Like most Colorado Winters this one also has been a roller coaster ride of highs and lows. Fortunately, there have been only a few red flag warnings. It also has been a wetter than normal Winter in my opinion. We had an artic blast (like most of the country) with some of the coldest temperatures I have experienced since living here. However, since then the weather has been above average as we roll into February.
We went into this Winter with fifty one hives, and still have a goal of ultimately managing around sixty five hives, until I retire from education. In addition to overwintering double nucleus’ hives as usual, I attempted to overwinter several side by side resource hives from Dadant. Thus far seven colonies have perished, and all of them except one were Varroa Destructor load or mite related viruses that ultimately killed them. Of course, this has to do with there genetics, and the fact that they could not deal with Varroa Mites and the viruses they bring on there own without beekeepers’ intervention. Which brings me to all of the new things I attempted last year to see if it would decrease my “mite related” Winter loss percentage. I started counting mites (alcohol wash) in hives that were not growing, booming, and during robbing season. As well as, counting mite levels on our Treatment Free hives. Some preliminary thoughts/data follows…
- All hives had/have some level (percentage) of Varroa Destructor in there counts
- Beekeeper’s mite “threshold” differ on when to take action, but can be as low as one mite per 300 bees in an alcohol wash
- Some treatment free hives had/have a higher percentage/”threshold” of mites compared to others, and appeared to have no ill effect on them or there Winter survival
- Counting mites on fifty one hives is time consuming. Counting mites pre and post is time consuming. Now I know why some beekeepers don’t count mites at all, and just treat with various products on a schedule and hope for the best, but I don’t think that is best practice
- Most hives treated with Api-Bioxal did survive Winter, but not all
- Api-Bioxal is super time consuming & must be done on a 21-24 day cycle when brood is present for ultimate effectiveness
- Most treatment free hive’s mite counts remained stable, or went up and down on there own without any interventions, infestations, or virus overloads
There is still plenty of Winter left, so it will be interesting to see how the rest of it shakes out and how it will affect the remaining forty four hives. I typically begin to see the first pollen of the year coming in mid February, which signifies brood rearing will start getting ramped up in most colonies. My plan for the year is to continue to count mites, breed queens from treatment free colonies, use resource hives as brood factories, and use Api-Boxal as a tool for genetics that would die if left to there own devices.