varroa mites in colonies 2010

[Ewok]

Absolutely zero varoa either by drop or in drone brood cull.

I thought I'd done this by accidentally over dosing the oxylic acid traetment, but from this thread, it looks as though it was the cold winter???

 

[Grub]

no problems here in s.wales, very low or no varroa

Hi I am about 5 miles from you havn't found one yet
Grub

 

[Firegazer]

I had a sticky board on for 2.5 days and saw:

3 big dark brown mites;
1 paler but big mite;
2 really tiny dark brown mites;
a few tiny black dots that might have been mites but didn't look them;
these were all static, with a smear of vaseline around the edges of the board to stop them escaping.

I saw quite a few (20?) tiny mobile straw-coloured mites travelling forwards with 4 legs each side, clambering over the debris like seagulls on a rubbish tip. I don't think these were varroa.

So, I guess the real number was probably about 10 in 2.5 days = about 4 a day.

So I definitely have varroa in that colony unless they were the last 10 in there

It doesn't seem to be very high at the moment.

I haven't checked the new one from PH yet.

FG

 

[louiseww]

Just about to do a check on my two hives. We had a Varroa workshop at the end of April and I was thinking then that wouldn't it be great if we could get the ants to agree to a symbiotic relationship with the bees because of their formic acid !

 

[louiseww]

Absolutely zero varoa either by drop or in drone brood cull.

I thought I'd done this by accidentally over dosing the oxylic acid traetment, but from this thread, it looks as though it was the cold winter???

Bring on more cold winters then!

 

[Cazza]

Bring on more cold winters then!

As I sit here gently melting in the heat, a cold winter is a distant, pleasant dream!

Negligible varroa too.

Cazza

 

[Blue Spinnaker]

Saw a few bees with deformed wings tottering around the outside of my hive (newly installed nuc with a super of honey stores) so checked for varroa - drop of 12 since yesterday

What treatment would you recommend?

BS

 

[Baggyone]

I would go for apiguard but only pull back the foil by half way at most.

 

[Blue Spinnaker]

Will this affect my (possibly, now) virgin queen and imminent future egg laying? I don't know which is the lesser evil - leaving it until she's properly got going or treating now.

Thanks for advice.

 

[mbc]

I wouldnt use apiguard while a virgin has yet to mate, its smelly stuff and alot of what goes on in a colony at this time is governed by smells.
You could time it right so all the broods hatched out and there's no sealed brood yet and catch over 90% of the varroa with an oxalic treatment

 

[oliver90owner]

Blue Spinnaker,

You can also remove the first capped brood. Most of the the varroa will be diving in to reproduce. Icing suger rolling before any open brood is capped would get a lot, if done properly.

You need to do something now or the result wil be.........

Apiguard and honey in supers are not really compatible. A fully opened tray is the way to go with a full brood box. Maybe less for a nucleus hive.

'Recently installed' and 'full super' don't go together too well either, nor does nuc and virgin queen. Not really sure what you have there.

RAB

 

[Blue Spinnaker]

RAB, I've probably got the terminology wrong, but I had 5 frames with queen cell, she hatched, but there was no sign of eggs last week. I was given them with a full super in lieu of feeding them, so not intending to extract honey.


Thanks for your help.

BS

 

[Firegazer]

BS (that sounds wrong, somehow),
this is getting off-topic, so we should probably start a new thread for your colony - it sounds like it may need some helpful advice from the experienced ones on here (not me!).

You took the 5 frames from your friend 15 days ago, so most capped brood should have emerged by now, along with their varroa mites. This will artificially raise the numbers you get on a sticky board collection - all the mites are on the bees rather than only a small proportion, with the rest breeding in capped cells.

You could look at sugar dusting them, before brood rearing gets going. This seems to work well against mites on the bees; its usual weakness is that most mites are in cells, but in your case it could be just the job. I don't know if this is likely to affect the virgin queen - others might be able to help here.

Hope this helps.

FG

 

[oliver90owner]

NEVER treat for varroa while a virgin queen is present! Simply asking for trouble. Plenty of time while there is uncapped brood!

Regards, RAB

 

[BKF Admin]

Is sugar dusting really doing any good ?
I thought research had thrown it out the window last year along with small cell foundation.

 

[Firegazer]

There's some really good stuff on it at scientific-beekeeping.com.

He has done lots of testing and thinks it knocks about 30% of the phoretic mites off. This is either rubbish (if most of the mites are in capped brood) or pretty good (if there's no brood, just done a shook swarm).

His site goes into detail about how both measuring for varroa, and treating techniques need to be done in coordination with the colony's state in its yearly growth and shrink cycle. I thought it was pretty incisive and could explain why the results on different varroa treatments can be widely different when performed by different people in different places and times of the year.

FG

 

[BKF Admin]

I see its Randy Oliver's site.
Well worth a read then,the man has to be one of the top beekeepers around.

 

[keithgrimes]

NEVER treat for varroa while a virgin queen is present! Simply asking for trouble. Plenty of time while there is uncapped brood!

Regards, RAB

Why's that RAB?

 

[oliver90owner]

Gadzooks! Mainly common sense! Perhaps I should never say never, but can you think of a worse time to go interfering, in any colony, with any sort of medication, chemical addition or other colony interruption - while you have a recently emerged queen, or one leaving on mating flights?; with no brood present so absconding is an easy option if they don't like your chemicals? Etc, Etc.

RAB

 

[Gardenbees]

In answer to the original question: Yes - I've checked two nucs and one long hive, not a single mite dropped so far, and nothing in the drone cells that I checked either. That's not to say there's none there, but it's certainly a very low amount. Perhaps the very cold winter helped? Who knows. Unfortunately the training apiary up the road had quite a few mites when checked last month, so it's not a universal phenomenon.