Varroa Onslought, and Rough Cuts

Before an inspection, and on the morning after a big rainfall, I took a look-see on the hives, particularly Natasha. The high Varroa count has me a bit concerned. I saw a strange site. They're a bit blurry, but a small group of stunted bees were hanging on the wall outside the entrance, and some on the bottom board. I thought they were burned. They were completely black. Did something weird happen from the storm? Lightning? What the heck is this?! I assumed they were dead.

They weren't dead! They were barely moving. WHAT has happened to my bees? After conferring with "The Beekeeper's Handbook" I realized I was seeing sure signs of "varroosis", or the deadly effects of the Varroa Destructor. The hive was doing early morning house-cleaning. I think they were forcing the stunted bees out. They were drones, the mites' favorite targets. Their wings were withered or missing. You can also see deformed pupae being taken out as well. I saw a house bee fly one out and onto the ground. Action is required! Being chemical-free means a combination of IPM approaches, starting with a powdered sugar treatment regimen.

I just bought a slightly used "Varroa Dustructor" from one of my mentors, Hernan. It blows powdered sugar directly into the brood nest, unlike sifting sugar on the top bars, and really puts out a super fine dust cloud of the sugar. It has been proven to be much more effective than user a sifter. That is, if you use the equipment CORRECTLY. I was very apprehensive about standing directly in front of the hive while doing this. You can see here that I'm holding this in the wrong position, with the sugar canister horizontal instead of vertical.

I should've studied the additional photos Brushy Mountain put online. THE SUGAR CANISTER MUST BE VERTICAL. You pump the bellows from side to side, not up and down. I was just pumping a whole lot of air and very little sugar into the hives, which meant I had to do this exercise umpteen million times to get enough sugar in there. Here you can see one of the annoy aspects of this device: the plastic barrel kept falling off. I had to really, REALLY push the plastic barrel onto the main body of the device.

And the bees started POURING out. Yvonne stopped taking photos and went back inside. Good thing! I was completely covered in bees in no time. I went from hive to hive repeating this treatment. It wasn't until the end that I realized the correct position to hold the Dustructor. I was pleased, though, to see the Kamakaze guards covered in sugar dust. The downside of this method is that you have to be in front of the hive and the powdered bees can still fly and attack. It took me 20 minutes standing far away off to the side to get them to leave me alone. I found out a trick. If you sit down on the grass while waiting they will leave you alone more quickly than standing up. There's got to be a better way to use the Dustructor than directly in front, and secure the barrel to the base. I'm going to repeat the treatments so I've got to figure it out.

So while my angry bees were all now hanging out on the front of the hives, making sure NO ONE came close, I decided to bide my time building equipment. I needed to build another Imrie shim for my homemade slatted rack for Natasha. I also needed to build a slatted rack, this one a 2-inch tall correct version, for Boris. Seeing reduced traffic in Boris this day, though, made me suspect that my original hive had already swarmed on me. I sure hope not. That will mean a big blow to my honey harvest this year. My brother Dan gave me free 1x1's and 1x2's made out of rough cut cedar and gum. I hand sawed the pieces, and used a bit of carpenter's glue, then stapled the corners to hold the frames together. Then I nailed them secure. This worked great. Man, do I love my stapler! I also made the entrance just to see if I could, by sawing vertically into the frame and then chiseling out the piece. Worked great! Man, do I love chisels! ;-)

Here's my homemade 9-frame slatted rack. The outside is cedar. The slats are sweet gum. Sweet gum saws like a D-R-E-A-M!. I made sure I left appropriate bee space, 3/8", in-between the slats (well, all but that one slat on the end ... this wood was rough cut and irregular). I also made sure there was appropriate bee space between the bottom of the frame, leaving the top side plenty of room for lots and lots of bees to hang out. This frees up the brood nest and makes it less congested. It provides increased ventillation, and encourages the queen to lay all the way to the bottom of the frames on the bottom hive body. This expands the brood nest. As a result, it decreases the swarming urge. Or so I've read. Makes perfect sense to me, though. I'm going to build more of these.

See? Room for each frame, while there's room in-between for the mites they groom off each other to fall out of the hive. It would've been perfect if these pieces were 3/4" instead of 1". Some were smaller than others, so it equals out, I suppose. Even the smallest space is 3/8", so we're good here (except for that one end of the right-most slat ... I should've measured again before nailing)_. Building these made me feel quite proud, happy that I saved money building something for free instead of yet another equipment purchase and paying lots of shipping, and a great sense of accomplishment.

Ta-daaa! My homemade 9-frame slatted rack. Because the rack is made out of cedar, I don't have to paint it. That stuff withstands all kinds of weather. I will be making hives out of cedar, as long as Dan gives me the free lumber, making painting optional. Of course I'll still paint at least part of the hives, if not all. I do want to keep my apiary pretty, with lots of cartoon characters on the hive faces. Maybe I'll just paint a patch of color on the front with a cartoon on it and leave the rest rough cut and natural. And cedar and sweet gum smell sooooooo good! :-)