spoke to a few beekeepers the last few weeks about when they are going to harvest honey and they said with in the next week. I also asked when they are going to plan there mite treatment and they said mid august! and most plan on using apiguard as there treatment. what I don't get is if they are going to harvest and put there supers back on and then with in 2-3 weeks they are going to treat what are they going to do with there honey supers that are on the hives? it would make sense to pull the supers the day of the harvestvand treat the same day and after the treatment period to place the supers back on.
what do you guys do?
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Apiguard is thymol and it makes a huge scent into the hive. You CANNOT treat them during yield period.
It makes no sense.
I am guessing that 1) they will be pulling the honey supers because the flow is over and 2) they will be putting supers back on after harvest temporarily for clean up purposes. If they put the supers back on in the hopes of getting additional honey, I am guessing that will be honey the girls will use forethemselves during the dearth, if you have one, and through the winter.
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Quessing and quessing. It is middle of summer now.
The scent attaches to brood boxes too.
I usually check my hives for varroa mites in mid August and when the temperatures drop below 90 degrees F. for about 7 days I treat with Formic Acid.
I do not have my supers on at that time.
Usually when I treat it's just the 2 deep brood boxes that they'll be going into winter with.
I have very good results in the spring with high populations in early March doing this.
What I do is not treat. For nothing EVER.
Quote from: sc-bee on July 21, 2013, 12:16:53 AM
What I do is not treat. For nothing EVER.
Same here.
Jim
Quote from: sc-bee on July 21, 2013, 12:16:53 AM
What I do is not treat. For nothing EVER.
What ever, but that is the worst habit to treat varroa.
You have in USA winter loss reseach. Those who did not treat hives, lost 66% out of hives.
In France it was researched varroa tolerant and treated hive honey yiedls. Threated hives got 100% better yield.
Quote from: Finski on July 21, 2013, 03:02:47 AM
Quote from: sc-bee on July 21, 2013, 12:16:53 AM
What I do is not treat. For nothing EVER.
What ever, but that is the worst habit to treat varroa.
You have in USA winter loss reseach. Those who did not treat hives, lost 66% out of hives.
In France it was researched varroa tolerant and treated hive honey yodels. Treated hives got 100% better yield.
Finaki,
Last year, I went into winter with 14 hives, at the end of January, I had 16 hives, got 2 swarms in January.
In February, my hives were expanding so fast that I was making nucs because I was afraid they were going to swarm. 4 weeks after pulling 3 to 6 frames from every hive and adding supers I still had hives swarming. I made the mistake of not putting the old queens in the nucs.
Out of 19 hives I now have (we sold several nucs), 2 hives have light mite drops. One of them is my largest hive and biggest honey producer. The rest, it is hard to find a mite in a clean, dry oil pan. SHB population is also very low, especially compared to thee thousands of SHB I was killing the first 3 years in every hive. That is why I am leaving the oil pans dry.
A lot of these hives are from feral hives that had to survive without any assistance. They groom each other and remove the pupas that are infected with mites.
Jim
Quote from: Finski on July 21, 2013, 03:02:47 AM
Quote from: sc-bee on July 21, 2013, 12:16:53 AM
What I do is not treat. For nothing EVER.
What ever, but that is the worst habit to treat varroa.
You have in USA winter loss reseach. Those who did not treat hives, lost 66% out of hives.
In France it was researched varroa tolerant and treated hive honey yiedls. Threated hives got 100% better yield.
Nooooot- at least not yet.
Quote from: sawdstmakr on July 21, 2013, 07:36:46 AM
A lot of these hives are from feral hives that had to survive without any assistance. They groom each other and remove the pupas that are infected with mites.
Jim
Sawdfakir
If your things go so well, it does not mean that with others it goe so fine.
You may tell what ever fairytales and I do not believe anything.
Why professional Americans do not use those Miracle Bees. Just take begin from woods.
.
Quote from: Finski on July 21, 2013, 01:03:24 PM
Quote from: sawdstmakr on July 21, 2013, 07:36:46 AM
A lot of these hives are from feral hives that had to survive without any assistance. They groom each other and remove the pupas that are infected with mites.
Jim
Sawdfakir
If your things go so well, it does not mean that with others it goes so fine.
You may tell what ever fairytales and I do not believe anything.
Why professional Americans do not use those Miracle Bees. Just take begin from woods.
.
Finski,
That's OK. You can believe what ever you want. There are a lot of beeks all over the world that have learned that the bees have the genetics from 250 million years of evolution to handle the mites and the beetles. You just have to let the ones with out it fail and find the few that do have the right genetics to succeed.
In Langstroth's time, moths were destroying most of the hives. Now a days moths only take over dieing hives. Strong hives are not bothered by them. The bees with the right genetics were the only ones that survived and now they are not a problem. I believe it was India that did the same thing and after 2 years of devastating losses and no treatments, the bees now do just fine with no treatments.
Jim
I am missing the OP's concerns since I am also going to pull my honey and treat. I do it actually at the same time. I am small time so when I go to the yard and pull my supers I do a sugar roll and note the heavy mite loads. I come back and put formic on the bad ones. When I was pulling my fume boards today where I had a couple of hives I noted bees working clover and nursery stock across the road so I put on a super of each one. Seems we get pretty extreme, I just drive down the middle of the road until I see somebody coming.