Mite Treatment 2023 transcript

this treatment day we're beginning to treat our colonies and I thought I'd explain a little bit of the process we go through we do have a video showing us using apiguard it was either done last year or the year before and I'll put a link to it at the end of this video but this is our Walmart yard these are not our best colonies Seth was telling me some bees he was in yesterday were quite strong it could have something to do with the fact that we got 400 nukes in this same yard too maybe a little bit too much competition I don't know they did make a little honey so what we do is we strip the lids off and the first thing we looked at is the population we're in a hurry so we're not trying to go through every brood Nest right now we're on the lookout for Duds or something that doesn't have enough bees obviously depleted and we will dig into that colony to see if it has brood or not if it has brood it's left and we treat it normally if it doesn't have any brood the Box comes off and gets put over in a skateboard on another Colony this yard is entirely singles which means they'll all get a 25 gram dose if they're double deeps we give them a 50 gram dose unless the weather is really hot if it gets into the low mid 90s we decrease those doses accordingly sometimes we'll do a half a dose and do it twice as often in other words a half a dose every five to seven days four times in a row until we're finished when we're able to give them a full dose again in this case 25 grams for a single or 50 for a double we'll come back within 10 to 12 days and give them their second dose and then that's it they've only got two rounds I just looked at the weather we're in the low to mid 80s this week and we have one day that's going to be 90 in about five days from now so I'm comfortable giving these bees a full dose so what laws we do really basically they've already got the rims on them so we watch for colonies like this one over here that doesn't have many bees first thing I do is look at the lid and see what the lid says this lid says nothing so um we didn't record anything like a new queen or a cell introduced or anything like that and also we got to check all of these for weight and that's pretty simple we just have them and check them for weight this frame has some old remnants of brood and some eggs and larvae yeah this is Queen right so there's something different about this Colony it has no markings on the lid so that tells me that it's in probably an older Queen and we will probably re-queen this before the season's over the APA guards are going pretty much as far as close to the center as possible but not directly under the feed hole before we leave we'll have to every colony and decide whether we want to give them a one or two gallon bucket so far we haven't had to feed a lot what do you think Seth like one in three colonies needs feed something like that one in four or five yeah for some reason just the way the weather worked and the Honey flow worked the bees backfilled their brood Nest significantly this year so the singles aren't real light like they are some year some years you take the honey supers off at the end of the flow and you've taken virtually all their food and you have to feed them immediately we're not running into that this year there's a few here and there that are like that but for the most part these little singles still have 10 or 15 or 20 pounds in them and if they don't need feeding right now we won't because I don't want to plug up or congest The Brood Nest the golden rod in this area the main Golden Rod flow is going to start in about three weeks we really want to have this treatment as done as possible by that time because when that pollen starts to come in these bees will start to rear brood in earnest and that's a good time to start giving them a trickle flow of something thin like 1.5 Parts water to one part sugar as the pollen and the little bit of nectares coming in off the Golden Rod we add that food and we create that chemistry that I talk about in several of our videos it's a good time to feed is during a pollen flow honestly so if they don't need feed right now we're not going to do it so we don't constrict The Brood nest pick it up in a couple weeks when we get towards the end of this treatment period so basically all we have to do now you can see they're all Jesse just we've only been here 10 minutes Jesse's already got the treatment on all the colonies I checked this one already this was smaller and I checked it it has a brand new Queen for some reason they raised a new Queen and they're smaller so this is ready to check for weight and feed and then we move on we go pretty rapidly now later when we're done with our ape guard treatment that's the time when we will actually literally go into every colony and check the brood pattern and check check what the queen is doing see what's going on and make a I guess end of the season judgment on that particular colony and yeah there will be a few Duds there might be some Duds in here right now that we're not realizing because we're not digging in too deep we're really only looking at the callings that don't have many bees and again this call these colonies here do not have as many bees as some of our colonies do that's just the way it is some yards end up better than others I don't see anything wrong I don't see any red flags they're just not as many Bee bodies let's walk along here they'll be fine for winter I we don't need massive colonies going into winter in fact I don't even want them anymore just eat a lot of food and build up early and swarm early next year we're going to try to do something a little different I believe so far in the past we've used Queens a lot from Chris Warner for making nukes in the spring and this coming year we're going to try to make more nukes for sale with our own Queen cells which means our new production will probably be pushed back a week or two because we can't rear those early Queens like we pick up from Chris this car looks like it's an okay shape it's just not quite as strong as some of the other yards alrighty Let's uh let's check them for weight and feed them we'll move on to the next yard just using the hive tool prying them loose on the pallet and see how the Box feels it feels light they'll get a bucket and feels heavy they won't simple as that let me get a bucket yeah some of them are still pretty heavy it'd be a mistake to feed something like that right now [Music] not many bees in that