NSW are working on information I gave them when I experience a log with a feral hive coming down into an area with my hives (pauatahanui) shortly after restriction lines were drawn across the middle of the north island.



The difference with Dr Goodwin’s experiment being that I observed my poisoning stations  rather than just putting out bait stations plus I only used enough fipronil for the bees to make just three trips before they died. (Didn’t return to the bait station).



After our Ministry found mites in the hive after destroying it a 5 kl  standstill zone was put around the area.



My hives were treated with a miticide but nothing else was planned so following a letter drop to all houses, Judd’s know where a lot of feral hives are), I went out and started sealing feral hives and poisoning the feral hives I couldn’t find using heated cappings wax and honey to attract them in.



Feral bees were black mellifera bees

While my bees were yellow bees. 



Didn’t take long to attract the bees so replaced the capping with new extracted frame with sugar and a tiny amount of fipronil.



At the same time I marked bees, and bee lined the direction the bees came from.

Within an hour the bees changed colour to yellow bees (my bees) so I moved another half mile and started baiting again.



In the end, with the help of another beekeeper it was easier to walk down roads looking for the flying bees and sealing them in the hollow trees with foam.



I killed most of the feral hives however I missed a few ( some didn’t

want their feral that had been in a tree for years killed). This slowed the spread of varroa for 18 months. 



My hives suffered the loss of about 30 bees in front of several hives but otherwise were undamaged.



My problem was that I did not follow up on poisoning a few months later to check for other ferals, hence varroa spread to a hive about a mile outside the 5 kl zone the next year.



Seems the way I killed these ferals meant that the poisoned sugar syrup was not stored otherwise my hives would have been killed when they started robbing the colonies I poisoned.



I use fipronil in jam to poison wasps each autumn when they become a problem to our bees. By supervising each bait station and squashing any visiting bees, it only takes an hour to clear an area of wasps and the bees start flying again.



Like most of you know, this is an experiment. My only concern is that just outside the coastal plain, hills rise steeply and it will be difficult to access these areas to kill the feral hives.

My other concern  is that drones can fly up to 14 kl. So is their zone big enough?



Frank Lindsay

Wellington 

New Zealand





Sent from my iPhone





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