V Count

[Finman]

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One possibility is to take off brood frames and put them in a big hive. Then special successive treatment in that hive and yo do not loose brood.

Next summer when I do swarming fever cutting with false swarm, I kill carefully mites from swarm. Last summer I was too lazy.

Bees fly themselves to the new hive. No need to shake them.

Nucs are quick to spray with 3% oxalic acid (no sugar).

 

[Haughton Honey]

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

Well done.

Those 'treat with OA in January or you're all doomed' crowd need shooting IMHO.

 

[RoofTops]

Were there any dead bees on the floor? It is not impossible to have an OMF completely covered with dead bees at this time of year.

Assuming the floor was clear then you might be doing the right thing but as pointed out by someone else. You won't know unless you do the treatment and then see how many mites fall out.

Given that all the evidence is that a single treatment of OA does no harm I don't see why you are hesitating.

A treatment in 6 months time will be in June or July. Prime honey gathering time around here.

So what varroa treatment are you going to use when the supers are on? Queen trapping would work if you have the equipment and the time I suppose.

Thymol is not as effective as the original synthetic pyrethroids which is why it needs to be combined with a winter treatment of OA. This should be standard practice but the message is still taking its time to get around. Left untreated those small number of mites will rapidly grow in numbers throughout the early part of the year when the colony is growing, and just when the colony is at its largest and they are bringing in the honey they will have such a heavy mite infestation they could be on the verge of collapse. Or possibly not. The risk is yours to take but I know what I would do.

 

[RoofTops]

PS to the above. If you really don't want to treat now then consider an early thymol treatment in say March/April. It will not be as effective but a lot better than nothing. An alternative would be formic acid.

Sugar dusting would be recommended by some but I think sugar is better dusted on cakes. The trials to date suggest it will not control a bad infestation and if you only treat with sugar that is what you are likely to end up with.

There are also continuous treatments like Hive Clean and Varroa-Gard which are used all year but this seems like a lot of extra work compared to one minute per hive with OA syrup.

 

[Arfermo]

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.

The booklet Rooftops refer to can be downloaded in pdf form from https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/index.cfm?pageid=167. Even though oxalic is not an approved treatment, it is NOT banned either and in fact on page 30 of the DEFRA leaflet on Managing Varroa the table suggests it should used in "December". DEFRA also dole out hard copies of their leaflets for free to local BKAs.

 

[drstitson]

"DEFRA also dole out hard copies of their leaflets for free to local BKAs"

Not any more - have to rely on pdfs for the forseeable as there is a total government moratorium on all new printing (according to SE regional bee inspector).

 

[Hebeegeebee]

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.

Agreed.