Yes, 60 mites in 300 bees is a bit high and thats what I'm afraid of, as soon as the brood nest shrinks those mites will be competing for the brood resulting in a load of deformed wings in the autumn and colony collapse, and this bad weather means that fewer mites will be lost in the field
Sure is! Depending who you ask the recommended treatment threshold is either 3+ or 6+.Originally Posted by busybeephilip
Randy Oliver has a load of stuff about mite counting on his site.
Lots of mine had a mite count in the 20s for the 300 bee sample.
All looks ok at the moment but a lot of those would collapse in the autumn if treatment did not take place in August.
I 've seen this numerous times on this hive. I'm inclined to think it may be that bees loiter in warmer entrances. In our PIR hives the entrance tunnels are always well occupied by bees. In fact it can take some work to get them all out. Why ? Defence or even heat retention I.e. The hives insulating walls are the other sides of the cluster? but this behaviour seems limited to only very well insulated hives with certain entrances.
Thanks Derek - I'll stop worrying then. They just like hanging out on the 'stoep'. I wish my own house on my wild hill had a stoep like that.
Kitta
I have one of his lightweight suits bought for helping out
My beat up old BB wear jacket stays at home (bio security)
The fencing veil needs a hat underneath or you will get stung on the head
£35 but not recommended
Its predecessor was from Solway bees and the hood zip jammed on day one and Mrs DR had to repair it
They had stitched a straight zip in a circle by putting a few kinks in it Again about £30
Not so many stings got through that one though
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 30-07-2015 at 10:35 AM.
Grafted in my usual way on Sunday and switched boxes round Monday (per Pasaga Ramic). Took a quick look at the cell-raising frame and this curtain of bees looked good: see pic ...
P1010925.jpeg
Today found one solitary cell being drawn from 16, and that one not yet quite capped, so slow. Bees well fed with syrup.
The weather has continued to be cold and wet and the bees seem to have gone on queen-raising strike. Should I give up or try again if the conditions improve? Very disheartening.
Last edited by Kate Atchley; 31-07-2015 at 02:58 AM.
Are you using the Cloake board method or a queenless cell raiser Kate
I googled Pasaga Ramic and came up with a list of Indian Restaurants
Prakel wrote about this last year and uses it successfully. Try Googling <Elgon/Pasaga Ramic method>. It's here in the Forum in "Queen raising 2014" where Prakel gave references on 04.07.2014:
"There are blog entries describing the method by Erik Osterlund here (http://www.elgon.es/diary/?p=167) and more recent follow ups here (http://www.elgon.es/diary/?p=498) and here (http://www.elgon.es/diary/?p=502)."
Assuming a need for more queens/wish to further tweak your system I reckon it's worth the effort to continue but the final results will as always rest totally with the bees.The one thing we can't do is force them to produce good queens -although there appears to be a growing group who believe that bees always make good queens and they can even spout reference to spurious research that proves the fact; unfortunately, no matter how many times they're asked for a link it's never forthcoming (beyond .... "so and so said it exists"). But that's an entirely different hobby horse which I plan to corral during the winter months.
...So, if they only want to rear one that might actually be a better investment of your resources than a dozen which haven't received quite the same attention. If drones are still looking good and there's a chance of improved weather then the odds might be with you but the weather's always the biggest gamble we take. I think the main cost of queen rearing is at the mating nuc end of the programme -a failed cell builder costs little compared to a dozen failed nucs.
Last edited by prakel; 31-07-2015 at 08:57 AM.
The weather looks better for queen mating from next week.
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