First Spring Inspections

Well we had 75 deg temps on Friday so I took the day off and did a few things which included inspection 15 out of my 18 hives in Buckingham. Out of the 15 I had 3 dead outs. Upon a postmortem, all 3 died from high level of Varroa mites.

At the recent Va State Beekeeping Fall Meeting Randy Oliver talked a bit about postmortem inspections and varroa mites. One tip he gave was to hold the frame by the bottom bar and with the sun at your back look at the top of the cells for little whitish specks of varroa mite poop. Now you have to be careful you’re not looking at wax bit from robbing but I could plainly see the poop across the brood frames!!

All 3 dead outs have been “flying” excellent and I had zero worries (it was the robbers flying in and out, so don’t tell me you can tell a healthy hive from a weak or dead one by looking at the front…), however I noticed two things upon popping the tops on the dead outs right off. When I smoked the top bars the hive “exploded out” (which were the robbers leaving) and that most of the honey was uncapped looking from the top down… At times you would the living hives with foragers with pollen coming in, so this is a clue from the front, but in some cases great hives did not have a forager with pollen for multiple minutes coming in, so without spending many minutes in front of each hive, do a quick inspection…

Anyway, I have 2 hives I am uncertain about. One I couldn’t find the queen or eggs but was bringing in pollen like crazy and had tons of bees… and the other I found the queen, a cantaloupe sized amount of bees, and a small batch of eggs, so I am a little concerned about this one, especially if we get a hard cold snap…

I had some hives that had just started to lay and others that had literally frames of capped brood (one I could take to almond pollination due to its strength…LOL)

All my nucs are thriving and will explode soon! So I have great proof that this is the way to go overwinter since they are stronger than my full size hives.

I have my dead out equipment (since I could confirm varroa mites killed them) sitting on a little trailer so the wax moths wont damage them but the bees can finish robbing the capped honey out as food, stimulation, and so I will be able to use some for honey supers for me.

The pictures below show some capped brood, healthy bees, dead out comb with cappings torn up, a close up of cappings torn up due to robbing, and my dead out boxes loaded up (4 deeps and 3 mediums)...

Pictures of Varroa Poop Holding the bottom bar towards you and sun at your back looking at the top of the cell wall...