It's been quite noticeable in my hives this spring that hives that are weaker than normal for whatever reason have more varoa per bee .
This could be cause-and-effect but it seems to me that were hives are boosting away in the spring they are actually at least for a little while out breeding the varoa while hives with dud Queen's et cetera just end up with more and more varoa and fewer bees. I am an absolute believer in treating every hive at the same time. This is by far the best method to keep hives healthy in the short-term but of course in the long-term we are not selecting our survivors.
A few years ago when we had some massive winter losses, we regroupoed and rebuilt,splitting evrything that was splittable, and some.
We raise our own queens,so in a sense the cell raisers were the survivors.
I use the same yard for cell builders every year. They get no special treatement .... except that I leave a lot more honey on them for the winter.
I just graft from what ever out of the yard of 24 has nice looking larva on the day I am looking.
I've spent this last lockdown feeding bees and taking stock of what we have this year.
Two yards of 48 hives have a visible varroa issue. Another two yards have 50% dead ....one yard we forgot to treat until we found it wintering down, and the other came out of pollnation totally thrashed and never really stood a chance.
The balance of the other 20 or so yards are up and down, but mostly weaker than normal,with many queens only just starting to lay.
It's always a mental challenge at this time of year ..... wondering how the heck a hive with one and a half frames of brood will make a crop gatherer of 100,000 workers. .
But experience says that with dilgence and syrup, and the odd wasrm day, a miracle will unfold.
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