Apigaurd Mite Treatment Results and Late Summer Colony Assessments transcript

so we're getting to the end of our mite treatment period um we're going to start doing some mite washes to see how effective it was this particular yard has only been treated twice and it an overwintered yard it wasn't started from nukes or queen cells or any of that business so of all of our yards this would probably have the highest might load of any the last apogard video has generated some comments that i that were reoccurring uh was it's interesting how you know we get comments on the youtube channel and then also people come into our store and ask questions about what they saw and the three reoccurring questions have been about absconding and feeding and how effective it was some people seem to have problems with apagard not being real effective for them as far as absconding i've only had a major issue with that one time when i was in south georgia it's really before i understood the the mechanism of apogard very well it was about 95 degrees and i treated about 300 colonies with a full dose 50 grams of apogard and trashed a bunch of colonies basically because i don't know if you would call it absconding as as much as it might be better to say they were escaping i didn't realize that a full the instructions said you know 50 grams and i just did what the instructions said and i didn't realize that in excessive heat that that would be too much gave those 300 colonies 50 grams and they pretty much exited the box most of them were hanging out on the side of the box some were under the pallet i actually saw some colonies that were building comb under the box or under the pallet i should say that was pretty interesting to see the bees just couldn't take it at that temperature and uh what another interesting fact about that episode is that it didn't seem to bother the high beetles at all most of the colonies that exited their box and the high beetles just took over and slimed things terribly it really ruined all 300 colonies and then the other thing of course you know i have a habit of feeding at the same time as i uh treat and on that occasion that wasn't such a good idea because there was nobody in there taking the feed and the feed droop down on the landing boards and it caused robbing and stuff i generally and actually that leads to the next question that we seem to be getting over and over and that is about feeding at the same time we treat and i just except for that episode i don't have an issue with it i've i fed at the same time i treated with apagard thousands and thousands and thousands of times and it's just not an issue as long as the colony hasn't exited the box and absconded or something like that i'll put a link to the manufacturer's website talking about absconding and feeding at the same time they have some interesting takes on that when they address the question of feeding at the same time is treating they say the answers both yeah both yes and no and and their reasoning is interesting they talk about if you're feeding at the same time that you treat that the bees get pre-occupied with the feed and they don't touch or try to remove the apa guard as much that's not been my experience at all it's very interesting how so many beekeepers have different experiences i know several commercial beekeepers that use apagard and they feed at the same time also and they've never reported any issues with doing that anyway i'll put a a link to that website and maybe a quote up in the video talking about that a little bit um let's see the third question oh how effective it is i think it's a matter of understanding the temperatures and the quantities quite often you hear that you should give them a half a dose if it's a little warm and i think in many cases people are giving them a half a dose when maybe it should have been closer to a full dose because it's not really too hot we've given everybody all of our colonies this year the double deeps have all received a full 50 gram or you could call it a 50 milliliter dosage with zero issues i think it's been very effective and then all of our singles have been getting a 30 gram dose and i think it's been pretty effective we're going to do some mite washes in this yard because as i stated this yard is if there's going to be still some remaining mites in any of our yards it'll be this one because it only got treated twice now another thing that people need to understand is if you treat them and you come back five or seven days later and do a mic count you could have you could get a incorrect reading because you really have to kind of wait till the brood is hatched that was sealed at the time you treated this yard has been 18 days we just looked at our book to and to see what calendar date we were here and it was 18 days ago that we were here which is a long time that's plenty of time for the brood to hatch so all of the mites would have come out of that brood and we should get a correct correct reading on our mic count here seth is the official [Music] so we'll let him do the work again we'll find him some brood that is uh generally open brood that's where you'll find most of the mites and again we're using the easy check kit and uh 90 90 alcohol 70 works too so let's get to work and figure out if we need to treat again or not here john check this out get real close these bees really don't like this stuff you can see how this card got propolized in place yeah and you also notice that the card is offset we never put the card right under the hole where the bucket feeder is going to be you don't want that fee dribbling down on your thigh mall the bees really stay away from it at first you know you sometimes you come back the next day and you'll see a circle around your treatment where they're the bees are just not there they kind of stay to the other end or the sides of the box and that's something to be aware of when you're feeding with buckets you can't put it right over the thyme all you need to put it on in such a way that the bees can