The Buzz Newsletter

October 2006

 

 

Page 4

THE BEEYARD REPORT

My, how quickly the plan changes. I didn’t think we were going to have nucs to winter. Now, it looks like we will have around 30. After we sold all the queens, Adam left 32 nucs to requeen themselves. 30 of them were successful. Our normal success rate with cells is only about 85%. New queens tend to lay longer into the fall than the older ones. We still have a chance to get enough young bees in the nucs to winter. We’ll evaluate them at the beginning of October. Some years ago, I bought some overwintered nucs from Peter Coyle. He showed me all of his equipment and explained his system. At the time, I thought,”This is a really smart guy.” I also thought,”I am never ever going to do this.” Now that I am going to do it, I can’t remember anything that he told me.

Our crop is going to be pretty good. It’s going to be over 100 barrels but I don’t know how far. We still have 12 yards to clean off. The mite load varies a lot. Some yards are in the single digits. Others are in the 20 to 30 range. There is still a lot of brood so those yards are going to require treatment. One of our good producing yards has a big load. I got 70 on one of the ether rolls. They were showing signs of PMS. Bees were pulling pupae with mites out of the cells and there was some crappy looking larve. It’s going to be curtains for that colony.

I had panned to try the new Apiguard treatment to see how it worked. Most of my inner covers have enough room to apply it. It is currently on back order so it doesn’t look like we will be using it this fall. I got some of the Miteaway II pads just so I could fool around with them. They require a rim about 1 ½ “ high. They can’t be used if the temperature is over 80 degrees. The smell is really bad and the chemical gloves are really hot. The pads may work but they have a lot of bad points. The rim is the worst part. The last thing I need is something that requires more parts.

We have been working with oxalic acid in some of our yards. It worked in the spring when mite loads were low. We have been using it this fall in yards that have loads in the fifteen to twenty range. Results are unknown at this point. I found out you don’t want to spray oxalic acid when the temps are in the mid 80’s. It runs the bees right out of the hive. It may not cause any lasting damage but I didn’t like the look of it. I was 35 miles from home when this happened. I knew I wouldn’t be back in that yard for a month. I had a box of Checkmite strips on the truck so I used those. I hope they still work.

Adam didn’t wind up with a very good fall schedule at Iowa State. He has to be in Ames Tuesday through Friday. He also has considerable school work to do over the weekend. This has slowed things up. He is here on Saturday and usually shows up late Sunday to extract for a while. If I get lucky, I have him for a while on Monday.
Last month, I wrote about losing two yards. Now, I have a lady complaining about another one. I don’t think she will be happy unless bees are totally gone from her yard. I usually try to work with people when they complain. In this case, I think I may take exception to that guideline. She really managed to irritate me.

Submitted by Phil Ebert