V Count

[eddiespangle]

I’m planning to do a mite drop count tomorrow. The trays would have been in for 7 days. What number should trigger further action? My IPM in 2010 was OMF and treatment with Api Life Var; for 2011 I the same along with drone brood removal in July.

 

[RoofTops]

The varroa booklet from Fera has figures. There was a link posted recently on another thread in a similar vein, but what are you going to do if the figure is high, say more than 20 over 7 days? The answer should be an OA trickle so why wait a week to find out, as the chances are some or all of your colonies will have too high a mite count as thymol on its own is considered insufficient and needs to be followed up with a winter treatment. Ditto drone brood removal. It helps a bit but if you are going to do it in July and then use thymol in August, just a month later, I am not sure why you should bother. The thymol will kill many more mites than you will catch in drone brood.

Thymol in August and OA in December. Children should be taught this at school...

OA trickling is well researched and will do no harm. It should be standard practice for most beekeepers these days.

 

[Bad Boy Bee]

This year for the first time I have combined winter green in November and OA on December/January with some of my colonies.

I regularly check the drop in my hives but still apply OA regardless, sorry to all those that will be agast by this. I have monitered the mite drop on all colonies and found to my surprise that even those with a very low count suddenly produce a massive count on application of OA. e.g. 3 to 5 a day suddenly producing a 1001 in an afternoon, go figure.

OA has been my only treatment for years now, not my only IPM but my only treatment. It has been interesting to hear lots of attitudes to this treatment and because of the posts I have read here I may re-think my methods.

PS Some students of mine treated with Thymol without telling me and also prior to extraction (not as good a teacher as I thought) I would not reccommend Honey and Thymol, too medicated a brew!!

Every day in every way I get better and better.

 

[Hivemaker.]

If your bee's have brood now,as some do already have brood, you could give them up to four treatments with oxalic over the next few weeks, to kill the mites that emerge with the young bee's.

 

[Finman]

If your bee's have brood now,as some do already have brood, you could give them up to four treatments with oxalic over the next few weeks, to kill the mites that emerge with the young bee's.

brood are not much now. You may take them off too.

 

[Hivemaker.]

brood are not much now. You may take them off too.

True, yes you could,as some only have two or three frames of brood.

 

[beeboybee]

what sort of timings would one need to do to achieve this?

 

[Hivemaker.]

what sort of timings would one need to do to achieve this?

About 1 or 2 pm should be okay.

 

[beeboybee]

hmmmm it is late.............. should it be weekly?

 

[Hombre]

I should plan on just giving them the one treatment Beeboybee. No point in pushing your luck until you have the experience and confidence to be sure of what you are doing.

I take it that you did Apiguard or some other thymol based treatment in the Autumn.

That would be about what most people do as a rule. Multiple OA treatments are not generally standard with most people except maybe for swarms of one type or another where there is no brood, so opportunistic for those that do.

 

[beeboybee]

i was only going to do the one treatment (went well today for a first time) but all this talk of multiple applications had got me worried...... i treated with Api Life Var in the autumn but never did see a mite on either colony.....even after oiling the varroa tray...

 

[Hombre]

So, you have it cracked for now, relax. This time next month the OA questions will be behind us and everyone will be turning to patties and stimulative feeding.

Not everyone does either or both, but what they do. The average bee keeper does because of preference perhaps and the bee farmer because of logistics, cost or perceived benefit.

But I'm getting into the next chapter of the story . . . Enjoy.

 

[beeboybee]

thanks hombre.......i am going to stop worrying and get on with toping up fondant as necessary and building and painting some new hive bits.

 

[MJBee]

thanks hombre.......i am going to stop worrying and get on with toping up fondant as necessary and building and painting some new hive bits.

The only cure for winter cabin fever. Only problem is that over here it is -3C and too bl**dy cold to work in the workshop and SWMBO will not tolerate my bandsaw in the living room

 

[Heather]

If your bee's have brood now,as some do already have brood, you could give them up to four treatments with oxalic over the next few weeks, to kill the mites that emerge with the young bee's.

Wow ,are you sure??

I thought ONE Oxalic per year as it may endanger the queen's lifespan and also weaken the bees to be repeated.
Surely done once when broodless/minimum should suffice.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Wow ,are you sure??

Yes,very sure,many have now got brood.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17624673


http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q...y2xGJ9&sig=AHIEtbRjOzMVgBduhb8cgKIC56gaaqQtcQ

 

[RoofTops]

Thanks for the links HM. I've seen the second one before but had forgotton about it. However, there is a paragraph (6.1.1) in it which says:

"A single treatment should be conducted in the broodless period at an outside temperature of >3C. Repeated and summer treatments are not recommended as they result in a high level of bee mortality and low efficacy, due to large numbers of capped brood cells."

This contradicts the first paper which does mention in the Abstract that repeat applications were used but it does agree with what I've seen before. I think the mortality is in open brood rather than the adult bees. I can see why repeated applications would get over the problem of capped cells but there will be a loss of brood.

I suppose the issue is whether leaving the varroa untreated is worse than the risk of repeated applications of OA syrup. If there is a high mite fall at the moment then I would use OA but follow what Finman suggests and look for any sealed brood to cut out and then do a single treatment.

The same paper also reports on near 100% efficiency when used on artificial swarms - i.e. a colony in spring/summer without any brood of any sort. I might try this after doing a shook swarm.

 

[Hivemaker.]

The older paper of the two also has a section where they treated colonys multiple times ....four treatments one week apart, with rather high losses to queens and entire colonys.

Brood removal is one way,depending on how much brood,some colonys have now got two or three frames of brood,some have a small amount of brood all through winter,but would be better to remove it when its not too cold,plus it's a bit invasive at this time of year,with a risk of some queens being balled. So the multiple treatment may be better,not going to worry about it killing any brood, as this was otherwise going to be removed and destroyed anyway.

 

[Skyhook]

PS Some students of mine treated with Thymol without telling me and also prior to extraction (not as good a teacher as I thought) I would not reccommend Honey and Thymol, too medicated a brew!!

Add some whiskey, you've got a hell of a cold cure there!

 

[eddiespangle]

The counts were 0 and 1. Beebase suggests treatment in 6 months time. I don’t think I’ll apply OA this season.