What did you do in the Apiary today?

[BeeKeyPlayer]

Why are beekeepers treating with Oxalic Acid now? I'm a novice so please put me right! I understood that OA is only effective when there is little/minimal/no brood, as the so called phoretic mites (who are piggybacking on the bees and so not reproducing and easier to kill). Before OA treatment one needs to make sure that all the brood has hatched. Since this autumn has been so unusually warm then the normal brood free period has been delayed. I'm told that one should treat, having checked at least over a 12 day cycle that brood is minimal, in December. Night temperatures should be above 0', day temps cool (to avoid too much bee activity), intervention carried out as quickly as possible to avoid chilling... Preferably before midwinter, after which time the brood might start up again. Fulfilling all these conditions and being free from work, means the windows of opportunity are few! Please put me right if I'm mistaken!

You're absolutely right. Like almost all treatments, OA has no effect on mites which are inside cells. Some treatments stay for up to ten weeks in the hive and the substance is slowly released over a period which catches the mites as they emerge from cells. OA does not have this prolonged effect so treatments have to be repeated if there's brood in cells. Monitoring the mite drop after 24 hours gives an indication of the mite numbers. Some suggest to do three or four treatments at five-day intervals. Sometimes more are needed.

 

[The Poot]

If you vape in December you will avoid all the fuss about chilling. I wont dribble, so no need to open the hives.
Some folks are vaping a little later than usual this Autumn as the weather has been so mild. Some because other treatments have failed.
Normally, here in Dorset, four vapes five days apart does the job, but sometimes more are needed. This year my colonies needed five each.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Why are beekeepers treating with Oxalic Acid now? I'm a novice so please put me right! I understood that OA is only effective when there is little/minimal/no brood, as the so called phoretic mites (who are piggybacking on the bees and so not reproducing and easier to kill). Before OA treatment one needs to make sure that all the brood has hatched. Since this autumn has been so unusually warm then the normal brood free period has been delayed. I'm told that one should treat, having checked at least over a 12 day cycle that brood is minimal, in December. Night temperatures should be above 0', day temps cool (to avoid too much bee activity), intervention carried out as quickly as possible to avoid chilling... Preferably before midwinter, after which time the brood might start up again. Fulfilling all these conditions and being free from work, means the windows of opportunity are few! Please put me right if I'm mistaken!

OAV is effective in the presence of brood if you vape three or four times at five day intervals.
I wouldn’t normally OAV this late but I wasn’t happy with the five colonies that have Apivar in. The others have been done and dusted by mid September

 

[Bluetractorman]

Why are beekeepers treating with Oxalic Acid now? I'm a novice so please put me right! I understood that OA is only effective when there is little/minimal/no brood, as the so called phoretic mites (who are piggybacking on the bees and so not reproducing and easier to kill). Before OA treatment one needs to make sure that all the brood has hatched. Since this autumn has been so unusually warm then the normal brood free period has been delayed. I'm told that one should treat, having checked at least over a 12 day cycle that brood is minimal, in December. Night temperatures should be above 0', day temps cool (to avoid too much bee activity), intervention carried out as quickly as possible to avoid chilling... Preferably before midwinter, after which time the brood might start up again. Fulfilling all these conditions and being free from work, means the windows of opportunity are few! Please put me right if I'm mistaken!

There's a good article from David Evans on the subject here.. Broodless? - The Apiarist

 

[user 819]

Why are beekeepers treating with Oxalic Acid now? I'm a novice so please put me right! I understood that OA is only effective when there is little/minimal/no brood, as the so called phoretic mites (who are piggybacking on the bees and so not reproducing and easier to kill). Before OA treatment one needs to make sure that all the brood has hatched. Since this autumn has been so unusually warm then the normal brood free period has been delayed. I'm told that one should treat, having checked at least over a 12 day cycle that brood is minimal, in December. Night temperatures should be above 0', day temps cool (to avoid too much bee activity), intervention carried out as quickly as possible to avoid chilling... Preferably before midwinter, after which time the brood might start up again. Fulfilling all these conditions and being free from work, means the windows of opportunity are few! Please put me right if I'm mistaken!

As has been mentioned , oa/ oav efficacy is down to how the product is applied. One covers a complete brood cycle at 5 day intervals to catch any mites in the open.

