Making fondant
Last year's fondant had kept well in store and that's what David used to feed the lighter colonies over at Little Piece last week. But we also wanted to be sure with the hive on the Hill and hive 2 at the Rectory. So, I made up some more yesterday, which David put on at the Rectory and another lot today which is ready to go to the Hill when we have some time.
Posted by Sally on Sunday 24 January 2010 - 22:18:26 |
A little disappointing
We walked up the garden to take the air and look at the bees and I idly suggested that we should check the varroa count. I slid out one of the trays and immediately decided we had to count, as I could see a lot of varroa. It was about 4 weeks ago that we treated the garden apiary with oxalic acid, surely the count should be zero. I got a notepad and the magnifying glass and was quite shocked at the results. It's ten days since we last counted - the floors have been in during that time - and all the results were about the same daily rate as last time or greater! Some colonies are giving a daily average higher than before the treatment.
What is going on? There was a big drop after treatment. Are we still seeing some effect, perhaps because of the bees clustering in the cold weather? I have searched the net for info and did find one piece of research that had a surge of mite drop 2 weeks after the treatment, but mostly the effect trails off because there are no mites left! Did we not do it well enough? Was the product we bought too old? Have our bees been so strong that there are huge numbers of varroa? The Apiguard didn't seem to do the job this year either. And we have managed the colonies with shook and artificial swarms and some drone culling. We didn't sugar them as much as we would have liked because the humidity has been so great for so much of the year: could that be a key element that we are now paying for missing?
I have put the trays back in. I would like to think that when we check again they will show much better results, but I fear they will not.
Posted by David on Saturday 23 January 2010 - 22:54:24 |
Just not enough bees
I went over to Little Piece today following up on the varroa check 4 days ago. The plan was to do nothing to Hive 1 as the Apiguard had done its work and it is a good weight. Hive 2 we had decided to treat with oxalic acid and feed some fondant as they were light. Hive 3 was scheduled for oxalic acid and the other three colonies were due a top up of food by way of Sally's homemade fondant just in case stores were getting low.So I got together some supers to act as ekes and the fondant and oxalic acid and drove over to sort them out. It was good that I had a clear plan but...
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Posted by David on Monday 18 January 2010 - 18:35:38 |
Producing wax
I wasn't sure what effort might be needed to prepare our wax but it is important that we include this task in our beekeeping calendar in order to be able to give back to the bees as much of our own wax as possible so that we can be sure of its provenance. This way we reduce not only the amount that we need to buy in but also the risk of introducing contamination from chemical residues from unknown sources. We probably will buy some foundation this year but after our experiments with starter strips last year, we are really keen to use starters wherever possible and we can certainly cater for that with our own wax.
So, today was a practice day but at the end of it we have 3lbs of rendered wax all wrapped up and ready for use.
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Posted by Sally on Sunday 10 January 2010 - 22:57:01 |
Improvements
Yes, today's checks show a definite improvement in what were the worst affected hives in the garden apiary varroa checks.
Hive 1=1 a day
Hive 2=11 a day
Hive 3=24 a day
Hive4=10 a day
Hive5=11 a day
We'll continue to monitor.
Posted by Sally on Thursday 07 January 2010 - 22:24:33 |
New Year checks
Varroa checks first in the garden following the oxalic acid treatment. Well they are certainly reducing but the treatment may still be effective. Now I'm not sure how instant oxalic is meant to be? Hive 1 is down to 8 a day, hive 2 is 22, 3 is 5, 4 is still high at 47. and 5 is 55. So, moving in the right direction but not out of the woods yet.
We then visited all of our other hives.
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Posted by Sally on Friday 01 January 2010 - 22:02:41 |
Garden checks
Varroa counts reduced since treatment.
Hive 1=93 a day
Hive 2=136 a day
Hive 3=77 a day
Hive4=106 a day
Hive=65 a day
We'll check again in a couple of days
Posted by Sally on Wednesday 30 December 2009 - 22:05:57 |
Out Apiary Visits
We've visited all the hives at the Rectory, Green Lane and Little Piece today. All looks OK and we've helfted them all and they are probably all OK for stores until Spring. They're a little on the light side at Little Piece but they are all small colonies so we'll continue to keep an eye on them. All varroa trays (where available) are in and we'll check in the next few days and decide if we need to do any further oxalic acid treatments.
Posted by Sally on Monday 28 December 2009 - 18:52:19 |
Planning
Well we've had our bee talk and have agreed to carry on with our bee enterprises. We don't aim to increase our apiaries and plan to keep our hives down to around 21 at the peak. We've got insurance that allows for an extra two on top of that so should manage it (famous last words!). We're a little clearer about what hives we will use where and numbers of colonies at each site. I'm sure there will be lots more discussion but we just need to stay organised and try to manage our time in the best way.
One exciting thing for the new year - we want to experiment with top bar hives. So, watch this space!
Posted by Sally on Sunday 27 December 2009 - 23:57:27 |
Garden treatments
Today we treated all of the hives in the garden with oxalic acid. Using the recommended mix of 3.2% oxalic in 50% sugar syrup solution, we dribbled 5ml of the solution along each active seam of bees.
We decided to treat hive one even though its daily drop was much lower - maybe the bees disagreed because one came out and stung me - or maybe I shouldn't take things so personally!We were particularly pleased to see quite how many bees there are in the hives - much better than we had thought and will definitely give them a good start in Spring and hopefully improved by a reduced varroa infestation.
Hive 5 has 5½ seams of bees.
Hive 4 has 6 seams of bees.
Hive 3 has an amazing 9½ seams of bees.
Hive 2 has 6½ seams of bees.
Hive 1 has 7 seams of bees.
Posted by Sally on Sunday 27 December 2009 - 18:30:58 |