Guilfordbeekeepers.org

How badly silked and tunneled up is it? If most of the comb is still o.k. you may want to use it in a strong hive and let the bees clean it up and keep using the comb. If you cannot save the comb I don't think you need to get to spotless plastic, but I would want to get to where the outline of the c...

Today, March 25, 2010, I saw the first drone flying and go into one of my hives. It was a golden colored drone and not the black drones I saw walking around the comb in my strong hive yesterday.

Updates on hives 4 & 7 7-- previously listed as doomed. Has tennis ball sized capped brood on 2 sides of 1 frame, some eggs, still some multiples. I have seen postings on another site suggesting these are good queens trying to ramp up but with not enough help to take care of all of the eggs she ...

I just received my information for the April 14th queen rearing workshop in Winston-Salem. If you signed up for this workshop look for the agenda/schedule in the mail.

Wally, your math is better than mine if the flow is not delayed by the cooler weather. If it is delayed by a few weeks the math gets trickier. I am somewhat anxious to complete the treatment of this hive since they are removing a few developing workers and drones with deformed wings. I may just wait...

I would love to have queens from the strongest (bee tree) hive. When I put the formic acid pad on the problem hive there were eggs and larvae. It never got hot enough to fume to the point where the bees came out of the hive (like they did last Spring). I'm wondering if the acid has killed the eggs o...

Jack Tapp was at the State meeting. I think the Chapel Hill weather has slowed queen/package production like it has our Spring buildup. I may go ahead and call him tomorrow to see when he will have queens. That would be a faster and easier trip if the timing is right.

I'm going to be calling Brushy Monday about the package pickup scheduled for March 27th. If they are delivering on that date or with a one week delay maybe they can add a queen to the order even though they are sold out of packages. If not, add brood/eggs to keep them from going laying worker until ...

I came home this afternoon to find a clump of bees surrounding something on the ground in front of my second strongest hive. I moved them away to find a nice fat dead queen with what appeared to be a damaged wing. I had been in my strongest hive yesterday and added a super of empty brood comb to giv...

An unhappy update. I can move hive #7 from questionable to doomed. I just went through the hive and the bees are occupying part of 1 frame in the first medium. There is a queen. There are larvae. There are multiple eggs in the bottom center of many of the cells. Somehow I just don't think this is a ...

All are Italians/Italian mutts except for the unknown origin of the strongest hive (Wally's bee tree bees--hive #4). That hive is building faster and earlier than the others. I have screened bottom boards in all of them. The bottoms were open (no plastic sheet in) all winter and I had small sticks u...

Hive.....8/1/09.......Treatment.......11/6/09.......3/7/10..........Status ...........Mite Count........................Mite Count....Mite Count 1..........61.............Apilife Var........63..............5..................Hopeful 2..........18.............none..............149..............4........

I hope to have assignments made this week or early next week.

I'm not at that point yet. The long cold winter has set my bees back and slowed what I can do. I just did a mite count and have a formic acid pad on one hive. I still need to do a nosema treatment for all of my hives. After that, I can think about honey supers. For me, my best guess is that it is go...

The e mail went out February 24th. Please pm me with your e mail address. If we had it wrong we can correct it. Only 1 came back undeliverable and that was because of a spam blocker. The e mail stated that we would have drawings for 2 packages of Italian bees, that this was open to 1st time students...

? AFB at no extra charge. Caveat Emptor (Let the buyer be ware)!

And now back to the original purpose of this subject line, mite counts (and not the merits of treating/not treating). My sticky boards went on this morning. I'll report results after I leave them in 72 hours and divide by 3 to get a 24 hour average drop.

I am getting my cooking spray and sticky boards ready. It looks like we are finally going to get a stretch of weather that will allow a varroa mite count. After I get the results I will decide on a treatment scheme if needed.

In this area I think your biggest, best and most reliable source of nectar is the tulip poplar and you probably want to gauge your activities to that. Other plants may produce some nectar and do better some years than they do other years. I want my treatments done early enough to catch the poplar fl...

There is a wealth of information to be mined from this board. Timing varies with weather conditions, but for examples, stay in this Beekeeping 101 category and go down to Poplar Bloom on page 2 2008 Honey Flow on page 3 Tulip Poplar Flow on page 4 I am sure there are other entries but these are some...