Recent content by Dr. Abe

I had the most unfortunate thing happen today. Three days ago I killed a few of my old failing queens and replaced them with quality mated queens that I bought. The opening in the Q cage is filled with candy and that usually gives enough time for the queen to get accepted. However, I also taped...

Can you further explain? 3 of my hives have literally zero stores after the winter and I did not want to take the risk of them starving simply from their swelling hive populations.

Well, I live in Michigan and the flowers I mentioned are just starting. Also, temperatures are regularly dipping down to temperatures where the bees cannot fly. I have not ever gotten enough honey this early to be able to harvest honey and I am mainly trying to boast the population. I will quit...

I finished my spring cleanout and started feeding with sugar syrup this past Tuesday. Dandelions, fruit trees, maple trees, and lots of misc. groundcover are flowering now in Michigan. Bees are bringing in a lot of pollen. Five of my Hive made it over the winter and are growing great!

I used Formic Pro. (2 strips)

Thanks for all the helpful advice! guess I was surprised partly because I requeened with a mated queen following the formic treatment. In my area there is really no good nectar flows in August and honey is usually extracted by late August. I should have kept better track of the mites, but...

Yes, the lower combs had some spotty, still capped, dead brood in them.

Makes sense. I treated with Formic Acid in August and with Oxalic Acid 3 Weeks ago. I think some bees were still alive when I did the Oxalic treatment because the top of the frames in the lower box were thickly sprinkled with dead Varroa. Also, I have a screened bottom board and quite a few...

Hello All! Yesterday I went out and checked 6 of my hives and added some "emergency" sugar bricks. I didn't see activity in one hive and further investigation revealed an entirely dead hive. At least 3 inches of dead bees on the floor. This is odd because this hive was one of my strongest and...

Thanks for all the advice! What do you mean by stressful for the bees? Do you think it was hard enough on them that it would be risky to treat in august and still be prepared for winter in time?

I am wanting to treat my bees for varroa mites and wondered of anyone has any experience using Formic Pro and what the results were. I have heard it can be temporarily hard on the colonies but/(and) want to prepare them for winter. My hives don't have a lot of mites but I want to treat before...

It was pretty close to every 7 days but I will say it may have been 9-10 days a few times. I didn't always look at each hive in detail every time but 2 weeks ago the hives looked super.

There were only 1 or 2 and out of the middle of the frames.

I just went through several of my hives and noticed an issue. 4 of the hives had no queen! 2 were trying to re-queen and I am trying to figure out what caused this to happen. They were very prolific colonies with great queens fresh this past April. It is disappointing also because they had...

So to clarify, you recommend I go in and destroy all the QCs except one?