There are a few beekeepers around here who already have their thymol varroa treatment on and I envy them. The ambient temperature needs to be above 15C for it to work properly, so since you can never guarantee the weather I want to get on with it. My back is sore from moving about brood boxes and supers and trying to get the colonies down to one brood box ready to treat.
My son and third daughter came with me to inspect. They are getting quite good at spotting queens now. I feel they have learned faster than I did because I don't mark all the queens. They look for a queen, whereas I always used to look for the mark on her.
Yesterday I ended up plunging my head in the stinking water butt again because I was getting stung on the face. It turned out there was a hole in the veil. The attempts to get the supers off had been only partially successful.
Attempt one, to get them to take the honey and nectar out of the supers that are not full:
I put on a crownboard, above the supers that I plan to remove to harvest. I mostly close the hole, leaving room for a couple of bees. Then put the half full supers above this crown board. I understood that the bees think that this makes the bees think that the supers above this crown board with a narrow entrance are outside the hive and they clean them out and bring the stores back into the main hive. I also have tried doing this withadding an empty super above the crown board so the stores are a buit further away. Results so far? It works imperfectly. It works a bit better with the empty super.
Trick number two.....I lift the brood boxes and put the supers I want emptied below it with an extra queen excluder and crownboard between the supers that need emptying and the brood box. I put in an entrance block. This seems to work better, but at this time of year it means that when I go back to check progress there are often lots of dead drones on the queen excluder.
Anyone got any tricks that work better? I can't be bothered to extract them and make mead/cake/preserves with it.
I've taken the crop off the wasteground apiary. I have got son to vacate his boxroom and have stripped it and have the supers which have any frames that are not 100% capped in there on their sides with the dehumidifier on full blast. Refractometer readings I took last year after doing this showed that it worked really well. The honey had low water levels and I felt confident. It smells really nice in there now.
I have had a go at putting a chunk of cut comb in a jar of honey to see whether people like it. I was amazed by how keen people were to have cut comb last year. We'll see whether this is popular too.
Time to go look up the Hivemaker sticky for making the thymol treatment that goes onto green oasis and spreads thymol vapour through the colony.
My son and third daughter came with me to inspect. They are getting quite good at spotting queens now. I feel they have learned faster than I did because I don't mark all the queens. They look for a queen, whereas I always used to look for the mark on her.
Yesterday I ended up plunging my head in the stinking water butt again because I was getting stung on the face. It turned out there was a hole in the veil. The attempts to get the supers off had been only partially successful.
Attempt one, to get them to take the honey and nectar out of the supers that are not full:
I put on a crownboard, above the supers that I plan to remove to harvest. I mostly close the hole, leaving room for a couple of bees. Then put the half full supers above this crown board. I understood that the bees think that this makes the bees think that the supers above this crown board with a narrow entrance are outside the hive and they clean them out and bring the stores back into the main hive. I also have tried doing this withadding an empty super above the crown board so the stores are a buit further away. Results so far? It works imperfectly. It works a bit better with the empty super.
Trick number two.....I lift the brood boxes and put the supers I want emptied below it with an extra queen excluder and crownboard between the supers that need emptying and the brood box. I put in an entrance block. This seems to work better, but at this time of year it means that when I go back to check progress there are often lots of dead drones on the queen excluder.
Anyone got any tricks that work better? I can't be bothered to extract them and make mead/cake/preserves with it.
I've taken the crop off the wasteground apiary. I have got son to vacate his boxroom and have stripped it and have the supers which have any frames that are not 100% capped in there on their sides with the dehumidifier on full blast. Refractometer readings I took last year after doing this showed that it worked really well. The honey had low water levels and I felt confident. It smells really nice in there now.
I have had a go at putting a chunk of cut comb in a jar of honey to see whether people like it. I was amazed by how keen people were to have cut comb last year. We'll see whether this is popular too.
Time to go look up the Hivemaker sticky for making the thymol treatment that goes onto green oasis and spreads thymol vapour through the colony.
