Sunday 15 June 2014

Sweet bees

I really wish I hadn't thought of that as a title for a blog....The Eurythmics "Sweet dreams (are made of this)" is one of my favourite songs and now I've got a dreadful attack of earworm.

Oh well.... on with the bees.....

Last week at the Apiary science night we were examining "litter" that falls through the mesh floor of a hive.  I'd stuck a couple of Varroa boards under 2 of my hives and collected a fair number of broken legs, pollen baskets, wax scales and a rather high number of Varroa mites.  Ugh!

Can't bear to think that my girls might be suffering with unwanted passengers....


Something definitely needed to be done about this.  After a bit of consultation about how to treat for Varroa without taking off honey supers, the best advice was dust them with icing sugar to encourage them to groom each other and hope they knock the Varroa off.

So here I am, in my ever glamorous marigold gloves, dusting bees with icing sugar...

 

 

Pretty soon they were all lightly dusted....



Its fair to say that some were more lightly dusted than others....


But they didn't seem unduly bothered....


 Look at all those proboscis and tongues.....
Straight out for a sugar fix!





I'll have to count mites again in a few days and see how well they licked each other clean!

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