Not much honey this year, even the bee’s are avoiding 2020. The hives were doing pretty well for most of the summer. one of our three new colonies had a huge population and has been packing away the honey. We might be able to get a few frames for our own personal use – but that’s about it.

The goal this year was to have most if not all the hives survive through winter. We’ve taken more precautions including treating for varroa mites earlier. Since we didn’t know what our honey situation would be- I looked into treatments that would allow us to treat and then possibly harvest honey after the treatment.

Most commercial varroa treatments aren’t approved for use when harvesting honey, but I did find that Formic Pro, an acid – works to penetrate the brood and is safe to use prior to harvest. We started the treatment in August. We elected to go with the longer, but safer single strip method. This requires us to pull out the treatment strip and replace it after 10 days.

In checking the hives, we noted that our yellow hive (one of the new hives) seemed low on bees, and we couldn’t see any brood, larva, or eggs. This usually means the queen has died, absconded, or the hive may have swarmed.

After some quick research, we found a supplier for queens nearby and bought a brand new Russian queen. She was readily accepted and we are happy to report she looks good. The hive has brood, larva, and eggs – and we even managed to spot her today while doing an inspection.

Our other hives are also doing well- we successfully saw three of the four queens. One thing we need to watch, however, we were seeing a few bees with malformed wings. This is a sign that the hive does have a varroa infestation – treatment or not. We’ll give them a week and look again. If it still looks questionable – we will treat again using regular Apivar.

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