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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: Lewis Cauble <lewis AT hivebody.com>
- To: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 10:47:47 -0400 (EDT)
We would expect the queens to slow down at this time of year and I have been seeing many hives with very little capped brood. I would be concerned if you did not see any eggs or open brood. I expect that the hives are probably fine. Seeing some eggs and open brood would be an indication that you still have a queen and they are simply responding to the environment and that everything is normal. At this late stage I believe there is little we can do. If you have a good population of bees, they have good food stores, and they have low mite pressure, you will just have to let everything play out and see where they land in March.
I have been looking at some hive scale data in my neck of the woods and the fall nectar flow was generally weak. It was interesting to look at the data from dozens of hives. Almost all of them gained weight on Sept 9, 12, 25, and 30 while losing weight on the other days. Hives where lighter at the end of September than they were at the beginning. I am curious to see what October data looks like. The point of this story is: Bees, particularly some races of bees, can be very responsive to environmental conditions. If there are no resources coming in, no (or very little) brood will be reared.
When we had the field day at your place we were able to look at one hive and assess your mite load (your other colony was not accepting visitors that day). At that time I believe we determined that the mite pressure seemed under control at the moment but we pointed out that you had boat loads of capped brood. I am wondering if you followed up with another sugar shake a few weeks later, what you found, and if you treated or not. Were you able to assess mite pressure in the other colony? Can you give us some follow up on that?
Thanks!
Lewis
On October 22, 2014 at 3:24 PM John McPhaul <john.mcphaul AT gmail.com> wrote:
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[ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
Jonathan Blitz, 10/22/2014
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Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
John McPhaul, 10/22/2014
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Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
- Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?, John McPhaul, 10/23/2014
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Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
- Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?, Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
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Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
John McPhaul, 10/22/2014
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