Apiguard

Bees bees bees. It's been a busy time for my beekeeping recently. Following the honey extraction I replaced the wet supers back in the hive for the bees to clean up. I returned today to find the girls had done an excellent job. Today's task was to apply Apiguard, the anti-varroa treatment. It comes in flatish packets which have a peel-off lid and are then put into the hive above the brood. It was pretty simple to put these in - I put a super on top of hive2 to give the Apiguard some space and removed some frames from the upper super in hive 1 so I could put the Apiguard sachet in. Also, I replaced the varroa boards, put in a partial entrance blocks and actually taped around the varroa boards to make things a little more air-tight. This is advisable since the idea is to make the atmosphere inside heavy with Apiguard. It's a thyme-based application, and my understanding is that it stays in the hive longer if the hive is better sealed. I am due to apply another similar sachet to each hive in 2-3 weeks so as to cover a couple of brood cycles and blitz those little mites.