OA and brood

[Gypsi]

 I am putting on my bee suit and going to play with my bees for a couple of hours this morning. I find they do not talk, they let me talk to them and they just buzz.  Have to check on a queen or 2 and merge hives and get sticky boards under them to catch some mites.

If I have a significant mite count in 24 hours I will be doing OA I guess. But I also just split a hive and am trying to get numbers up for fall, I do not want to damage a queen or brood, traditionally a brood break and an open sbb is the mite killer that works best for me. I probably had a brood break between flow and starting feeding earlier this summer. So I will see what is out there.  In a frame of drone brood from my largest hive I popped out most of the drones and found one mite, but it was only a medium frame too.

[Jen]

keep us posted on what you find. I have done oa two sundays now, and each treatment resulted in a full mite count, the second treatment with maybe 800-1000 dead mites. Doing a third treatment this coming sunday.

[Gypsi]

I am sure there are no mites in hive 1.  Hasn't been a full brood cell in there in a month, I don't know why there are any bees left.  Just honey and worker bees, not even a laying worker, but they are enormously productive workers. .  That is my finding for today.  Tomorrow, hopefully ledifini can ride out and help as I combine hive 1's boxes to each of my single box hives.   And I will put stickies in then and see what I see. Usually the largest mite count of the year for me is the brood drop that produces winter bees.  They get stuck to the stickies, and no more mites.