Treated with Oxalic acid today.

[Somerford]

Somerford,

Did you check with Admin that he had not previously treated that nuc with oxalic?

Regards, RAB

no, but then it was a summer nuc and one wouldn't expect it under normal conditions

 

[BKF Admin]

the nuc from you has the very low count.....!!

AH thats good,I can breath again now.

The only thing that I may of done thats different from your other colony is when I feed the hives the nuc's come from I add a few drops of Thymol in surgical spirit to the feed,I use a little more than is recomended so it would have an effect.

 

[ainsie]

Hi Admin, just wondered do you normally leave the first tray of apiguard on when putting the second one on and if so where abouts do you place the trays in relation to the brood nest.Hope this makes sense.Ainsie

 

[BKF Admin]

Hi Ainsie,
Thats what you should do yes.
I make my own up using olive oil and Thymol crystals,I put this on a folded tissue and place on the top bars of the brood box(all super frames removed).

 

[Poly Hive]

Treated today, two nucs gone and one small colony. Such is life.

PH

 

[BKF Admin]

Whats your thoughts PH:
Starvation
To small
Queenless

 

[Poly Hive]

No way of telling really. One was def starvation though surrounded by feed so go figure, one was too small and was a bit of a flier anyway and the third to be honest no idea.

I was far too cold to hang about doing autopsies.

PH

 

[BKF Admin]

Same as the one I lost last year,6 frames of stores around them but only 2 frames of bees that never moved across to the food frames.

 

[jezd]

Did post my findings on other thread but removed as ppl do get funny if posts are not bang on topic....did my first batch of OA - 8 hives checked but 3 are lost, 6 nucs checked and 1 lost.

Early days still, one down to starvation I think, the others probably size.

All hives insulated now, checking stores/fondant and adding to Nucs too.

 

[match]

-5C is very good weather to do trickling.

Thats good to know - I guess if its not windy, and the trickling solution isn't freezing cold, then the bees won't mind too much.

My varroa counts towards the end of last year were very low - mostly due to long queenless periods and supersedure, so I'm still not sure whether to treat as a preventative. But at least I now know there's less risk in doing it in the cold than I thought there was! Thanks for the advice!

 

[match]

Well, I did the trickle this lunchtime - its was nice and sunny, and no wind, so the hives were surprisingly warm when I got into them (even if I wasn't!)

Both of the main hives were well stocked with capped honey, with the extra feedbags on top of the frames almost completely untouched, and nice clusters of bees.

I've lost my nuc though, but I was expecting this - it wa a very late supersedure, and I had had to add extra frames of capped brood to it to get the numbers up. On inspection there was plenty of food in the box, but the bees were spread out all over the hive. I guess either a cold snap came on very quickly and caught them unawares (although this seems unlikely) or they had lost their supersedure queen, and without her had no inclination to bundle together for warmth (my best guess so far). Any other suggestions welcome.

Now that I've done the OA treatment, I'll leave them in peace til it warms up enough to get back into the next season.