Bees removed the formic acid pads themselves

[BEE C]

Day three of having the formic acid pads in the hives, they BOTH dragged them out the front entrance and dropped them off of the landing board!  It must have taken a good number of bees working together to do this.  They never cease to amaze me.  No I didn't put more pads back...I hung apistan between the brood frames.... I thought mice had chewed the pads up or dragged them out so I checked the bottom brood frames, and found nice patterns of brood filling out more frames than last week.  Apparently there has been a surge in brood production.  Our days are still quite warm and there are still a lot of fall flowers like aster giving nectar.  Looks good, the upper brood boxes are almost entirely capped over honey and sugar syrup.  Is this normal for them to drag out the formic acid pads? I had heard that they will propolize them, but this was weird I thought?

[Brian D. Bray]

Good for the bees, throwing out that ugly industrially made chemical stuff.

Here in NW Washington we've had 7 days of rain since late May, with an 89 day stretch without any.  For us that's severe drought conditions.

[Michael Bush]

I guess we know what the bees thought of them...

[Kirk-o]

small cell time
kirko

[TwT]

just a little question about your setup, is your hives in your basement?

[mat]

This is my second year i use mitegone/rormic acid pads. My bees did fine last winter, I put the pads few days ago again. There is something I don't understand, It seems imposible to drag the pads through two deeps and entrance, unless they chew it into tini pieces. That seems imposibile again because the pad is wraped in the plastic cover (blue, I do not see any blue on your picture) with holes to small for bees to get inside.

[CraigW]

What do you have on the front of your hives and are those regular hives?

Thanks,

[thegolfpsycho]

I think he has his hives in a "bee house" to keep the bears off em.  I seem to remember some pics he has posted.

[BEE C]

Hey,
TwT/BB, my hives are in a hive hut which is protected from bears, I don't have an electric fence finished yet, and built a hive hut which has metal screen entrances and those are the landing boards in front in the picture.
Mat, it seemed impossible that they could chew the pads, there was no blue side?The hives themselves are medium Langstroths, two boxes deep.
Lots of new bees bearding on the front of the hive too.  This hive is also not taking up syrup anymore.  I just put a new bottom board on with a sticky pad and found twenty varoa mites in an hour! Apistan was put on yesterday when the pads were kicked out.

[mat]

Did you use Mitegone products? Their methode is to soke the pads and hang beetwen the frames. In my opinion it is not to good and that's why you found the pads infront of the hives. I use Mite away. Much better. It is presoked pad, wraped in peforated plastic and you put it on top of the upper frames. There is no way bees can remove it.

[BEE C]

I used plastic pads that have little holes in them, which are soaked in formic acid overnight to absorb, and then the pads are put over top of the frames of the upper brood box.