[1102009]

Today I got into the elgon-carni-hybrid hives.

It was not a good idea. Wasps are a pest just now, we opened a honey comb patch while pulling the frames and pandemonium started.
I cleaned the honey a little bit, we put the feeder on top and waited until the bees had taken the honey while checking the mother colony of the hybrids.

My husband got stung twice and it was no joy to work them.

But everything looks fine, brood, the queens, we saw both, no disease. Enough food to let it go at that. These two hives increased brood nests and had used much honey. Still, one of them built comb.

 

[gww]

SiW
It sounds like yesterdays (day before) inspection was better. Bees nice and gentle.
Cheers
gww

 

[squarepeg]

nice report sibylle! sounds like all is going well so far this year. many thanks for keeping us updated.

 

[1102009]

nice report sibylle! sounds like all is going well so far this year.

Well square I thought so too but today i found the swarm from the elgon queenless split was without brood.
Seems to me 4 weeks are too long a time to break brood then was my last check, they had 6 combs of mostly open brood then, so i put in a comb with two egg patches surrounded with hatching brood from the mother hive so they can nurse well. Pollen and honey they had in abundance.

I took this from the defensiv hive because the others have no surplus of brood just now, having preferred foraging.
Had some thoughts about the defensiveness but today they were gentler.

 

[1102009]

Dar, your pm account is full so I answer here, hope this is ok with you, thanks for your message.

I've had brood breaks up to 5 weeks long in mid-summer. My climate is very different from yours so don't expect your bees to be doing a brood break. I think something is wrong and it is worth investigating to find out what. Is the queen marked? Are nectar and pollen being brought into the hive?

The only way to tell for sure is to give them a small piece of comb with eggs and larvae and see if they start cell building.

To all, I found it strange that 4 weeks ago the hive was bursting with eggs, larva and young brood, now is completely without brood. If I had squished the queen they should have had no problem to raise a new one.
There was no cell.
Food was in abundance, not many empty cells to lay in but some patches. Much pollen. When I hived them I put in comb, empty frames and honey comb.
I don´t know if they still forage for pollen, since it´s an outyard and I visit in the evening. Nectar, yes and all bees are still present, no absconding or swarming.

First thought was theft, but the queen was not marked, all combs were in and my husband says he always makes a special kind of knot into the hive strap.

I put in the egg comb yesterday and will see.
Many thanks.

 

[1102009]

I checked my AMM hybrids yesterday.

They did not use the flow situation for stores but continued breeding. Stores are just sufficient to survive this. I did not feed.

The one with mite crisis looks better, the new brood areas are not shotgun anymore and the old empty cells are used again.
But another has mites on the VB. Both colonies open brood cells with white eyed pupa.

Propolis is very sticky and the hive which looks better was attacking us, the first time I experienced bees trying to find their way into our clothes to sting.
Well, we showed them! Smoked them thoroughly and checked them anyhow.
I believe it´s the wasps. We have wasp invasion.

I took some mite samples to microscope them today. i will update if I find bitten mites again.
I saw that the jeopardized hives had drone brood on every comb ( the drone corners, 10% were used).

Next sunday when we have our next meeting and my "brother in arms" comes we probably will do a sugar roll and take some brood samples.
Just out of curiosity, because in the end I will have to wait if I have winter survivors.

My thoughts are that the "south bees" are still not adapted to the flow. They act like winter is only one or two month like where they come from. No preparations done.

Some picts that may be of interest:

The comb which was shotgun but now looks like this:

The hygienic behavior:

The arrangement of honey and brood, dar, this may be of interest to you. The bees did this themselves. The leaves are where brood frames start and end.

 

[1102009]

Met an ex co-worker today 8 he left our group because " resistant bees bring no honey" and because of my losses ( a failure to him).

He asked: how about your mite bomb hives?
I said: they are fine how about yours? Already treated? Harvested?

He said: no, I want more honey, I have to wait with treatments. ( His harvest so far: 240 pounds out of 4 hives).
I asked: and how are they doing?

He said: lost three hives this spring because of nosema. Chalkbrood in every hive. Mite? Like ever.
I asked: why don´t you use better queens ( there are local bred queens which are resistant to nosema and chalk brood) ?

He answered with a shake of shoulders..why?
I asked: and do you multiply your hives?

He said: yes I did a split but it is queenless. I put in an egg comb but they are still without brood ( 3 weeks ago). I have to buy another queen. He keeps bees as long as I do.
......

