Hi beeks!
I have a couple small colonies (they were mid summer swarms that didn’t have much time or resources to build up properly before our New England fall). I need to treat all my hives for mites, but the FormicPro strips instructions say that it’s not suitable for hives with less than 6 frames of bees. The small colonies have 4-5 frames, so I’m wondering how I can treat them with the strips. Do I use one strip for the 14 day treatment period? Half a strip? Or should I combine the smaller colonies with other larger colonies first and then treat?
Onto combining colonies…. How can I choose the “right” queens to keep? I have one big colony that is pretty darn feisty, but they have built up good honey stores and are healthy. My other colonies are much more docile and easier to work with, but didn’t build up as much stores. My gut tells me to keep the nice queens, but my head tells me to keep the feisty one. Which would you pick? Even splits and swarms with daughter queens of the feisty hive are more docile but have less honey stores. They are all 2021 queens of my own stock (I didn’t breed them, the bees naturally replaced them themselves this year).
