Busy July!

Heaven for my bees!

July is always a busy month, the nectar flow is happening, and bees are happy. They collect a lot of nectar to fill their hives to the brim. They are making preparation for winter, besides gathering loads of nectar, they bringing back a huge quantity of pollen. All this food is then stored meticulously on the frames in the hive. 

Colorful cells: Pollen

On top of picture: capped nectar, called Honey!
On the bottom is only nectar..see not capped yet.

This year I have decided to enrolled our 4 hives in a research project. It is called: Integrated Pest Management (IPM) , Citizen Science Field Study 2014 done by the University of Delaware by Kathy Ciola Evans and Dr. Deborah Delaney.

The goal of this project is to find a way to control pests (Varroa Mites) in honey bee colonies. IPM is a combinations of management which uses biological, mechanical and chemical tools into a program that will reduce the pests while decreasing the use of chemicals. In this instance, a chemical treatment is the last resort to save a colony of honey bees. Before using any chemicals a pest population threshold has to be reached.

How can we do that: by monitoring the Varroa mite population every month! By knowing the pest level in each hive, it can help by preventing the mite population to reach the damaging point of a colony, where the infested colony would have a very difficult time recovering and its chance of dying would be very high.

Right now the "accepted" behavior among some beekeepers is to medicate their bees , whenever it is needed or not. 

Fact: Honey bees have mites, they can live with them if the levels are low. 

So I have decided to use soft treatments made with plants: Apiguard (thyme based) or Hopguard (made with hop) to fight Varroa mites to reasonable levels only when needed.

Gayle taking notes!

In order to do that, I needed to know how many mites I had in each hive. With my friend Gayle, we took each frame of each brood box of every hive, and estimated the overall health of the colonies. We looked at about 120 frames, both sides, and recorded all the info! It was a job! But we did it. Without her help, it would have been quasi impossible to do by myself. 

Thank you Gayle :)

What I discovered in this experiment so far, is that I can inspect the bees, and not know that they are infested with an unhealthy load of  Varroa mites. When we see many mites on bees, it is often too late to treat and save them from certain death, and loosing a whole colony.

By knowing the mite level, one can be pro-active before the threshold is reached.

My results for July using the 72 hours natural drop method (sticky board):

Hive 4: 34 mites/24 hrs

Hive 3: 4 mites/24hrs

Hive 2: 2.6 mites/24hrs                                                                 

Hive 1: 7.3 mites/24hrs

Like I said, I did not see any differences between the hives when looking at the bees. They all seem to work, all have eggs, larvae, pupae, capped brood, nectar, pollen ... But look at the mite count!

After this first count, I treated hive 4 (34mites/24hrs) because it was deemed "critical". I am using Hopguard, a soft medication  because I have my supers on to collect honey.  No need to treat the others because the threshold levels have not been reached.

Gayle's garden where the hives are located

Gayle and I will monitor the mites again in August, and September. 

Natural Drop 24 Infestation Level

0-8-- low

8-15--moderate

15-30--high

30+ --critical

As a general goal, try to keep the mite level below a 1% infestation of adult bee at any time–

24-hr natural sticky fall—about 10 mites