First Spring bloom

This is from a few days back. I am just getting the time to update my blog. When we got home from the hospital everything was in bloom.

Here is a web album that shows a lot of pictures of what it looked like here at the end of last week. It was gorgeous.

I also took off my formic acid pads from my hives. They will be needing honey supers added on top so they do not have the urge to swarm.

To treat or not?

Integrated Pest Management(IPM) is a principal that the Ontario Beekeepers Association(OBA) is really pushing as an economical and the healthiest way to manage bees in Ontario. It involves monitoring levels of various ailments in the hive and determining if those levels have reached the economic thresholds. When the economic threshold is reached, there is a treatment available but of course this is at a cost to the beekeeper (for the chemical treatment and "downtime" of the colony).

An example of this is my current formic acid treatment for my Varroa Mite infestation. I monitored the mite drop over several days and I physically saw that their was mites in the uncapped brood. The economic threshold was reached and the hive require an intervention. I choose to use Mite Away II (formic acid pad) because I have some on hand and it is a soft chemical treatment (formic acid is found in nature). I also chose Mite Away II because it is a 3 week treatment.

The purpose of this post is that I am questioning if I should treat for prevention of Nosema and foulbrood. I treated for these in the fall of last year without there actually being any symptoms. There still are no symptoms of these diseases in my hives and I am thinking of not treating for them. The more you treat for diseases, the more that the diseases develop resistance to the drugs.

Hang on!

Formic Acid pads on!

Today I followed through with my instincts and treated both of my full hives which are located at my house. I did a quick inspection for both hives and then put my spacer piece and my Mite Away II formic acid pads on top of both brood chambers. I closed the top of the hive so that air does not flow freely. I also completely opened the front of the hive. All of those things are per the instructions.

When going through the green hive, which was by yesterdays count; the most heavily infected, I found a frame which I had forgotten about. For some reason the bees built this comb as one sided with a bee space behind. You probably should take a better look at the picture bellow to understand. Anyways, since the bees decided what size of cell that they wanted, they made it in drone cell. Which may be a source of all those mites. The mites love/prefer drone cells because they have more room. This is a ton a drones! This is a pretty good indication that the hive is vigorous. They do not start to raise drones until they are comfortable with their stores; I hope this does not mean that they plan on swarming.

 I took the opportunity to rip out all of the drone brood on this frame. This will automatically kill a lot of mites. Drones do not do anything but eat honey and breed queens; and I do not want either of those two things happening yet! I will have to see if they start putting comb on this frame properly. I may have to try to re-coat it with wax. The other side had young brood in it so I left it.

The formic acid pads will be removed on May 6th. They sit on the hive for 3 weeks. I tossed the spent wax in the field. You should always throw out wax far way from your hives so you do not encourage pests to seek out your hives.