What did you do in the Apiary today?

[Hedgerow Honey]

Boring stuff put an order for floors and roofs into maisi then turned 750 kilo sugar into 2.1 on Monday, put it all on yesterday/today. Now to start getting equipment ready for next season.

 

[Goran]

Few days ago was at one lecture.. They advise to we should not treat over winter colonies due to weed out in spring undesired traits, the fittest drones will spread good genes.. Although it has some logic.. but who will pay us for a loss of colonies and all afterward..
It is for me logical to if so, doing later queen rearing ( for me in July), when also grow varroa count but colony isn't suffering..
Also they are strongly advising not to use OA sublimation or such.. Something with Collos stuff in between, that was a bit in a hurry.. But well, anyway I have no intention of trying sublimation..
Again repeated the best queens are from your own area and are strongly opposing hybrids.. They mentioned some trials done through whole Europe which support using local first. For example, they had in a trial extremely calm queens from Germany, when they came here.. they weren't so calm in new environment, which is interesting to me..
But yet, when hear other people successfully using hybrids and criss cross queens from even other continents.. what to believe.. or truth is somewhere in between..

 

[Finman]

But yet, when hear other people successfully using hybrids and criss cross queens from even other continents.. what to believe.. or truth is somewhere in between..

According recent researches hybrids are not much more better than ordinary bees. They have perhaps 10% less mites than ordinary hives. And mites double themselves in a month.

 

[Etton]

Removed feeders, attached mouse guards, vaped again 3 hives with heavy varroa drop.

 

[Apiarisnt]

Biological Method (Bees) for Explosive Detection

Few days ago was at one lecture.. They advise to we should not treat over winter colonies due to weed out in spring undesired traits, ...
But yet, when hear other people successfully using hybrids and criss cross queens from even other continents.. what to believe.. or truth is somewhere in between..

Goran, would one of the desirable traits for bees in Croatia be the ability to sniff out land mines?

https://www.sps-bees4exp.com/
https://phys.org/news/2013-05-honeybees-croatia.html
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2018/06/15/sniffer-bees-mines/

 

[Goran]

Goran, would one of the desirable traits for bees in Croatia be the ability to sniff out land mines?

https://www.sps-bees4exp.com/
https://phys.org/news/2013-05-honeybees-croatia.html
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/world/2018/06/15/sniffer-bees-mines/

Someone took bad weed... I presume...
Now You ashamed me.. I think Baldrick had better ideas..

 

[Beefriendly]

Inspected my hedge nuc....a swarm that didn't make a decision and whose nest was cut in half by a hedge trimmer. No eggs no queen. Doomed I'm afraid....

 

[simonforeman]

Nothing today... it's bloody Baltic... good job I got the hives sorted for winter and strapped up last weekend when it was warm.

 

[Curly green fingers]

Looked at inspection trays on my home apairy hives the mite drop has fallen to single figures. I've got to remove apivar on the 10th of November,
Heading down to the river now to check trays and weigh three hives down there, then I'm going round to see how the nuc is doing at the lads apairy no need for any suit but deffo need for winter clothing.

 

[Helen]

Checked the hives. No bees flying in this cold weather .... apart from those damned wasps!!!! Still trying to get into the hives.

Do they have anti-freeze in their bodies?

 

[Erichalfbee]

. I've got to remove apivar on the 10th of November,
.

Leaving mine in for ten weeks, I have some to take off at end of November
Tempted to leave the bloomin’ things in

 

[drex]

But you won't ( I doubt) as it is a quick way to breed resistant mites.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Tempted to leave the bloomin’ things in

Surprising how many do just that, year in year out, with no problems regards resistance so far.

 

[Zante]

Removed the apiguard trays and the supers I had to use as ekes (yeah, I'll have to prepare better next year). Checked stores and gave them a feed of 2:1 syrup.

On the way back home I bought some more sugar. I don't think I'll be needing it as they had plenty of stores, and the syrup I gave them was just insurance. I also have a few kilos of fondant ready to give to them if they need it later on.

If all goes well some of that sugar will go into meringues, cake and buttercream frosting for my niece's birthday in late spring

 

[Curly green fingers]

Surprising how many do just that, year in year out, with no problems regards resistance so far.

I was reading somewhere that in other countries they've done studies where apivar had been left all winter with no resistance . It's definitely worked really well for me after my miss haps with apilife-var .
I did plan to leave for 10 weeks on the worst hive as I've not used apivar at all on these hives only thymol products the strips can stay there all winter because my next treatment will be OA as I've bought a vapperizer so I'll use that next year .

 

[drex]

Surprising how many do just that, year in year out, with no problems regards resistance so far.

Yet. Why make resistance more likely. It will come in time.

 

[Apiarisnt]

Resistance to Amitraz amongst Varroa Destructor

I was reading somewhere that in other countries they've done studies where apivar had been left all winter with no resistance .

Amitraz has been used longer for cattle ticks than for varroa, and there is significant evidence of resistance build up. There are many papers on the subject but this one suggests 64% resistance: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0174652


And for varroa destructor:

"Resistance to amitraz has been reported in
Croatia,5 is suspected in France, and now is
confirmed in the USA"​

and that was in 2004: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0005772X.2004.11099632

 

[Curly green fingers]

Was this constant use of apivar not changing to other products for say 6/12 month periods ?
Surely if your changing products regularly then the resistance would go down?
Or not treating for a period at all then using something different to what you were using last time?
I thought the more you changed between miticides the better chance of none resistance? Am I missing something.

 

[ShinySideUp]

The manufacturers of Apivar/amitraz tell you not to leave it in over winter, I suspect they probably know best. Deciding what is best with Apivar while disregarding the expert advice is a little fast and loose and is the inverse of stopping antibiotics before the course is finished because the taker feels better. All these things have instructions for a reason. I shall leave mine in until the 20th November, six weeks from insertion.

 

[Erichalfbee]

A lot of home made strips are made in Europe too
You might expect some beekeepers to stretch out the amount per strip?