The bees will be tested for tracheal mites, varroa mites and nosema. It'll be interesting to get the results which should be sometime next month. I chose the weaker of my two hives to test (the one that had AFB) which still filled six honey supers. It's looking pretty good but I think the mite count is higher and there aren't quite as many bees as the other one.
What else is going on? I can tell the bees are starting to get ready for winter: there's gooey propolis everywhere, drone production is way down and the top boxes are getting heavy with honey stores. Fewer drones means that drone trapping isn't going to work to control mites as well so I started another round of the powdered sugar dusting. It's kind of a pain but it's non-toxic so I giving it a try this year.
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