Not exactly a double blind test but here's what I did. 2016 I treated half my hives with Oxalic Acid in the summer. Last winter I lost 30% (off the top of my head) of the treated bees and the untreated half, I lost 70%. Pretty clear cut results to me.

Late summer of this year I treated all my hives at home with Apivar strips. 21 hives. I had 4 hives at the shop that I did not treat.

As of today, I have lost one hive at home. 95.24% surival rate, so far. As of today at the shop, I have lost 3 out of 4. 25% survial rate.

I tried to be a "treatment free" beekeeper for the first 3 years I kept bees. I got tired of losing at a minimum 50% of my hives every year, so now I treat. I don't like chemicals in the hive, but I hate trying to replace bees at an unreplacable rate.

I got every hive with a hive top feeder fed today. I will suit up fully tomorrow and put dry sugar on top of the hives with no hive top feeder.

One thing learned today is that bees coming off a bad cold snap, in the middle of winter are PISSED OFF at the world. I did okay until I opened a couple of hives to see how large the cluster was. It was large and they came out in full force. Luckily I had my veil on, but no jacket. My fingers and wrists are red and itchy, but I at least got the first stings of the year out of the way, so no more itching for the rest of the year.

Ummm. Even I know winter bees are ornery.

I got lucky and fed my 2 hives at home some old honey this past Sunday afternoon. Worried about one of them so I am going to check the cluster size next weekend. Still got to get some sugar on the farm bees.

Just a FYI. Keep a can of aerosol hair spray handy. When stung by a bee, hornet, wasp immediately spray the bite. Little to no sting or swelling will occur.

LOL I always seem to forget from one year to the next.

Never tried that. I've been stung so many times that it causes little pain and no swelling.

Still have so much to learn so this is an honest question; i.e. not trying to "sharpshoot" anyone. Why do you need/want to check the cluster size? Of course we are a different area but why checking my bees again yesterday to make sure they had enough sugar ( mountain camp) all I wanted to see was that I had lots of bees feeding and bees coming and going. Weather was sunny, some wind, and about 60 at noon when I opened my hives.

Bees were clam so I just wore a veil, popped the top, added more sugar to only two hives as the rest had enough. Had the smoker lit but not needed. Granted I did not pull any frames, just moved a couple in each hive enough to see what was still stored in the super left from the fall Goldenrod flow.

Did my winter OAV treatment a couple of weeks ago and only plan to to check that they have food every couple of week and for the most part leave them alone till things start blooming here around the first of March. What else should I be doing?

Grounhawg,

I still haven't gone in and checked them since my reply in this post. I really meant that I need to check and see how much more honey they have. More importantly, I need to check and see where the cluster is. The higher the cluster, the less honey they will have. I don't know of anything I could do right now to help the population anyway. I would get pollen patties on quickly if I thought the hive was bordering on death so they might get new bees early as possible this spring. I do have 1 of 6 hives that looks like very few bees going in and out. I thought this was my best hive going into the winter so I am curious to know how the population looks. I was planning on going all the way in and looking at them on a warm afternoon and adding mountain camp sugar on the way out. My hives had honey going into the winter, just not sure how much is remaining. Obviously, if I have enough honey I will not add sugar patties.

Wade thanks for the reply and information. Like to hear from all and learn what I can. Sure I know the joke that you ask 3 beekeepers one question you will get at least 5 or 6 different answers. Did not know about placement of the cluster in regards to food supply. Of course here in SE Alabama our bugs do not spend much time huddled together. Worse winter in the last 4 years have been in the past 6 weeks when twice have 3 days of lows in 20’s and highs around 35. Still had some “stores” in every hive just adding sugar to insure none starve to death.

Different question to you and others. Plan to make several splits this spring and add mated queens to each new/queen less hive anyone you suggest that sells queens?

Thanks.

I don't like Italian queens. Period. Those bees use all their summer honey making brood and starve in the fall. Or at least they do here. I ended up getting some Saskatraz queens late last summer and so far have been happy with them. I'm going to order more this spring to put in with splits to sell. Just Google, Saskatraz and you'll find them.

The ones I ordered last year will be used for drone mothers at my colony this spring for queens that I raise for here.

Groundhawg,

If you do the exact opposite of everything I say about bees you will be way ahead of the game. I'm learning too and I'm in year 3.

Fur,
You planning have any Sasktrazaswatch nucs for sale this spring? Also, what is your final thoughts on the Frost queens. Both of my Frost hives did great until I robbed them. I thought they were going strong enough that I could rob one medium super from them in June and be fine. They seemed to struggle after that. Plus, I tried to start a nuc from one of them and realized I moved a marked queen to the nuc box a couple weeks later. Nuc didn't make it and I'm not sure where she ended up. Both hives are still alive but I do agree they had a tendency to want to swarm. One plus is that I had a lot more than 3 pounds of bees per package from them. I could have easily started 3 hives from those two packages.

As you stated, the Frost bees are swarmy. Plus, the Frost queen lead hives that I started in 2015 are the ones that came up with Foul Brood. It's not that they had AFB, but they got it because they were very bad robbers. I wondered how those 3 nucs that I started right at the beginning of the horrible 2015 drought did so well, then I finally figured it out when they all 3 came down with AFB. They got it from robbing out a hive that was infected with it.

So, I'm out on the Frost queens.

No, I won't have any Saskatraz nucs for sale. All the nucs that I have for sale have queens that were raised by a small scale commercial queen breeder near Madison. I took him a treatment free queen that I raised, whose hive put up 250 lbs of honey in 2014 and he raised queen from her and they were mated to his treatment free drones. They should be really good queens.

The Saskatraz queens are open mated to Italian.drones. It's not the queens that I'm after, it's their drones, to mate with queens that I raise here. I will use all of them for drone rearing hives. That will get rid of the Italian influence on the Saskatraz genes and put Saskatraz genes into my queens.

If you haven't done any reading on the Saskatraz bee breeding project, it's pretty interesting. Those bees have been heavily tested and scrutinized. Only the best ones make the cut and that's been going on for 10=15 years. That should push my bee genetics leap years ahead of where I would have them.

Bingo. You just answered a question for me without me asking. The two hives I lost this fall got robbed out in a week long period. I thought it was because I put a top feeder on them (and still probably was). But, I added robber screens when I added the feeders thinking that would prevent robbing. But, they were located right beside the Frost hives. Hmmm. They were actually in pretty good shape for late swarms; I was just trying to get them some syrup going right before the goldenrod bloom to make sure they would pile up some winter honey. Oh well, never even thought the robbing issue could be related to those new bees.

Keep us updated on those Sasquatch bees.

Going to move my 2 Hoover hives to a farm down below Montgomery. When do you move hives a long distance?

I've never moved hives long distances. I have moved them 500 yards or so. I did that right at last light and put a real weak split in the old location. The move went fairly well and the weak split got one heck of a population boost the next morning.

I finally had a chance to check the farm hives today. First one still had a medium super full of honey. Had to add mountain camp sugar to the other 3. The last one was down to a couple of frames of honey. Glad I checked them when I did. Still need to look at the 2 at the house.

Did you get the queens from John Horton?

Yes, except he used my best honey production queen for the eggs and they were mated to his drones.

I like him. Nice guy.

Yes he is.