Leaving it late.

[Neils]

And I thought I was being Organised this taking my holiday in September.

I went up last weekend to take what little honey I've got this year off but there's a late flow on and there's nectar dripping off the frames.

The original intention was to start with thymol this weekend but my revised plan is now:

Consolidate all the honey supers onto one hive this weekend.

Start thymol treatment on the rest of the hives.

In three weeks time when I'm back from holiday and the centenary remove the honey and start treating the last hive. - this is a maximum time period.

This isn't really ideal, but I'm reluctant to leave starting treatments on all hives until the last week of September and there is at least one week when all hives will have thymol applied at the same time.

They will all be OA'ed over winter as well.

Is this a sensible compromise?

[Jon]

That sounds ok assuming mite levels are not well into the danger zone.
I am doing something similar with my supers getting them all on to a couple of the strongest colonies and starting apiguard on the rest.
I started treating my nucs 2-3 weeks ago and they are on the second dose of apiguard.
With regard to the flow, mine seem to be storing nectar in the brood boxes as opposed to the supers.

Mite levels seem to be low again this year.

[Neils]

The levels are higher than I'd like but we've a lot of colonies and two varroa factories elsewhere on the allotments.

There's not much evidence of DWV or other varroa related conditions but I am starting to see phonetic mites in several colonies with far more regularity than I'm comfortable with. That's as much a factor in not wanting to delay treatment into late September, especially in case the late "summer" comes to an abrupt end.

[Rosie]

The theory behind treating early is to ensure your winter bees get the best possible nurture during their pupal development. That should help them survive a long winter as adults. It's probably already too late to get the most out of the treatment but late is better than never.

Having said that I haven't treated mine yet either but I justify that by wanting to keep the bees under a certain amount of varroa pressure to help me select the ones that cope best. If I only had a few colonies and did not rear queens I would stick to early treatment.

Steve

[gavin]

For the last few years we have had decent Septembers and even later, so treating now has been OK. Maybe this year will be different, but I'll be doing a thymol treatment tomorrow. Main reason is a colony belonging to a friend which has turned delinquent and which I've taken charge of, to sort out. It clearly has a Varroa problem as well as a problem queen (plenty of brood and eggs, just nasty bees). I'll give it and also give my own colonies a thymol treatment, at least the ones which are without supers.

[Bridget]

Last year I didn't treat mine until mid September. This year it could be later if the heather is still out and we have some good weather. I noted last year that the commercial bee keepers didn't take their bees off the heather moor , and back home, till first week in October. So how do they deal with treating varroa?

[Rosie]

I make an exception with my heather bees and miss out the Autumn treatment altogether. I know it's very naughty and not something I would recommend to anyone with only a few colonies but the truth is that the heather bees seem to survive the winter particularly well and generally emerge in the spring in better heart than most of my others. It might be due to the late brood rearing and strong nests that are seen in the heather bee colonies. That means the varroa are spread between more pupae so fewer are affected than in the other colonies. In addition the late winter bees that result don't have to live as long as the earlier ones that the other colonies have.

In my opinion, by the time the bees come back from the heather it's too late for the Autumn treatment as the winter bees have already developed.

However, none of my colonies miss out on the winter treatment of oxalic acid.


Steve

[nemphlar]

It's a difficult one I've found big hive big varroa count. I treated 8 with thymol and 2 with FA last week and as usual big hive big count. Haven't seen any dwv this year but the high count are still around 170/7days for the FA and first week in for the thymol up to 70. It would be interesting to see how these heather hives do 2nd year and if the queens survive a 2nd term

[Neils]

Well I've put a thymol treatment on all but one hive which has the three and a bit supers of honey that's been bought in so far ths year. Well see how they get on.

[nemphlar]

I didn't treat one hive that had super on and was the queen I had taken most of the grafts from, it had a natural drop of 3 over 7 days. Maybe I ,ve the stock that can live with varroa

[lindsay s]

The levels are higher than I'd like but we've a lot of colonies and two varroa factories elsewhere on the allotments.

Excuse me if I’ve got this wrong Nellie but aren’t you worried about infestation from the varroa factories elsewhere on the allotments?

[Neils]

Not worried so much as we've had to increase the amount of active intervention and treatment in our IPM as a result.

[nemphlar]

Treated 8 with thymol this year rather than FA , never seen so much robbing, does the strong smell disguise the scent of intruders and allow them free access. Does seem to knock reasonable numbers down, but never seen such a frenzy of robbing. Large hives d own to 10mm, with nucs locked down

[gavin]

I do get the impression that thymol encourages robbing, but it also causes a lot of fussing at the entrance. Could that be what you are seeing?

[Adam]

Thymol has a strong smell and must mask the queen's pheromone and also the hive smell. If all bees stink of thymol, then maybe they can enter other hives at will?

There has definitely been activity in front of many of my hives. However some I thought were being robbed have liquid stores right by the front door, so that would indicate that they are keeping invaders at bay. Mini-nucs have not bees so good at it, Esp. queenless ones as they have been robbed out. I was keeping them either to temporary house queens - soon to be withdrawn from service, or to shake out in front of another hive when the brood had fully emerged. The robbing has been by bees, despite there being quite a few wasps about.

[nemphlar]

Gavin treated the last of my hives with thymol yesterday, very agitated but different from robbing, they are crawling all over the front of the hive, but not much flying going on. This hive had a new queen laying well in the nuc but very patchy in the bigger hive and I replaced her last week. Knock done for one night 270 thymol is pretty impressive, was tempted to use OA due to lack of brood.