Hive one 2015

Hive One 2015

Hive one was the first hive to have a late summer shook swarm treatment.

Stage 1 Sunday 10th September 2015 I took all of the frames out of the hive except for two frames and filled the brood box with new frames. One of the two frames left in the hive with the new frames of foundation was the frame with the queen on it. (Some of the new frames were without foundation but wired.) The other was a frame of newly laid eggs. Above the brood box I put on an Ashforth feeder and filled it with sugar syrup. This process removed a lot of the mites in the colony headed up by the old queen.
(The frames of brood and stores that I removed were put on to another National hive that had had a new queen unighted with it after the old queen had been taken from it during the splitting process - making that hive a double brood box.)

Stage 2 After one week the two old frames were also removed and replaced with new frames. The queen by that time was laying on the new frames. This removed more mites in the two (now capped) frames of old brood. Hopefully a lot of the mites that were on the bees at the time when the brood was removed in stage 1) had moved into these two remaining frames of brood as there was no other brood available to them.
I kept the feeder on the colony through into the Autumn putting a super on top of the brood box when the ivy was in flower.
In October I put the half full super under the well filled brood box. The two boxes went into the winter the warm way round. This colony will not be treated for mites during the winter of 21015/2016.


2016
2017