Survey of Mites in Capped Brood Cells

So I was out working the bees today and I was removing some deep frames from a medium hive.  The bees had built comb hanging from the bottom of the frames.  It was the only way I had to get a deep nuc into a medium hive last year.

I took the best of the brood comb and tied it into a foundationless frame:

However, a lot of the comb was drone and so out of curiousity I started pulling out the drone brood and counting and separating them by which ones had mites and which didn't.  Then out of more curiosity, I did the same with the last little bit of worker brood there was on a similar piece of comb. 

Here are the results:  Of the drone brood, I uncapped 56 drones, finding 15/56 (27%) infested with at least one varroa, and two with two mites for a total of 17 mites.  Of the worker brood, I uncapped 73 and found 5 infested with a mite (7%) and one having successfully reproduced, showing multiple mites in the cell, in the typical ages of a mite lifecycle in a honeybee cell (1.4%).  I did not find any reproducing mites in the drone cells, but as you can see in the picture above, the drones were all recently capped whereas many of the workers were near emergence.

What does this demonstrate?

First, I have mites.  No surprise there, I have been saying that for years.

Second, I have plenty of mites.  No tiny insignificant population here.  This is not a hive that has demonstrated hygienic traits, yet survives nonetheless.

Third, the mites obviously prefer the drone brood, infesting at a rate of one in four while worker brood was only infested at a rate of one in fourteen.

Fourth, some hives are capable of handling a substantial mite load without crashing or even showing detrimental effects.  This hive is about the fourth strongest in this yard of nine.  I used it as my cell builder this year.

Five, if these numbers hold out, mites are not terribly successful at reproducing in worker brood in this hive, only about 1 in 71 worker cells result in mite reproduction.

And for some background data, I measured the cell size of this piece of nearly perfect free form comb and found the cell size to be a consistent 5.2mm.  The rest of the comb in the hive is 4.9mm wax or 4.95mm plastic.

Natural Cell Size

If you've read the blog for a while, you'll know that I was trying foundationless frames this year.  If you want to get caught up, go ahead and go back and read.  I'll wait.

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Okay, you're back.

Well, I only have one comb to show you, because it just so happens that the hive it was in happened to die a few weeks ago.  No worries, this hive was a split from the hive the frame was previously in (still alive and well) and the frame certainly had nothing to do with it.

Here, you can see the frame and you can compare it to what it looked like soon after it was begun.

It's not too bad, though not perfect.  It had several queens made on it over the course of the year so that also makes it a little holey.

So, how did it turn out?  I measured the cell size on the frame in a number of places and different directions.  Here are the results:

Here's a 4.9mm section.

Here's a 5.1mm section.

Here's a 5.2mm section.

As you can see, there is natural variability.  However, the natural cell size is certainly on average below the smallest standard sized foundation available at 5.2mm.

In the future, I'm switching wholesale to plastic frames and foundationless frames, but until then I still have quite a bit of foundation to run through.

How to Use Nucs.

Here's my most recent yard pic:

I recently watched this excellent video on keeping nucs as part of one's operation.  It's long so that means if I'm recommending it, it's really good.  This is just part one, there's also a part two.

Mike Palmer 4/2011 The Sustainable Apiary Part 1 of 2 from PWRBA (Prince William Regional B on Vimeo.

The idea is that keeping nucs, even as many as you have regular hives gives you all sorts of flexibility and sustainability in your bee yard especially if you are raising your own queens.  At this point in history, any serious beekeeper should.  As Michael explains, queens and packages are becoming more and more unreliable.

Among other reasons, nucs offer the ability for quick requeening, quick hive replacement, quick increase, the ability to use a nuc as a 'bee bomb' to boost a hive's production, the ability to raise and test queens before devoting much equipment to them, the ability to draw out new combs rapidly without suffering honey production, and as a consistent product to sell.

I currently have the equivalent of 10 nucs that I will be attempting to put into circulation this next spring.  After this disastrous summer we've just had, the idea of selling nucs primarily appeals to me as such a thing can be done even with zero honey production in a calendar year.  The really big thing that I learned was not to make nucs from your big productive hives, but to make nucs from mediocre healthy hives, but make queens from your big productive hives.  Thus far, I have been splitting queens the old Emergency Queen way but this next year, I'm going to be grafting.  If that fails, I'll try the Nicot system or Jenter. 

I could go through and explain the whole system to you but it would take hours to type and read and you can watch the whole video yourself.  So please go watch the video.  You'll find it well worth your time.