Honey supers on Brood boxes

[DuaneB]

Do you want a medium Honey super per hive or per Brood box, for over-wintering?

1 Brood box - 1 Honey super
2 Brood boxes - 2 Honey Supers????

Thanks,
Duane

[Jacobs]

Generally, 1-10 frame medium of capped honey/ sugar water "honey" plus the honey the bees have elsewhere in the hive is sufficient going into winter. Even with that on, it is still a good idea to heft the hives regularly to check weight during winter, and on 50 degree+ sunny days you can pop the outer cover to see whether the cluster has eaten its way into the top super. If so, supplemental feeding (adding a super with some capped honey over the cluster or shim with sugar bricks) may be in order.

[DuaneB]

OK.

Thank you.

Next question. Is it to early to install Apivar strips?

[Jacobs]

I haven't used Apivar. I did check out the label by going in our forum to: Just Stuff-Useful Information Links-Pesticide Labels and pulled this up--
https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_se ... 131017.pdf

If you are at/above threshold and have your honey supers off, I didn't see any temperature warnings for the product. You'll want to read the label information closer than I did if you are going to be putting it in your hives.

If you are a super meticulous follower of labels, you only have a couple of days to get the strips in since the label states it is a spring treatment or a fall treatment . [Only half joking--If I needed to use a miticide and decided upon this one, I would probably risk a raid from the summertime bee police.]

[DuaneB]

I'll be doing mite inspections this weekend, hopefully. With 23 hives, I'm thinking it will take a while.

Are you only doing OAV now? Or what would you treat with this time of the year? For <3 mites? For>3 mites?

Thanks.

[Jacobs]

I would use OAV as an emergency knock down if I were to get really high mite counts and temperatures in the upper 80's+ for an extended period. If I can get a 3 day stretch of highs in the lower 80's, I would probably go with FormicPro--allowed to have honey supers on & kills mites under cappings with no expected resistance issues to develop. I'm not saying I would never use Apivar, especially if there is no upper temperature limit for it, I am just not there yet.

I would probably hold off treatment with < 3 mites /300, unless I decided to hit 'em up with OAV. This time of year, I would probably do at least an OAV knock down with >3 mites/300, and if considerably >3/300, I would be looking for a serious mite treatment to get on as quickly as I could after the OAV knock down.

These are not written in stone--just my current thinking.