Kona queen which I had split 5 ways essentially. Turns out her nuc was aggressive when I oav'd them because they were in fact queenless at the time. The 7th hive to fall to mites that year was the original hive that Kona queen headed which had successfully requeened and looked decent but come winter they were gone as well due to PMS. Basically 19 hives going into fall, 12 remained but the lack of treatment at the proper time had still taken it's toll. The cordovan queen that was a deep and medium full of bees previous was down to about 4 frames of bees. Same with the Monsanto queen which had gone from a strong 5 over 5 to about 3 frames of bees. The new splits hadn't faired much better, the WSU queens and daughters from the Kona queen were down to a frame of bees, but all had put up 3-4 frames of capped honey at least. Ray's queen was down to a seam of bees as well, but with 4 frames of capped honey at least. The mean swarm from the house was going strong as ever though. Although a bit testy, those bees were always flying and active. They maintained about 12-14 frames at the time in 3 deeps, the top being mostly capped honey and drone comb. The queens in Elk Grove faired better as the forage was great over there. The F2 daughter from my first supercedure/split was a strong 5 over 5 and Honey-4-All's queen was about 7-8 frames of bees but with a deep and medium full of capped honey. All in all, suffered about 40% losses, all due to mites and most of the hives looking like garbage, but luckily we have very mild winters here. Spring 2014, here we come!
 
#32 ·
Spring 2014 rolls around.... Whatever was left made it so I had 12 colonies to work with. A few definitely needed some help though. The queen from Ray Marler was down to a handful of bees and the queen. I gave them some pollen sub which stimulated some laying but I eventually had to give them a frame of brood and bees. One of the daughters from the Kona queen that had her wings torn up pretty good also needed a frame of bees and brood, her sister was on the cusp but I felt like they would be alright on their own, but they weren't much better. I was still pretty discouraged about my 2013 losses though and the shape of the hives going into fall so I was really starting to strategize on what to do about mites. I'd gotten the OAV unit, a Heilyser JB 200 but didn't really care much for the method of application and results weren't really promising on the few hives it got tested on but the method was still in it's infancy at the time. I still figured VSH was a good option, and still wanting the Pol Line stock I ordered a few more breeders from VP queens. I ordered a Pol Line, Adam's Italian X Pure VSH, and his VSH Carni line. I also wanted to hedge my bets so I ordered from Broke-T who had open mated Carni daughters from VP queens and had a pretty good reputation on Beesource. I ordered 3 queens there. I also wanted to bring in some of Joe Latshaw stocks, and Pine Ridge Farms was offering open mated Aurea daughters that were mated with carni drones predominantly so I ordered 2 queens from there. I also ordered a breeder from Lauri Miller since she had incorporated some of Glenn's stocks in her bees and was having good success with minimal treatments with them. I also contacted Zia queens but they were fairly busy that year so it didn't work out, but I still had bees to make some splits from as well to evaluate, especially in some of the swarms I collected and I really liked in what I saw with Phil's queen as far as production traits go.

From a management stand point, I also wanted to adjust my strategy. Small cell got a lot of talk at the time so I figured I'd give it a try. Not that I really bought into it as an effective measure or anything but I figured if it could have an impact it was worth trying. I opted to go with small cell wax foundation from Mann Lake in this regard as it seems none of my bees take to plastic very well, especially the areas that don't get much of a nectar flow. In this regard I try not to say much about it except that it doesn't really seem to do much for mite management for me but you really need to see how the bees drew the foundation out etc... and not every single frame in the hive is small cell as stuff gets shifted around and I have some foundationless frames and a mix of frames from the 6 hives I bought which probably consisted of 140 frames of various configurations, either pierco full plastic or wood frames and plastic foundation or just standard wax foundation.

Fortunately, the consolidated yard in Woodland had a lot of almonds around it, so early forage was excellent. There was also a fair amount of wild mustard and radish. The first order of business was to move the September swarm as I had just placed the bees underneath where they swarmed at, kind of in the front yard of the property. Only issue was, I knew some of the foragers would return so it also proved to be a good time to make the first split of the season. I relocated the hive to it's permanent spot in the yard and it had grown to about 8 frames of bees and had a pretty good foraging force. I took a nuc and pulled a single frame of bees and brood from the Cordovan swarm queen and set it in the old spot to catch all the returning foragers. Checked it a few days later and it was probably 3 frames of bees total and they had started some queencells so I closed it up and left it at that. Around the same time I also did a walk away split from Honey-4-All's queen in Elk grove as they were doing quite well. I moved this split to my house to get mated. The other hive there also got a 3rd five framer box put on top of it as I didn't feel like putting it in 10 frame equipment just yet.