access it and they're not repelled away from the feed because of the thymol treatment this brood looks great they've gotten back to rearing brood again something i'm really liking to see right now is this pollen in this comb can you see that yeah three or four weeks ago these bees didn't have any pollen in the comb and now suddenly they've got plenty now the golden rod is just starting to bloom um the helianthus has been blooming for a couple weeks so that's a big part of brood production and as it is our habit in situations like this i always like somebody else to double check the frame none of us is foolproof when it comes to spotting queens and i'm no exception look at that that's a nice frame yeah they look really healthy [Music] zero zero that's what i like to hear zero and we'll use it just like i said in the last video uh we'll use this alcohol over and over until um it's too messed up zero zero perfect yeah zero zero i.e double zero we'll check a few more and uh as long as we keep getting that i'm happy two treatments seem to have done the job in this yard and of course almost all of our yards will be checked i i like to counsel people don't ever just accept the idea that whatever you did worked don't just assume your treatments work i highly recommend getting some way of checking for mites when you're finished and making sure that you're going into winter with a real low mite load so if we get a few more zeros or ones or something like that we'll know we're done treating in this yard we'll just go through every single colony and kind of do an assessment this will be the last time we really dive into the brood nest and check things out and make sure a colony is in good shape these larger colonies if they're full of bees and we get into the brood nest and see a couple frames of brood we're happy we're done [Music] what we really look for is when we pop a lid if we see a low population of bees or i don't know something just doesn't look right we'll dive into the brood nest and really look closely [Music] this is our last chance to make an assessment on the queens the quality of the queen how she's doing and it takes a lot of time to do that into the season assessment but i find that i have a much better overwintering percentage if we just give them one last check before we assume everything's you know on the fast track for winter the brood looks fine though that looks healthy you wanna double check me bob [Music] zero promises [Music] i honestly didn't expect nothing but zeros in this yard but apparently that's what we're getting we are done treating two treatments was very effective apparently i'm happy we're just going to open up every colony check them for weight make sure the queens are doing a decent job they have plenty of bees and move on to the next yard yeah this one john yeah no she's doing really well okay like really well okay that's all we need to see we see we see a couple frames like that that one looks pretty good i think i'm sure she knows he did right now so this queen doesn't have a very good pattern uh not as many bees as we like to see in a colony so we're that's why we're replacing her this time of year we like to use these push-in cages we make them out of eighth inch hardware cloth they're not not hard to make this one's about three inches by four inches it's about one inch high and we just fold it into a block we cut out this little door where we can release the queen in into the inside of the cage and then shut the door and we push it all the way to the center of the frame so the bees can't burrow under and get her out of there that's one of the good things about plastic foundation if you use a push-in cage on wax foundation a lot of times the bees will burrow from the back side and release it prematurely as long as you push this against the plastic foundation they can't do that and we've got a really good spot for putting this cage right here i don't know if you can see this john see i've got bees that are hatching right now that's the perfect place to put a push in cage because as these bees hatch they will instantly accept this queen as their own queen they don't know any different and then what's really great is right beside that patch we have some empty cells so the queen can start to lay right away and she lays in here for a while and some of these bees hatch and treat her as their own in about four or five days we can just pull the cage off and just let her go to the general population so here you go seth i'll hold the frame you go ahead and put that cage in there i'd put it right here sometimes it takes a few seconds before she figure out figures out the doors open okay she's in the cage okay perfect she's in there by herself now these bees are hatching it's a perfect scenario the other thing you have to watch out for is what you put against this cage the next comb you don't want to press brood against this cage you want to even be careful about pressing honey against this cage ideally you'd want some empty empty comb against it if you don't put something against it this cage can kind of come loose as the bees chew around it so something has to be against it to keep it from coming off of that mid-rib we'll find the perfect home to get against it this is a good one there's nothing in this comb so we can push this right against the cage okay i'm not going to say that this push-in cage is foolproof but it's the best way i know of introducing a queen without extra equipment like extra boxes and things i've had really good luck with it and every queen that we introduce this fall we'll use a pushing cage we've got a whole box of them takes a little more time it's a little more effort but planes are expensive i don't want to lose any if i can help it there's a reoccurring theme in this yard and that is that all the colonies that are not doing well are queens from last year this is one of the yards left that we still haven't replaced all the queens i'd say two-thirds of this yard is new queens and every time we are running