These 12 hives he and his friend have are in range of drone mating. My neighbors 5 km.
I think I have to move my AMM hives.

 

[1102009]

Weather is not very forage friendly so if the exploiters want to exploit treat and feed, they should hurry or the stores will be used.

I took a long walk Saturday with my neighbors dog ( mine is too old) to scan the area around my AMM bee yard.
When I started 2014 I was isolated 3km with probably 20 hives in this distance. Now they are up to 60 hives which means I will move my survivors, if I have any, to my other outyard.
I´m limited in this location to 6 hives because it´s not my property.

I plan to flood the area of the elgon and carniolan bee yard with my drones.

I´m not sure about how to use the AMM, because they are still not adapted. But still, they survive in such an environment and are not overly aggressive.
It might also be they produce surplus with better flow.

Maybe use elgon genetics for my future splits from them but allow some genes to improve diversity from their drones.

I will place more boxes in the forest, I´m not limited there except through flow and so far flow was good the last years.

I found it strange that 4 weeks ago the hive was bursting with eggs, larva and young brood, now is completely without brood. If I had squished the queen they should have had no problem to raise a new one.
There was no cell.

I still cannot understand what made this hive go queenless without raising a cell on their own but now they raised 4 cels from the donated comb.

 

[1102009]

My samples show some mite biting done ( AMM hybrids, 2. and 3. generation):

 

[gww]

SiW
I did see a bee grooming another at the water hole today. This one looked like it started near the head and then worked towards the tail. I didn't see any pollen and the bee did not stop at the joint but looked like it was sorta brushing the hair or something of the sort. I did try and take a picture but between trying to see for sure and knowing how to work the phone, it just didn't happen. It does have me curious. I see the leg biteing and wing pulling and stuff but this is differrent.
Cheers
gww

 

[1102009]

My young friend offered me a queen from his grafting success.
She came in an apidea. She is Elgon F1 from his best hive.

So I splitted one strong hive again and we combined the split with the apidea via paper. We wetted the paper, made three small slits and put two drops of oil of clove on the paper.

I hope everything will be fine and the bees will accept her.

 

[1102009]

Later in the evening we had a group meeting and made some barbecue.

We had a wonderful time bee talking and celebrating with the families.

Here a pict of some of the co-workers at my bee yard :

 

[Oldtimer]

Looks good SiWolKe, let's know how that combine turns out.

 

[1102009]

:lpf:

Well, it would have worked if the bees in the mini nuc had not throwed a swarm or superseded.

Seems my friend did not check them small frames, only looked through the window to check for brood!

I fixed the mini frame under the broodnest and left the hive with over 20 queen cells under construction which were very juicy with royal jelly. Shame it is so late in year.
The best will win and fingers crossed get mated.

 

[1102009]

I harvested all mediums today and left the bees in one deep as the arrangement for winter. I want the deeps to burst with honey and the bees to fill honey domes.

All have stores in the deep, only one not much. This one I have to watch the weight. The have nectar and capped domes. it was the one queenless which throwed a swarm, if the swarm`s queen is not laying in two weeks I will combine the hives, so they have enough workers.

One hive was so strong of bees I put on a medium again with foundations. I will check once in a while if they build more comb, end of august the latest I want to take it off.

The honey was mostly capped, the open honey I will use to make syrup and freeze in bags to feed back if needed ( in fall or spring).

OT suggested in a pm to make holes into the comb as passways for the cluster because I have such thick frame bars and small bee space. This seems the most wonderful idea to me and I will do this in september.
The natural combs I let them built already have such holes, but I believe my foundations are too thick for breaking through for the bees.

 

[1102009]

This is a special post dedicated to BernhardHeuvel and Oldtimer!

I have two hives which are almost in the same condition, mites counted for 3 weeks --8 per day the average falling down.

Today I installed the Varroa-Kill-Unit on the top of one.

The other will be for comparison.

I will count the mites on the boards every morning until end of month and update to what I see. When the ordeal is over I will check thoroughly with a sugar shake and brood sample.

 

[1102009]

The experience of B. a seasoned beekeeper on his path to become treatment free.

One of my colonies ,the test hive, is placed in a bee shack directly beside a hive of the same construction. The other side is empty and places beside this is an inhabitated hive of another construction.

The colony was established may 17th 2016 to introduce a surplus queen.
July 19th 2016 the queen was removed.