About three weeks from making the first split of the year I checked for emergence and found a nice cordovan virgin. I thought she was a bit runty at first but I figured it was better than nothing and just an experiment in catching foragers to boost a single frame split. Here's a pic before mating:



After mating:



Was a pretty nice looking queen and proved to be a good layer. Once she was laying I moved the hive to Davis. At this point in time I also started to grade and evaluate the queens that I had and giving them nicknames where appropriate. The mean swarm from my house in West Sac became 'Swarm Mama'. I thought they may have some resistance/tolerance to varroa as they exhibited some Russian characteristics but I still kind of gave them a wide birth as they were a little testy, runny, drippy bees. Will not accept a queen or queencell from other hives either. I recall inspecting them early spring and I had forgotten I gave them a few foundationless frames the year before and they had pretty much drew them all drone comb and come mid spring raised 3-4 cycles of drones in every one of them which should of tipped me off at their intent at the time but they weren't overly crowded in 3 deeps but Swarm Mama earned her name because quite frankly, every spring I had her, she hit the trees or attempted too. They also lit up my land owner when mowing right before swarming and when we shook them out of the tree, they weren't very happy then either so they had to go. Unfortunately at the time, Ray Marler had a rough year so I figured it was a good time to donate him some quirky bees. I ended up keeping the swarm with the original queen as the landowners just wanted the mean hive to go away and didn't really understand that was now the mean hive, but the original hive requeened and as soon as she was laying I donated them to Ray. Since Swarm Mama was nuc'd now, and I inspected them more frequently, they actually calmed down a bit for the year too. The other quirky thing they did after swarming was to kill a massive amount of drones they had reared previously. They were pretty mite infested at the time as well, so any thoughts of resistance or tolerance went out the door as well and I dropped some Apivar in both hives to help clean them up.
 
#36 ·
Spring 2014 rolls around.... At this point in time I also started to grade and evaluate the queens that I had and giving them nicknames where appropriate. The mean swarm from my house in West Sac became 'Swarm Mama'. I thought they may have some resistance/tolerance to varroa as they exhibited some Russian characteristics but I still kind of gave them a wide birth as they were a little testy, runny, drippy bees. Will not accept a queen or queencell from other hives either. I recall inspecting them early spring and I had forgotten I gave them a few foundationless frames the year before and they had pretty much drew them all drone comb and come mid spring raised 3-4 cycles of drones in every one of them which should of tipped me off at their intent at the time but they weren't overly crowded in 3 deeps but Swarm Mama earned her name because quite frankly, every spring I had her, she hit the trees or attempted too. They also lit up my land owner when mowing right before swarming and when we shook them out of the tree, they weren't very happy then either so they had to go. Unfortunately at the time, Ray Marler had a rough year so I figured it was a good time to donate him some quirky bees. I ended up keeping the swarm with the original queen as the landowners just wanted the mean hive to go away and didn't really understand that was now the mean hive, but the original hive requeened and as soon as she was laying I donated them to Ray. Since Swarm Mama was nuc'd now, and I inspected them more frequently, they actually calmed down a bit for the year too. The other quirky thing they did after swarming was to kill a massive amount of drones they had reared previously. They were pretty mite infested at the time as well, so any thoughts of resistance or tolerance went out the door as well and I dropped some Apivar in both hives to help clean them up.
Some of the best bees I ever had as they made me a better bee keeper!
Everything Jeff said is true, these bees are really something. They have several genetic strains in them though. Some offspring are more Italian, some are more Russian, and some are... who knows what. A lot of propolis and many are runny and drippy and won't take cells or queens to requeen or when making splits, and I would not call them mean, but I got to using a smoker and wearing a veil every time now. I started trying to clean up some of the genetics of offspring this past year (2016) and am happy with a couple that I have this winter so far. I have high hopes for that line of bees, they seem to be more varroa tolerant than most bees I've kept here, and the genetics I've kept so far are a little calmer on the combs and easier to work with. OK, sorry for the interrupt, carry on with the story, it's been very good reading.
 
