Mad Scientist

Oh no, mites already? My two surviving hives have mites!?  One is pretty small and the strong one has signs of deformed wing. Sigh. And this is after treating with Formic last spring and Apivar in the fall. I don't know whether my mites are resistant to the treatments or if the bees are just susceptible due to bad genetics.  Or maybe they're getting reinfected from other hives in the neighborhood?

 

Anyway, time to try something new and bring in reinforcements.

 

Enter the mad scientist! This is my friend Jim from IEBA. He brought over his equipment for oxalic acid vapor treatment.

 

The oxalic acid powder is heated in a crucible by a heat gun and it shoots a vapor that we directed into the hives. It only kills mites on bees, not brood so I will need to treat weekly x 3. If we're successful, the mite counts will drop and the hives will grow and out-breed the mites.  I will also re-queen later in the spring. We'll

see how it goes.

Package Day!

 

Time to start the new hive! I picked up a package of Italians at Tate's yesterday.

 

Toby came along for the ride. He didn't mind the bees flying all over the place: he was too busy enjoying a honey stick.

 

I dumped them into the new hive with some help from

Toby's friend Marko.  Now is the hard part: waiting for them to release the queen and get started.