I've been up to the apiary and while I technically did open the hive to stick a dummy board in, I didn't do a full inspection. As much as I wanted to from a personal interest point of view, I didn't see any reason to do it.
I know my colony is small, I know that this weekend is when the first of the new brood is starting to emerge so it's no surprise that just a quick visual check down the frames as I swapped a frame of foundation for a dummy board showed no immediate sign of expansion. That being said, they seemed "happier". There were more foragers coming and going and there seemed to be more bees on the two frames of brood.
My Varroa count has also nosedived. This has been a big concern to me over the past few weeks; the count I have, going by the books, indicates potentially big problems. But, I have a very small colony so I'm limited in what I can do. I've no drone brood, only a couple of frames of brood, Apiguard carries a risk, however small of stopping the queen laying and we're pyrethoid resistant in this neck of the woods.
It has been suggested that I might have a very high mite count because I have "hygenic bees". Yesterday I had two immature mites on the tray under the open mesh floor (it's permanently in place at the moment to try and help the bees warm the brood) from the past week. Today I had two, apparently adult mites on the floor.
Right now I don't know what to think.
In other unrelated news, we cut back the ring of brambles that surrounds the hives and discovered blackcurrants fighting for their lives, DIY ribena coming soon.
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Bait hive has worked for the first time!!
11 years ago
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