#34 ·
I can't say for certain square, but I think some virgins shrink a lot just before mating and there's no real standard to judge them by, except maybe look more at their width then total length and the size of their thorax. I'll know better in spring when queens will plump up more, but I did produce a daughter off my VP Carni, and I must've caught her right when she emerged as I was very pleased with her size as a virgin. I checked her a few days later and she'd shrunk up a lot and even after mating I would say my impression is, she was bigger the first time I saw her as a virgin.
 
#35 ·
"They were pretty mite infested at the time as well, so any thoughts of resistance or tolerance went out the door as well..."

Hey JRG, great read, keep it coming. Did your "Swarm Mama" colony exhibit any outward signs of mites that led to your decision to treat, or was it count based? Thanks.
 
#38 ·
i pinched a queen once for looking runty like that, perhaps i should have waited...
If a queen shows worker characteristics, she should be pinched. The simplest worker trait to look for is pollen baskets. Queens don't have them, workers do. Beyond that, I'm in favor of medium to large size queens. In the past, I got rid of a lot of rat tailed queens. They never produce enough eggs to maintain a colony.
 
#39 ·
Nordak,

They get a little DWV but I would say in general, tolerate mites better than really susceptible hives. It was more based on the amount of phoretics I saw at the time, but it was a mild winter that year and drone production probably started in January and the 3 foundationless frames they had didn't help things out since she laid it wall to wall drones. The carnage the few days after they swarmed was immense too, just a huge pile of drones outside, I don't think I've ever seen a colony do that either, but then again, I only ever had one colony swarm last year, which happened to be that first queen from that initial supercedure of that Kona F1 from 2013.
 
#42 ·
Nordak and JRG13
I would say that evicting all the drones might have been from time of year, it starts first of summer here as the dearth starts and the queen starts slowing down, drastically in some hives, especially swarm mama daughters. Also, that could be a reason of eviction, the bees performing mite control. Evict the drones and shut down brooding after the main spring flows. I find that at that time the mites then hit the worker brood pretty hard. My thinking at the moment is that all the drone brood helps keep the varroa out of the worker brood throughout the spring. But then the summer solstice happens, dearth starts, queen shuts down or drastically slows down, drones get evicted and drone comb gets backfilled, so worker brood is where all the increase, percentage wise to brood, all the mites go. This becomes a critical time in my area to check for mites and treat if needed. Usually it's needed badly by the end of June or first of July. I may try doing some shook swarm splits at that time and see if it helps with mite control any at all.
 
#47 ·
Yeah, I'm hoping they taper off now. Last night was rough, woke up about 1.5 hours after falling asleep due to the pain, pills did nothing, tossed and turned, moved to the couch to recline, tossed my cookies as the pain was nauseating me, finally fell back asleep about 6am, kids woke me up at 6:45....
 
#48 · (Edited)
Ok, back to 2014, first splits on the ground, bees building up nicely, started evaluating queens. I tend to overwinter in nucs when I can as well, especially with our mild winters, which aren't severely mild, we just don't get a lot of snow, but we can get periods of relatively cold days and nights and extended periods of rain December - March so you still need to have your hives winter ready, but it also means a frame of bees can successfully overwinter if you keep them dry and they have enough stores. The WSU queens overwintered well, they didn't need any help come spring and overwintered with a nice viable cluster of bees in their nucs and had put up enough stores in fall to not have to baby them. Both queens had good brood patterns and stores and the bees were gentle, the Italian line was a little farther along then the Carniolan. The Kona daughter queens all looked quite well, only had 3 left at this point. The F2 from the original supercedure and two F1's from the hive in Woodland that was a pretty good mother colony. One queen had chewed wings prior to mating, didn't need a nick name for her obviously and had no worries of her swarming off any time soon. I had to boost this one with a frame of brood though, but they built up nicely. The other colony I nicknamed 'Super Queen'. Didn't overwinter much better than her sister, but I did not boost them with a frame of brood and bees. This queen was the first to fill out her nuc in 2014, even faster than the WSU queens which had 2-3 frames of bees when spring started. Queen from Ray Marler's stock needed a frame of brood and bees as well after initial pollen sub as her cluster size wasn't viable. Queen was heavy on the Carni side and it showed during fall when they capped 4 frames of honey in the nuc and pretty much wound down from there but mite pressure took it's toll in winter but they put up the most honey for the size of colony at the time. Colony took well to the frame of brood and built up nicely as spring advanced though.

