WE HAVE A MITE BOMB!
Hey all, just wanted to share with everyone a summary of what we found this weekend up at the FLC and why it is so important to be testing right now for mites!
On Saturday morning I demonstrated 2 different way to do alcohol mite testing. The “bump and scoop” and the “waterfall” method. The mite counts were as follows:
Hive 1: 24 Yikes!
Hive 2: 2
Hive 3: 3 (100 bees in sample so normalized to 3)
My acceptable level right now is 6.
So as you can see hive 1 is a mite bomb at more than FOUR TIMES ACCEPTABLE LEVEL.
I suspected an issue as soon as I took the inner cover off the hive as the bees were super aggressive. Upon further investigation and 5 stings later I was able to determine the hive re-queened itself around 4 weeks ago (which coincides with the last full hive inspection) and has a new queen barely starting to lay eggs in the last 2-3 days.
Here is why it is important to check your mite counts now….
Because we have so much time and I have a queen sitting a nuc with no place to go this winter I am removing the honey from the hive and treating with a full dose of formic acid (Formic Pro) this week. I will do the 1 strip for 10 days….remove….then a second strip for 10 days. Then I will re-queen the hive. Twenty(ish) days from now I will also do a second mite check on the remaining 2 hives to ensure they are not affected by mite drift and mite counts remain low.
The remaining 2 hives have medium size populations and will need to be feed 2:1 sugar syrup to get ready for winter. I will also add pollen patties.
All 3 hives did have brood hatching out from the top brood box and the queens starting to lay in the bottom boxes so they will have plenty of room to store food therefore, we did not have to re-arrange frames.
I will send out a note for the next round of mite testing and when I re-queen the hive.
I want to send a special thank you to Jim McMan and Bob Fischer for helping out as I was in the hives and answering questions.
Talk to everyone in a few weeks……AND CHECK YOUR MITE COUNTS1
Mark
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