BBKA Forum

Bees "usually" start brood rearing anew shortly after the winter solstice....21st of Dec. So before the end of the Dec is about as good as it gets.. If you had a hive monitoring temperature gauge you would see a sudden increase in temperature up to 34C in the cluster. Then you would know they have started to rear next years new brood. This is when they really start to burn through their stores generating that heat.

It's also important to act quickly if you think a hive is really short of stores. Bees share their resources equally and fairly whilst they have them. This means the bees within a hive can all die out within a few hours of each other if they have no more food to share.

As Nigel says, the last week of December should be about the best time to treat - and of ocurse if the queen does start to lay you have 9 days (3 days egg and 6 days as larva) before the larvae are sealed over and it's just before that that the varroa slip in. For me it's convenient to treat between christmas and the new year, when I'm off work and I can have an excuse for not going to the sales.

Having watched the Christmas films, it also means you can walk towards your hives fully suited up and with your loaded syringe pointing skywards, murmuring in an indeterminate foreign accent “Just relax, Mr Bond”...

Vaped six today and one tomorrow when I go to the wife's gran's.

Couple of colonies still have a high varroa drop after 2nd OA. Some evicting larvae so no brood break yet. Colonies bringing in Hazel pollen last week.

Trickling today or tomorrow, depends when I can fit it in around various family commitments and the footy

MickBBKA wrote:Couple of colonies still have a high varroa drop after 2nd OA. Some evicting larvae so no brood break yet. Colonies bringing in Hazel pollen last week.

I’m far from convinced about the effectiveness of multiple vaping during brood periods. I have done multiple vaps at 5 days intervals (as many as 6 times) this year and haven’t had clear success. Just recently I did a pre Xmas vap in six hives and the drop on three was in the high hundreds directly after. All these hives had thymol treatments, some with poor results and followed by multiple 5 day vaps back in September. Having vaped twice brood free in the last two weeks the mite drop levels are near zero so nothing wrong with the treatment but I’m thinking multiple vaps when in brood have very limited effect.

Vaping is very effective, assuming you have got everything in the right place and understand that if vaping from beneath an open mesh floor will cause lots of the OA to recrystallise on the mesh (i.e use more Apibioxal than recommended). I have a sublimox and usually vape from from the top using a specialised eke or through the front entrance.
What is the unknown is why a few hives continue to drop mites long after the others have. I've had one that required far too many vapes to get the numbers down. A possibility is they are robbing a nearby feral hive and picking up a heavy mite load from their frequent visits. But nobody knows for certain, but most of us vapers have come across them at some point
What is important is the bees are treated for varroa before they produce their winter bees i.e late summer early autumn. These are the important bees and you don't want their long term health compromised by high varroa and virus levels,

Trickled today. Forgot to clean inspection boards beforehand. Aside from that it went well.
Colony with new queen is on about 4 seams. Corner colony of locals is on 6 or 7.
Nuc is strong as I expected.

They keep surprising me. I thought the two big colonies would be the opposite way round.

NigelP wrote:Vaping is very effective, assuming you have got everything in the right place and understand that if vaping from beneath an open mesh floor will cause lots of the OA to recrystallise on the mesh (i.e use more Apibioxal than recommended). I have a sublimox and usually vape from from the top using a specialised eke or through the front entrance.
What is the unknown is why a few hives continue to drop mites long after the others have. I've had one that required far too many vapes to get the numbers down. A possibility is they are robbing a nearby feral hive and picking up a heavy mite load from their frequent visits. But nobody knows for certain, but most of us vapers have come across them at some point
What is important is the bees are treated for varroa before they produce their winter bees i.e late summer early autumn. These are the important bees and you don't want their long term health compromised by high varroa and virus levels,

Yes very true about the conditions, I usually try to do on a cold still day when bees are inside, I use dose as I only have the varrox type, I find it’s quite easy to do nuc s by just putting them on the ground and using the grass to seal round the edges after clearing an area directly under the pot. Your spot on regarding difference from one colony to the next also. Last year I had one I vaped about 7 times and still was getting drops days later.