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
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