Hi Bobby,
I watched your sugar rolling video, great footage and great color! Thank you!
For a short year, I’ve had one (Flow) hive in the Santa Monica Mountains in Southern California. As you might have heard, we’ve had a super wet, and rather chilly winter (29F at its lowest). The Flow roof leaks nicely btw…
This weekend I found my colony somewhat decimated, 50-100 bees dead on the ground outside, and DWV present. A jar-sugar shake test presented 15 mites. The brood pattern is irregular, my queen is wandering around in the center of the hive like normal, there are no drone cells, there are no queen cells, there are minuscule amounts of capped honey, ants are at bay, there’s some pollen and minimal amounts of nectar. There are visible larvae, and pupae, and spotty brood… I didn’t look for eggs.
To remedy the issue, I condensed my bee’s living quarter from two deeps to one, I installed two strips of Apivar, and I fed them. Again.
Now, the idea of “showering” the bees with powdered sugar to “ease their burden” as they’re trying to swell the colony again sounds appealing to me. What’s the harm in dusting them with real powdered sugar once a week for 42 days?!
Apivar strips should stay suspended in the brood chamber for 6 weeks. I used the sugar to knock the phoretic mites back immediately because the load was so high, then a few days later, I dropped in Apivar strips.