??>With three deep brood boxes there are about 60k bees (theoretically), and
??>the temps can still get very warm during the day.

>I doubt in NH right now you have 60,000 bees in your boxes unless you have
>been doing what we do which is feed syrup & patties since February and the
>three boxes are not as effective I have been told for above formic use. I
>have been *told* that removing one deep and using two during spring the
>treatment works best but I have never personally tried to treat three deeps
>with formic.

Was on the road for a few days and am playing catch up.  Sorry, that's not what I meant (# of bees).  I was referring to the time of year, when I treated with FA, which was late summer/early fall.  I was not referring to now.  Allen has commented many times on unnecessary copying of prior text, and I try to comply, so I probably did not copy enough to make it clear.  I think that at this time of year the count is more like 10 - 15,000.  But, in the late summer, with a good queen having laid on multiple frames across three deeps in mid-late summer, I think they might even push beyond 60,000.  But, I have not taken the time to count every bee in every hive to know for sure.

Three deeps is probably not ideal for treating with FA, but I think it still worked, because I watched the numbers drop dramatically in the hives with the higher counts, and, by the third or fourth treatment all treated hives had final drop counts of <10.  As I wrote in an earlier post, the smell of the FA was very apparent from the vents in the vent box above the inner cover, so it was definitely circulating within the hive.  But, I do not know what the concentration was up top.  However, by that time of year (late summer/early fall), the bees had pretty much filled the top deeps and part of the second deeps with honey (we had a really strong goldenrod flow last year) and had pushed the queens down into the lower half of the hives to lay.  So, the brood was further down in the hives then it would have been in the spring, like now.


###################################
Bill 
Claremont, NH
+43 21’ 25”  -72 23’ 01”
+43.35687     -72.3835
CWOP: D5065
Weather Underground: KNHCLARE3
HonetBeeNet: NH001

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