It's now necessary for us continue with the varroa treatment plan we started several weeks ago. It is not recommended to disturb colonies with virgin queens but this is an ideal opportunity for varroa treatment with them being in a broodless state. It means that all the varroa mites present (and there has been a sizeable infestation here, especially in N1 and N2) are currently only surviving on adult bees, just waiting for some suitable bee brood to infest.
If we insert some bait frames now, every varroa mite in the colony will enter them to breed. Destroying these bait frames before they hatch out should eradicate the entire infestation without using any chemicals at all.
This does of course mean sacrificing some frames of otherwise perfectly healthy bee brood, but with varroa mites being such a devastating parasite it is a sacrifice well worth making.
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Beatrix: 1 mite drop in a week
We have already successfully used the bait comb treatment on this colony - it now only shows one single mite drop in a week, a phenomenal reduction from the original infestation. We are now using it to provide the bait combs for the two original nucs.
We selected two suitable frames, one for each nuc. They need to be full of eggs and larvae. This one is ideal - a small amount of pollen stored around the edges and the rest of it full on both sides with freshly laid eggs. These stand up on one end and look like minuscule grains of rice.
We have selected young eggs on purpose, rather than developed larvae, so that the nucleus colonies can actually use some eggs to raise a new queen, just in case the single queen cells I left in each one have not yet produced a queen. If they don't need to raise a queen they will just assume these eggs are hers and treat them as their own.
This other frame is in an identical state, with plenty of fresh eggs and a small quantity of developed larvae.
I carefully brushed every single bee off these two frames and carried them over to the two nucs.
N1 first. There was no sign of a queen or any brood at all so we removed one frame of stored honey and placed the bait frame in the centre, where you would normally expect to find brood developing.
N2 next. This is in an identical state - no sign of a queen and no brood at all.
Having brushed off every bee from the two frames of stores we swapped them over to Bea's colony. We closed these three colonies up and continued with the next ones..
Charlotte: zero mite drop in a week.
This colony has also had successful bait comb treatment and will provide the bait comb for the new hive.
As we scanned through the brood frames looking for suitable ones to remove we saw a right mess on this one - a wax moth larva [see here] has been eating a load of the brood cappings! As soon as I took the photo above my wife shrieked - there was an inch-long wiggly thing waving at us out of the brood! It is actually just visible in the photo above, on the far left side, caught just before it popped out and did the gruesome wiggle at us!
I quickly dug away the cappings where it was with my hive tool but it had already popped back in, ghastly creature! It made our skin crawl to look at it, I just hope a bee will be quicker than I was the next time it comes out for air! Yuck!!.
New Hive: 30 mite drop in a week.
This is the first bait comb frame, loads of young larvae on both sides.
And this is the second frame, slightly further developed larvae but still unsealed, so an ideal temptation for a varroa mite!There was also no sign of a laying queen in this colony yet but she would only be a week old now - she should be laying within the next few days, hopefully.
There is nothing more we can do now but wait for a fortnight and then remove and destroy all these bait combs and hopefully all the varroa mites with them!
