Spring Mites

 

My cat, to start with- an old handsome gent and a hunter- but a constant companion. I have no bee photos, so this will have to do.

Today, in the short legged amount of sun we had, I busted unexpectedly (to the bees) into a good hive I have here at home for its first inspection. It's late, but it's been cold and rainy, and I've been busy on the days that were sunny- and truthfully, sort of tired of dealing with it all, lacking a program. But its getting on swarm time- and I've had hives swarm much earlier than this!- so need to get into the hives, reverse if needed, and Demaree (though still too cold) if there are q cells.Surely there will be soon.

Having not looked til now into this hive- I found it packed edge to edge with bees, a lot of brood all throughout the hive, and a lot of drone cells between the boxes, on top of  the frames.

And those cells, when scrapped, proved to be pretty dang infested with mites. Sometimes you break open drone brood, and its consistently mite-less- but not in this case. 

This hive got a double super dose of formic acid in Fall, and two OA treatments in January. Not sure what else to do.

I added a super for the growing population to move around in- but really, this hive needs a serious mite killing treatment.

April? Too early?

And my guess is all seem the same in other hives. So maybe a risky experiment- formic fumigation for all?

Thinking on it. Have never tried a serious mite treatment this early, it might be a disaster.