Your practice of establishing lots of nucs in the Spring with your own queens and giving them fresh foundation mimics natural swarming. New combs yield larger bees which are more vigorous. You are a wise beekeeper. Love watching your videos.
The advantages of the North country: 1) longer hours of sunlight in summer resulting in more honey production. 2) longer winter's resulting in less mite propagation. Fast and furious beekeeping.
Definitely pros and cons. Down here in the south US I have no brood break whatsoever. I treat with only OAV, 5 treatments, 5 days apart. I do that every 2-3 months depending on need. A natural brood break sounds amazing, but I wouldn't want to deal with 5 months of winter temps! You seem to have almost mastered your climate though, very impressive.
@@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog My philosophy has been not to contribute to mite treatments that they will build resistance too (so I don't become reliant on a potentially fading treatment). And so far I haven't needed to do more than OAV. I am considering buying a set of Apivar strips to keep on hand in the worst cases though. I have the leisure of treating with OAV 5-6 times a year because I am a hobbyist with 10 hives. I can imagine how that would really impact a commercial keeper though.
@@kylew1385 I am living in state of Washington and had no brood break also. But now I using insulation of queen. From plastic queen excluder I making queen insulater and around 5-10 September I putting queen to the insulater. By the end of September there is no any brood. In the end of October I treat bees with oxalic acid by solution with seyrange. Sorry for mistakes because English is my third language. I also hobyyst and my advise to you, please, buy queen catchers for yours 10 colonys. On the next season make window in your plastic foundation under top bar, let bees build it. Then any time (September or October)you could catch your queen by queen catcher and by thred to tie in the window that frame. After all brood are gone (24 days) you could treat your bees ONLY ONE TIMES. By the way I was reading somewhere it is harmful to treat bees with oxalic acid more than one times a year. You could keep your queen in that device even until the February or depending of weather and realize her. I am afraid to use queen catcher, because around of Seattle sometimes is cold and bees could leave queen and went to look for honey. I hope you understand me properly. The method above created some Ukrainian beekeepers. Thank you.
How do these bees manage to take a cleansing flight over the winter when the weather may permit it? Am I to understand that they won’t have any possibility to do so? I am really amazed to see the number of hives you manage and winter! Any losses during the winter? What kind of percentage are we looking at if you do? I live in Quebec and am just starting in bee keeping and don’t know much at this stage. I am sure though that your bees must be genetically winter hardy. Thank you for sharing. God bless.
I love your videos and have learned a lot from them. I got my first nuc here in SE Texas mid August and have already split that hive. I'm doing all 10 frame deep and in the honey boxes plan on spacing out 9 frames like you do. I'm going to be strictly honey producer like you. Next year when we start making drones again I plan on dividing a 10 frame deep into four 2 frame compartments (queen castle). Then when they build up convert that 10 frame into two 5 frame nucs by moving the 2 outer frames on each side and the outer divider boards and put the 2 frames from each side into another 10 frame deep with a center divided board. making two 10 frame boxes with two 5 frame nucs in each box. by the time they build those nucs out the honey flow will be on. My question to you is I see you put three 6 frame nucs together with queen excluders on them with two 10 frame deeps on top for honey. So you have bees from 3 different brood hives working on the same honey boxes. Have you experienced fighting and killing of queens by mixing those hive together in the honey boxes? Because I will try putting and excluder on my 10 frame boxes with two 5 frame nucs in them then a 10 frame deep honey box on top of that. Do you think that will work? Again thank you for all the great videos and the valuable information you put out. As a new beekeeper your channel and others like you have been a fantastic learning tool.
Looks as if your stock already shows some nice resistance to mites. Mite drop numbers seem pretty low, if you consider that theese numbers are after an OA vapor treatment and no treatment between the apivar spring, and this OA late fall treatment. Your long winter broodbreak might help, apivar in spring might be a very effective treatment, but still... congratulations!
Boy mites have been a battle here in Michigan. I'm going to try Apivar this spring, then formic pro in August, and oxalic acid in October. I did 4 oxalic treatments this spring, then formic in August do to high mite levels, and when I hit them with oxalic in October there was a huge drop. It just feels like a huge battle.
Instead of pumping chemicals waisting money try pulling off the sealed brood for splits hit the parent colony with OAV then hit the splits 10 days later with OA . Aster bloom was so huge we had plenty of extra brood for late splits and using those splits as form of mite treatment
DO you use formic acid at all? Apivar didn't touch the mite loads at all this year. I don't like formic acid, but if it works I can use it in the spring. I do use Oxalic acid in the fall and I'm waiting for the brooding to stop so that I can treat. The recent cold weather should get them to slow down soon.
How long were the strips in? I had to leave some in 7 weeks because of rain and I was worried because the instructions said 6 weeks if I remember correctly. When I removed them it was 70 degrees and the hives look fine. I’m only a hobby beekeeper with a few hives and losing a hive for me is a big deal.
I did two treatments of oav last month and got a bottom board drop of about 50 both times. I might do another if it warms up. I think I will try apivar early next spring as well.Thanks
Wow Ian, I just treated my hives last Sunday with Oxalic Acid vapour, I will check my botton board this week as i do the wrapping for the winter. Would you normally be putting your hives indoors this late or were you caught off guard by the early storm and all the water/flooding?
If you forgot strips, what results? Strip stays in place emitting a low non lethal dose on mites, which may lead to a tolerance? Then apivar strips eventually have no effect. ?
@@aCanadianBeekeepersBlog Ian we are fortunate that varroa hasn't got here yet, last country standing but it will happen. We are sub tropical where I am and our main issue is SHB they just love it here. A strong hive helps but they just corral them so lots of squishing with hive tools when opening lid.
If your bees are a hobby, not commercial let them swarm messes up the cycle of mites. That’s how Ferrell bees address this issue, small clusters multiple swarms through year.
I can't see any advantage to southern bee keeping . No way I'd wanta deal with the pest and short flows . Lug syrup all summer .. I think we had short week long dearth late Aug only because Goldenrod was late .. flow starts end of April early May and really gets going mid June .. dealing with extreme heat no thanks
How many times you wack a huge with a ceiling fan bringing the hives in? I put out an eye years ago and have little to no depth perception so I know if take out a fan or two lol.
@SeedsandArrowsFrontier As long as the colonies are strong and they have good ventilation and enough food stores, there is no need to worry about the cold. Cold does not really kill bees. Humidity does. I winter my bees outside with insulation on the inner cover to avoid condensation. They overwinter just fine, and it gets cold here in Finland too.
hello from Greece! 3 day ago i treaded my broodless colonies with oxalic acid vaporazation. Today i saw dead varroa and i did test for varroa and the resalts was in fist hive 100 bees 2 varroa and in second hive 145 bees 1 varroa. My question is ....how many days all mites can be dead and the colonie is free of varroa?? when can we do the test for varroa so we can see
I can only imagine your cost to treat your hives with Apivar. I treat with Apivar in the spring too and i buy mine from Mann Lake at $130 for a 50 pack X2, and I hate throwing that money out there every spring. I do the Oxalic in late October also. Do you treat all your hives with Apivar in the spring? If so, i sure hope your getting a bulk price.
"Just hammer'em. Kill those little bastards!!" Wise words :-) I'm not a fan of the winter either anymore, but it does help us get to the mites, and there is another opportunity of winter: it kills wax moth.
That's okay I don't think I want to be an iceberg beekeeper. That's for them crazy Canadians up there they can have all they wanted my snow and ice lol😨😨😨😩
