Monday, June 9, 2014

meet-up with the bee inspector

Wow!  It was great, having the bee inspector at the field day.  Thanks Craig!  Craig did a "show n tell" - doing the powdered sugar roll for VARROA MITE.  He also pulled some drone brood from cells to take a look for VARROA.  He talked about what he's seen so far this year - our "winter for the record books"....getting packages up and running....lots of "bee stuff".  Some good questions arose about NOSEMA - and a discussion about the "NEW" NOSEMA.  I'm personally rethinking the fall sugar syrup/fumagilin treatment.  Craig's method of treatment is a DRY recipe - and it made a lot more sense to me as far as getting the DOSE right - and DIRECTLY to the bees when they need it.  He mentioned about how it's been shown that fumagilin taken in sugar syrup in the fall and stored for winter - breaks down. Meaning it's EFFICACY is questionable.

CRAIG'S RECIPE (and people who were there - please correct me if this is wrong!):  2 Cups POWDERED SUGAR, 10 tsp FUMAGILIN B.  (shaken and stirred up and stored away someplace dry - AND LABELED!  you do not want to accidentally use this for frosting!!!!)  THE DOSE: 1/8 cup sprinkled directly on top of the cluster!

ANY DAY OVER THE LATE FALL/WINTER/EARLY SPRING MONTHS, when you get high 30's, 40's - a bright sunny day - when you can QUICKLY CRACK THE HIVE OPEN...you treat (and get out quickly)

So my preparations for this fall - add this powdered sugar recipe to my STASH of bee stuff....along with sugar cakes.  I'll likely still put fumagilin in the SPRING sugar syrup, because I like to also give them some HONEY B HEALTHY.

Another GREAT IDEA brought up was to MOVE RECIPES...to a RECIPE TAB.  Which I'll work on.

No comments: