ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Orange County, NC Beekeepers
List archive
- From: Mike Johnson <mm AT reddrum.com>
- To: Randall Austin <ra41717 AT gmail.com>
- Cc: ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org
- Subject: Re: [ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum
- Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2015 18:13:27 -0500
I did not know if a photo was acceptable to the list - I’ll take one and send it! I opened the hive after I didn’t hear anything, and saw the dead bodies on the bottom. But I put it back together because it was late in the afternoon and frankly I wouldn’t have known what to look for to determine what went wrong. My thinking was to preserve the scene until I could learn what to look for. I plan on bringing it in the garage in a day or two and going through it. So… I didn’t do a lot of poking around. I did see a golf ball sized cluster near the top outer frames and a much, much larger cluster of bees vertically through at least 3 boxes. Think 6x6 board vertical if you will. Last fall I sprinkled powdered sugar over the brood box and checked the IPM board a day later. It had less than 10/inch (6 I think) so I did not treat with anything. At the time I didn’t realize how dangerous varroa mites were, but I recently watched some of David Tarpy’s videos and now know I need to be much more careful. I may change to 200 bees in a jar for testing as well. I’m hoping to be as chemical free as I can. I did have a very increasing number of hive beetles at the end of last summer/fall. I had beetle baffles on all of my hives and tried beetle blasters. The blasters caught a grand total of 3 beetles. I had 5-10 beetles on each frame when I looked at them. I don’t think that is overload and I don’t think that would cause the hive to die in winter, however it is more information. I read and was concerned about feeding in cold temperatures. Can the water in the mix increase the humidity in the hives to dangerous levels? Is getting pollen patties or making sugar candy a good way to feed too? I’ll “weigh” the other hives and see if I can determine how much food they may have. Rambling here, but I saw a hive scale is for sell now that transmits the weight to your phone. That would be incredible to have to learn about flow, but it is $500/scale! I’ll post back after the autopsy. Thank you for your help! (Sorry for the rambling - it’s so interesting) mike
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[ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum,
Mike Johnson, 02/17/2015
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Re: [ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum,
Randall Austin, 02/17/2015
- Re: [ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum, Mike Johnson, 02/18/2015
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Re: [ocba] Bee Hive Post Mortum,
Randall Austin, 02/17/2015
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