Apiary Report for 2026 Coming Soon

Bee Report:  Check you hives in the next day or so.  A lot of my hives were froze shut today and entrances needed to be clear so when the weather gets nice the bees can fly.Here is an update on my oxalic acid dribble treatments.  Here is what I find interesting.  The treatments seem to give you a kill for 4 to 5 days and then settle out to a natural drop.  If you look close at hive number 5 in my backyard you will see 2 treatments and both flushed a significant amount of mites; to date over 3000.  The drop was 22 mites today and that is still is indicating a 3% mite count which is still high.  If you look at the right hand column you can see that their average drop has gone down after each treatment from 75 to 35.  I will keep monitoring them and hopefully their average drop will get down to about 10 or less.  The other 4 hives look good as their daily drops are near nothing.

This is a mite board from the bottom of the hive.  Each dark spec is a mite.  This one had over 300 in 24 hour period.

Bee Report October 2025  

I feel like I am doing battle.  I feel like I am in a FIGHT with MITES!

So life as a beekeeper has been good this fall.  I was able to get my mite treatments on for the most part in August and the goldenrod flow has been fantastic and the best I have seen in this area since 2010 and the hives filled up with honey.  Which is great because I have talked to people in other parts of the state that did not fare as well.  The Grassbaugh dairy planted some buckwheat and the hives in Gambier were .9 miles away but close enough to get a super full.   My girls made me proud when they had kill and laid out 5 yellowjackets on the landing board as a warning to others. (see photo).  I have filled most of my vent boxes and installed most of my entrance reducers.  So what's my problem?  

Here it is:  I so happened to clean one of my screen bottom board pans a couple of weeks ago and by chance was back in the apiary the next day.  I found 84 mites in a natural 24-hour drop.  That can't be right, I had just treated this colony 6 weeks earlier with Formic Pro and it looked like the strongest hive in the apiary and had produced 4 supers of honey.  Let's do this again.  So, I cleaned the pan and came back the next day and found 96 mites.  If this is right, then this hive has a 10% infestation of mites. (see the first page of the attached) Its dead and it doesn't know it, many would say.   You can see at the bottom count totals per seam.

So I treated:  I am not done counting but so far 3620 mites have dropped from this hive and they are still dropping over 100 per day.  Even at 3600 mites if I had 36,000 bees in this hive that is a 10% infestation.  But my guess is that there are more mites to fall and less bees than 36,000 which would make the infestation even higher than 10%.  See the results below so far.   More than 2 or 3 percent make the experts nervous going into winter.   And I didn't and couldn't see it; but the pan did.  Use the pan!!!  People say the pan is not accurate but when your hive is dropping 80 or 90 mites a day you have to believe your hive is in trouble.

My treatment were made with formic acid and oxalic acid which are naturally occuring acids.

This section is for BEE GEEKS: 

Attached is an article explaining fat bodies and their critical role in overwintering bees.

This is a discussion that has fascinated me for a long time and with new research available my understanding is beginning to come together.  It is about winter bees (we call fat bees) and fat bodies.  I used to think "fat bees" were just fatter than their sisters but the "fat body" is an organ that stores protein for times when there is a lack of pollen/bee bread available.  Winter bees are physiologically different from their sisters in that they have developed fat bodies, laden with excess protein.  This allows them the ability to draw on these extra stores for use in winter and to make royal jelly if they don't have the proper food available.  Bees eat 2 things: nectar/honey for their carbohydrate, and pollen for their protein.  It is the protein that helps them develop fat bodies. This is why it may not be a bad idea to give your colonies a pollen patty in the fall to help them build stores of protein in their fat body.

• How do fat bees become fat bees?:  Fat bees are produced in the fall and in our area probably in September.  They are fed well and usually don't take on any brood rearing duties because this will reduce their protein level in the fat body.  This is why it is so important to have healthy nurse bees in September to raise winter bees.  Healthy nurse bees in September come from good brood production in August.  So, there you have it.  For healthy and numerous winter bees we need to think about what is going on in August not September or October, by then it is too late.  We need to make sure our mites are under control and fed a little if needed to boost brood production.