Want to start raising bees in the spring. Any advice welcome!
- Thread starter manybirds
- Start date
Dogma
Loving the herd life
Thank you all. I'm so sad about this. I didn't have the entrance reducer in sadly 
I think I'm retiring my equipment...
I think I'm retiring my equipment...
Dogma
Loving the herd life
No mite treatment. Everything looked so good a few weeks ago
Happy Chooks
Loving the herd life
I didn't treat my first year either, and this was about the time of year that I lost my hive. Mites can overload a hive very quickly.
babsbag
Herd Master
Diito what @Happy Chooks said. I lost hives in Oct. this year...poof....gone. Left their honey but no bees. I lost them late last year too and I also didn't treat for mites. I do now and hoping it makes a difference.
Nowadays, you pretty much have to treat. I didn't want to, but when I took pictures of the bees when I had the hive opened and I could SEE varroa mites on a couple of their backs, I had no choice. If you zoom in on this bee on an alfalfa flower, you can see a varroa mite on her back, right between her eyes. Its' light brown and looks like a speck. If you weren't looking for it, you'd never see it.
I chose the Hopguard II strips as they are made out of all natural ingredients from hops... no pesticides or harsh chemicals. When I installed the strips, I put the white drop board back in at the bottom to see what happened... over night the board was covered with THOUSANDS of dead mites! literally, thousands in one night! I was astounded... I checked it every day for about a week and those numbers continued daily for 3-4 days before they finally started dropping.
To give you a size scale, you can see a drip of honey running down the board from the damaged cells when I inserted the strips. This is a small area of the drop board. the entire board looked like this with the heaviest concentrations right below the brood frames. Once the cold weather starts and the queen stops laying eggs, the varroa attach to the existing bees and suck them dry. Treatment is normally done in the fall to prevent the colony from being overrun and killed off from them. I'll almost bet this may have been a contributing factor in the loss of your hives.
Seriously, before i installed the strips the hive was active and looked very healthy and vigorous. constant traffic etc. Had I not done a treatment, my hive would most likely already be dead.
I chose the Hopguard II strips as they are made out of all natural ingredients from hops... no pesticides or harsh chemicals. When I installed the strips, I put the white drop board back in at the bottom to see what happened... over night the board was covered with THOUSANDS of dead mites! literally, thousands in one night! I was astounded... I checked it every day for about a week and those numbers continued daily for 3-4 days before they finally started dropping.
To give you a size scale, you can see a drip of honey running down the board from the damaged cells when I inserted the strips. This is a small area of the drop board. the entire board looked like this with the heaviest concentrations right below the brood frames. Once the cold weather starts and the queen stops laying eggs, the varroa attach to the existing bees and suck them dry. Treatment is normally done in the fall to prevent the colony from being overrun and killed off from them. I'll almost bet this may have been a contributing factor in the loss of your hives.
Seriously, before i installed the strips the hive was active and looked very healthy and vigorous. constant traffic etc. Had I not done a treatment, my hive would most likely already be dead.
Dogma
Loving the herd life
Omg!!! I had no idea!!! Now I wish I'd researched further and treated them. I thought it was a summer issue.
babsbag
Herd Master
I tried for 5 years to not do mite treatment and it always ended badly. This is the first year that I have really been diligent about it, and I still lost the two from the packages I bought this year...right before I would have treated them. Next year package will get treated with Hopguard in the spring shortly after I get them. Also not buying another package, will be buying nucs.
@Dogma, I understand your sadness and frustration, I have friends that have given up. I am just too stubborn and I need them here to pollinate my orchard so I keep trying but no one would blame you for packing it in.
@Dogma, I understand your sadness and frustration, I have friends that have given up. I am just too stubborn and I need them here to pollinate my orchard so I keep trying but no one would blame you for packing it in.
Have you ever noticed that you never, or rarely see dead bees on the bottom board screen? Maybe one or two, but they're really only there because the workers haven't pushed them out the door yet. Or in the spring when you first tear into the hive to check to see how they did over winter... again, before they're really active going in and out of the hive to do clean up? At the same time, if you look on the ground right outside the hive entrance, once again, you rarely can find dead bees... I have found dead bees on the roof of the chicken coop nest boxes and such... no damage, just dead , and away from the hive.
I believe that the bees know when their time is near and voluntarily leave the hive and fly off to die. They do this to keep the hive they're leaving clean, and to keep from being attacked and removed as they are sick/dying. If the mite issue gets to the point where most of the bees have them, it makes sense to me that those bees know when their time is about up and leave the hive. In the fall when the queen slows down and stops laying brood, the mite cycle also stops and they no longer go into (about to be capped) brood cells (there are none) and instead attach to bees and start feeding. When her last larva hatch and climb out, the mites also come out and by this time the majority of the bees in the hive will be infested. So the attrition would begin in earnest and before too long (like 21 days) all or most of the bees would be dying and leaving. End result, empty hive with untouched honey and pollen stores.
Just my thoughts.
I believe that the bees know when their time is near and voluntarily leave the hive and fly off to die. They do this to keep the hive they're leaving clean, and to keep from being attacked and removed as they are sick/dying. If the mite issue gets to the point where most of the bees have them, it makes sense to me that those bees know when their time is about up and leave the hive. In the fall when the queen slows down and stops laying brood, the mite cycle also stops and they no longer go into (about to be capped) brood cells (there are none) and instead attach to bees and start feeding. When her last larva hatch and climb out, the mites also come out and by this time the majority of the bees in the hive will be infested. So the attrition would begin in earnest and before too long (like 21 days) all or most of the bees would be dying and leaving. End result, empty hive with untouched honey and pollen stores.
Just my thoughts.
Mini Horses
Herd Master
Makes sense to me. Nature has it's way.
