February Update

Getting ready for the new season

As we gradually approach the start of the season, which I arbitrarily consider to the 1st March, there is a fair amount of preparatory work to do.

At the moment its mostly sorting out the frames.

The super frames that have been drawn out and OK to use again are sprayed with stuff called Certan which kills a parasite that can take up residence in the comb in the frames.

In an unusual display of optimism I have decided to get frames in all the small nuc boxes I made last year to deal with any new colonies I get from the swarming season and also to fill all the supers with frames ready for the honey extractions.

Some of the frames have foundation residues so they are scraped clean and then put in a Burco with a weak bleach solution to kill any bugs. They are yhen scraped with a wire brush and claewned in clean water.

Varroa Treatment

The first job of the new year was to do the  Winter Varroa treatment
Varroa are nasty mites that lay their eggs in the cells with the bee eggs, hatch and do horrible things to the bees.
I have a page on the web site about them here.
I am a bit late doing it this year and the temperature was about zero degrees when I did Ravensden. Despite this The Usual Suspects couldn't just ignore me, they had to come out and say hello.
I took the opportunity to check how their fondant blocks were going - 5 of 8 at Scald End needed more, 4 of 10 at Ravensden.

Bees on the internet

A blog I follow specialises in bee  photographs and they often win awards and are used commercially.
This is a photo he posted recently.

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A cure for varroa?

Varroa is probably the greatest threat to honey bees.There are treatments that aim to reduce the level of the mites in hives but the mites can become immune to the treatment and the cost of introducing a new treatment is so prohibitive its difficult to get new ones approved.
Recently it was announced a possible new treatment has been discovered. To say 'discovered' could suggest it has been the product of carefully targeted and precise medical research. However it wasn't and was 'discovered' purely by accident.

Scientists were working on introducing genetic material into the mites by adding it to a sugar feed which the bees would take up and then it it would be taken up by the mites when they fed on the bees and the mites then died.

Different types of material were used and all had successful results. They then tried genetic material that should have had no effect but it produced exactly the same results.

They then discovered the active ingredient was in fact Lithium Chloride, something used in the production of the genetic material.

The oxalic acid I use is fairly unpleasant stuff but Lithium salts have been used as a psychiatric drug and has some nasty side effects.  It seems patents have been taken out so at some time in the future some medication might appear on the market.