There are many pests and diseases that can afflict a bee colony but the one that requires the most careful management is the varroa mite. These are tiny mites less than a millimetre long that stick to and feed on the bees, and especially the larvae.
Varroa is endemic now in the UK so you cannot just hope your bees are not affected. There are a number of ways to reduce the number of varroa mites in the hive and this autumn we have chosen to treat the hives with Apivar which is a pesticide developed for this purpose.
Apivar treatment is dead easy. It comes impregnated into plastic strips which are simply hung between the brood frames using matchsticks.
We did a rough count of the number of mites in each hive before treatment. Hives 1, 2 and 4 had pretty low varroa, but hive 3 had high infestation so needed pretty urgent treatment.
After the Apivar being in for a week we did another varroa count (you count the number of mites that drop out of the hive onto a special board that is slid under the hive). Sure enough, hive 3 had dropped a massive number of mites - I lost count but it was 300-400 mites.
We'll be inspecting the bees less frequently from now on. Our main check will be to ensure that the colonies are big enough and have enough food to get them through the winter.
You can read more about varroa and how we managed it earlier in the year in this previous post:
http://cpbees.blogspot.com/2019/02/winter-varroa-treatment.html