Hives in Elk Grove were doing well. I had the F2 Kona daughter there and Honey-4-All's queen, both of which were packing in stores. I ended up having to go 5x5x5 for the kona queen and eventually put them in a double deep and a medium. Had them set up on a Country Rubes bottom board, and the mite drop was pretty high it seemed but they didn't seem to suffer much from it. It seemed to taper off eventually though and I doused them once with Oxalic in spring, both hives at that location. I also made a split from the queen sourced from Honey-4-All and put it next to the parent colony.

The original split I had at the house in West Sac ended up looking very nice. Honey-4-All or Noble Apiaries has some nice queens, productive and easy to work. I ended moving it as a 5X5 to Weimar to replace the bees there and I ended up semi-checker boarding it into a double deep with some drawn comb in the bottom box as it was a pretty strong hive at the time with a lot of capped brood ready to emerge and a very nice looking queen.

Started getting queens from orders in May, pretty sure I got 4 queens from Broke-T on May 3rd, just before Cinco de Mayo. Got them all nuc'd up the next day, one nuc was queenless already and after a couple days I made the brilliant decision to just release the queen as the bees seemed amenable to accepting her... Here's a pro tip for everyone... just let the bees release the queen, no need to rush an introduction.... anyways, what was I saying, after introducing the 3 queens I got from Broke-T the queens were out laying and looked good in general, even had green dots for free. The 'other' nuc got a frame from superqueen so they could make their own queen and they successfully performed that feat.

Next I got two Cordovan queens from Pine Ridge Farms, introduced them successfully, they looked very good as well. I believe they were Latshaw Aurea daughters mated in his carniolan yard. I then received a breeder from Lauri Miller which was introduced successfully. She also sent me 4-5 virgins no cost, but the post office, even though it was clearly instructed to hold for pick up, decided to deliver them on a 103 degree day, and we have those communal boxes that sit on the side of the street. Well, I got home early to check the mail as I hadn't heard anything, but got to cooking dinner instead and about 90 minutes had passed before I remembered. The breeder turned out to be ok as well as one virgin. I think two were DOA and 1-2 were still alive but all the attendants were dead and the queens weren't looking too good but were moving around. The virgins were some of the biggest queens I've seen though and I must give Kudos to Lauri, she raises some quality queens but you don't need me to tell you that. I tried to intro the healthy virgin but it didn't work out, well maybe it did, the whole nuc absconded, I presume with the virgin but I can't say for certain.

The last queens I received for the year were three breeders from VP Queens. I had planned on just overwintering them for the year and got them at the tail end of the season. I ordered a Pol-Line, Italian X Pure VsH, and his Carniolan. It was still pretty hot for being so late in the year and the nuc's got stressed. Luckily two of the queens made it though, but of course the Pol-Line was dead in the cage the very next day, so now I was 0-2 on Pol-Lines, but although it was another gut wrencher to find that queen dead, I was glad at least the other 2 made it. I think some of it was a combination of making late splits and leaving them in the yard and I used some of the WSU bees for the splits and they seemed to beard more than the rest of the bees I had on the real hot days, so basically a bulk of the bees were bearding on the nuc's and not very many bees were actually inside caring for the brood and queens. Lesson was learned though, I typically move all splits from the parent yards now and if it's more into summer time, I use a shaded location to transfer them too and it seems to alleviate a lot of the stress on making splits in hot weather.

I also made a few more splits due to supercedures and colony reduction on swarm mama. Ray Marler's queen ended up getting superceded mid summer. She was in a packed 5x5 and I found a queen cell on the bottom of the frame, but I was kind of in denial mode, so I tore it down. Checked a week later, found two cells, so I did a three way split. I artificially swarmed the queen with a frame of brood and a shake from a frame of bees into a nuc, and added 4 pf100's. I then split the two nuc boxes, each with a cell and brood and put them on their own bottom boards and left the queen in the original location to pick up the foragers. All the splits were successful, except the queen got superceded a few weeks alter with a large cell, that turned out to be a dud. I eventually got them queenright with a frame of eggs/larvae from the WSU Italian queen.
 
#51 ·
Ok, back to it....

