Autumn 2020. First tests of bee families using Apivox Smart Monitor in winter mode.

It is late autumn now, and the bees are not doing any work outside the hive. When it is warm enough some bees can take honey from different places in the hive in order to supply another bees with food. There are bees that heat the central part of the nest in which the queen is located . Until it is not so cold,  (now about + 5C - + 7C) all signals inside the hive remain practically the same as in summer. This suggests that the bee colony feels normal and the bees are  engaged in normal in-hive works.

 But there are some peculiarities of diagnosing the state of bees in winter mode of operation of our device ... At first, you must switch it to winter mode (1), then you must make sure that you hear the signal of bees ... The picture of bees sounds must be clearly visible when amplification indicator is green or yellow... (2) If you see a red icon when trying to see the signals of bees, it is better to change the place of control, or to check the condition of bees personally...

At this time, if we will even slightly open inner cover of the hive or slightly knock on the body of the hive, the bees will be immediately excited ... To a certain extent, this interferes with the diagnosis, but this is normal and we should not pay attention to this. That is why even if there are such signals on the chart, (3) then we do not pay attention to them in the resulting diagnosis ...

Another feature is the behavior of the heating signals ... Usually, when the colony is in a normal state of hibernation, the heating signals are almost always small enough... (4) They are not the main ones, because it is enough metabolic heat which the bees emit without generation of any sounds, to heat the loose autumn cluster of bees. Therefore, the heating signal is small and the diagnostics do not mention it. If it is strong enough, then there is a high probability that brood rearing continues in the family and this is not a very good factor, since it allows Varroa mites to continue reproduction even in winter ...

The third feature is the possibility of presence of emergency heating signals. This is the lowest frequency signal in the hive. (5) And the most unpleasant one ... Its presence usually indicates, that the family does not have enough own heat to heat the nest and the queen, and this, in turn, suggests that there are too few bees left in the family to the beginning of winter. This is a very unpleasant sign, because there is a very high probability, that you will lose this family during the wintering process!

 Thus, diagnostics using Apivox Smart Monitor in winter time will not only show the state of the bees at the moment, but can give you a long-term forecast about their condition in future, if you will understand the relationship between phenomena about which we have just written ...

 Here are examples of diagnostics of two families remaining after 2 years of experiments on the Apivox Varroa Eliminator project. Until the last opportunity, these families did not receive treatment against Varroa mites, and suffered quite severely from it. Family 5-2 was very strong and produced 60 kilograms of marketable honey. But there were a lot of mites in it, especially after the finish of honey collection, and It suffered hard enough. Family 8-2 restored the queen in June and Varroa mites population in it became strong only at the beginning of autumn. We have not monitored these families for a month.

The family 8-2 showed a fairly good result. We can see 2 pictures - the first was taken in the Monitoring mode, the second was taken in the General State Control mode, that is, with averaging the results. We always choose an interval of 3 minutes as more indicative. Signals are clearly visible when the gain level is in the green zone. Family is in a working state. There is practically no excitement. Ventilation is episodic and is very weak when averaged. There is heating, but it is small and is not reflected in the diagnostics. In general, the family's condition is satisfactory.

Family 5-2 did not show very good results. We see the same 2 pictures. At first, we can see, that in order to see good signal of the bees we had to increase the gain - we see a yellow warning icon. This means that the sound of the bees is rather weak. In the monitoring mode, we also see the periodical appearance of the emergency heating signal. In General State Control mode, it also appeared, but unfortunately we did not take a photo. The second photo shows the presence of strong excitement. It would not be scary if it were not for the presence of the first signal - that is, the emergency heating signal ...

 

 

This most likely suggests, that 5-2 family is very small ... Most likely, there are very few bees and they have to heat the nest even at positive outside temperatures in a mode, that will lead to their rapid deterioration and death. This also explains the reason, that the bees are very easily become excited at the slightest touch of the hive ... Most likely this family will not survive in winter. The damage caused by the mites was too strong. There are almost no young bees left in the family which can survive until spring.

The check of the sticky board confirmed our assumption ... According to it, the size of winter cluster of bees is quite small!

And besides this, there are many mites on sticky
board, which fell down after the last treatment with amitraz. Most likely, not all the mites died.

 

Inspection of sticky board  from the family 8-2 showed,  that its size is also not very large, most likely it is about twice as large as the 5-2 family.

Thus, it can be assumed, that most likely, the 5-2 family will die before the beginning of new year. The family 8-2 has more chances to survive until spring, although they are not absolute...