Mites!

We try to use as few chemicals as possible in our hives, while still doing our best to maintain health and numbers. We have a screened bottom board that is too small for bees to fit through, but it does allow varroa mites that fall off the bees to pass through. Normally these mites would just crawl back up and onto the bees. But we keep a sticky paper below the screen to capture these mites. It also allows us to count how many mites are coming off the bees. We have a chart we use to determine if our numbers are normal or too high that factors in the size of the hive and the time of year with a 24 hour count. I don't always use the chart because I check them enough to know what's good and what's not just by looking.
This is a fresh sticky paper I put in a week ago. The lines are formed from the frames - the debris falls where the frames are not, in between them.


After a few weeks the paper is really full of stuff - wax, pollen, bee parts.
You can see those nasty little mites here: They are the mini crab looking things.



Our neighbor just had two hives up and vanish recently. By the time he found them their honey had been completely robbed and not a single bee was in the hive. I'm not completely sure why this happens, but I think every beekeeper has a story like this. It's probably just a matter of time, but that is another reason why we got the second hive, you can keep everyone going easier when you have another hive to borrow from. Spring will tell how our hives did over the winter, but hopefully we have done everything we can to ensure their survival.