Winter Hive Check & Varroa Mite Treatment

Yesterday, Mark and I took advantage of the warm Texas winter weather to check on our five hives.  It made it to 75 degrees and was a perfect time to treat our hives for varroa mites using Apivar strips.  It takes five weeks for the treatment to complete and will keep the bees as healthy as possible before the upcoming spring nectar flow. (Click on photos to enlarge).

Hive boxes 01 and 02 are empty, but still stand on their foundations.
Hive box 07 has been removed.
Healthy and active hives include 03, 04, 05, 06 and 08.

Remember, our hives 01, 02 and 07 were lost to swarming and failed queens in 2016.  When we inspected our hives 03, 04, 05, 06 and 08 yesterday, we saw each of our queens.  Whew!  That was a great feeling and gave us reassurance that all is well in the bee yard.  Hives 03, 04, 05 and 06 were in very good shape.  Hive 08 was struggling a little, but we were able to get things corrected and back to normal.

Hive 03 has a small colony, but they are hanging in there!

Hive 03 queen near the lower right of photograph.

Hive 03 has one deep hive box.  Our queen is marked with a white dot and she is with about three frames of bees.  There was enough honey in the hive to last for the rest of the winter for the bees. There were a few small hive beetles, but not enough to cause concern.  We added two Apivar strips to treat for varroa mites.

 

Hive 04 has our Buckfast queen that we picked up from R Weaver in May of last year.  She is marked with a blue dot. 

Hive 04 queen is a Buckfast bee and has a blue dot on her thorax.

This colony has two deep hive boxes and is full of bees.  We added four strips of Apivar to these deep hive boxes.

Hive 04 opened for inspection.

Hive 04 lower hive box with many bees.

I ordered three new queens from Bee Weaver Apiaries and will pick them up in March or April.  These three new queens will allow us to split some of our larger colonies into two colonies.  Hopefully, these three new queens will get hives 01, 02 and 07 back up and running.   Hive 04 has many bees and they are a candidate for splitting before springtime.

Lots of bees in hive 04.

Last year, we put supers on a few of our hives to collect honey for our own use, however the bees didn't make enough honey for us to make it worthwhile to extract.  So, we left the supers on three hives for the bees to use the extra honey through the winter.

Hive 05 was one of the three that had a super and yesterday we removed it in order to treat for varroa mites, as instructed.  There is still some honey in the super frames, so we will hang them out near our house for the wild bees and other pollinators to forage.  Once picked clean of honey, we will have empty wax comb ready for our bees to use for the spring nectar flow.  Hive 05 had a ton of bees and is a candidate to be split before springtime.  The queen in this hive is not marked.  There is plenty of honey in the two deep hive boxes, so the bees will be fine for the remainder of the winter.

Lots of bees in hive 05.

We plan to split this hive before springtime to keep the bees from swarming.

Hive 05 queen near the center of the photograph.

Hive 06 has only one deep hive box and a super.  This queen is not marked.  There are about five frames of bees in the colony and a good deal of honey.  We removed the super and added two Apivar strips to the hive.

Hive 06 bees.

Lots of bees in hive 06.  We will add a second deep hive box
to this colony before the spring nectar flow.

Lots of bees in hive 06.

Hive 06 queen near the center of the photograph.

Hive 08 had two deep hive boxes and a super.  We noticed the smell of fermentation right away when we opened the hive.  We removed the super and saw about four frames of bees in the top deep hive box.  We removed that box to inspect the one below it and found hardly any bees there.  There were a couple of frames that seemed to have a dusty mold coating on the comb.  And, we noticed some small areas where wax moth larvae had tunneled.  We did not see any wax moths, nor any larvae.  This may be because last week, we had a couple of days that made it below freezing and that would have helped to control the pests.  We inspected the top hive box and found it was doing fine.  The bees had managed to keep the honey and comb healthy.  We saw our queen, marked with a white dot, and felt comfortable that the bees' situation would improve if we were to remove the bottom deep hive box and the super, and leave only the top deep hive box for the bees.  This smaller area will help them to manage against pests better.  We added two strips of Apivar to the remaining deep hive box. 

Hive 08 bottom deep hive box has no bees.  We removed this box
and left only the top deep hive box that had several frames of bees.

Hive 08 queen near the center of the photograph is marked with a white dot.

A couple of the hives served as temporary homes for groups of ladybugs.  They huddled together in the corner of the screen inner covers.  It was amazing to see the many colors and patterns on them!

Ladybug collections!

The next few days are expected to be warm and all of the bees have plenty of honey.  We felt really good about each of our hives when we left the bee yard yesterday!