Claire helped examine my hives and check for mites. Thanks again Claire. The first hive check found only 4 mites so no treatment needed. Neither of the 2 honey supers had been used so they were removed. The top deep on the hive is full of honey. We placed the air vent box on the hive.
The second hive check found over 20 mites and we placed formic pro to treat the hive. We were able to find the queen in this hive. One honey super and the top deep is full of honey. We placed the vent box and I covered the PVC vents with duct tape for the duration of the treatment.
Bees don't like queen excluders. Sometimes they are necessary but the first year you definitely don't want queen excluders. The frames need to be drawn out. It takes them a lot longer to do that if there are queen excluders in place.
Next year when the comb is drawn the bees don't mind going through the excluder to store honey.
There are ways to remedy the situation if the queen lays eggs in the honey super but you don't need to know that yet.
Did you treat? Consider formic pro. A full dose (2 pads) for a strong hive. Yours definitely qualifies as strong!
Be sure to come to the September club meeting. We are making ventilator boxes.
Hive check today.
Both hives seem to be doing well and both have almost completed filling out all the frames in the 2 deeps. Each hive is working on the backside of the number 1 and number 10 frames. Frames 8 - 10 are all honey.
A small number of bees have started moving up into the first honey super and are beginning to build on the comb. I have the queen excluder on both hives between the top deep and the first honey super and I'm considering removing them for now, but haven't decided. Thoughts?
I placed the entrance blocker back into the entrance with the 3" opening as Claire suggested.
Hi Rick,
I haven't used a treatment. This was my first test of the new bees from my 2 Nucs this spring.
Tom
Good news on your hive.
What mite treatment did you use ?
Rick
Thanks to Rick Steele for guiding me through my first mite inspection. We had very good results. My "weak" hive is no longer weak. It seems to have rebounded and is doing well now. That colony had 0 mites seen. The larger hive is also thriving and our sample showed 3 mites. We were very happy with the results.
Thanks again Rick.
I checked on my hives today and they seem to be plugging along, although I know you all wouldn't consider them strong hives. I cleaned up the frames with comb built in between. I note that the first deeps on both hives are now filled out and they are working up in the second deeps now. Nothing capped but they are building out the comb and appear to be doing it correctly in the second deep.
The first deep on both hives have 2 full honey frames on either end and there is pollen and brood in the center frames. I was pleased to see the 4 honey frames.
There was only one queen cup i noticed and it was dry and I removed it while cleaning up the mutant comb between the frames.
I removed the feeders today and left just the one super on each hive for now.
Thank all. Claire we can try to combine if you think that would help. Give me a call when you have time. About the feeder. Yes I'm still feeding syrup because the hives were so weak I felt they needed the help. I would remove them if I wasn't feeding them as well. I planned to feed through the end of this month. I also removed one super and the queen excludes to see if they start feeding again.
Just my humble input here, but I have learned from sad experience that leaving a feed box empty will cause you a lot of grief. And now that we have summer, there is no reason to feed.
The bees take advantage of empty spaces and will start building out comb.
Just sayin'
Tom you mentioned you are still using the feeder. Are you putting syrup in it, or are you keeping it on to help with ventilation? I stopped putting the syrup in as figured there is plenty of pollen out there now. Was I wrong to stop feeding? I did keep it on, to help with ventilation.