It’s been a while since I blogged. I’ll be uploading many photo galleries from the summer and more video…. bee footage I shot in Brazil! Stay tuned…

Back in San Francisco, I sprinkled powdered sugar on my bees for the first time to see how many mites would fall through the screened bottom board, on Oct 25th. The week before, I noticed some shriveled bee wings on some newborns that were booted from the hive and were getting plucked up by little yellowjackets on a chilly, overcast day. It was alarming, but also rather normal and natural. I was hoping not to get into any heavy management of this hive, but I’m attached now. I love what is happening in there now, and powdered sugar is hardly one of the poisons or nasty (boric) acids that other beekeepers recommend to control mites. So, I opted to see what happens. I found one mite after sprinkling some sugar on the top super (see photo). I’ll do more sugaring another time.

I benefited today from reading about “proper supering” on mainebee.com http://www.mainebee.com/articles/March.php
One photo in my gallery from 10/25/08 is a view of my recently harvested super, in which I returned 5 frames with comb onto one side of the super about 2 weeks ago (10/10). There was honey residue on there, and I tried to preserve their comb while spinning the frames. I didn’t really clean it off with water. I’m back 2 weeks later and it’s all filled out again, but with evidence of burr comb and bridge comb. I decided not to examine the frames and just powder sugar to see what happens. I’ll take the advice from mainebee.com. Thanks!