A couple of Varroa questions.

[Alleree]

just a couple of thoughts I had about Varroa:

1) One of my colonies (now united) was queenless for almost six weeks this summer, for at least three of those weeks without brood, just shiny polished cells. Would that have interfered with the varroa life cycle?

2) I've been watching my little dusty ghosts bringing in the balsam for weeks now and there's still plenty in the woods nearby. Bearing in mind the way some people use icing sugar, is there any evidence that bees clean the pollen off each other, thereby dislodging mites?


Having said that, there are still horrifyingly loads of the creepy ugly little beasts being Apiguarded out of my hive!

 

[drstitson]

"Would that have interfered with the varroa life cycle?"

see my post in another thread today.

a walk away split should result, when new brood first appears after mating, in all the phoretic mites leaping into the brood cells about to be capped - the crowd killing the drone larvae and hence having a suicidal result.

I have seen a good example which would support this last year - split off nuc essentially mite free in august whilst parent hive riddled.

However, what i not clear about is whether the prolonged time to laying this year is good or bad for this model. does it help deplete phoretic mites (on dead foragers outside the hive) whilst no source of increase OR does the depleted stock of mites mean that the suicide crush effect is reduced. also not sure if adding mated queens to failed splits is good or bad - if they get laying fast then more brood for mites to infest and hence less suicide whereas a newly mated queen will take a little while to get the hang of things.