The result is that there is no surviving hive. No, I didn't kill them in the process of testing them, they were dead when I got there, likely of the same cause that we think killed the first hive, mites. Alyssa just dropped me an e-mail and said her hives didn't make it either. We are both sad.
But what do you do? Back on the horse.
The good thing to come out of this is that I got lots of good info on how to handle mites from readers of this blog. Out pointed me towards Randy Oliver's Scientific Beekeeping site, which does a great job of boiling down all the latest thinking on beekeeping, pulling from journal articles, over the fence chatter and everywhere in between. There's a nice graph in his article on Varroa management strategy, for example, that illustrates why my healthy hives were such perfect targets for mites. With the mite population curve mirroring the bee's, just a few months behind, you can see how the bee's natural thinning at the end of summer fatally coincides with the peak of the mite population. Ouch.So what's to be done? I think we're all agreed that chemical solutions, even if they weren't anathema to to the small farm, organic ethic that so many of us hold dear, just isn't effective in the long-term. Just as bacteria is becoming immune to the antibiotics we've been using for years, so the mites are becoming immune to chemicals we've using on them.
Scientific Beekeeping has a lot of good advice. It sounds like a combo of strategies is needed, but a key one is drone removal. Mites live in cells with larva of the bees and apparently, they're much more productive in drones cells than in worker cells, by a factor of 10 to 1! So, if you eliminate or reduce drone brood during the critical period for mites, you can reduce your mite count immensely. It's definitely going to be more effort-intensive than my beekeeping efforts have been thus far, but I'm kinda getting tired of this whole dying off thing. I'm over it. Ready to move on to living through the winter.
For now, though, I'll just clean up the equipment and put in my order for another two colonies for April.
Here's a puzzler in the meantime. A reader e-mailed me this question:
I've never heard of bees being attracted to coal. Any ideas why?We have a birdbath in the backyard with one large piece of coal in it to keep it from blowing away. The bees are attracted to it like it is something special... There are always several (like 50 or so) hanging on to the coal.
glad to see you have progressed far in your bee knowledge, excellent idea with the drone comb removal. i use Randy's drone comb frame idea and it works well. just don't forget or bee gone from home as day 30 approaches or you will have a mite breeding factory.
i would add a piece of advice and that is skip the Italian packages from sources that have no claims of mite resistance.
check out Old Sol Apiaries in Rouge River Oregon. John has a line of survivor bees that have a better chance of living with nothing but drone comb removal then the standard run of the mill Italians.
also many of the large package and queen breeders have miticide contaminated combs that makes the drones sterile and queens not too healthy.
one other person I can think of in your part of the country is Olympic wilderness apiary in Washington State. I've not used their bees before so can't comment but they advertise survivor stock
if you can find 100% pure russians in your area thats an even better choice but the acceptance of this strain is low and not many beeks have gone that direction. they are a northern strain and winter on a smaller cluster on a very small amount of honey. one tough bee
i checked my 100's of colonies after a brutal winter in the upper midwest and all look well. the russians survived the best but old sol genetic's also look good.
and one more line I have experience with but they're a long way from you in the mountains of GA
http://web.mac.com/dannpurvis/iWeb/Purvis%20Brothers%20Bees.com/Home.html
just reading his site though is informative. best wishes on spring we still have snow on the ground here