>
I agree with Pete--that's why I'm belaboring trying to figure out why Charlie thinks that the OA dribble killed his colonies
I don’t think the OA did them in!, I strongly suspect the loss of a partial round of winter bees is the culprit. Yes I suspect the Dribble compounded that issue. Keep in mind they didn’t die, they just didn’t make grade, only 2 dies right off, and that can be for many reasons other than the OA I suspect queenless drift to be the main culprit.
If your not up on it there are many requirements for grade in CA, the normal standard is 8 frame minimum in Feb, we like to be well above that and generally try not to ship anything that wont make a 12 when it hits the ground. Experience has shown us that anything smaller will not fare well and be damaged by multiple moving.
Those hives didn’t make grade and have overall higher loss. We did not segregate them to get a good number as to how many perished, as in the chaos if prepping and moving it was a moot point to us.
We (3 of us in the area who run about 800-1000 each) are still struggling to find the perfect recipe and timing for treatment, honey, requeening, and fall feeding in order to get the right amount of winter bees to make grade. As a hobby beekeeper a 4 week shift in hive status is not a huge deal. Most often they snap out of it quickly and you don’t notice or care, one or two hives is always at a different level. When you make the shift to commercial, for pollination 3 weeks of hive status is the difference between a almond check or not (and other crops) its also enough of a shift to completely miss the main flow. Right now we are making the preps for nuc sales AND melon pollination. Pollination is 2 months away, but we start the day they hit the ground after almonds. Many hives this year are way behind where we need then to be. This season the bloom in CA was a bit peculiar, and many smaller hives did not benefit from the trip.
This last season a 30 day shift in killing frost was a huge deal for the making of winter bees. I simply suspect the dribble cost us on those hives in that key window.
> But I also do this quite regularly with no ill effects using the same
application rates and mix. Its not rocket science.
>Charlie, I'm not clear what you are referring to. Are you saying that you've previously applied OA dribble in fall with no ill effects?
We dribble nucs in spring on a regular basis, Fall or established hives, no. that’s a new attempt based on having more trouble clearing viral loads once established.
The application and mixing of the OA solution is one of the safer and easier uses. Not nearly as fussy as many other things we do such as formic pads or other livestock or pesticide mixes. Given the amount of math and timing and applications we do on a regular basis, goofing up this one is fairly unlikely was my point. I do recognize the margin of safety is small, but if its that sensitive, it even makes my point more in that maybe fall is not the best time. It seems that the dribble method is and can be pretty hard on bees, not as hard as a high load of mites, but harsh enough that one needs to be careful of use and timing and not use it as preventive on bees that need to live a long time.
Charles
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