I’ve been listening with my ear against the hives in this extremely cold weather, and hive #2 has gone quiet. Rapping the side sharply with my knuckles was met with dead silence. So far that’s the only one that has gone quiet, and the remaining 10 have that comforting low winter hum.
I always hate to lose a colony, especially so early in the winter. We, and they, have a long way to go. I won’t do an autopsy until the temperature is warmer, but this colony was one of two that had a very heavy Varroa drop when I treated them with oxalic acid vapor at Thanksgiving. I had been planning to do a follow-up treatment on those two hives about now (4-6 weeks after the last treatment), but the extremely cold temperature means clusters are too tight for a treatment to be effective. The second colony will have to wait. Speaking of Varroa……again…….those of you that subscribe to Bee Culture magazine probably read the interview with Samuel Ramsey (soon to have his PhD). Turns out he discovered that a long-held belief among researchers and beekeepers is false. The belief was that Varroa feasted on hemolymph (bee blood), but it turns out they feed on the fat bodies (stored proteins) which are equivalent in function to a human’s liver. If something was perforating your liver would you do something about it? We will discuss Varroa control methods as we get closer to spring when we can actually do something about it.
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The forecast for the next several days is for relative warmth, mid to high 30’s, no snow showers, and light winds. Weather-wise, it’s an opportunity for us to check our bees’ food supplies. I got concerned when I read Fred’s post on http://ourbeeblog.blogspot.com/ that some of his colonies were already using the emergency sugar and that he had added more. It seems early in the season for the bees to be at the top and taking sugar, but it has been a relatively warm early winter following a relatively poor honey season.
Because of Fred’s post I loaded up sugar discs, a hive tool and a veil to check my three ‘out apiary’ hives on the way home from the December 16 meeting. The first hive I checked had bees on the top bars and half of the sugar disc had been consumed. One bee took off straight for my face, and bounced off the veil. (I had learned that lesson years ago). The other two colonies were still down in the boxes and hadn’t touched the sugar discs.......yet. I appreciated the ‘heads up’ and will be checking the sugar in my eight home hives today, and then all of my hives every two weeks throughout the season. It can be a pain when the snow gets deep and I can’t take the Jeep across the 40-acre alfalfa field at Out Apiary 1, but hiking through the snow and drifts across that field is part of my commitment to the bees. We certainly have had mild weather lately, but it is coming to an end in several days when the temperature is forecast to plummet to the teens and twenties for an extended period (like 3 – 4 months, I’m guessing). Now is the time to make final winter hive preparations if you haven’t done so already.
On Thanksgiving Day I treated my home colonies with oxalic acid vapor to knock the Varroa level down one more time before the cold sets in. That day it is was 64 degrees so the bees were very active, and very defensive. I anticipated that they would be vigorous in protecting their home and honey and was prepared. I walked away unstung, but several bees died with their stingers stuck in my gloves and jeans. I put sticky boards under the screened bottom boards to keep the vapor from escaping during treatment, and left them in for 48 hours to see what the mite drop looked like after that. Two colonies had a mite drop of around a billion young mites and a few adults, and the rest had maybe a half dozen mites each. Quite a disparity. I will wait 4 weeks and then treat the two hives with the heavy drop again when we get a 40 degree day. |
ECWBA NewsletterSince 2009 Archives
March 2019
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