one but I checked it it's Queen right that's right we did add some nukes here to replenish some empty spots that's probably what it is this is interesting this doesn't happen very often usually we have to do a lot of feeding as soon as we take the honey supers off of singles like this this is actually one of the beauty of pallets it's very simple to check for weight individual bottom boards you can do the same so if we pull the cap we know it needs a bucket there's three Brandon I gotta stop you for a moment sure you've been here all summer what do you think I like it he likes it I like it he's got the disease he's got he's got it y'all got the book for the bug not everybody not everybody comes out with the bug trust me some people only last a week or two or three wow only three neat feet out all these colonies oh there's more than three I think there might be five maybe five okay so far that's different and of course we gotta start making time for all these nukes finalize these things they don't need food immediately but at some point they will to finish off for winter I think we've got about 400 nuke boxes that are going to overwinter either in Nuke boxes or over a double screen board it's good news I guess just so we need more colonies right now oh yeah yeah Up and Up and Up Up and Up and Up yeah how you doing this here what are you sitting at right now yeah okay good pretty okay for running mate noobs awesome yeah Seth made a lot Queens is here he's also not sure that's what he wants to do that was a lot of work gets in the way of real beekeeping okay well got these all counted out fuels and 13 double so the singles are going to get a half dose of 25. milliliters and the doubles are going to get 50 milliliters according to uh it's going to be a little cooler this week and it was last week too foreign 66 full doses in one of these tubs and we ordered quite a lot of it adds up too this stuff isn't exactly cheap I'll tell you what though using this is cheaper than using apevar back when I used it really yeah the last year we did apevar the bill was 18 000.

I haven't done the math on this but it's significantly less syringe there uh the half dose and the full dose there so it makes it easy then I don't have to really like really look look yeah kind of stir it every time before you use it yeah it won't draw up very well if you don't thank you let's see what the other one looks like under the lid there okay that's about what we'd expect this time of year yeah if that's a light double go ahead and give it a two gallon bucket that's the only colony in the whole yard that needed feed doubles and singles pretty heavy yard um heavy this is a strong yard of bees and these double deeps in this yard are very heavy that's one of the differences with double thieves is that feeding is not the issue it is with singles these honestly wouldn't have to be fed at all to make it till next spring but here in a few weeks when the treatments are over we will give them some a little bit of stimulation see of course the double Deep's got a full 50 grams plenty of bees double deeps over winter with a lot more bees than singles do in general it's one of the advantages to them if you're a package producer or you like to make lots of nukes double deeps absolutely work better gives you a lot more Assets in the spring to work with more bees more frames more honey more brood more everything of course singles have the advantage of being more efficient when it comes to treatment and getting through winter without you know as many pounds of food pros and cons to both it's a pretty good yard of these here video come on nice looking singles nice looking singles that's a dud why that's why I moved it off the pallet we literally just take the Duds there's two in this yard put them over a b Escape which is on top of the rim and over the thymol treatment and then the next time we come back we can get those boxes and they've got nothing in them just you know hopelessly queenless bees treat them like a honey super and then get them off and take them to the cooler for the winter definitely shrinking rude nests have been shrinking for a month now there's just a couple of frames of brood in most of these by the time they're ready for winter these will just be five to eight frames of bees singles definitely definitely overwinter with less peas and a double deep that one's kind of on the small side these smaller ones I check them make sure they got to lay in clean make sure they're not good foreign 's got a few more bees all in all everything's looking pretty good not too many Duds last yard had three or four yards before that had none last yard Fellers aren't you glad so you so you guys got 10 yards yesterday right I think so yeah we're only getting seven today we've got well we got such a late start it was lunch by the time we started no yeah we're doing good I'm just not going to take forever to get the first round on thankfully oh there's the queen right there marker sure tell us how you do it Seth you see the big spider on the back of that box oh the granddaddy long leg them don't bother me black widows I draw the line yeah we and we do we see black widows back there in those handles sometimes I got hit by a black would I ever tell you about that I got um I had to cut cut out part of my thumb it was just rotting it wouldn't heal it hurt too huh it's gnarly yeah okay looks like a decent yard yeah okay I just got a phone call from a friend in Nebraska that kind of inspired me to talk a little bit more about APA guard I think I need to be a little more concise and what I suggest his call was about a friend of his actually who had was reporting colonies that were removing dead brood after an apagard treatment so my first question was what was the temperature he said it was 100 degrees my next question was was it a full dose or half a dose it was a full dose well a full dose ape guard at 100 degrees is just asking for trouble I proved it to myself I've ruined a bunch of colonies years ago decades ago when I first used apiguard I gave a bunch of colonies a full dose in the upper 90s and it just ruined them all um if it's first of all when it gets 95 or 100 degrees I don't do a Picard at all but if it's in the low 90s or upper 80s I feel comfortable doing a half a dose on a double deep like this one a half a dose would be uh 25 or 30 grams of full dose would be 50 grams so knowing that it was going to be warm today and actually the next couple days it's supposed to get into