BEE CHRONICLES Dec 2010

December 2010, about to start the new year and my bees are dyeing faster than last year. Whoa is me! To my chagrin I am failing again. To my credit I know why the bees are dyeing. What I can’t figure out is how to stop the problem. If I do succeed in stopping the problem, will it matter any way or will the bee hive population be so small that I will ultimately loose the hives.

My bee keeping philosophy is to keep trying. My problem is varroa mites. One question is how did the mite population get so big so fast that I didn’t notice. Well, this is normal for the “untended hive”. A more or less normal and expanding mite population at the end of the nectar cycle has lots of mites. As the queen starts slowing down on egg laying the population of bread female mites is very high. Each of these mites must go into a larval cell. Since there are fewer cells more mites go into each cell. Bees emerge from pupation physically damaged from the mite predation during pupation. You can add all kinds of viruses and illnesses that accompany a weak population of bees.

I am distraught, but I will survive. I don’t think my bees will. What am I going to do to “keep trying”? I am treating the heck out of my bees to physically reduce the number of mites in the hives. I am feeding Florida paddies to keep every bee as strong as possible. My sugar syrup has “Bee Healthy” in it for all the good reasons. What about the small colony sizes? Right now each colony is in its own hive structure. In a couple of weeks I will check to see the changes in colony population. I don’t think it will be a significant increase. All the queens are laying eggs but there may not be enough nurse bees for the queen to switch from a population maintenance mode to and increase mode.

What I plan on doing is reducing all the colonies to one hive body size. I have lots of honey and pollen in the hives. Next I will combine two week colonies into two hive body sizes. I will keep both queens, one in the top colony and one in the bottom colony. When I combine them I will place a sheet of news paper on top of the brood frames on the bottom hive body. Then I will place 2 queen excluders, one on to of the other, right on top the newspapter. Then I will place the second colony hive body on top. My hope----by the time bees eat through the newspaper the 2 queen scents will become the smell of the 2 colonies. Sounds good huh? Even though the hives will be full of food I will still want to supplement as needed. I think I will need to have entrance feeders for the bottom colony and in hive baggy feeders for the top colony. I think the bees will go back and forth between the colonies with out a problem. However, I want to reduce the possibility of fighting for the food.

Does anyone have advice? How could I have been so stupid as to letting this situation develop? I must admit to not following by own advice and normal practices. There are personal reasons why and it is a very expensive lesson. You must take care of your bees as well as you do the house cat. When the hive is left to its own devices, nature takes over. As we all have heard lately, with CCD and what not, now is not the time to let your bees go “al natural”.

What should we be doing in the hive. Mite control, feeding, and health watch. Actively monitoring the hives and getting them ready for winter. My wooly worm say it is going to be a long cold winter. The weather man says a normal length warm dry winter. That is all good advice. Just be a good Boy Scout and “be prepared”. Order you queen, packages, and nucs now. Many bee keepers did not get all they wanted last year, so there will be a shortage of bees available this year again.

Thanks for listening, I’ll keep in touch.

Glen