Yikes! Mites!

One of the problems with factory farming is that it allows pests to build up and easily transfer from one host to another. Something similar might be happening with my bees. I think that having so many hives in our Stanford bee yard may contribute to a big problem with Varroa mites.

Varroa mites attach to bees as they develop and feed on the larva. This can prevent the bee from developing properly and they also carry viruses that can destroy a hive. Here are some pictures of the mites.

Scott Bauer, USDA Agricultural Research Service, www.forestryimages.org

I did a mite count last week to determine if there are any Varroa mites in the hive, and if so, how many. The way that I do this is to put a sticky sheet of paper under the screen that serves as the floor of the hive. Occasionally, the mites will fall off of the bees and through the screen at the bottom of the hive, thus getting trapped on the sticky paper. At the end of a few days I retrieved the paper and counted the number of mites. Here are the counts:

Droogie 1: 186 mites /4 days = 47 mites/day average

Droogie 2: 35 mites /4 days = 9 mites/day average


Bad news! The levels that a hive can tolerate would be around 2-3 mites falling per day. I doubt that my colonies will be able to survive the winter with this level of infestation. After seeing this shocking number of mites in my hives, I now understand why the neighboring hives don't usually survive the winter. He uses Italian bees, which are much more susceptible to mites than my Russian strain.

So what do I do now? I really, really don't want to use any pesticides in the hive. That said, when I'm surrounded by other hives that aren't well taken care of and are mite-infested, it is almost certain that my hives will succumb to this pest.

I've decided to try an organic approach first, and measure the mite loads after I've finished. If I cannot bring the levels down, I'll try using formic acid, which has been proven to work and supposedly doesn't leave a residue behind.

The organic approach that I will take is to dust the bees with powdered sugar. Once they are covered with sugar, bees then groom each other to remove the powdered sugar and remove mites in the process. It sounds reasonable. However, there aren't any studies that show that it is effective. Based on what I've read, I have decided to dust the bees with powdered sugar 2X per week for three weeks, and will do another mite count at that time.

What's next?

I just spent a little time reading the bee forums to figure out how I need to prepare my hives for winter. While browsing the site, I found a post from this man, who had 11 supers on his hive in Palo Alto, which yielded about 300 lbs. of honey. dude...


The posts suggest that we live in the best area in the US for beekeeping, in that we never have real winters. The temperature remains warm enough for the bees to continue foraging throughout the winter months, and eucalyptus trees bloom starting in late October through February. They will usually fill up a super by February if they aren't infested with mites.

This means that I'll probably just keep hives with the 3 full mediums going into next month. I'll add a fourth super to both hives with empty frames and they can fill them as they see fit. I'm going to begin to measure mite loads with a sticky board and will try some of the non-chemical methods to reduce mite numbers if they seem high.

Honey, Honey Everywhere

And lots of drops to drink.

We transferred the honey from the bucket into jars last night. It was wonderful to watch it flow out of the honey gate, and having a box on the floor underneath it kept our kitchen from getting sticky.

The good news is that the honey continues to taste wonderful and is a beautiful amber color. We had it for dessert last night over frozen yogurt.

I can't really taste the lavender in it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. Ellie and I tried a lavender-infused honey at a farmers market once; Ellie said the lavender flavor was overwhelming and I thought it just tasted like honey...


We filled up almost all the mason jars that we had in the house, 33 cups in total, or 29 jars of various sizes. That translates to about 25 lbs. of honey using the "Bee Honey Conversion Calculator". The shocking fact is that this came from one hive, and being the first year, I was only able to take six frames from it. If both hives produce like they should next year, we'll have 3-4x this amount! I don't think we'll have enough friends to give it all away.

We also have a good amount of wax left over, which we'll use sometime this winter during a rainy weekend to make candles. Thanks again to the bees! They are truly amazing creatures.