Swarm Mama started to build up well again and to keep her colony size down I performed two walk away splits. Both drew queen cells and hatched virgins. One ended up being a really small queen, so I pinched her and introduced a queencell in a roller cage. I plugged the top of the cage with wax but these bees really don't like foreign queens so they chewed threw it and destroyed the cell. I gave them some brood and bees from one of the WSU queens and they started to draw out cells but tore them down a few days after capping... Around the same time I found the September 1st swarm I collected in 2013 superceding with a few nice cells, as a last ditch effort I cut one of the cells out and placed it into the nuc and they finally accepted a new queen. A nice virgin emerged but she was damaged at the end of abdomen on her mating flight, had a big dent in it but she started to lay and was able to get the nuc through winter even though it was late in the year and she didn't have much to work with, she became known as 'damaged mama'.

I believe that was about all queens and splits done for the year. I was still formulating my mite plan though and still wanting to screen for resistance so treatments were again on hold but as it was getting towards fall it was getting obvious something would need to be done. So lets tally it up by location and I'll add some details I left out, but for all instances we're at about August 2014...

Weimar - Noble Apiaries F1 Queen from West sac... after placing the hive I came back about 4 weeks later and to much disappointment hadn't done much. Found them queenless with some capped brood still emerging and laying worker started. I brought in a split, donated 1 frame of eggs and larva to this hive and also placed the split there... both hives drew queencells and had virgins emerge. The split was successful, the main hive, the virgin never got mated, was still running around as a virgin in October, still had a little bit LW, left hive to dwindle. The nuc hadn't done much either, it did not survive winter as well.

Elk Grove - Noble Apiaries Queen - 2 deeps, 3 mediums, mites apparent, slight DWV
F2 Kona Queen - 2 deeps, 2 mediums, high mite drop, brood becoming spotty, slight DWV
Noble F1 split, 2 deeps, mites noticeable, slight DWV

Davis - F1 Cordovan Queen, first queen of 2014, 2 deeps and a medium, mild PMS setting in

West Sacramento - Lauri Miller Breeder Queen, looked good, some mites, no symptoms of PMS

Woodland (auxillary yard) - Carni Breeder, looked good, got Apivar but mite levels not noticeable
Woodland (main yard)- WSU Italian: 5x5, took multiple splits, looking good - mites building up, slight PMS symptoms
WSU Carniolan: 5X5, took multiple splits, looking good, mites noticeable
Broke-T queens: All 3 looked similar, transferred all to single 10 frame equipment with internal feeders, 6-7 frames of bees, 3-4 frames brood, looked decent, some phoretic mites, no PMS
Cordovan Swarm Queen: 2 Deeps, 2 mediums - 2 splits taken, PMS starting to be apparent, mites noticeable
Kona F2-F3: Sister to Elk Grove Kona F2, superceded in summer, 2 deeps
September Swarm 2013 queen: Superceded, 2 deeps, Apivar in, new queen looks good
Monsanto Swarm Queen: 2 Deeps, 2 splits taken, mites noticeable, PMS apparent
Swarm Mama: 2 deeps, Apivar early as mites were becoming apparent
VP Italian X Pure VSH: 5X5 with 4 frames of bees in the top box, Apivar, no mite issues but was recent split
Super queen F1 - single deep, looked good, Apivar
Super Queen - 2 deeps, PMS apparent, colony was collapsing, Apivar
No wing Kona F1 - single deep, slight-moderate PMS present, 1 split taken
Ray Marler F1 - Italian looking, 5X5 look good
Ray Marler F1 - Carni looking, single deep, look good
WSU Italian F1 - Nuc, look good, 3-4 frames of bees, looks good, large queen
Swarm Mama F1 - New queen superceded, nuc dwindled in fall as it was no longer viable
Damaged Mama - Sister to September F1 queen, they look identical except the dent, reddish/rootbeer colored Italian, no stripes, 2 frames of bees, Apivar in as insurance
Pine Ridge Queens - 1 queen remained, looked decent, 4-5 frames of bees in the nuc, the other queen had absconded in late summer

That puts us as 26 colonies from 12 hives from spring, a lot of which were nucs, I excluded the hives in Weimar from that count, so it would actually be 28 colonies was the high from 12. When I noted splits taken, that just means they donated 2-3 frames for a split at some point during the season, I did not list them all but where I remember taking splits from them, I made the note so you can get a sense of why some started as nucs but are still 5X5. That about sums up early fall, next we'll get to September when the losses really start rolling in from the mites....
 
