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Skåne, eight years. I've got the boxes from a colony that collapsed in September sitting in my shed — properly diagnosed as far as I can tell, heavy mite load, deformed w…
Provence, eight years, sixteen hives. A neighbour clearing branches found a nest the size of a beach ball high in a plane tree at the edge of the village, and it's unmist…
Vermont, second year. After the mess I made of not noticing a dying colony last month I've put clean trays under all three remaining hives, partly for mite counts and par…
Kent, third year, five colonies after the unite. My winter treatment has always been a dribble because that's what my mentor lent me, and a few people at the association …
Andalusia, ten years, 22 colonies. The northern threads about timing a treatment for the broodless period are lovely to read and completely inapplicable here. My colonies…
Twenty-two years in middle Georgia, 40-odd colonies. October here isn't a wind-down, it's a knife fight. Days still hitting 24°C, nothing much coming in, and every colony…
Muğla, fifteen years, 60 colonies on pine. For anyone who doesn't know our system: the pine honeydew flow here runs from late summer into autumn, and in a good year we're…
Vermont, second year, four colonies on one stand. The smallest one has been limping since September and on Saturday I found it dead — a fist of bees on two frames, no que…
Oregon, fifth year. I lost a small colony in late August to what I'm fairly sure was a mite-driven collapse, and I made the classic mistake of stacking the boxes in the s…
North Carolina, third year, six hives. Beetles were a proper nuisance in August — I had traps in every hive and was still squashing adults on the inner cover every visit.…
Quebec, fifth year, eight hives at the edge of a woodlot. Two winters ago I opened a colony in March to find it dead, no mouse nest, no chewed comb, but a heap of dismemb…
Tyrol, 18 years, 24 colonies at two altitudes. My autumn treatment finished three weeks ago and I now have clean trays under all of them for a seven-day count. I trust th…
Eight years in Provence and this is a first for me. One of my eight colonies — one of the strongest, three deep boxes of bees — has, over the last week, started producing…
Third year in Uppsala, four hives, and I want to get the winter oxalic right this time. Last year I did an Api-Bioxal dribble by the calendar, mid-November, and my spring…
Well. I was going to fit the mouse guards this weekend, and it turns out a mouse had the same calendar as me but got there first. Galway, second year, three colonies. Lif…
Second year in Vermont, three hives, and I'm confused about which mite number I should be aiming for right now. Ran Formic Pro in mid-August (two strips, 14 days, temps c…
Every September the same visitor shows up in my Tyrolean apiary: Vespa crabro, the European hornet, big reddish-brown thing the size of my thumb. Right now there are two …
Uppsala, third year, four hives. The last few days I've been seeing a handful of bees on the landing board of one hive with their wings held out at odd angles — the front…
First year, two hives in central Minnesota. Yesterday I noticed maybe twenty or thirty bees crawling in the grass in front of my stronger hive, and when I looked closer a…
Fifth year in Małopolskie, ten hives. After a warm start to the month we've had ten days of cold rain and the bees have been stuck inside. Two of the ten hives now have b…
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