Turns out that Szabo bees are kept nine frames to the hive, so there will be room in each hive for one frame of drone foundation which we must then remove, along with the Varroa mite burden, in 24 days. Presumably we can use the candles double-boiler to melt off the wax and this will destroy the two species of pupae just as effectively as squishing.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Picking up the bees
In February, Dr./Professor Szabo estimated we could pick up our bees at the end of May. Well, the telephone rang this morning and bees are scheduled to be picked up at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, 1 May! Fortunately, the Junior Bee-Keeper has a PD Day on Friday, so he can come along to pick them up and fetch them home; and--perhaps even more fortunately--his parents--one or the other--or both--are free at noon to help unload the two hives from the Honda CR-V onto the bee cart and thence trundle them to the hives base, which I just this morning leveled, and must now raise a few degrees at the rear so the hive floors will drain to the front.
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Tibor Tzabo uses nine frames per brood box, "gives them more room, and they build out into the bee space," so we removed a brood-empty frame in each brood box, and replaced with a frame of drone foundation. This is a method of Varroa mite control. The workers draw drone cells from the drone foundation, the queen lays drone eggs in the cells, and the Varroa mite females, which prefer to lay in drone cells, lay on top (they lay several eggs--a male egg first, followed by female eggs; the male mite is then able to fertilize his sisters before emerging from the cell, the drone larva having been eaten by the young mites). The bee-keeper removes the frame 24 days later (before hatching), cuts the comb out of the frame and destroys it (you can zap 40% of the hives' burden of mites using this method--the mites lose a generation). The bee-keeper then places worker foundation in the frame and replaces it in the hive. The hive doesn't need drones except to fertilize a new queen, so their loss isn't felt. What doubtless is felt is loss of 1/9th of the hive's brood comb--and the labour of raising foundation on new worker-comb.
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