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Bees & Beekeeping

What medicines do you feed your honeybees in spring?

12 years ago

Its springtime. I had three hives last fall - now I have two. One hive died over the winter. not sure why...

I have been reading about honeybee diseases and doing quite a bit of research into remedies. One son-of-a-beekeeper writes about how commercial apiaries feed antibiotics to honeybees in the springtime. He details Oxysol 62.5 which I cannot get.. He also mentions acid pads and sticky strips for killing mites. ?

Do the fruit crop growers and hobby beekeepers in Niagara Falls foster a hotbed of honeybee diseases? (through neglect ie they are only keeping bees to pollinate fruit crops and dont care about bees well-being or honey crops...?) interesting idea. hope its not true

What do you guys do? What diseases do your fear most and what is your drug plan with bees?

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Comments (2)

julysun
12 years ago
Been out of beekeeping for a few years but am starting back with three hives. Bought package bees from suppliers that have and are breeding bees for natural mite resistance. No chemicals. Some danger there but they are progressing so I plan to follow their lead.
I do use screened bottom boards and plan to monitor my mite load. There are some natural helps such as powdered sugar treatment, Drone come use, re-queening with resistant, cleaning, strong queens. Avoiding stress and such.
Reading web articles on mite prevention and such will bring you up to speed. You may choose to use chemical treatments and that is OK, just read widely on the subject.
Keep us posted on your bees and your chozen methods ;-)) Happy Beekeeping!

Web searches;
Screened Bottom Boards
Mite resistant Bees
Powdered Sugar Treatment of Bees
Bee Mite Monitoring
American Foulbrood Resistant Bees
Using Drone Brood comb To Fight Mites
Re-Queening (with mite resistant Queens)
Konrad___far_north
12 years ago
As a hobby bee keeper try to do without any.
Most, if not all larger scale bee keepers here treat them with allot of chemicals!
Why?? I only guess because they can simply not monitor all 1000 plus hives as close as I can do with less then 10 hives.
It's their livelihood and don't want to risk high loss.

That's why I believe my honey is much better then any in the store. It's worth every penny,..even if double in price.
Also because my honey/source comes from mostly wild flowers, bees are far away from huge, one sided nectar source like canola etc.
For about 20 years or so, I plant lots of trees & shrubs to provide even more flavor to the honey.

Don't let the combs get too old, 3 or 4 years max. give them some new one's in the middle for brood every year. I know of a smaller commercial bee keeper who doesn't use
antibiotic, he's the only one around here who can sell he's honey to Germany. I'm trying to follow he's advise,...so far I cut down in treatment for mites,..didn't treat all of last year, fall check was low in mite no treatment and all are thriving, I'll have to check now and decide.
You can put some shallow combs in your deep,..they build/extend the frame with drone comb preferred by mites, cut them away.
I don't do any antibiotic in spring, a little in fall with Fumagilin because bees are locked up most of the time due to cold temp. from Oct. to April.

With new packages you should get away with no treatement for mites for at least one or two season,..again you need to check.
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