across a colony we're not happy with every single one of them has been a queen from last year that's one of the reasons that i like to replace queens every year now jesse just found one that was doing a great job it was a queen from last year we can tell because it has a blue dot on it i told him to replace her too even though she's doing a really good job because next spring and moving into next summer she's going to be beyond middle aged and i want to replace her now while we have this chance that's it that's just our way of doing it it's not something everybody has to do it's just our way thanks john yes sir zero yeah this yard's turning out just like the last one we haven't found a mite yet that doesn't mean we don't have any it just means we're in good shape we have a very low count so although this yard's only had two treatments it will will not get any more this season we'll catch it again in november december with oxalic acid vaporization when they're broodless we're almost done with this yard and we haven't had to replace with just one queen so far which is actually a surprise even though these queens were all brand new this spring we usually have to replace a couple in a yard before going into winter sometimes more than that just because the queen is from the current year doesn't guarantee that she's perfect and will be a good queen going into winter in the next spring we don't hesitate to replace a queen even if she's just a few months old if she's not doing a good job i see some helianthus over there in the back of the field blooming it's been going for about two weeks and everything in the front here is all goldenrod which is about ready to pop it's perfect timing for the work we're doing making sure the queens are all good assessing mite loads finishing our treatments and then the bees are all ready to start rearing the winter bees that'll have to get them through till next february and march i'm going to go into winter in healthy condition i'm really happy with what i'm seeing we carry around this box full of queens with us from yard to yard these were harvested out of our own queen mating nukes last week should be enough to get us through the next seven to ten days as we move through the yards and check and reclaim some and then we have one more round of queen mating nukes that we can harvest about two weeks that'll give us all the queens i think we need to get through the season looks like she just got started again know i've got three frames full eggs here yeah what happens the guard kind of shuts them down and they come back with a vengeance [Music] yep all that right there's got is laid up everything that you see you think that's what we got i'm just a little surprised at all these zeros we haven't found them out yet right zero zero okay this april guard really worked for us i'm a little puzzled when people say it doesn't work i've always had pretty good luck with it most of the negatives about it are just like over treating when it's hot besides that i've had zero issues with it um these bees have taken their feed well uh two times in a row they still look good brood's coming back with a vengeance very healthy looking i have no problems with apriguard this year since jesse's gotten into a colony that's raising a bunch of drones which is uh not normal for this time of year we're gonna check this for mites and take a real good close look at the queen pattern looks okay that looks great okay there it is this is it what this is the right frame hold the right frame to shake okay yeah we got a bunch of open brood here yeah uh check me over i don't make any mistakes but you know look at that [Applause] we got a colony with three mites in here and this is the calling that's raising drones so that's very interesting so three mites in a alcohol wash of 300 bees is really the threshold that's what i would consider the limit a colony with three mites at this point would probably be in no danger of crashing before we got our mid-winter oxalic acid vaporization treatments on but uh we're here we've got the means to treat it one more time so just this one colony in this yard is going to get treated the rest are fine we've gotten nothing but zeros all day long until we ran into this colony i'm still feeling pretty good about everything oh yeah they prolifed the card perfectly yeah that's a lavish amount of proof right there yes sir there's no messing around let's just scrape that off we're starting to see a lot of propolis show up all right we actually bought 200 propolis traps we're going to put on our colonies as soon as we're done with all this treatment business which should be by next week looking forward i've never trapped propolis before i'm looking forward to playing around with that okay this yard was pretty good too nothing but zeros on the mic check this is one spot i'm not surprised though this yard has been split heavily this year we probably pulled three or four splits out of every colony and the last time we did it was about two months ago and we reclaimed every colony with a cell all of those brood break cycles really make a difference when mites are involved helps keep the mic count down when these callings are in good shape for the winter you'll notice that some of them have buckets and some don't it's because some of them are starting to get fairly heavy it's just the last day of august today and it's too early to plug these colonies out before winter uh we have to be careful not to get them too heavy while they're still time to rear brood we'll plug them out pretty good in late september to mid october but for right now i want every single to have at least three or four frames open without food that they can rear brood on and golden rod pollen is going to start coming in here any day um this this yard's gonna get sold or i should say it's for sale i don't know if it'll get sold or not but we have several yards of bees we're gonna try to sell this fall this is one of them and uh either way we can feed it very heavy before winter sets in