Hello All,
I'm a total newbie here, just hived my first package last Saturday
question about resistance
do the mites become resistant as a result of the way an individual hive is treated, or can a newly established hive get contaminated with mites that are already resistant?
Also, an update on my first package
I thought I was being real smart and pried the little metal disc that was stapled to the top of the queen cage up about 3/8 inch and used it to suspend the cage between 2 frames. The guy at Brushy Mountain suggested putting the cage near the top of the frame since we are having a cool snap, I guess it would be warmer there. Well, impatient me figured out after 2 days (yesterday) that since I have a screened bottom board I could look in from the bottom and see what's going on without opening the hive. I peek in and there's bee's everywhere, but I also see something in there that's not a frame bottom. Hard to tell what I'm seeing. Could it be the queen cage has fallen to the bottom? That wouldn't be good. I wait another day and worry about it. Today I opened the hive up and in fact the cage has fallen to the bottom. I pull enough frames out to reach in and retrieve it and the queen is still in there ok. With my untrained eye I don't see any sign of her coming close to escaping so (this may have been dumb, tell me if it was) I rupture the screen on the cage to release her and stick the cage back in the hive and close it back up. a couple of hours later I went and looked again and all the bee's are working on comb and the queen is running around and looks fine. So, I think I'm in pretty good shape. The cool snap is over and the weather is lookin pretty good. The bee's are doing orientation flight and taking the syrup.
I thank you folks for all the excellent info that is available on this board
Dave