Despite the heat, I went into #2 today. This is the hive I under-supered 10 days ago. And the one with the k winged bee.
Naturally, the top super was heavy and full of honey. I only checked the outer 2-3 frames of the second super. There was drawn comb and some honey, so the supply is still building.
In the top brood box, I spotted the queen. There was a good brood pattern, too. There was still a frame with drone brood. Once again, I only looked at 5-6 frames.
I did an alcohol wash mite count with the results in the picture below.
As you can see there is a dismaying number of mites- 26 to be precise. This is way too many for entering the winter.
This is a good article explaining why. So I need to treat and the question is when. Most sources say to treat after the fall honey harvest and others say that here in mid-coast California, we should treat before mid-August. I plan on treating now, tomorrow actually. Each Langstroth will get 2 MAQs. I will not treat Olea's. One reason is that it is just too difficult. (Probably the way to treat top bar hives is with oxalic acid
dribble or
vaporization. I do intend to decide which method to employ and to get the supplies.) The other rationalization is that it survived last winter, so by definition is a survivor colony. By the way, Olea's population was diminished by swarming but now appears to have recovered with bees on all the combs. Perhaps I will get some honey from it this year.
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