Closeup look UNDER THE LID OF A BEEHIVE during a hive inspection – this is what you can expect
Closeup look UNDER THE LID OF A BEEHIVE during a hive inspection – this is what you can expect
Hello dear visitors and subscribers,
This weeks short video shows a closeup look under the lid of a beehive during our autumn hive inspection. This is what you can expect to see inside a twelve month old beehive all going well. Nice and healthy beehive with a strong colony, plenty of honey stores and a strong laying queen.
Any time we look into our hives, the first thing we get ready to catch a glimpse of is the number of hive beetles present as you lift the lid. This is critical to check. Any new or novice beekeepers out there, if you do not check in the first 3 seconds of lifting the hive top cover, you may not get a good understanding of the extent of the damage they are able to do.
We have quite a substantial problem ourselves, but we keep on top of it, squash as many as we can, and most importantly, we keep our hive very strong so they can dedicate enough bees to keep the hive beetle at bay. We use all sorts of traps, which we will cover in detail throughout the next few months. Keep your eyes out for that series, as once you lose a beehive to the hive beetle or the wax moth, (or FBT etc for that matter), you will never look into your beehive the same way. This series will be very extensive as one of our current projects is to review the hive beetle problem and as many have done before us, attempt to find a solution to the problem. The industry so far, it seems to us, deals primarily with the SYMPTOMS of hive beetle, but we would like to tackle the problem from the other end – successful prevention. This involves understanding hive beetles anatomy, life cycle, strengths and weaknesses. Once those are well understood, one can attempt to deploy strategies that may exploit one or several or in deed all of these. We are strong believers of using as little chemicals as and where possible, especially pesticides, and believe that nature has way to deal with every problem naturally. It may be less cost effective yes, possibly difficult to implement, and yes, perhaps not even commercially viable, but we are not a commercial beekeeping operation, and we care about our bees and those around the world, so every helping hand may assist, and who knows, the saying “Seek and you shall find”may in the end win over.
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Have a fabulous day!
