Anonymous wrote:
When did you do your last mite wash? It's early for mite issues but yours overwintered so they may have an extra mite load to deal with. I have been treating the swarms collect as I hive them and my nuc has already gotten its second vapor treatment.
No mite was yet this season. I am reluctant to open boxes when cold and wet. I check sticky boards often. OAV series in October and FormicPro in April.
High mite counts bring virus levels up in the colony and often boomers just dwindle down as the viral infections from the mites spoil colony health.
Keep your mite levels under 1%
I use the Ceracell mite wash jar to avoid wash jar issues. No leaks!
Mites are top of the list, so how old is that queen, maybe she is played out.
Queens are one year now. Unmarked.
You can force them to build comb by feeding light syrup that needs lots of comb area to dry out, or re-waxing, checker-boarding, etc may encourage comb building. But your colony and queen health rule the day. If you can't check for mites, the secondary visual indicators would be instances of Deformed Wing Virus which seems to be a predominant visual indicator and very easy to spot (although usually far too late for the colony)
If their brood box is not plugged they will be less likely to move up into supers. They have no reason to. Why is your population low? Is your queen not laying up a storm? Did they re-queen and are just getting started? An over-wintered colony I would expect to be larger or at the limit of a single deep by now. As the weather warms the bees will fill the upper brood box with honey and the majority of the brood area will naturally move down closer to the entrance. I would expect by now that they would be starting to move down simply due to population.
Four colonies now. Several frames of honey in each. A fifth colony went through winter with a laying worker. I robbed the resources and added a second box to my TVBA nuc.
And some bees just start out slow, they don't have such a volatile population count..... What did they do last year? Queen marked? Same Queen? Do you have other hives?
Last year was a bust. After DOA packages I was late getting replacements. They then made lots of honey in the deeps but drew no wax on the supers. The apiary is at 1200’ and get twice the rain we do in the valley. Averages 5-7 degrees cooler too. I will plan alcohol wash next warm day. Thanks