Well, it's been an interesting week or so with the second hive....

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    Well, it's been an interesting week or so with the second hive. No, they're not as aggressive thank goodness. There's not as many of them though. I noticed a lot of greyish dried up pods at the front entrance of the hive and Mrs Google told me the hive had chalkbrood. Lots of panic ensued and I learnt that it may have been in response to a failing queen, ventilation/humidity problems...generally the hive was stressed. Tried not to check the frames too much as that process stresses them even more. As most of the brood larvae dried up and died I realised that the number of foragers had dramatically decreased and the hive was heading for starvation. Found some fresh new larvae, so the queen was still there, even though I couldn't see her. After much procrastinating I just followed my instincts and decided to change the bottom board every day for a week and see if that helped things, eg less pods with fungus wallowing around. I sanitised the bottom board with white king and gave it a good hosing off and left it in the sunshine until the next day. Was lucky to have a spare bottom board available. I was slightly concerned any residual bleach would kill them but things weren't looking good for the hive anyway. Decided to go for broke and put a supplementary sugar bag in the super every day as well because the number of forager bees was dropping at an alarming rate. It was then I discovered that they became quite docile after the first day of the sugar feeding. A sugar high? Don't know, but don't need to smoke them when I change the bag. After the first couple of days when the number of grey chalkbrood actually increased they have dropped off and this morning there was only a couple on the bottom board and a lot less debris as well. So I will continue with the white king for another few days and see how they go. I checked the frames this morning and they are looking OK. If they can manage to keep the chalkbrood under control themselves I will take a brood frame from my first hive to boost their numbers up. Not sure how to do it yet but I am going to replace the queen as soon as I can find her. When I look back, the 3 frames I bought from the Buderim guy were probably infected with chalkbrood and I will return to my original bloke at the Glasshouse Mountains for a new one. One good thing though, there's not many hive beetles around at the moment. Will do another post on the hive's progress. Fascinating to see how industrious they are.
 
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