ENVIRONMENT

I went into a couple of hives with someone today.  One was super strong and had lots of honey, some pollen and a good bit of brood including eggs and larva.  Another was about medium, maybe six frames of bees in each of two deeps.  We found the queen and some capped brood but there was next to no honey and absolutely no eggs or larva. Huh? 

The knotweed is just finishing.  How could there be no honey?  Lots of bees coming and going. Having done an OA vaporization on this hive a few weeks ago, we knew this colony had a "small" varroa problem which means foragers die sooner. Also I have to think, like all living creatures, they are consuming what they are bringing in. It had about half the bees of the strong hive.  Perhaps there were no eggs and larva because there was nothing much to feed them.  (They weren’t yet being treated, an act which often shuts the queen down temporarily.  The pat answer is usually that she ran out of sperm but with five million sperm from mating, I’ve never understood that one.)

So my “warning” is that just because you see lots of bees coming and going that doesn’t mean everything is okay.  If you are not treating and you have no brood, you have a problem. Healthy hives have not stopped producing brood yet.  Feed. In my opinion (and it’s just my opinion) if they need something to survive on now, it should be sugar water 1:1.  Soon 2:1 is the norm for them to put away for winter.  I would even put part of pollen patty on to stimulate them to produce winter bees.  Nurse bees can't make royal jelly without pollen.  Again, this is just my opinion. From now on for the next six months they will be consuming some honey every day. The larger the colony the more honey needed.

Next topic is frames with undrawn comb.  They absolutely need to be removed.  I’m going to put some 1.5 inch rigid foil lined insulation on the edges inside the hive to take up space and provide additional warmth.  (Rosenberg’s doesn’t sell anything thinner that 1.5”.  Home Depot does.)

I know Patsy gave a talk on winterizing which I missed because of a cold.  I won’t go on about my other thoughts. Most important is thick insulation above the bees. They need it now!

What I am so conflicted about is ventilation. Vivaldi boards have been around for decades. They allow a little moisture to escape.  A few years ago we had a push to build “vent boxes” which one beekeeper used successfully for several years. Just be sure you have high density or closed cell foam in them and put foil lined insulation on the inside and outside of the outer lid. Do not put the inner cover under the vent box.  I have seen it block the ventilation enough for it to get moldy. If you have any of these vent boxes and you aren’t going to use them, I would like to buy a few.

 The thing is there’s so much talk about the “chimney effect”.  Any opening above the bees is going to draw heat out. 

I was talking to a couple of beekeepers who use the “condensing hive” approach.   All the bees are packed into one deep! Lots of 2:1 sugar syrup; a candy board and fondant! Topped with a second box filled with insulation, and the insulated outer cover. One of the folks did this with a single eight-frame deep very close to the ocean in Lincoln City and the bees survived the winter!

Evidently the bees are so packed in that they need almost nothing to eat to keep warm. Plus, evidently (again) bees packed in give off CO2 and this puts them into a kind of stupor.  I’m going to have to try this with one or two colonies. I’m thinking the best time to do this is the end of October or early November. I'll leave them all the deep frames of honey they made. They have to be finished producing their brood and I will feed them lots of sugar water to fill any empty cells or I will uncap the honey supers for them to move the honey down. I will put on a candyboard and/or fondant.  Better safe than sorry. 

Someone gave me the idea of just putting the supers with capped honey in some sealed bag or container and put them back on the hive in February or March.  There's a possibility.

******

A few of us are going up to the Washington Bee Conference, October 4^th-6^th. It’s geared for backyard beekeepers. One of the talks is on overwintering.  I’m going to tape all the talks and will write up a report for the forum when I get back.  There’s also a talk at the Oregon Bee Conference on overwintering.  Hopefully, by the end of October I will have this figured out.

I know I go on and on and on. But you can stop reading whenever you have had enough of my prattle.

******

One last thing:  about varroa mites.

I will never do another alcohol wash as long as I am keeping bees.  Doing an oxalic acid vaporization not only kills the phoretic mites it gives you a more accurate idea of the problem.  There’s even a website called mitecalculator.com where you can put in the mite drop count, estimate the amount of bees and brood you have and it will convert your mite drop count to the kind of percentage you get from doing an alcohol wash.

I don’t care about the percentage.  If I have a couple dozen mites, I consider it a problem.  I have thirteen colonies and only one indicated a problem.  I didn’t trust that the others didn’t.  Surely something was wrong with the vaporization. When I put formic pro on the problem hive, I put a single formic pro pad on a half dozen others. The bottom board was covered with mites in the problem hive and virtually no mite drop in the others.  Maybe I’ll trust the OA vaporization test.

As you can tell, I enjoy sharing stories, thoughts and frustrations.  One thing I’m sure of is that, for me, beekeeping is very complicated. I’m less sure about anything.