Lack of varroa mites

The Young Beekeeper couldn't find any varroa mites stuck to our Crisco-slathered file folders , either.    It's unlikely we don't have ANY, though.   Paul Kelly, of the Honey Bee Research Centre, Department of Environmental Biology, University of Guelph, who taught a bee-keeping seminar which I took in April, kindly replied to an  e-mail and an article which I sent along from The New York Times RE a beekeepers'-ball held in New York City (<http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/having-a-ball-at-the-beekeepers-ball/?scp=2&sq=honey%20bees%20&st=cse>):   

Hi Emily:

 Thanks for forwarding the article. Bees sure are getting lots of attention these days. Your varroa population is likely low but certainly won't be non existent. Great to hear you are monitoring. You'll see more mites later in the season.

  Best Regards,   Paul

Crisco-covered file folders

I removed the varroa mite traps made of file folders slathered with Crisco, and I got all set to count varroa mites and divide by three (days) etc., and/but couldn't find any varroa mites.  Got out a magnifying glass:   the specks looked like bits of wax or pollen.   Got out a stronger magnifying glass(the lens which screws onto my bird-watching monocular and turns it into a microscope).   Lifted specks one by one with tweezers and placed them under the lens, and, sure enough, these were little moon-rocks--wax or pollen.    No horrid little legs, or smooth red bodies, etc.  Tomorrow the Junior Beekeeper arrives straight from the dentist to be whisked off to the ice cream emporium and thence to the public library, and before we set forth I will ask him to look through the lenses with his sharp young eyes.   

More maintenance

Above:   capped drone cells.  The cells which have not been capped, mostly contain honey.    The two frames of drone-comb, one taken from each hive, went home with the Junior Beekeeper and the Junior Beekeeper's Cousin to open, examine, salvage wax, and so on.   Below, burr comb with honey scraped from the inner covers:   yum!

Above:   the Young Beekeeper slathers a layer of Crisco on a file-folder.   This will be put just below the wire hive base, on the wooden hive base, to leave for several days, and remove, and we'll count the number of varroa mites which have fallen there, and got stuck in the Crisco, and this will give us a means of judging our varroa mite burden.   We bought our bees from a great bee-keeper, and they've been beautifully bred and beautifully cared for, so we may not have many varroa mites.   Bees are now bred for grooming behaviour, by which they remove mites from one another.    Below:  we're placing the Crisco-slathered file-folder.  

Thank you, Mary Lynne, for taking our photos, all 60,003 of us.  

Maintenance/upgrade

Maintenance/upgrade

On Sunday, 21 June 2009 we went into our hives to perform maintenance and upgrade.    

We knew this was necessary for two reasons:  a.  bee behaviour--the bees were flying as if on a 400-series highway, and the guard bees were getting cranky;   b. by the calendar, it was time to remove the frames of drone-comb.  

1.   When we opened the hives, we were very pleased that the hives seem equally-strong now:  both have raised comb in all nine frames of their top (second) brood super, and it's mostly capped.   We didn't go into the bottom brood super of either hive.   

2.  We removed the frame of drone-foundation we'd given each hive for varroa mite control (varroa mites lay in the bees' drone comb, so if you give the bees handy drone-foundation, the bees will raise drone-comb, the varroa will lay there, and this frame can be removed BEFORE the varroa hatch and this thwarts the varroa--and we don't need the drones anyhow).   Lesson learned:   mark the drone-comb frame!   Fortunately we remembered where it was and successfully removed this first try both times.  

Above:   Removing a drone-comb frame.

Below:   The Young Beekeeper's Cousin (a big help to have an extra pair of hands).

Above:   the time of day and the weather were both perfect for this job--early, cool, and a sparkling June day with low humidity, though we had rain yesterday.   We've removed the frame of drone-comb from the near hive (it's leaning against the hive).   We've given the bees a replacement frame with regular worker-foundation, and we put the queen excluder on top.   Next, on top of the queen excluder, we will place a shallow super with ten frames of wired worker-foundation in which to raise comb and make honey for us.   We've already given the far hive its queen-excluder above the second brood-box, and on top of that, a shallow super containing ten frames of wired drone-foundation on which to raise comb, and in which to place honey for us.    (Comb raised on drone foundation is said to be easier to extract because the cells are bigger:   if all goes well, we'll find out if this is true!)

Below:  the Junior Beekeeper's glove was stung--here's a photo of the (pulsing) venom sac. 

31 MAY 2009

On Sunday, 31 May, the Young Beekeeper brought his Aunt Laura and friends to see the bees.    She took some photos, for which we thank her!   Below (top), a photo of a serious-minded Young Beekeeper in kit.   Below (bottom):   we're still feeding the red hive (weaker) with spring-formula syrup, and we took this opportunity to refill the jar.