September 16, 2025 Meeting Minutes

September 16, 2025, fourteen people were in attendance. Buddy made a motion to accept the August 19, 2025 minutes as emailed out August 28, 2025. Randy seconded the motion. All were in favor.

Devin reminded everyone that December is election month for the new association officers for 2026. He is willing to serve as President again. Priscilla is willing to serve as secretary for one more year. Randy has offered to take over the treasurer’s position. 

Rosemary has volunteered to line up speakers for our meetings. She would like to know what topics others would like to learn about. Randy suggested other pest besides mites, for example: skunks, wax moths, hive beetles, hornets, etc. Priscilla would like to learn more about when to re-queen and raising queens. 

Randy and Devin would like to see our association more involved in the community. They suggested having a table/booth for local county events to hand out information about beekeeping and our club. Maybe have a used beekeeping equipment sale and a co-op available. 

Lewis Cauble, the apiary Inspector for WNC was the speaker for our meeting. Lewis Cauble covers 21 counties. Please see his contact information below. 

There are three main recommendations Mr. Cauble made to keep your bee hives thriving. First, monitor and control the mite infestation. Second, feed and only when needed (when you have a new hive, Spring time when honey stores may be low, anytime you find your hive is starving, and to build up stores for the winter). You should have the box below full of bees with some honey. The box above should be full of food for the winter. If you feed too much, you may encounter an unwanted swarm. Third is to manage queen events. Know when the hive is replacing their queen, or building queen cells preparing to swarm. 

Next Mr. Cauble spoke about the different mite treatments available for our bees. Apiguard is a thymol based treatment and can be temperature sensitive. It can’t be too hot. He hasn’t encountered resistance to Apiguard yet. Apilife Var involves three treatments. Both Apiguard and Apilife Var do not permeate the capped brood. Formic Pro is an organic acid and does permeate the capped brood. Formic Pro can be too hard on bees if you use two pads at one time. Varroxsan is a new treatment out. You can use it with the honey supers on. It is good to try and hold the mite count down during the honey flow. Oxalic Acid and Api-Bioxal are both flash treatments. They only kill the mites present, not in capped brood. They are good to use mid December, early January. The treatments don’t last long. Ez-ox  is an oxalic acid tablet. 

Apivar was a good treatment to use in the past. However, its active ingredient is amitraz. Mr. Cauble has found the mites are creating a resistance to amitraz. He had four hives he treated with Apivar June 4, 2025. June 24, 2025 the mite count was down. July 27, 2025 some mite counts started to increase again. Mr. Caudle did a mite resistant test using the Apivar and found the mites were resistant. For more about the test and results, you can check out the NC State Extension’s website: https://pollinators.ces.ncsu.edu/2025/09/how-to-monitor-for-varroa-mites-the-right-way/?src=rss

Mr. Cauble has used Apivar in June/July and Oxalic Acid in the summer for about 10 years. It is best to try and alternate/use different medications instead of sticking with the same ones for long periods of time. It is very important to read the labels of all treatments and look at the manufacturer’s website! Make sure to read and follow all directions. Keep the hive entrances open, close the bottom if you have a screened bottom hive, use eye and glove protection. Don’t inhale the products. Kelly solutions is a good website to reference for information about pests control.  https://www.kellysolutions.com/NC/

Mr. Cauble’s take aways: Monitor “all” colonies to find the outliers. Immediate post treatment monitoring may not tell the whole story. You need to keep monitoring for mites. Every 4-6 weeks you should monitor for mites. You need to treat the whole bee yard, not just the hives that have a high mite count. Early spring, summer time after you have taken off the honey supers and treated, and then again in mid October are prime mite monitoring times. Get experience with as money products/tools as possible. https://pollinators.msu.edu/programs/keep-bees-alive.aspx is a good site for mite treatment information. The following is the method Mr. Cauble uses to check for mites. It is a good technique if you have a lot of hives to check:  https://youtu.be/ZrApRXqYofY?si=HXgS7tXhGakyCnG3 If you just have a few hives, Mr. Cauble states the varroa easy check mite tester works great too. 

If you have any questions about bees, please contact Lewis Cauble. You can call, text or email him. 

Hope to see you at our next meeting on October 21, 2025, 6:30 pm to socialize. The official meeting begins at 7 pm: 106 E. Morgan St. Brevard, NC.