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Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
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- From: "John McPhaul" <john.mcphaul AT gmail.com>
- To: "Lewis Cauble" <lewis AT hivebody.com>, <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?
- Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 12:45:48 -0400
Lewis,
Thanks for your response. We did not do another SS and it was also
low on brood so hopefully that hive will be OK but we never did one on the
“mean” hive however we did go in both (thanks to our more veteran neighbors
Bradley & Dorothy) and there was very little capped brood in the mean hive
but then we went in the “nice” hive and it also was lacking much capped brood
especially compared to how full it was on the field day.
This made me think it was just bees being bees and I also felt that with
such little brood currently the varroa would not have any hosts to breed
on?
After reading your input and thinking back about the wet Sept. and cool
October that we are OK since they do have lots of honey stores. We did not
want to stay in the hives too long as even Sunday afternoon it was cooler out
than normal.
I still go stand by the hives and look for any signs of varroa but wings
and bodies show no signs(at least to my untrained eyes). I’m thinking
we’ll just go with the Laissez-faire
route since that works best with my work ethic!
If we get the inevitable warm days we tend to
get in the fall we will do a SS on the hives again and try to be more observant
as to eggs, etc.
I just don’t want to be like the chorus in Joe
Strummer & the Mescalero's song “Johnny Appleseed” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWcLkWT1YOY):
Hey - I hear what you're
saying
Hey - I hear what he's saying If you're after getting the honey - hey Then you don't go killing all the bees We’ll
keep y’all posted.
Thanks
John
& Nina McPhaul
From: Lewis Cauble
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2014 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem? 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
-
Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
John McPhaul, 10/22/2014
-
Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
- Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?, John McPhaul, 10/23/2014
-
Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
- Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?, Lewis Cauble, 10/23/2014
-
Re: [ocba] First Fall - Big problem?,
John McPhaul, 10/22/2014
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