Unexpected results

Again, contrary to the weather forecast it brightened up yesterday afternoon so I decided to get in and have a look at what they were up to. Having had to replenish the feeder three times this week I hoped they were doing something for their syrup. I had placed a varroa board in under the mesh floor on Monday to see what the level of mite infestation was, I had pulled it out on Wednesday to have a quick shifty but could only see one mite so replaced it. Well I pulled it out yesterday, expecting to see loads but again there were only two on the whole board one of which was alive and scurried off! There was also a dead bee, a decapitated head, some pollen and lot of wax shards but only two mites! Surely that can't be right can it? Can the mites crawl or get blown away? I've looked but can't find the answer. Maybe look into some Vaseline or sparymount or something, obviously something with no insecticides in it, that would be silly! Anyway, due to the lack of Varroa evidence, I shall not worry too much and just go through the routine Apiguard dosing in a couple of weeks time, which reminds me, I don't have an eke, EEEEk!

After opening up the hive I was encouraged to see they had definitely increased in size and there does now appear to be activity on all but the outer 2 or 3 frames. As it was sunny by this point I was hoping that the majority of them would be off foraging but it seemed me girls wanted to wait and say hello which many of them did, repeatably against my head! A few puffs of bee tobacco and they gave up and went down like the nice well mannered ladies I hope to encourage. They are still a small colony which too be honest is good for a novice like me, I can build up confidence whilst they hopefully build up numbers. I went through the hive fairly quickly checking for usual, any sign of disease or disorder? None. All capped brood was tidy, all uncapped was healthy looking, no signs of disease. Checked for signs of laying but didn't see any but as this queen seems to favour these inner frames and all but the wire line cells having something in, either capped or uncapped I assume she is up to her old tricks as the colony was calm. They had started to draw the outer frames and two sides were filled with stores so I think this queen will be sticking to these 5 inner frames for the remainder of the season. They are still producing a lot of brace comb but it's no biggie, they could be doing much worse things. There is some drone comb on the bottom of some of the frames but she ain't laying in this so I can't think what they are doing. No queen cells though.

I guess that's it for this week, need to make up and paint another hive as may swap them into that one over winter as this one is getting a bit old and needs a bit of TLC, I also want to get them onto a stand before long, I may as well do that whilst disrupting them with a house swap.