The plums had ripened in our absence and many had fallen to the ground. I was surprised to see the bees all over them. I think they were sucking the juice rather than eating the pulp; they ignored the older plums.
I took a look into the hives on sequential days and put in sticky boards for a mite count.
Hive 1: There was no honey in the top super, but the other super was very heavy, maybe 30 pounds. The top deep box was also pretty heavy but I didn't inspect it. I switched out the drone frame. There were drones hatching as I watched.
Hive 2: No honey in super. There doesn't seem to be much new comb being drawn. The hive looks healthy but nothing is changing- the population seems static. Switched out the drone frame.
I looked at about 10 pupae and saw no mites other than one that was on top of a capped cell.
Hive 3: There was no brood in the top box (there had been before). There was capped honey around where the brood had been and some nectar. There was still empty foundation on the peripheral frames in both boxes. I spotted the queen. There were 4-1/2 frames of capped brood, but this colony doesn't seem to be growing either. I'm wondering about it making it through winter. I'm thinking about how to deal with it; feeding, combining hives, sink or swim?
I took the sticky boards out after 4 days and the counts were high- 102,22,32- and I decided to treat all three with formic acid (mite away quick strips MAQ). What a job that was. One lesson I learned is that this kind of work would be a lot easier with 2 people. I also learned that it's a good idea to follow instructions. The packs have a picture of scissors pointing one way, and I didn't think it mattered which direction one went... until I went the other direction. The formic acid pads have a paper wrapping around them that helps control the rate of evaporation (I think). I discovered that this wrapper is open at one end and cutting the plastic pack open the wrong way also cuts and tears this wrapper.
I put one pad in #3 because of the small number of bees. In the other hives I put the recommended 2. The pads are laid on top of the frames between the two deep boxes. The bees make brace comb in this same space. I tipped the top box up to expose the bottom and scraped off the wax. Then I scraped off the wax on from the tops of the other frames. Even doing that, the boxes in #1 didn't fit together properly and I had to open it again and scrape off more wax. Then I just pressed down hard on the boxes to close the gap between them. I still don't know what I'm doing.
The next day there were a lot of dead bees on #2 porch and inside under the lid. This is the one that had the damaged paper wrapper.
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| Earlier the porch was carpeted with corpses |
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| Under the telescoping lid |
Here is a video of wash-boarding from a couple of weeks ago.
