And varroa kills

[Finman]

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My friend has not succeeded well in varroa treatments.
Couple days ago we treated 14 hives with oxalic acid and we can see that 2/3 of hives are practically dead. They cannot survive over winter with such small gang.

Mechanism goes so that hives were large in summer. They capped 2 Langstroth boxes Winter food. There were loads of bees in hives at the end of August. Average honey yield was 50 kg/hive.

But mites concentrated into August brood, which ought to be Winter bees. Most brood died. When summer bees die after feeding the winter brood, hive will be practically empty.

Typical sign is that there are capped brood still in hives , what bees were not able to clean out. There were so few bees there. Another sign is that there are brood porriage on floor, when bees have drawn white varroa violated brood out from combs. Autumn treatmet will not save such hives any more.

It tells that hive has started its brooding season with big mite load. No oxalic acid treatment has been done in winter. I did in my hives two tricklings last winter and my hives were splended this Autumn.
But it has been years, when my hives have been as bad as my friend's hives now.

first case was in the year 2002, when my mites were turned Apistan resistant. I lost 12 hives out of 18, and the rest were in poor condition. But life continued and bad years too every now and then

 

[Finman]

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The basic reason....

My friend has hated to give "poison on bees' neck in cold weather". He has never bought oxalic acid and years have gone well with thymol pads.
But then it comes a years when thymol treatment was not succesfull and mite load becomes too big. Too many mites survived in treatment.

4 years ago he had same situation. He lost 50% out of his hives. He gove only one thymol pad to 2 box hives, even if recipe was that give one pad to one box and two pads to 2 box hive.

Story about savings in treatments....

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[Tom Bick]

Unfortunately he won't be the last beekeeper in a similar situation.

I prefer to only use thymol but you have to be very confident it has worked and you apply it correctly otherwise you could be in trouble somewhere down the road.

 

[Finman]

I prefer to only use thymol but you have to be very confident it has worked .

Yes, I have done some big faults with good hives. I have treated the hives in very easy case, but I have not shecked, how much treatment affects.

Later I realised that big hives much be squeezed into very small space by shaking. And then take off contaminated brood. Then give thymol, oxalic acid or what ever and polish the colony.

In one case I realized too, that even if I clean the colony, and there is an uncleaned hive on side, drones may move a big load of mites very soon into the hive.

This autumn I saw too, that I had 5 hives in one corner of the yard. They all had an exceptional mite load when I trickled them. Mites have moved certaily directly from hive to neighbour hive, and drones may be biggest factor.
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