New to bee keeping "varroa" probs

[ryan_220]

Hello.
Had my hive about 4weeks or so now and they are going though rapid build up at the moment and pulling the suppers out. I supose they have filled 6 frames give or take with brood and the other have 50/50 hunny there ish.
My problem is i pulled the bottom of my floor out on my WBC hive today to give it a clean and a wash.
On the floor i found three Varroa mites i think, iam quite shore they where.

Can anyone tell me whats the best way to control or even better rid them and where to get the stuff from if possible ? I have put a pic up of my hive.

I have a fue other questions about the best way to feed them if i wanted to and what to use.

Is it possible to use a queen excluded on the bottom of my brood box to control swaming. If so whats the pro / cons of this

 

[hedgerow pete]

wecome to the forum

 

[victor meldrew]

Hi Ryan,
good questions, Firstly ,how many days between you fitting and cleaning the floor insert ? the reason I ask is ,an average daily natural mite drop is needed to estimate the mite load carried by the colony !.
1 mite is neither here nor there . As you have supers on and you suspect your bees are carrying too many mites, the only treatment I can recommend is dusting with icing sugar at fortnightly intervals,ie three treatments covering 2 full brood cycles . Another thing to be done ,is to insert a shallow frame into the brood area, to which the bees will attach drone comb. after the resulting drone brood is capped, you slice off the said drone comb and destroy along with any mites breeding in there .
I wouldn't recommend fitting a QX as a method of swarm prevention, you would find it rapidly becoming clogged with drones trying to escape.

Your one hive seems to be doing well, so the question of feeding can be answered later perhaps.
Good luck with your beekeeping and ENJOY!!.
John Wilkinson

 

[ryan_220]

Thanks for the reply
Its been about 3 days or so since i last wipe the tray clean.

Just iceing sugger ?

 

[victor meldrew]

Yes just icing sugar, other treatments are for later in the year .
A quick way to apply is to place a screen on top of frames and sift 100 grams of icing sugar onto screen, push it about with a brush so that it all falls through . Quick and easy ,minimum disturbance . Have your insert in so that you can check how many mites the sugar has dislodged over a couple of days ." Simples" as the merekat says .

John Wilkinson

 

[match]

Looking at your original post, I'm guessing you're new to either beekeeping, or varroa, or both

Varroa does need regular treatment to prevent it taking over your colony - and there are both chemical and management ways to do it.

The simplest ones are the chemical treatments - miticides apistan, apiguard (available from beekeeping suppliers), and formic or oxalic acid (Thorne's now do an easy application formic acid solution). However, these can usually only be used when you don't have supers on, so either use them in the Autumn, or if your colonies are under severe threat (and save your colony at the expense of a honey crop). Note however that miticide resistance is common in many places in the UK, so Apistan might not be suitable for treating varroa in your arrea.

The management ones include those already suggested (icing sugar dusting to encourage grooming and drone brood destruction, as well as other more complicated methods involving swarm control techniques.

The most important thing is to keep counting your mites round the year. Put in a clean tray under the mesh floor, leave it for 7 days, and count the number of mites dropped. Divide this by the number of days the tray was in to give a 'daily mite drop'.

Then look at this table:

http://lancaster-beekeepers.org.uk/component/jootags/varroa

If you're approaching those numbers, then you definitely need to treat.

For more general information on varroa treatment, see the FERA fact sheet on Managing Varroa:

https://secure.csl.gov.uk/beebase/pdfs/managing_varroa.pdf

 

[ryan_220]

Thanks for the info

Whats consedered to be a problem with varroa mites ?
I did checked the slide out the bottom of my hive and funnd 1 male and 2 females on there.

So i then cleaned the slide, then refitted it back into the hive.
Then dusted 100g of iceing sugger over the hive they where not happy about this, refitted the hive back together, waited around 1 hour and pulled the slide out and found 30 or so mites on it no doubtly more will come out between now and next time i check them.

I take it i should keep doing this every 2 weeks for another 4 weeks?
Anymore i can do or buy to fix this ?

 

[ryan_220]

wecome to the forum

Thanks

 

[lusklabs]

The management ones include those already suggested (icing sugar dusting

Then look at this table:

http://lancaster-beekeepers.org.uk/component/jootags/varroa

Interesting reading Match. Do you have any other lnks as I cant see the pictures on the above link.

These floors which you refer to, would they fit in Ryan's WBC ?

 

[Finman]

.
It has been researches that those floors are not valid in mite control.

There was Canadian research:" Nothing good to say about mesh floor in mite control".

They stopped the research because hives got very bad chalkbrood.

 

[BKF Admin]

In one Apiary I have 10 hives.
Nine have OMF with National woodwork.
One Has a wood floor with WBC woodwork.

Of the ten hives only one has a verroa prolem,the WBC.

I have looked at emerging brood and the house bees for Verroa.
Maybe its just a coincidence ?

 

[match]

There aren't any pictures on that site - just the useful table of Month and Mite Counts. Best option is to read the FERA report on Managing Varroa, do your mite drop counts, then compare with the table to see if you're in the 'danger zone'.