So I had some time off today as I worked Sunday while being on-call I both my wife Teresa and Earl had doctors appointments and I worked on taxes (that's a blog on it's own). The Dr. appts went well Earl has more therapy and Teresa gets some more shots in her neck but more on the bees
So the hives are Florida and Virginia... we have cool weather coming in tomorrow night and I was anxious to get the Oxalic acid dribble in the hives.
So for both hives are still in a three deep configuration with feeders. I filled the feeders last week and was looking to see if they took any of the feed and the bees did take it in it is almost empty.
So the feeders got the hives through the winter now and I will remove them perhaps tomorrow after work or at least the floats.
With the three boxes on I am hoping that frames in all the boxes have syrup, pollen and bee bread and I will look at splitting the two colonies after Thursday.
Then put on mediums for the spring nectar flow. I am expecting the bees to have a weak time collecting due to the splits and that a good portion of the early blooms were frozen and died.
So at the top and bottom you see the brown flowers they should all be bright pink. Now tomorrow night we will get low again 24 degrees. but the bees have been hoping around so we'll see if we get any peaches..... again back to the bees
So I grabbed my oxalic acid 600 ml water, 600 grams of sugar and 45 grams of oxalic acid all mixed and refrigerated. I grabbed the 60ml syringe and filled it up. I let the OA warm up and then took off the feeder and top box and dribbled on the second box and top box between frames on the bees for both colonies.
I was hesitant to see how the first application did before doing the second colony but the inspection of the slide out on the bottom board showed mites in both colonies again. So assuming I didn't do anything wrong in mixing I think it was wise.
Having varroa is a given and it's not knocking them down that is the trick for the bees survival, its preventing the rise of varroa. I have enough solution to do more than three treatments so I'll go for three and then look at the results.... assuming the bees survive the first treatment.
Two colonies and each has 50ml on three boxes.
Other things to note are:
1) the slide outs had less varroa than the over-winter which is expected but higher than I thought I'd have
2) the colonies were good and strong with Florida besting Virginia. Below is Florida
The this was Virginia
Keep in mind that Virginia was the weakest colony going into winter.... it's amazing they are still there. This will be the colony I split.
So next steps on Saturday split Virginia and remove feeders and do complete inspections. I am using and subscribed to Hive Tracks (http://www.hivetracks.com). So Spring is in the air but we are going to have some cold days still. I just need to get going.
Below is a short movie of the bees in the peach trees...
Also if you stumble across this blog... please let me know how you found it, who you are and if you have questions... I'd love to try and answer them.
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