The 2 remaining hives have had a lot of dead bees in front of the entrance - but have seemed happy enough. The bees have been out on the warmer days collecting pollen - a sign, we are told, that there is brood within.
I have been reading Steve Benbow's Urban Beekeeper, a fascinating account of keeping bees in Central London. He mentioned using oxalic acid solution to control varroa in winter, so thought it would be worth a try. Did a search and came up with a number of pages about it such as on Scientificbeekeeping.com, and a paper by Charriere and Imdorf. I thought it worth a try, so made up a 3.5% solution of oxalic (wood bleach from Bunnings) in 1:1 sugar solution to trial. Removed the Coreflute board from under hive 3 and made a sticky board using vaseline, as described in the blog The Walden Effect, in order to count any mites.
Opened up both hives - seemed to have a lot of food stores in the top 2 boxes. Hive 1 had some burr comb on the top of the bars in box 1, containing some brood. Saw a varroa mite on one of the larvae.
Tried to spray the frames with 5ml each for bottom 2 boxes in each hive, but the sprayer from the $2 shop didn't work! Quickly moved to a squezy plant waterer, but not able to regulate dose. Hope the treatment works - a bit of a concern because literature emphasises the need to work with broodless frames because oxalic does not get into brood cells.
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| Sticky board, oxalic acid, sprayer etc. |
