As you may know, our bees face many threats over the year. Right now, we have two primary threats: Yellow Jackets and Varroa Mites.
The Yellow Jackets become quite predatory this time of year - as nectar sources begin to dry up and their growing populations require more food. They become desperate and will attack the hives. In years past this has cost us many hives. Our strategy is to reduce the entrances on our hives. Since I use a round entrance, with a soup can lid as a swing door, this is rather easy to do.
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| Round Entrance with a Varroa screen attached |
We will be resetting our yellow jacket traps as well. This Spring we used them to catch quite a few of the Yellow Jacket queens. Hopefully, with this management strategy will help. Last year, it did help - but the yellow jackets were so terrible we did lose a few colonies to them.
Varroa Mites
These guys are a real problem for us. I use varroa screens on all my equipment and have been using Oxylic Acid and Hopguard this year to deal with them. Once, the honey is pulled, I get after this in a big way this time of year. My aim to have clean hives that are varroa free and this means a treatment regimen that lasts at least 3 weeks to make sure ALL of the mites, including those in the capped brood are eliminated. Luckily, the late summer dearth leads to a slow down in brood production, but I want those hives to start building next month in preparation for winter. This means feeding and hoping for some fall rain to bring on a 'mini flow' that will trigger brood rearing. This yard also received ProDFM probiotic treatment this spring too and they are looking good now. 11 very strong doubles with a 2 that are lagging a bit. These guys will take a trip to California in November to winter there and to work the Almond crop as well. I will keep you posted.
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| Things are drying up a bit but a sunflower field is just 300 yards away |
