Drone brood mite count

I went into the hive today with Laura. No one got stung. Laura thought it was amazing. Perhaps she'll comment on the blog regarding her impressions.(clue, clue).
We got a look around the hive. As usual, the bees seem happy. We saw brood, pollen stores,capped honey, nectar in the process of becoming honey and a few drones. We did not see the queen.
There was a bunch of burr comb with capped drone brood cells. I scraped some off and we took it into the house to look at some larva. Then we put the drone brood frame in and closed up the hive.
Here is the brood comb in a flower pot dish:

The comb is somewhat distorted by being scrapped off. You can easily see the domed caps of the drone cells. The white stuff is pupae that got squeezed and squished in the removal process. The toothpick and pins are our dissecting tools. Here's what we found:
Those dark spots on the pupae are, you guessed it, varroa mites. I looked at 11 pupae and all but one were infested. The one on the left was the only pure one. Many had 2 mites on them and some of those disgusting mites were even crawling around. 10/11 mites is close to a 91% infestation rate. I suppose I could have examined all the pupae, but it was too tedious. According to one source, an infestation rate of 5% is ok, over 25% indicates a severe problem. So, no more deceiving myself, my colony is in danger.
I will re-queen later this year and will use the drone frame to keep the count down. I'll probably do some powdered sugar counts or dusting as well.

White powder mystery explained

You may recall in an earlier blog, I wrote about white powder on my bees' back. I attributed it to pollen from the eucalyptus getting on the bee in an area where they couldn't reach to clean off. That may be correct, but now I also have a new explanation.
Searching on the web, I came across a discussion that talked about pollen from Jewelweed. I don't know if this grows around here. Then I saw my bees on the cascading rosemary flowers, and they had the powder on their backs. The flower has an arching stamen so when the bee goes in for the nectar, the anthers rub on her back.

Here is one of my girls getting her nectar with the stamen clearly visible.

Here is an interloper at the rosemary. You can see the pollen on her back.

OMG- mites!!!

Today I wanted to clean out the beetle trap (the tray under the screen bottom). I have a new one for my next hive and I stuck that unused one in while I cleaned the old one. A couple of hours later I switched them. I took a look in the tray just to see how much debris had fallen in that short time. On the grid on top there were several wax flakes and some pollen. I took a look in the tray, and...MITES! 5 mites!! In just a couple of hours!!!
Imagine by shock and dismay. What to do? Should I treat now with either of the treatments I have (thymol or formic acid)? I had meant to put the drone frames in, but hadn't yet because it's still winter. But as we all know, it's pretty spring-like now, and I did see a couple of drones two weeks ago. I will put the frame in this week-end. (Laura is coming down and wants to go into the hive, so I'll wait until then.) I emailed Jeremy Rose and asked him about treating. Now for sure I will re-queen with one of his queens which are mite resistant.

Maybe they like it better this way

I couldn't go into the hive Monday because of the bad weather, but today was sunny and warm. I took out the empty box and removed the Apiguard tray. There was still some thymol left from the first tray and some from the new one. It was pretty dry. I smeared a few small pieces on the top of some frames of the brood brood box and put the two medium supers and the Vivaldi box back on. I took the sheet of cardboard out of the bottom. Lots of dead mites in the debris. Of course, it was about four weeks of droppings. So now the hive is back in its previous configuration.
I did take a peek into the brood box. Saw my queen and there was lots of brood. One frame had empty cells in the central part. I'm thinking that bees hatched recently from there and new eggs have not yet been laid.
Sorry, no pictures today.

Apiguard replaced

I crossed my new bridge and went into the hive 2 days ago to replace the Apiguard tray. Much to my surprise, there was no comb built in the empty super. The bees had built some cells below the thymol tray, sticking it onto the top bars. There was only a bit of dried out gel left. I scraped out the remains out placed it on the removed tray cover to leave in the hive and put a new tray in. Today there was a piece of the dried gel outside of the hive along with the usual few corpses- what good housekeepers those bees are! I took a look at the cardboard that is under the screen bottom- lots of dead mites and debris. I didn't count.
On the lavender today, I saw two of my marked bees again.