Mid Bucks Beekeepers Association Blog

The weather is still overcast and damp with a cold wind, no bees flying. If this weather continues we will not be able to get any cars onto the field for the opening of the Apiary next Sunday.

The varroa boards were removed in order to take the “Spring” varroa drop count. Armed with a magnifying glass we scanned each board and then as a double check scraped the detritis into a jar, added Methylated Spirit stirred and counted the varroa that floated to the surface. Dividing the varroa count by the number of days the boards were in place (9 days) gave us the daily drop count, at this time of year it should ideally be less than 2. Hives 5 and 7 gave a count of less than 1 and Hive 2 a count of 3.

Fera recommend we consider employ drone brood removal for low infestations so we will need to set this up for Hive 2 when we carry out our Spring inspection.

This entry was posted on April 4, 2010 at 11:34 am and is filed under Apiary Visits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.