Oxalic acid treatment on the Barnehurst Apiary and Hornet traps

Colin and I have a few hives in Barnehurst, 10 minutes by bike from my home. Today (20Feb) they received the Oxalic acid anti-Varroa treatment and, touch wood , they were all in reasonable nick as far as I could tell. The feral colony that had set up home in a tree on site, see my blog for 17^th Dec 2012, is not easily accessible and will have to wait until I shake them onto new comb in the spring. I mention this because the accepted wisdom in beekeeping circles is to treat late in the year or in January.  The theory being to treat r6when no brood is present, so I should at least be ok from that angle.

Every morning I feed the birds on the Apiary with seed and fat-balls. On Wednesday I visited the Apiary twice in one day and within 4 hours the substantial helping of seed placed on the bird table was almost all gone! I suspect the two turtle doves which are always the first on the scene. Does anyone know of a method/ contraption which would allow smaller birds to get a share of the goodies?

Forgive me for “rattling on” about the subject again but as you probably know there is a strong possibility of the Asian Hornet becoming a problem in the south east in the near future. As I have also mentioned before on this blog if you capture the Queen early in the year before she has fully established her nest you may have prevented a major infestation and you will have delayed the colonization of Kent by the Vespa velutina nigrithorax (Hornet). Anyway I intend to make up a few traps for the Bedonwell Apiary and for my apiary at Barnehurst and I recommend the idea to all Beekeepers, who knows if you’re “lucky” you may have the dubious claim to fame – “the first Beekeeper to capture the invader in the UK”. Below is a photo that I took in Nepal of the hornet carving out a chunk of goat meat for her offspring and a video showing how she hovers under the entrance of a hive in order to pounce on returning foragers. This link will take you to an authoritative article on the Hornet by FERA. https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?pageId=208

The video declines to be uploaded to the blog, I keep getting an error message, so I'll upload it to You-Tube and I'll post a link on my next post. 

Oxalic Acid and Queen excluders on Saturday 2nd February

I had promised to be at the Apiary for 10:00am to treat the Apiary bees for Varroa. I was making good time up to the point where I realised that I’d not made up the Oxalic Acid solution. Still, a quarter past wasn’t bad. Then the car wouldn’t start!

When I eventually got to the Apiary, on foot, I found Richard, Nigel and Kevin and his boys had kindly turned out to help. Waiting patiently for me and as it turned out to witness my embarrassment! The weather was cold so hopefully the bees would be nicely clustered and receive their treatment quietly.

First the essential cup of tea and biscuit, courtesy as always of Kevin, as always accompanied by informative bee gossip.

And so to the business of the day. Hive 1, oh dear, all the bees are clustered in the super above the Queen excluder, any bees in the brood chamber have expired, including the Queen presumably. We drizzled the oxalic acid over the bees in the super anyway. I’ll probably combine these bees with our weakest Queen-right colony later in the spring.

All the hives had Queen excluders still fitted and we opened each hive with some trepidation but all were still ticking, or perhaps I should say buzzing, nicely and clustered far enough into the brood chambers to keep their Queen snug and warm. All received the designated 5ml of oxalic acid solution per seam (between each pair of frames).

We couldn’t do much for the top bar hive as the bars have no gaps between them but judging by the activity at the hive entrance the colony is reasonably strong.

 Al in all we were quite happy with the condition of the all the colonies except, of course, for Hive 1.

The lesson for the first inspection of the season is :-

Do not leave your Queen excluder on over winter if there’s a chance of the cluster moving up into a super and leaving the Queen isolated in the brood chamber!

I suspect  there may be more examples of what not to do by the end of this season!

Barry