 

[drex]

I routinely apply Apiguard after summer harvest and vape OA once early December. I do not bother counting mite drop as a routine. Never bothered with repeat vapes. Never had any clinical problem from varroa . Yet.

 

[Moobee]

My two dead outs cleared and minimal wax moth luckily. Frames now being rotated through the freezer to store. I can only do about three at a time as it’s full of ratatouille from the courgette glut!
Brought home all the supers but left two brood boxes strapped together with some old comb ready for spring swarms.

 

[BeeKeyPlayer]

I can only do about three at a time as it’s full of ratatouille from the courgette glut!

 

[pargyle]

My two dead outs cleared and minimal wax moth luckily. Frames now being rotated through the freezer to store. I can only do about three at a time as it’s full of ratatouille from the courgette glut!
Brought home all the supers but left two brood boxes strapped together with some old comb ready for spring swarms.

Freezing frames is not 100% reliable to prevent wax moth infestation. You really have to get down to well below freezing and with the frames in there for several days to be sure. At the rate you are rotating frames you could well find infestation in those frames you have not treated.

I've found that treatment with a suphur burner (dead easy and quick to do) kills any resident infestation. I follow it with a spray of dipel but sulphur burning can be done on a monthly basis to prevent any subsequent ingress of wax moth.

It's a cheap, effective and reliable treatment. £10 or so for the burner and £12 for the sulphur tablets.

https://www.thorne.co.uk/health-feeding/pests-diseases/wax-moth/sulphur-discs.html

 

[Moobee]

Freezing frames is not 100% reliable to prevent wax moth infestation. You really have to get down to well below freezing and with the frames in there for several days to be sure. At the rate you are rotating frames you could well find infestation in those frames you have not treated.

I've found that treatment with a suphur burner (dead easy and quick to do) kills any resident infestation. I follow it with a spray of dipel but sulphur burning can be done on a monthly basis to prevent any subsequent ingress of wax moth.

It's a cheap, effective and reliable treatment. £10 or so for the burner and £12 for the sulphur tablets.

https://www.thorne.co.uk/health-feeding/pests-diseases/wax-moth/sulphur-discs.html

It’s a chest freezer and I’m doing 72 hours at a time. Would that be enough to kill the little beasties?

 

[pargyle]

It’s a chest freezer and I’m doing 72 hours at a time. Would that be enough to kill the little beasties?

Depends what the temperature it gets down to - domestic freezers are usually set to run at 0 degrees fahrenheit (-18 degrees centigrade). If your freezer is capable of that then 72 hours should be fine.

 

[pargyle]

All bar one of my colonies were flying strongly in the sunshine thus morning.. one colony - no bees coming out at all. Took the roof off and peered through the clear crownboard .. no bees in sight and despite insulation on top of the CB no warmth coming up... dead out I thought. So .. got my kit on ... ready to check it out and close it up if necessary . Didn't bother with lighting the smoker. Prised the crownboard off ... and all of a sudden they were there .. lots of them and not that amused. Try getting the crownboard back in place without a smoker when there's a lot of bees that don't want to go home. I thought I'd learned most of the schoolboy errors by now ... lesson one.. always have a smoker to hand and lit .. even when you think you don't need it. Lesson two ...colonies of bees don't all do the same thing at the same time ! Be ready for the unexpected....

 

[Wilco]

Freezing frames is not 100% reliable to prevent wax moth infestation. You really have to get down to well below freezing and with the frames in there for several days to be sure. At the rate you are rotating frames you could well find infestation in those frames you have not treated.

I've found that treatment with a suphur burner (dead easy and quick to do) kills any resident infestation. I follow it with a spray of dipel but sulphur burning can be done on a monthly basis to prevent any subsequent ingress of wax moth.

It's a cheap, effective and reliable treatment. £10 or so for the burner and £12 for the sulphur tablets.

https://www.thorne.co.uk/health-feeding/pests-diseases/wax-moth/sulphur-discs.html

Or just buy sulphur powder and use an empty tin can inside an empty deep.

 

[JamezF]

The forecast for today has been "no rain and sunny intervals" for the last four or five days. We've had regular very heavy showers for a couple of weeks now, and today also coincided with the maximum Apivar treatment time for some of my colonies so it appeared that a plan was coming together...

Only this morning it kept raining I hid in the workshop, finished replacing the broken seat on a folding gardening stool and started making a tenon cutting jig to use with the table saw instead.

