Varroa drop normal

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ROCKIT

New Bee
Joined
Sep 17, 2010
Messages
51
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Location
Goosnargh/Preston
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
1
Simple question.
During the course of the year, would you expect to see Varroa on a board if they were present in a hive? That is without any treatment in there!
 
Simple answer: yes.

I started this year: 2 TBHs. One had lots of varroa: daily drop 3-5.
One had little weekly drop 1-2.

So perhaps not every day.. But every week...
 
Yes but with a couple of qualifications

Either a sticky board or a drop distance in excess of 50mm to stop the critter climbing back into the hive.

No evidence of ants - they eat the fallen mites and produce a false zero count

It is very easy to be lulled into a "zero count therefore no need to treat" frame of mind only to lose a colony because the count was "skewed" by the above.
 
This is my first colony and I have just started the second Apiguard treatment.

I have a first drop count of around 70 a day, but last week when i changed the Apiguard over, I had something between 500 and 700 for the week.

Is the use of Apiguard cumulative to that extent, so that it can increase by a factor of 10 over a week, or could it be ants were eating the mites from the board? I have seen them on the outside, but not on the board when I have done my checks.
 
still getting very low mite counts here at the end of the second week of AG
 

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