A word of warning and an admission of guilt.

I inspected a hive at the weekend which is suffering from varroa damage. It is now on week 3 of Apilife Var, so treatment is underway although it started late as there was uncapped honey in the supers previously. There is dead brood in the comb although not much sign of deformed wings or varroa on the bees themselves. The comb and some of ther removed bees look just like the fera leaflet; Figures 6 and 7 on page 7. The mite drop isn't massive with 50 - 60 in 24 hours since the last treatment. The bees are flying well so that from the outside the colony looks good.

https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/bee...ment.cfm?id=16

Just as described in the Fera book, the problem has highlighted itself very rapidly and the colony looks like it could collapse. Hopefully I've caught it just in time. An admission of guilt here, that being in an out apiary I haven't paid close attention to it for a while; maybe with more care I would have noticed things going wrong sooner.

The queen is one I want to rescue if possible. There is a frame of open brood and 2 or 3 frames of sealed brood but some of that could contain a selection of dead bees - I need to check further.

I plan to put in a frame of sealed brood from another colony in the next few days which will give it a boost. It has been fed Fumidil B over the past few weeks so Nosema should not be too much of a concern.

Is there anything else I should consider? Has anyone else rescued a colony in this way?