The second dusting of August/September to clense my bees of the Veroa mite. The first hive of the cathedral or barn type went ahead and was completed without incident as seen in the sequence of images here. The other hive treated today was of the ordinary top bar shape but the sequence was interrupted after one comb broke away from the top bar, and fell to the bottom of the hive so upsetting the proceedure. Understandably the bees were none too happy and decided to see me off. After lighting up the smoker afresh I managed to regain control to continue with the dusting and finally closed up the hive.
I am carefull to use pure icing sugar labelled as fondant icing sugar that contains no anti-caking agent or additives.
To take these shots I set up my Nikon D750 camera on a tripod to take a picture every eight second. Here are some of those showing the sugar dusting to best advantage. The remainder of the 518 total were discarded. (250th at f11 auto focus and exposure at +1.7 to get better into the shadow detail.)
The flat TopBarHive pictured below became a little chaotic as can be seen here; The water spray canister contains tap water. The smoker is fueled with dry grass. The grey cloth dangling dummy wasp/hornet nest is believed to spook attacks from these insects that sometimes plunder the apiery.
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The broken off comb is being retrieved from the bottom of the five
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Hooking out the broken comb
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Gently placing down and under attack
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Stung around the waistline and through the upper arm of my tunic
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Smoker re-fuelled with dry grass
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