Because of the following broodbrake there were not many mites so as a test the colony went into winter without mite treatment.

The hive is a „Hinterbehandlungsbeute“ ( in former times used, frames can be taken out from the side), 9 combs, small drone comb, brood box insulated and 12 combs above for honey which are used for splits and surplus queens.

Because I heard that a small hive will have a positive influence to varroa development, I left this colony in this hive.

April 2017 the colony expelled the drone brood. The living more developed drones showed virus sickness, workers I saw not many.

May 4th 2017: The colony occupies the brood chamber and half the honey chamber. Downfall of mites: 50 per day.

The colony directly at the side shows a mite downfall of 12 per day, no virus symptoms. For diagnosis I use a diagnosis plate 26cm.

May 22. 2017
60 mites on the plate . The hive thrives. Not enough space for the bees.

No virus effects seen any more. Drones are still expelled but carried away, so it´s hard to observe if they are damaged.
I never culled drones so I see more and more healthy drones around.

The blue Queen is an AMMmix Hüngler type ( I don´t know what this is, SiWolKe). These go into winter very weak and are not very strong in summer. They have not much honey, but are specialists for variable flow. Never need feeding. So far not much problems with varroa ( when treated once a year in winter, I did this because they were so weak last year because they were robbed, which started high mite infestation ). I treated once with oxalic acid, they barely survived and are just now starting to shift honey into the honey chamber. ( Remember. 9 broodframes only)

May 30. 2017
Test Hive 62 mites per day
Neighbor hive 28 mites

Partly the mites are damaged and bitten.


Update
June 16th 2017
Test Hive: 102 mites per day, density lessened, broodbrake with drones
Neighbor beside: 29 mites
Neighbor with space between: 9 mites

June 23. 2017
Test Hive: 79 mites

July 12 2017
Test Hive: 75 mites, bad weather, no flow, former density again
Neighbor beside: 28 mites
Neighbor with space between: 21 mites
No virus sickness observed

July 20 2017
Test Hive: 45 mites
Neighbor beside: 42 mites
Neighbor with one hive space between: 16 mites

July 29 2017
Test Hive: 65 mites
Neighbor directly: 54 mites
Neighbor with space: 50 mites

Amazing! They are still alive!

Well, the Test Hive and the others seem to have the same level now and the Test Hive is the most resistant.
I will treat now and regress to small cell foundation next year the survivors, breed from the test hive.

It´s a fact, that the hives placed directly near get the mites. This can be positive because I found the mite biting behaviour now in the neighbor hive too.
But I don´t know if this is common behavoiur with them.
I never checked.

The colonies placed at distance of 5m or more are not influenced.

Perhaps it´s important that the queen is a descendant from a colony which never had a varroa problem being treatment free. But this colony was susceptible to chalkbrood and I suspect that the mite descendants died with the chalkbrood mummies.
This colony then superceded as often to loose chalkbrood susceptibility but then was not varroa resistant any more.

These kind of bees breed not many winter bees so now I will treat the Test Hive and neighbors with OAV to have them survive with the genetics still available.

Copyright B.

 

[squarepeg]

sibylle, i sure am enjoying following your progress, thanks again for keeping us updated here!

 

[1102009]

Thanks, Squarepeg, it´s nice to be appreciated. Thanks for your interest in VivaBiene too.

Today we plowed a field ( my dear husband did it) by hand and I sowed the flowers.
It´s raining so I hope the seeds will grow and my elgoncarnis have fall flow.

 

[1102009]

My daily mite counts tell me that the two hives ( with unit and the one I compare with) are much more mite infested as I thought them to be.
Data follows end of trial.

Well, I have to admit they must be dead. But they still do their daily work and only one, the one with unit, has drone pupa carried outside.
Yesterday I found a dead hornet in the robbersreen ( I had no camera with me) and today they washboarded in the entrance, this behavior I never saw so far. Pict shows this.
They are in a fighting modus.

The thresholds to start treating were fixed to 10 mites per day counting for 10 days by my mentor 2014. If this was lethal then it´s a wonder they still live.

I see no defect bees crawling around on the ground. Because of my experiment with the unit I have to wait with check for two more weeks.

Of he two hives near, one is 2 m near and has some mites but not threatening, the other , more than 10m far has almost no mites.

What I see is that there are not many dark mites on the boards. Half of the mites are light ones which must be the unmated daughter mites since males look differently.