Five days after putting our package into its hive (check out this video of the process to see me talk to our bees and never sit still), we quickly checked on the colony’s status. Kha-bee-si, our Queen of Bees, was free! She was laying. The field bees were hard at work bringing in pollen and nectar, and building comb. All was well with the world. We carefully removed the queen cage and its rubber band, eyed all the beautiful hexagonal comb that our bees had created from scratch, then closed it all up for the night.
The main reason we chose a screened bottom board was to monitor the serious threat of the Varroa destructor mite, responsible for spreading deadly viruses such as Sacbrood, Deformed Wing Virus, Chronic Bee Paralysis Virus, and more throughout a hive. I learned a lot in my first days of research, but I’m learning more every single day about how these little fat suckers can quickly multiply and take down even the strongest hive.
Nancy, our mentor (I highly recommend having a seasoned beekeeper show you how they do things: it’ll clear up a lot of confusion and help you feel more at ease), Tim, and I trekked out to the riverside hive on the one nice-ish day of the week. We planned to do our first real hive inspection, then apply a treatment of oxalic acid, to destroy much of the varroa threat before new brood was capped. Our queen was looking big and strong, five frames were drawn out with fresh wax, and we saw eggs as well as about five-day-old larvae in some cells. Everyone looked happy and healthy!
We removed the corrugated plastic board from our screened bottom board to check out the debris: just a lot of wax remnants and dropped pollen pieces. We cleared off the board, oiled it up, and replaced it. We then got to work performing an oxalic acid vaporization treatment (read these instructions to learn more about the process). Be sure to wear a half-face respirator when doing this, because the acid can seriously damage throat, lung, and other soft tissue in humans. Bees don’t have this soft tissue, so they are not affected.
We could hardly wait to see how many mites we destroyed with the oxalic acid treatment, while simultaneously hoping we found none in our hive at all. We removed the greased-up board 72 hours after treatment. With a magnifying glass and some good lighting, we found only five varroa mites. What a win! Our hive is now down five mites to start off the year.
Since this treatment and hive inspection, we’ve let them bee, but I continually visit the hive and just watch them fly in and out. My favorite thing is seeing the ladies entering with their “pollen pants” on, what I affectionately call the full pollen baskets on their hind legs. I’ve also been adding sugar syrup as needed, since the weather in Upstate New York has been cold, dreary, and not very conducive to foraging.
At this point, I have no idea what next month will bring, but I look forward to telling you all about it!