AeroviewBrewery

Thanks Diane, that's really helpful! I'll see if I can find someone closer before making you come all the way over.

Hi all I am looking for a DECA certified beek in Akl area sought to check a small backyard apiary. 3 hives + 2 nucs. No signs of AFB - check required for compliance only. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated - unsure what the going rate is these days but if a payment is expected, more than happy with that. Thank you in advance, Tapio

The bees will learn the new path, but it will take a bit of time and the confusion is likely become worse before it gets better. A couple of days should be enough. Depending on the eye size of the net, you might get unlucky and the bees will just decide to continue to land on it and go through - shade cloth material works better, as the bees can't get through it.

Checked both hives. The split hive was fed syrup for the past week to encourage comb-drawing, which has worked very well - the checkerboarded top box has a good amount of uncapped syrup on freshly drawn comb and the queen is busily laying in the middle - no queen cups / cells. Sugar shake tested for varroa from brood frames, no mites fell on the plate. Removed varroa strips and the top feeder, added a honey super above QE. Happier about the stores situation now than I was last week - the bees have put a good amount of syrup / nectar away and there's plenty of pollen around the broo

Hives Went through the hive with the old (failing) queen and the new prolific one. The queens are separated with a QE so I know what's happening with each one. Hive is doing really well in terms of numbers of bees & brood. In the failing queen FD, the bees had made a supersedure cell from one of the playcups - it had been capped during the week. No swarm cells anywhere - just the one supersedure. My guess is that the nurse bees in that part of the hive couldn't smell the better queen up the top and decided to requeen. It would be a shame to let a perfectly good look

Didn't you say you would have left the 2-queened hive alone, though?

Both hives checked. The 2-queened hive is really pumping - having one queen in each FD and placing a QE in between was a great tip, as now I can better see what's going on. The new queen is laying up a storm - the old one is still laying but not as well. The hive is full of bees and the bees are 'holding hands' big time - they are even hanging below the hivedoctor base. Despite this, there is still space to lay and to store honey. Hopefully checkerboarding emptier frames to the middle will help so that the bees don't do anything silly before the varroa strips are coming

I think I like this plan better than what I did. The FD's are just sitting next to each other so I'll probably just lift one over the other with the QE in place and be done with it.

The bees' continued attempts to make the beekeeper understand their behaviour still have no effect - the beekeeper still doesn't understand what on earth the bees are doing. To recap: 03/06/2017 - capped queen cell - decided to keep it in the hive and see what happens 13/08/2017 - unmarked queen found with plenty of brood; figured a successful mid-winter supersedure had taken place 31/08/2017 - spotted a marked queen in the same hive. Hive is super busy and flowing over with bees and brood. Uh oh. Ran out of time but made plan to go back into hive asap to figure out

A quick AFB matchstick test for one of the hives - no symptoms but wanting to be sure. Further inspections stopped by rain...followed by hail. Thanks Auckland.

Maybe I am going nuts but haven't been able to find the above since the forums update - has this subforum been re-established yet or has it been discontinued?

I think Apivar strips lose their effectiveness if left in sunlight, so it might not work well for long.

I take it you are a long-term beekeeper but only have a couple of hives by the sounds of it - what do you do with swarm control / splits? Do you sell off the 'excess' growth or just manage to keep the bees from swarming in other ways?

It seems to me to be just a different distribution method of (presumably) the same miticides than your traditional strips - and it is away from the broodnest so the nurse bees won't be stepping on it, which I'd imagine is not a benefit at all. Happy to be convinced otherwise but unsure what the benefit is over strips - same risks around resistance etc.