Honey Harvest, part II

Ellie and I prepared the kitchen for harvesting honey by placing cardboard boxes on the floor and counter to catch errant drips of honey. Then we started the process of extracting the honey from the comb. We used the crush and strain method, which means we cut out the comb from the frames, crushed it with a potato masher, and then poured the mixture of honey and crushed comb into a strainer. The honey goes through the filter, leaving the wax behind, and we should be able to bottle it today or tomorrow. I think that we'll make candles from the wax sometime this winter.

The honey was amazing. It has a zing to it. I think it has a hint of citrus. Ellie described as cough drop flavor but in a good way, which I didn't taste, but everyone has different buds. Here are some pictures from extracting along with a video of Ellie doing the crushing. Thanks be to the Droogies!

Ellie cutting out the comb.

Beautiful honeycomb about to be squashed.

Happy to be smushing.

Mmmmm.

Honey Harvest, part I

Hooray! Droogie 1 was kind enough to make us some honey! Yesterday I removed 6 frames from the hive. I removed the bees from the frames by shaking and then brushing them off with a bee brush. I've read that this process of removing bees can be a little intimidating for the novice beekeeper, and it was! I would have tried using my one way bee doors (Porter bee escapes) but I lent them to a colleague who hasn't returned them. In the video below, you can see my process of shaking the bees off of the frames and then brushing them. I was really surprised by how the bees then gathered around the entrance of the hive. Maybe they were waiting in line to go in?

Most of the bees were kind enough to stay behind with the hive, but a few stayed on the box that I put in the trunk, and a couple explorer bees found a way into the car through the rear speakers. This meant that I drove the hour home with the windows wide open, hoping that the wind would keep them stuck in the rear window. They were kind enough not to sting me while I was driving too fast down the interstate.

O.P.H. Part II

I took a stroll over to visit the Droogies during my lunch hour today and was astonished to see how the activity at the entrance of my hive compared to the hives around it. As you might recall, I've been jealous of the amount of bees going in and out of the neighbor's hives, but I don't have to be jealous anymore. It is a bit of the "Tortoises and the Hares." His hives were gangbusters earlier this summer, having started with 4 lb packages of Italians, whereas I started a few weeks later with 3 lb packages of Russians. However, my hives now have much more activity and many more bees than those around them. Why might this be? I can think of a couple possibilities:

• Feeding: I fed my bees longer after installing them in the hive. This might have encouraged the queen to lay more, but I doubt that this is the reason.

• Swarms: I think he might have had some swarming. His packages were installed in a deep hive body, and still only have one deep and one medium on them, which makes me think that they would be very crowded by now. His hive that overwintered almost definitely swarmed. There were soooo many bees in that hive at the beginning of spring, and now it looks like his other hives.

• Disease: I hate to say it, but I think his hives might be suffering from mites. I don't think he uses screen boards or any other form of pest management, including treatment for the hive that overwintered. His bees are also Italians, which may be more susceptible to mites than my Russians.


The commercial beekeeper who has many hives in the yard next to ours has harvested his honey recently. His hives, which were six or seven supers tall, are now just a deep and a medium. I wonder if he'll start medicating his hives in preparation for winter, and if this will affect the honey that I'm planning to take from my hives in a couple weeks. I sure hope not.

Hive inspection, August 6th

Here's what I observed today while inspecting the hives.

• Droogie 1 is drawing new comb in the top (4th) box and storing nectar. I'm surprised that there is still nectar available out there, but glad to see it!

• There are about 5 capped frames of honey in boxes 3 and 4, and more will be capped soon. I'll probably harvest a few frames in early September.

• There was lots of activity at the entrance of both hives. I think there are more bees now than ever.

• Droogie 2 continues its strange habbits. The queen is laying all the way up in the top box (3rd), and they don't have much honey stored away. The brood pattern is really dense on some frames, and then she'll skip a frame for some reason, and then there is more brood on the next frame. I'm not sure what is the reason for this. Perhaps the comb isn't the right size? I think the wavy foundation might have had a negative impact on the way the bees were able to draw out the comb. I'm only going to use foundationless frames in that hive from now on. They also continue to leave the combs on the side of the boxes alone.