I haven't posted since spring, in late April my yard collapsed and over the period of four weeks I lost all six hives. Looking back the loss was due to my mis management starting in the late fall. The gruesome details are to follow which starts with missing a proper mite treatment in January. The warmer winter last year didn't provide a brood break to reduce the mite population and the lack of a good freeze thanks to climate change kept the SHB population higher than usual going into the spring. To deal with the mites I hit the hives hard with OAV during March and at the same time tried a non-approved treatment for the SHB's. Well not only did I kill the mites and SHB's I also decimated my hives. Over the course of three weeks the ground around the hives was two inches deep with dead or dying bees. Nothing I did would stop the die off.
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Not sure if anybody has had to deal with a complete die off of six large hives with boxes of honey on top but the cleanup was nasty. By the time the hives died off the SHB's had moved back in and my only option was to power wash the honey out of the frames trying to save the foundation. Power washing twelve or more boxes full of honey loaded with SHB larva was a bit of a bee keeper's nightmare and something I hope never to attempt again. Probably washed about 12 gallons of honey out of the hives which is something even now I don't like thinking about.
After all the mess was cleaned up I had one small weak hive that needed a queen. Planning to stay in the game I found a nice queen from a local supplier and set her up in the weak hive. Things actually looked good for about a week till the SHB's came back with a vengeance from the earlier infestation. Well that was it, in about five or six weeks I went from six strong hives to a stack of empty boxes. Demoralized I hung two swarm boxes and walked away from the whole mess. My initial plan was to replace my losses with some nucs but I realized that my yard was loaded with SHB larva and bringing in more bees would be just killing them slowly.
I guess the bee gods still wanted me, in late June a small swarm move into one of my swarm boxes. I have babied the little swarm. Feed it, protected it through a hurricane and a tropical storm, moved it into the sun during a cold snap and so far it's part of my future bee yard.
I spent some time working on my 30-year-old Maine work boat as a distraction during the summer. She had been sitting under cover for about five years and need some TLC. Forgot how much fun a 21 foot CC is and how much I enjoy being on the ocean.
Just started sorting and cleaning all the equipment for the start of the new year. It's not fun power washing the wax moths off the frames and out of the supers but it goes pretty quickly. Not sure of how much is re-useable but I was moving over to plastic foundation and it has all survived so far. Only going to start back up with two nucs and the swarm this year and try to keep the operation small. Wife thinks I'm crazy to start up again and maybe I am.
Anyways it's good to be back