This afternoon things looked better though it probably wasn't as warm as desirable so I whipped through the hives as fast as possible using a pair of long-nosed pliers to pull the strips out. Initially I was just grabbing the wire loop that I'd put through the hole in the top, but then I had one tear through the plastic, so clearly holding the strip itself is desirable. Otherwise it was really easy to get them out with the pliers compared with fingers, so it looks like I'll be adding a set of long-nose pliers to my beekeeping toolbox.

I also swapped a couple of hives that were still on mesh floors onto solid UFEs and watched whilst the girls sorted themselves out. It took them a few minutes to get the idea, but soon it was all back to business as usual. Loads of bright yellow pollen is still coming in. Oddly I saw a worker returning with a heavy pollen load get into a serious fight with a guard. No idea why. There were no other hives within fifty metres or more, so she'd not drifted from elsewhere that I could see. Perhaps the guard was just distressed by the change of floor. Also saw another "crash land" on the landing board with one corbiculum absolutely stuffed with pollen and the other near empty

I stopped when the Sun started to get a bit low and the bees were clearly less keen to be out. I have three more hives to do, but as I put their Apivar strips in a day later I don't even need to feel guilty about leaving those until tomorrow. Whilst the forecast is for more cloud and less sunshine tomorrow, at least it's supposed to be warmer and dry.

James

 

[pargyle]

Or just buy sulphur powder and use an empty tin can inside an empty deep.

Yes ... that's the cheapest way in the long term although I like the round 'polo mints' that Thornes sell as they are easy to light and I also like the fact that you can hang them on the little hook under the lid of the Thornes burner and light them without getting lungs full of sulphir dioxide. For about £20 in total and enough sulphr tabs to see my stored supers and brood frames safe for a few years ... there comes a point when this eco-warrior accepts defeat and decides that his time is more valuable that DIY ...

I only use the burner once and then Dipel looks after my frames for the rest of winter.

 

[madasafish]

I routinely apply Apiguard after summer harvest and vape OA once early December. I do not bother counting mite drop as a routine. Never bothered with repeat vapes. Never had any clinical problem from varroa . Yet.

Ditto.
Simple.
No thinking required.
No complications.
Works.

 

[JamezF]

Finished removing Apivar strips today. At least I think I did. And I did a bit of "a pargyle" in the process. Clearly I really wasn't with it.

I got to the apiary to find that I'd forgotten to put my smoker back in the toolbox after taking it out to clean (it had some tar build-up around the top and wouldn't close properly). "Oh well, never mind, I'm here now. I'll just have to be quick and disturb them as little as possible." Of course the bees were understandably dischuffed when I opened up the hives, particularly as it was quite overcast and most of them were at home. I wasn't stung, but they made their displeasure quite evident.

Anyhow, I got everything done, dropping the used strips into an upturned roof that I was swapping out because I noticed some damage inside last time I visited. Some of the strips were quite tricky to find in the hives as the bees had built wax over the tops and in one case I had to split all the frames apart to get hold of it even with the pliers, which obviously made things even worse. I put the new roof on the hive that needed it, gave the bees five minutes to get out of my face and calm down, packed up and came home to unload.

At which point I discovered that I was missing one strip I think I removed them all and either missed the roof when I was dropping them in and didn't notice, or one fell out whilst I was carrying everything back to the car, but I can't be 100% certain that in my hurry to get the hives closed up again I didn't skip one strip. So tomorrow I have to go back, hunt for the stray strip and if I can't find it open all the hives up again to see if I left one behind. Fortunately I can at least do that by looking through the clear crownboards.

James

 

[nantmoel]

I looked over the fence!

 

[Newbeeneil]

I found some underfloor heating insulation which seems to be made from 20mm Dowmate in a skip so have cut it to size to fit in the recesses on a national brood box. It fits nice and snugly and I will cover it with my woodpecker guards. I'm not sure if it will make any difference but its worth a try.

 

[JamezF]

I found some underfloor heating insulation which seems to be made from 20mm Dowmate in a skip so have cut it to size to fit in the recesses on a national brood box. It fits nice and snugly and I will cover it with my woodpecker guards. I'm not sure if it will make any difference but its worth a try.

Is that the B&Q version of the Evolution Rage 5 in the last photo?

James