the low to mid 90s we just gave them the 30 gram which is a half a dose the singles a normal dose for us is 30 grams we only gave them 20. yeah temperature matters when you're doing this apiguard it's really easy to ruin a colony giving them either too much or too hot I really don't like using this stuff if it's over 82 but sometimes you got to do what you got to do so basically anything up to 82 perhaps 85 we shoot for the half a dose or excuse me the full dose and if it's over 82 or 85 we definitely go for the half a dose and if it's over 90 we don't do it at all we'll just wait and that's not good either of course I mean if you got a treat for mites there's a reason but boy you can ruin a colony real quick over 90 degrees definitely over 95 I wouldn't do anything at all I'd wait till cooler weather and I don't know the answer to that that's one of the problems with Vapor guard now a lot of times people think because the dose is gone that it's done working and that's not entirely true paper guard or the thymol and apiguard is absorbed by The Colony I guess the wooden wear and the beeswax and kind of persists for a little while if you put your nose down real close even when the dosage of a guard is gone you can smell thymol for a little while initially you'd think that's a bad thing you know if it's being absorbed by beeswax but the good news is that it dissipates very quickly even the stuff that's absorbed by beeswax gases often and just kind of disappears pretty quick within a week it's gone that's why even though a dose is totally gone on the card it can still be effective for a little while after afterwards so that was a 30 no excuse me this was a 20 gram dose would have normally been 30 and it's about half gone in just two days three days and by the in two days from now supposed to get into the low to mid 90s and that'll be completely gone so I think we kind of just barely scooted under the heat wave that's about to come and thankfully we got it done because I really don't want to go into late August without our bees being finished you know the treatment finished because that's when they start rearing their winter bees I don't like rearing I don't like using apiguard when I know the bees are trying to brood up for this fall build up I call it when the Golden Rod starts coming in that pollen will normally stimulate them I don't want to shut that down I want them to start rearing winter bees in late August early September so in my view it's really important to get this stuff on in early August and get it off a few weeks later anyway I guess we're doing okay it's warm here it's about 85 86 degrees and again supposed to be 92 94 here in a couple days I'm missing anything Seth that's about it I think that's about it so we've changed the way our boxes are getting robbed we recently built this roof and we created a long overhang it's about five or six feet under here I'm just putting our stacks of supers under here so the bees that are about a quarter mile away can come down here and clean them out we were taking a trailer up to them but now we're having them come to us and this it works they're out of the rain you don't have to move them very far and I know a lot of people really question the wisdom of us doing this but I really like to get our supers nice and dry before we put them away for the winter keeps them and keeps the comb in better shape and mind you so Seth is sorting supers onto pallets in preparation for going to the cooler we rent cooler space at a food bank in town and very lucky to have that I used to use wax moth crystals for keeping our supers from getting messed up with wax moths I never liked using it I still don't like using it and having this cooler that we can rent has really been a blessing getting ready to take this load up there we'll have a lot of pallets the boxes up there before we're done and they're great folks anytime we come they'll load us up or on Lotus whatever we need and give us a good rate and that's why this is doable so we're lucky I'm at our medium supers are mostly Newcomb there's very little comb that has had any Root Root in them but I still like keeping them in the cooler instead of outside or with wax moth crystals so you seal them with cardboard and and wrap them up and then in the cooler the cooler is Big you could park a darn semi truck in that cooler they got up there and they'll stack them you know a couple pallets high in the cooler if we got something we feel like the wax moth and and or high beetles are starting to get into a little bit they'll put them in a freezer for us for a day or two kills everything before they move it into a cooler that is kept at about 38 or 39 degrees so let's see what else can I say about that I'll put a link [Music] description a little video on that cooler situation maybe at the end of this video I'd put the same link we'll see we are in the middle of treating bees with apric but today is so hot that we're not doing it we've got a cool spell coming up starting tomorrow actually it's going to drop down into the mid 80s so I feel comfortable putting the ape guard on at that temperature I don't like I don't even like putting half doses on when it's in the mid 90s or something like that so we're getting it done we've got every Colony has had its first treatment and we're going to start doing the second treatment tomorrow just too hot today and we got to get this tour done anyway so also you can see we're starting to stockpile HDO plywood we've got 14 units right now I think that might get us through the winter we've got a lot of lids and bottom boards to build both for us and for the store and double springboards that's right so I hear the staple gun who's in there working Elena Celine is working yeah okay it looks about lobsters she looks about Loft yeah she was working in the garden my guess is she's sunburned by now and all of those deeps that's just feeders and stuff that does not have to go to the cooler that will be stored under this roof for the winter but this comb is definitely going to the cooler the cooler all right we'll see when you get back he'll have another load when you get back good camera you get my light set here that's better okay so Selena's assembling Lids on this day away from beekeeping her Lids are so simple to reassemble so it was getting hot out there wasn't it it was very hot she was working on the garden pulling weeds and stuff and uh after lunch we just had her come in here we don't want our beekeepers to have heat stroke