So far 38 out of 41 of my personal hives are alive, but don't know how strong/viable they are. This weekend is supposed to be in low 60s so I should be able to get a better understanding. 40 of the hives are in suburban/rural area, 1 was in my backyard and it died. Did an alcohol wash and found 11 mites per 100 bees. Cluster was spread on 5 frames and full deep of stores above it.

The other 2 dead outs were in similar situation; good cluster size, good to the sides and above but high mite loads - 11 and 17 per 100 bees. Out of the 41 hives going into winter I treated 8 with oav in early November to see if there's a noticeable difference between the treated and not treated hives. Up until this point I've never treated my hives and relied on brood breaks, splits and breeding from colonies with low mite counts to control varroa.

At my workplace it looks like 7 out of 14 are alive. All of the hives were treated and monitored for mites. I used HopGuard in July, MAQS in September and oav in October. Robbing was a big issue in Chicago in the fall and hives kept getting reinfested after treatments.

I'm thinking of creating a survey of winter losses in the Chicago area, but so far it looks like 80% losses from personal conversations.

I have a list of questions I'd like to ask, but if anyone has suggestions on what to ask, feel free to email me off the list and provide feedback.


Marcin

Chicago

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