SPEAKER:
So, we have the hive opened up, and Wendy’s here to help me out. You can see she’s holding on to the drench gun that we use. You can get these from agricultural supply stores. They’re a really handy way of dispensing the oxalic acid and sugar syrup. We mixed that up in a bucket here, so it’s handy to haul around to the bee yard. And we have a recipe on our website for mixing up this solution. So we follow that every year, make sure we’re doing it the right way, and we draw up 50 millilitres of the solution into the syringe and then we’re able to apply it to the colony. So, if you look down here, you can see they’re bees from roughly the second frame in from the outside over to the second frame on the other side. But what we’re looking at is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t see a lot of bees here because most of them are down lower than that. It’s important to know where the bees are because you want to apply the oxalic acid solution directly on top of them. So, you can go ahead there, Wendy.
You’re going to start at one side and just methodically work your way over to the other side, applying approximately five millilitres in between each of those frames there. I say approximately because some frames have less bees than others, so you do the best you can to distribute it evenly through the hive. Once that’s done, we’re able to wrap the hive up and close it up and call it a year. This is the last activity of the year in caring for our bees. I want to mention that it’s really important that beekeepers follow recommendations for their own regions. We follow the guidelines that are provided by the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food. They’re appropriate for Ontario. It may be different in your region. (VIDEO STOPS)
