Winter bee watching

[fatshark]

I think because evaporation carries on working for longer it might be better in these circumstances
but who knows for sure ?

The additional thing in favour of vaporisation is that it's better tolerated ... even if (as DR suggests) there is sealed and unsealed brood in the colony, there should be few if any toxicity problems that you otherwise get with trickling. There's a paper in J. Apiculture. Res. from the Sussex group just recently that has looked at this - link to the press release as I don't have JAR access at the moment.

[alancooper]

OA sublimated the other day - calm and 13C. Bees flying, ivy still flowering (with fresh pollen) but bees not going too far and no pollen loads.
Next day varroa counts in six home apiary hives were 36, 31, 10, 0, 0, 0.
How I wish I knew how many bees in each, how much sealed brood and the state of clustering - then I might be able to decide how many grams of OA crystals to use? As for speculating whether I have three hives with a good grooming tendency - well ??????

[The Drone Ranger]

Hi Alan
if you keep a running count of varroa killed you might get some useful indications from that
It might be worth looking in one of the Zeros to see if there is brood ( or as I found once no bees lol! )
If you have time to stick any dead varroa under the microscope then you can look for oxalic crystals on them
Something to do in the quiet season

[madasafish]

OA sublimated the other day - calm and 13C. Bees flying, ivy still flowering (with fresh pollen) but bees not going too far and no pollen loads.
Next day varroa counts in six home apiary hives were 36, 31, 10, 0, 0, 0.
How I wish I knew how many bees in each, how much sealed brood and the state of clustering - then I might be able to decide how many grams of OA crystals to use? As for speculating whether I have three hives with a good grooming tendency - well ??????

An IR thermometer aimed at the crown board will give you an idea of the likelihood of brood. No need to open up.

Mine are at 16C - so no brood.

[gwizzie]

Well now i am seeing gorse flowering ? see what keeping bees does to you!!!
I would never have noticed that before as I thought it was around february that it started to flower.

[fatshark]

When the gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of season ... i.e. never

[gavin]

not me - I've never seen pollen being brought into a hive that did not have or was very quickly about to get brood, but then I've never looked in Dec/Jan. So there is the issue. I've got hives packing in the pollen at the weekend so I think I'll wait until after some cold weather, into later Jan probably before washing my frames with OA.

No point in delaying other than briefly to catch them clustered (if you are trickling). Bernard Mobus and others reported that through the winter hives have brief small bursts of brood raising and it is all out of sync in any apiary. That shows that they are not (necessarily) responding to better weather by raising more brood. So many people assume so, but I haven't seen any evidence that it is true. Maybe Italians do, I don't know, but you'd be better requeening them.

Colonies prepare for winter by dropping brood raising to low levels early on and most colonies shed workers and reduce their size for winter. Various reports elsewhere say that November and December are the best time for treating with oxalic acid. The bees' focus after the solstice is to start building for spring. If you have colonies that have laid in plenty of pollen then my guess is that they will use it from January onwards.

While I'm on, just wish to say that there seems to be a rush to convert to sublimation on the back of one PhD study and a press release from Sussex on a paper that - last time I looked - wasn't even published yet. I've no doubt that sublimation works well and is fine for those who know about handling dangerous vapours outside. What I will continue to doubt until I see good evidence to the contrary is that it is much better than trickling, which has to be safer for the beekeeper.

[gavin]

Someone whose judgement I trust and who is a little shy on this matter has written to say that in his (southern) locality with fairly prolific bees the end of the first week in January consistently has been the best time for lack of brood. Sealed brood I think as it was said this is consistent with the least laying being around the solstice.

Merry Queenrestfulness everybody!

G.

[fatshark]

While I'm on, just wish to say that there seems to be a rush to convert to sublimation on the back of one PhD study and a press release from Sussex on a paper that - last time I looked - wasn't even published yet. I've no doubt that sublimation works well and is fine for those who know about handling dangerous vapours outside. What I will continue to doubt until I see good evidence to the contrary is that it is much better than trickling, which has to be safer for the beekeeper.

Wise words ... however, there's clearly been an upswell in interest long before the Sussex data hit the shelves (or paywall) and there's a wealth of data available online showing both the relative efficacy of dribbled vs vaporised vs sprayed OA (all much of a muchness and well within experimental noise caused by the state of the colony etc) and how well tolerated vaporised OA is (very by the bees, not very by the beekeeper ).

[Jon]

Surely they tolerate Oxalic trickle pretty well too and there has been quite a lot of research done on this elsewhere in Europe.
As Finman likes to say in the other place, just Google Nanetti and varroa.
I have used it for about 6 winters now and not noticed any problems.

Re mite drop, Most of mine drop very few in winter but I always get the odd one or two which drop a couple of hundred. These ones would be in trouble by mid summer starting with a mite load like that and it could have a knock on effect with the mites getting into neighbouring colonies.
The mild autumn will only have made things worse as there were probably 3 or 4 generations of brood raised after August Thymol treatment with the mite numbers doubling every generation.