It's been really nice weather this week and the bees have been out in force around the garden every day. It's another lovely afternoon so we were glad of the opportunity to open up the hives again, especially to monitor the effects of the very high varroa mite infestation in the first hive.
First Hive (Bea):
Much as we had expected, not much change in the supers. We have previously found that when using this Thymol gel treatment before, all work in the colony seems to slow right down, no matter what the weather conditions. This may be because the smell of it dramatically affects the bees' communication.
They've taken most of the Thymol gel from the pack but the treatment isn't over yet. There are a quantity of mites still sealed safe inside the brood cells which will not have been affected until they hatch out.
This section of drone comb which was empty last week is not quite fully capped. I've got at least 10 days until those capped drone pupae on the left hatch out (along with all the varroa mites inside), so I can afford to leave this chunk for another week until I slice it off.
This was a distressing sight, and unfortunately not the only one we saw (and definitely not the last, I'm sure). It's a bee which has hatched out with deformed wings. It must have shared its development as a pupa with anything up to 10 mites, all of them parasites in its cell. We noticed 6 more bees with similar deformities.
We saw Bea quite easily and she seemed as healthy as ever. The brood pattern and all the cappings seemed in very good condition too - apparently these are the next warning signs to look out for if a colony continues to seriously decline.
Other than the few deformed wings, the health of the colony didn't seem bad. There were still a large number of clearly healthy bees and the signs of good housekeeping were there still. We closed up again, replacing the varroacide as it was.Second Hive (Charlie):
We were really looking forward to inspecting this much healthier colony after that first one, but we weren't prepared to see this...
These are swarm cells - signs that the colony is intending to swarm. They really meant it, too - there were over 20 of them in the hive...
... and every single one we could see inside had an egg in it already! This colony is really getting serious about swarming. Once an egg has been placed in a swarm cell it means you only have between five and eight days until the colony could swarm. We had to break off every single queen cell. This will not prevent the swarm from happening in future but it will delay it a bit. Now it's possible that they'll change their mind about swarming for the time being but at least now we have another week to prepare for it!
This drone brood comb was fully capped, as were many others in this hive, so I sliced it all off to see what level of mite infestation there was.
It's at times like this I'm very glad I wear latex gloves during inspections! This is a varroa mite clearly visible on the pupa here. I only found a couple of mites in all the drone brood I inspected so I'm confident that the level of infestation here is still moderately low (but that would change rapidly if the colony next door were to collapse - a large number of starving bees would come here in desperation, along with all their parasites!)
See the clear difference between the two colonies here!I found this photo above probably the most upsetting one of the whole day (and there have been some pretty gruesome sights today!). These two colonies have been raised from sister queens, both of them actually hatched out on the same day. They have both stayed here, within a few feet of each other. They have both had identical varroa treatment, both in dosages and timing, yet within 12 months one colony is already in full health and about to swarm (just like her mother did, this time last year), yet the other is potentially within weeks of complete colony collapse, entirely due to varroa infestation.
It shows so clearly just what a horrendous menace the varroa mite is to bees.
