Capped Honey
November 15, 2018

Altadena

When Jeff approached the hives, he told me that there was a lot of activity coming and going which is always what we want to see. We first opened the Joyla hive which is a single medium box and we found spotty brood, larva, some nectar and some Capped honey. We did a varroa mite check and we were shocked to see how many Varroa were in the hive. Jeff took a photo so we could count later but it was clear that we needed to do something so we decided to powder sugar each frame covering the bees. They will then groom each other and hopefully knock the mites off their backs. Jeff also replaced the bottom board and sprayed it with PAM so that if there is a mite drop they will get stuck and we can count. We fed them 1 to 1 sugar water.

We then opened the Brisa hive which was really teaming with activity. It looked very very strong with a lot of bees, nectar, Capped brood and arrays of honey. We then did a Varroa mite check and found 20/300 bees. This is still higher than the desired threshold of 6. We have learned from our classes that the Varroa really spikes in the fall and so this validates that. We then fed them 1:1 sugar water and did a powdered sugar shake on each frame. Jeff also replaced the bottom board with a sticky spray Pam and will double check to see what the results of the powdered sugar shake are in a week. We will check at our beekeeping class on Sunday to see what the recommended Varroa treatment would be for this late in the season.

Off to the nursery…

You may remember that the Cecilio hive is the one that tumbled in the wind storm and I don’t know if it knocked mites off the bees… But we were pleasantly surprised to see this hive is good and strong with very few mites. We did the powdered sugar treatment on the frames as a preventative measure and fed them 1 to 1 sugar water.

Jeff then opened his hives (two deep boxes) and it was thriving with bees and honey and nectar, some larva, capped brood…all the things we like to see. But then he did a test for mites and there were 18 per 88 bees. That correlated to 48/300! Terrible! We had a clumsy mite test and I knocked the cover down the little hill so we didn’t take as many bees as we normally do.

He fed his bees sugar water and we tested each frame with powdered sugar and will be back in 10 days to test again and then repeat the chemical treatment if that mite count is still high. We put all new sticky boards at the base of each hive so we will be able to see the mite drop.