Days 14 & 15

24 mites for the last two days.

Days 12 & 13

12 Mites were found for the two day period.

day 10 & 11

Looks like I might have ton count every day now. The count has gone up and the pollen is unreal. What a waste that it is just getting wiped off my sticky board onto the ground! 29 today for the two days.

Day 8 & 9

Today's count was 21. To be honest there was probably more, but the count was hard to do because of all the pollen on the board. Lots of bright yellow, grey and a brownish color nuggets.

Day 7

6 mites found today.

Days 5 & 6

6 mites total for the 48 hour period.

3 &4 day check

I forgot to count my mites yesterday, so todays count of 9 is for two days!

2 day mite check and pupae

Today's count was 16 mites.

I notice two pupae in front of the hive. This is supposed to be a sign of small cell bees doing their job of clearing out mite infested brood.

Mite count 24 hours post treatment

13 mites were found on the sticky board today.

I will keep checking for the next 14 day till all the brood that was treated had a chance to hatch.

Adding a shallow for spring feeing

After pulling the fume board off I added a shallow for them to work on. I plan on feeding them in hope of them pulling out a couple more frames that I will freeze over winter and feed back to them in the spring.

24 hours after treatment

After 24 hours it time to take the fume board off. All the formic acid should be evaporated by that time.




I have to be careful pulling the tape off the bottom of the hive because John warned me that hive beetles would be hiding under there after the treatment. I was happy to only see about 6 or 7 total. I smashed them w/ my hive tool.













I marked my sticky into quarters to help w/ the mite count. It went back on the hive and I will do a count soon today to see how many mites have fallen out of the brood onto it.

Mite treatment

John putting fume board on brood boxes.













Tin foil and painters tape is used to seal off the screened bottom board.

















John tapes up any cracks.

Formic Acid mixture

Formic acid mixed w/ honey bee heathy

Fume board goes above brood nest. Heat from brood nest will make the formic acid mixture evaportate. Formic acid is heavier than air so it drops down to the brood nest and kills the mites even in capped brood.

John made this fume board and was nice enough to sell it to me so I didn't have to make my own.

My mite board w/ the 14 mites before treatment.

14 Mites were counted today

I did a 24 hour count to see what my mite count was before and after the mite treatment.

Surprisingly only 14 mites were found. I believe 50-60 is the you better do something number.

Pictures and more info to follow shortly.

Formic Acid treatment

I have decided to take my friend John's advise about treating for mites. I'm pretty sure I lost the last hive to mites, so as much as I don't like it, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do a sticky board count for 24 hours before we do the treatment to see what I get and then do another count after treatment for 24 hours.

Here is a link for info and instructions for treating w/ formic acid.

Hive work today

I was worried about mites crawling back up into the hive w/ it sitting on the table, so I put the hive on cinder blocks to give it plenty of drop distance. I will also put some D. earth under the hive after it rains today.

I found one hive beetle in my AJ's beetle eater, two running on the top lip with 2 wax moth larvae and one moth. I squished all of them with my hive tool.

The bees seem to be in bad temperament today when moving them onto the bricks. Probably stung 10 time on my gloves. A storm is rolling in so maybe that accounts for the foul mood.

Today is the first time I have seen the queen since I installed the package.

The picture of comb is a frame that was drawn from a popsicle stick starter. The cells looked huge. I will have to take a ruler out next time and measure the cell size. These bees were supposed to be reduced to small cell already, but it looks to be at least 5.2mm. Maybe because its honey storage area? If so then what does it do when we give them sheets of small cell to store honey? I would like to move to all foundationless. I believe they need differant sizes for differant use.