Having googled, read books I took the plunge and got into bees, and with prodding from my neighbours I joined the Rodney bee club.

Attended most meetings, I listened , learned, fronted up to the field days, learnt how to extract honey…yum .

During meetings the clubs president always says remember…what works for that person may not work for you ..you need to look at your hive .

My hive has been slowly dropping numbers, but that’s alright , it’s winter ,so to be expected, I have got mite treatment, so cant be that , must be hungry, so I’ll keep feeding them but numbers kept dropping, built a fence to keep the cold southwesterly away, but still numbers kept dropping .

During the last field day, we all got involved, opened hives inspected, gee these hives are doing well..compared to mine. Than the penny dropped, my mite treatment was not working!!!.All the signs where there but i forgot..what works for that person might not work for you.

Got some different treatment, hey presto…dead mite city.

Took some interesting pictures with a microscope.