Here I am. It's been a few years of no beekeeping. First because of Covid and then my health took a downward turn. This summer I got more bees and have been very focused on keeping them alive. My goal is to keep them through the winter and then expand to two hives in the spring.
Varroa mites is the key...or lack of varroa I should say. So I have been treating them with OA sponges during the spring/summer and then Apigard in the fall. In late November, a few weeks after removing Apigard, I treated with OA vapor. Now, on 12/15, I was trying to do another OA vapor treatment but saw that my hive had come off the bottom board. So I had to do something and couldn't manage to get it back into place so, because it's almost 50 degrees today, I took the hive apart and fixed it. Then I closed it back up, added a ratchet to keep it in place, added back the tar paper and the Xmas wreath. Now I'm waiting for them to settle down so I can go back out and do the treatment, which was to be my only task with them today until I saw the issue and had to deal with that first.
In a way it was good to see what's going on inside the hive. I have lots of bees! None of them were happy with me though. They prefer it if I leave them alone. I also was able to clean out the bottom board. Once I complete the OA vapor treatment later today or tomorrow morning, I should be all set for the winter. I wanted to take advantage of this nice day. We never know if/when we'll have another one until spring.
