warmer weather coming

 The weather is coming back to more normal temperatures. This will be a great time to treat the bees with oxalic acid. I firmly believe that this late mite treatment is an important step for winter survival of a colony. By treating with oxalic acid will make the hive as mite free as possible going into winter. If colony is mite free the odds of wintering improves by quite a bit. I have two video's about how to use and apply oxalic acid a couple of posts ago.

Time to Winterize the bees?

 While we have experienced a bout of winter weather, putting winter covers on is not paramount at this time. While it is on the cool side, the bees can handle 30 degree weather with no stress. The future weather still has a warmup in the future, of into the forties. I am holding off on covering my hives until I do my Oxalic Acid treatment. I would like it to be 40 degrees out to make my treatment. But having said that, it would not be negative to cover the hives and finish any winter prep. The bees will not take any more syrup at these cool temperatures. 

Here are a couple video's of using different types of winter covers:

Oxalic Acid EPA Label

 Here is a link through Bee Culture Magazine about Using Oxalic Acid for fall Varroa mite treatment.

https://www.beeculture.com/using-oxalic-acid/

The link below is to the EPA Label about Oxalic Acid.

Oxalic Acid EPA Label

The EPA Label states how to properly use Oxalic Acid for the treatment of Varroa mites on Honey Bees. The label lists all the hazards in using the product and the use of the proper PPE. The one thing that is murkey is the dosage. Being it is scientific and not used for baking a cake, all of the mixtures are by weight or by metric volumes.

The weather is turning a corner brrr, time for the last mite treatment

 The weather looks like it is turning colder, maybe for the duration. Feeding colonies will becoming much harder to do. The bees maybe reluctant to take down syrup when it gets cold. The bees do not like to ingest cold syrup. It may work to put warm syrup on the hive during the warmest part of the day. The bees may take it down, but as the syrup cools, the bees may stop taking the syrup down.

 October is the time of year to treat hives with Oxalic Acid for a last varroa mite treatment. Oxalic acid is used this time of year when there is no brood in the colony. The lack of brood in a colony, give the varroa mite no place to hide and any Varroa in the hive are located on the bodies of the bees. With no capped brood to hide in, the Varroa mites are easily killed by the Oxalic acid treatment. Beekeepers who have fed late into fall, may still have a couple frames of brood in their colonies, making Oxalic treatments less effective. 

Oxalic acid should be done when the outside temperature is 40 degrees at the time of treatment. It can warm up later in the day, but at the time of treatment it should be forty degrees. Here is a couple videos on how I treat my bees with the dribble method and using a vaporizer.

Dribble Method

Vaporizer method

Where are we in the bee season

October 2nd today. Time is slipping away to finish our bee work. By now you should have treated for mites and fed the bees to get the hive heavy for winter. 

In a perfect world, right now the top box on the hive should have eight full frames of honey and one partially filled frame located about in the center of the top box. The box below the top box should have four full frames of honey. If your hive has this much honey, that should be ample food stores for the winter. 

 If your hive does not have that much honey in the top box, but your lower box is heavy with honey, the honey needs to be put on top of the hive. Bees do not move down to get honey in winter. A hive can starve even though the bottom box is full of honey.

 The weather will be perfect for feeding starting on Sunday. You can feed to top off the hive if the bees need it. Use a hive top feeder or several pails to get the feed in.

Three feeder pails can fit in a deep for feeding large quantities of syrup quickly.

Entrance reducers should be in right now at their biggest opening. Mice will start moving in with the cooler weather. 

Nothing else to do at the moment. Looking ahead, Oxalic Acid treatments should be applied in late October when it is 40 degrees at the time of treatment. Oxalic Acid works best when the hive is broodless. Winter covers can go on anytime after Halloween.