M4tt

👍. Sounds to me like your wets are being robbed . Its rather early to be adding boxes . Far too early actually I see what you’ve done . Replaced the largely empty bottom box with some ‘food’ for them . If that’s what you wanted to do , you should have dropped box number two with all the bees , down to the base , and put the box of ‘food’ on top . That way, you have guard bees down by the entrance to defend the hive . Unfortunately, you have all the food unguarded and it’s a ‘free for all ‘

I’ve never seen videos posted here . My guess is the file size is too big and it’s not possible . You can post a link to YouTube

@Wildflower, welcome back . It’s been a while

No , that’s not accurate at all . This just happens to be where we learn and share our learnings . Regarding resistance , every other treatments ‘appear’ to have moderate to severe resistance issues , so you’re right , resistance to OA might become an issue . That’s no reason not to use it though because it actually works where others fail . Yes , it seems that a long period of treatment is required . What we are fighting with here is the rapid collapse of hives once exposed to varroa , so my treatment regime with OA/Gl staples is almost entirely about prevention of mite infestation , which is a whole lot different than letting a population of mites build up , then banging them with synthetics . I'm pretty sure if OA resistance does become reality , you’ll read about it first here 😊

If I may .... 40% oxalic acid / 60 % glycerine This is the ratio that Phil has settled on. I don’t pretend to be clever enough to mix and soak the staples thoroughly enough , so some of us ask Phil to prepare them for us .

That depends if any of the admin wants to move it. Its also quite topical for August so it’s not a bad thing discussing here

Lots of bees is good. It gives you more options to fix it, should you need to , as in , even queenless they will carry on for a while doing their thing . A small colony is much harder to pull through . All the best 😊

It might be worth putting my situation in context . This is heading in to my second season with the only treatment being staples . My Feb treatments stayed in , and were replaced and moved with the cluster every few weeks through winter , all the way through until they were all pulled out and replaced with new staples in late July, early August . The very important thing to remember is at the start of Spring treatment , there were no mites in my hives. This slow but steady application of staples as the brood grows my not work with a mite loading , in which case , staples placed in a line through the brood may be the best option to get them under control , initially

I’m adding staples slowly primarily based on my own user error of adding too many at once , at the start of spring treatment . What I found was where there were plenty of bees and not much brood , too many staples has ‘stopped ‘ those hives moving forward . For example , 7 staples over two boxes of bees has seen no expansion of brood , and I suspect , a drop in bee numbers , to the point I’m pulling staples back out . It ‘feels’ to me like I’ve done wrong by them . Whereas , the hives with less bees and one or two staples are building up and look better . Regarding the older staples losing power , I guess I’ll keep my eye on them , but I expect the bees to give them a real good chewing out before that happens . No bees have started chewing yet, but they will .... with a vengeance

I’ve just pulled all the staples out of he middle of the brood and placed the whole lot as per the @Stoney method. I’m really liking the ‘no brood damage’ that I’m seeing . They are starting to build pretty quick with most having new brood on two more frames than last visit, so in with another staple .

Hi Anna Winter is the hardest season to get beee through alive . Im not sure what bees do in Southland at this time of the year, but I believe they should have brood , or very close to it . I imagine your observations are correct and your hive is queenless How many bees are in there ? As in , when you open it and look down on the frames , what do you see . Bees covering 2 frames , 5, or 10

Let them do what they are doing , then once the new queen is laying , check the brood caps to see if they are worker or drones . You can then deal with it if you need to

I am pretty sure that more than one leg of a staple per seam of bees is doing something very counterproductive to a hive . Perhaps @Philbeecould comment , but this may not have helped your bees @jamesc. The action of both fencing them in and creating a toxic centre in the hive . You won’t get that with only one leg per seam. Ive also found 5 per box too many . The one on the outside frame is wasteful . I also suspect the 40% staples are less forgiving on a hive than the previous lower strength brew . It seems to me that the management of applying staples needs to work alongside the beekeepers intuition . Read each hive as a separate unit . This means erring in the side of caution and starting with one or two staples on the small clusters , and adding more as they build up . This probably means more regular visits than with synthetics . My bees have been pretty quick to expand the brood to the next couple of frames where there was none the previous visit , but I have definitely negatively affected hives by putting in 7 over two boxes in one hit . Its a a learning game and I believe with our open communication we are making really good progress

You should see what I used to chuck in the old one . Should have gone on a deck . There are very few non sealed roads around here . I’m struggling to think of any

That’s what I’ve always done too . Using @Stoney‘s method , there is no loss of brood from either killing brood under staples , or forming a barrier the queen won’t lay past . I will keep a very close eye on them , but at this stage with the info I have , I think they will still work . Best to have a go yourself with a few hives and see what you think