It's been fine here all week which is a bit of a miracle although other parts of Hawke's Bay have had a lot of afternoon showers. I took off my honey crop from my 32 hives this week and it will average out at about 30 kg per hive . Disappointing but nowhere near as bad as the hives up in the hills many of which will do a negative crop. Grafted two boxes of cells this week mainly for my mate and got 40 out of 40 in one box and 36 out of 40 on the other which is not too bad. Got varoa strips into all my hives at the same time as I took of the honey. Most of the hives had no visible varoa in the drone brood but one had some PMS. Helped my mate shut down his hives up in the mountains today. They were getting a little bit of fresh honey but no surplus to take of and most will need feeding several times before winter. A lot of the drone brood was showing signs of what I call purple death which makes the grubs turn various shades of purple and can occasionally be fatal but generally doesn't seem to cause much problem. I believe it is caused by the bees eating koromiko pollen. It varies from hive to hive but with hives with a lot of purple death you also get a good smattering of very dark brood caps which cannot can look very much like AFB. If the brood does die in the cell you end up with a fairly small mummified purple bee. It is nothing to worry about and I've never seen more than a very tiny percentage that die. I wish I had my camera today as there were some magnificent purple drone brood.
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