#52 ·
Varroa ended up being bad as usual in the late fall of 2014. The Monsanto swarm queen ended up succumbing first. I basically found them getting robbed out, and they were down to a few hundred bees and the queen. I re-hived them into a 5 frame nuc and reduced the entrance down to stop the robbing. They ended up surviving and I had to donate a frame of brood and bees to them before winter set in. Next in line was the Cordovan swam queen. I gave them 3 rounds of oxalic, but the PMS was severe by late September and they ended up collapsing down to about a frame of bees from two deeps and a medium that were fully occupied. Even after the 3 treatments, mites were still readily visible and the PMS was reduced but still noticeable so they got a strip of Apivar to do a final knockdown. Fortunately, they made it as well as 2014 was a very mild winter and January 2015 was I believe a record setting warm although December was typical and we got a few weeks of frost around Christmas time. The hive in Davis was the next victim, I just didn't have time to get a mite treatment in early fall, but I knew PMS was setting in when I checked them last, but they succumbed rather quickly. Although I liked the Cordovan line as they were decent bees, they were obviously very susceptible to mites in both mother and daughter. Super Queen was the next victim as well as her sister, wingless. The Kona lines proved to be decent bees as well, but also seriously lacking in any type of tolerance let alone resistance. All the Broke-T queens remained untreated but shrank down to about 3 frames of bees each, but had good stores. The last queen in Woodland to fail was the WSU Italian, the colony was alive come spring which pretty much started in January, but they were queenless and down to just a small cluster. The Carniolan lined proved a little better but had reduced down to about 2 frames of bees and received apivar as well.

Elk Grove faired a little better, but the colonies still took a big hit and got a late round of Apivar to get them through. When I checked them mid December, Original Noble Apiaries queen was down to about 4 frames of bees, the split was slightly better around 5 frames and the original F2 Kona queen was about 6 frames as well. Apivar seemed to do the trick though and all the hives rebounded and took advantage of the warm January. So, now that look back, 2014 wasn't too bad loss wise, but we hit a high of about 28 hives, down to 22 after mite kill with 3 very weak hives that would only be rebuilding all of 2015 and the rest of the hives collapsing down to 3-5 frames of bees with late season Apivar getting them into 2015.....
 
#53 ·
Reflections on 2014...

Although it wasn't a bad year, it was still discouraging at the end to see the bees collapsing down. It was fairly obvious what the problem was, but I still had that notion to screen for resistance, heck, I was starting to settle for maybe a little tolerance and you could see that in some of the bees but it was still hard to compare due to location. The bees in Elk Grove get a nice flow most of the year, build up and put up 3-4 supers of honey, where as Woodland, you might get a medium super off a double deep in summer if you're lucky, other than that, some of the nuc's could surprise you or even a 5X5 could cape 6-7 frames depending on the bees, especially the lines that seemed more frugal like the WSU Carni or the darker queens from Ray Marler, but they also tend to naturally shrink the fall cluster as well.

Another thing that opened my eyes a little is spending about half a day listening to Keith Jarret. He invited me to come up and grab some sub in the fall, even bought me lunch, he talked I listened for the most part. I have to give Kudos to Keith, he has his game plan down and he sticks to it. He realizes the value of strong colonies and the ROI each one is capable of and manages his bees as such. He showed me his stack of duds... about 5-6 singles stacked on top of each other, with a special innercover that acted as top of one hive and bottom for the one above it, the entrances alternating each one to face different directions then the one above or below it. Pretty good way to take advantage of the hives insulating each other. Of course he cracked a few, and they had rebounded quite well from when they were culled out months prior and were all just packed with bees. I'd like to spend a little more time talking to Keith this year if he gets some time too, but he helped consolidate my plan and strategy on what else to look for in colonies besides the basic and mite resistance.

Another thing I really started contemplating on was when to actually start screening for mites. As for now, my populations were small, but diverse but it really doesn't make much sense to screen such a small population. It's really more useful to keep your bees healthy until you have the resources to really make some splits and grafts from each queen line to be evaluated in some quantity. That being said, 2015 turned out alright until the tail end of the year when I had to move everything but I will cover that in a bit.
 
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