I spent the best $10 I believe I will ever invest in beekeeping today when the state apiary inspector, Ben Chadwick, and Chris Rallis, State Survey Coordinator, Division of Plant Industry came out to my Sullivan apiary to do a post mortem inspection of my hives. If you voluntarily register your hives with the State of New Hampshire, you are able to request Ben to do an inspection of your hives whether viable or not. It proved to be one of the most informative 2 hours I have ever spent as a beekeeper. Total cost? $10 as I have more than 10 hives. $5 if you have less than 10.
I have enjoyed known Chris Rallis for several years and find him to be to be an excellent resource and beekeeper. Ben is an affable, incredibly knowledgeable beekeeper with 500+ hives. He tells it like it is, gives what I believe will prove to be excellent advice and has a great way of making things easy to understand. He patiently dismantled 5 or 6 of the hives, pointing out exactly what he was seeing, explaining what occurred and why, plus how it could have been prevented. I hope I am a better beekeeper tonight than I was this morning based on his observations, suggestions and patience.
Inspections
I left more than half of my dead outs untouched so Ben would be the first to open them. The first hive showed a heavy mite load. Dead mites–lots of them– were all along the top bars of the frames in the top super. As he went through the remaining 3 supers mites, were always visible. He commented that the hive had looked like it had been very healthy with lots of bees but the mite load overtook them. Chris found some brood on one of the frames and pulled several bees out of the cells, comparing what one healthy bee about to hatch looked like to several bees that had their wings chewed off and were 1/2 normal size due to mites in the cells. As this was the nastiest hive in the apiary, I could easily understand that this particular hive had a high mite load as It was very unpleasant to work. Now I know why…
Ben then moved over to one of the nucs. I have always overwintered my nucs in single, individual wooden nuc boxes stacked on a SBB with inner and telescoping covers. Upon removing the covers, Ben’s first comment was I need to do a better job scraping the edges of the frames so they can be placed closer together. There was burr wax and propolis on the sides of the frames that added an extra 3/16″ space between each frame, reducing the space between the outside frames and the hive body. This created too large of an interior space for the cluster to keep warm. As the nucs are 1/2 the size of a normal hive body, the extremely cold temps we’ve had were too low for the cluster to overcome. Ben’s comment was if I wanted to continue to use these hive bodies, I should make migratory covers so I could stack the hives closer together side-by-side and rather than wrap each hive individually, wrap 2 nucs together so they could share warmth. He also suggested placing screen or burlap on the top supers and adding another nuc box filled with straw on top to help with ventilation and heat retention.
Mites in various quantities continued to show up in the rest of the hive dead outs. Just as Mike Palmer told me over the phone, Ben and Chris mentioned the mites reduce the health of the bees and reduce their ability to overwinter. I knew this but after 6 previous years of fairly successful survivor results, I now understand I have to do a significantly better job breaking the mite cycle and reducing the fall mite load. Ben thought one hive probably absconded due to excessive mites and showed me the rough chewed cell edges indicative of robbing. What had been a properly filled 5 super hive was completely robbed out.
The T Word
Both Ben and Chris said I need to treat or continue to loose my bees. Ben suggested soft treatments using thymol, as he knew I do not want to treat the hives. Based on the results I have had over the years, he suggested I might want to try treating some hives and not others to compare the differences. He even mentioned the possibility of treating every other year and checking the results. He was also quick to say that even treating does not guarantee winter survival.
Now What?
I certainly have seen the results not treating can provide, both the good and now the horrendous. There can also be serious reactions by the bees due to the use of treatments such as Apivar Life, Apiguard etc. Loss of queens, agitated, fighting bees, robbing, etc have all been reported by beeks using Apivar Life. HopGuard is not approved in NH. Now I have to decide whether to move forward with soft treatments or to incredibly amp up my efforts to break the brood cycle, use powdered sugar or other no treat techniques.
You’ll have to check in later to see what I decide because tonight I am really torn as to what to do. I have fought treating for years but I also did not aggressively try to holistically manage the mite load. I let decent survivor results lull me into becoming lazy. I certainly cannot continue to survive as a beekeeper with more losses similar to this winter’s. It’s not the monetary loss, it is the emotional devastation I feel as a beekeeper that has taken it’s toll on me, just as I know it would on you. By not monitoring my mite load in the fall, I failed my part of the compact with my bees. I let them down and set my bees up for a winter very few of them will survive.
My heartfelt thanks to Chris and Ben for coming to see me today and opening my eyes. New Hampshire beekeepers are very lucky to have you gentlemen willing and available to help us! I hope to get back out to the apiary to get photos of many of the above things I did wrong and will post them here when I can.
Meanwhile, I hope your bees are buzzin’. This weekend is going to be warmer. Try to take at least a quick look and maybe get a patty on them. As the survivor hive in Sullivan is going well, I put a patty on the top super today. Ben suggested breaking it into 4 pieces and surrounding the cluster with it. As I had bees coming through the center hole in the inner cover, he suggested doing the same thing on top of the inner cover, too. If they want it they’ll eat it. If not, no harm done.
On to spring…
Have been hearing nothing but good things about oxalic acid vaporization. It doesn’t kill the mites in the cells, but will kill mites outside the cells. So, two treatments 4-7 days apart seems to be the key… And am told it doesn’t contaminate the wax or honey. Most many due to mites this winter myself… Am thinking about treating with OAV as well this season or in the fall.
Attended the Geneva bee conference this past weekend, where chris harp of honeybeelives.org had nothing but praise for OAV treatment in conjunction with using good resistant strains of bees, whether feral survivors or purposefully raised…
Jacob: I’ve spent most of this morning reading user comments and research about OAV treatments. It sounds VERY interesting and I am going to seriously consider this path. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
John
John:
Thank you for sharing your pain and your learning. It reminds me that I often overlook what I do not want to see and I always learn about beekeeping when someone’s in the hives with me. I can’t wait for the pictures. Rick
I hate hearing of bees dying. I hope you have success treating the mite problem.