# OAV as mite monitoring tool



## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

I'm wondering if anyone might be using a single OAV treatment as a mite load monitoring tool, instead of alcohol wash or sugar shakes. I'm thinking maybe one treatment every couple of months during the active season to evaluate the mite fall on the sticky board, and then treat or not treat accordingly. 

Seems it might be a more reliable assessment of the phoretic mite load than the other methods, and less intrusive. Along with the added bonus of reducing the phoretic mite load in the hive in the process. 

With the wash or shake methods bee sampling can vary depending on where the bees are collected, which could skew the test results. Whereas the OAV will reach the entire hive and provide a more reliable reading. 

Just kicking this around, any thoughts?


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## robassett (Feb 26, 2018)

The problem is how do you determine the denominator of the equation: infection rate = (# mites counted) / (# number of bees sampled)?
If you know about how many bees are in your hive, then I don't see why this wouldn't work.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

robassett said:


> The problem is how do you determine the denominator of the equation: infection rate = (# mites counted) / (# number of bees sampled)?
> If you know about how many bees are in your hive, then I don't see why this wouldn't work.


Which is the same serious flaw with using conventional 24 hour mite drops.
I will say that I did some oav treatments during the season and when they dropped a thousand mites.....I was pretty sure I needed to do more.


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## missybee (Sep 6, 2014)

We were doing late season OAV's we sort of did that. A few hives had a lot of drop, others almost none to none. The ones with the heavier drop we did another late season OAV.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

robassett said:


> The problem is how do you determine the denominator of the equation: infection rate = (# mites counted) / (# number of bees sampled)?
> If you know about how many bees are in your hive, then I don't see why this wouldn't work.


I guess it would be a judgement call based on experience rather than a set mathematical equation based on the number of bees in the sample. If you've been at it a while you should have a fair assessment of the total colony population and be able to come up with an equation divided by 100% of the treated colony.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Mike Gillmore said:


> I'm wondering if anyone might be using a single OAV treatment as a mite load monitoring tool, instead of alcohol wash or sugar shakes.


How would that be done in summer months during nectar flow? Label says not to treat if there's honey for human consumption on the hive. Just wondering.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

You would need to know your local seasons pretty well and plan the OAV dates before and after the nectar flow.


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

Mike Gillmore said:


> I'm wondering if anyone might be using a single OAV treatment as a mite load monitoring tool, instead of alcohol wash or sugar shakes. I'm thinking maybe one treatment every couple of months during the active season to evaluate the mite fall on the sticky board, and then treat or not treat accordingly.
> 
> Seems it might be *a more reliable assessment of the phoretic mite load* than the other methods, and less intrusive. Along with the added bonus of reducing the phoretic mite load in the hive in the process.
> 
> ...


I've never understood how a miticidal treatment can ever be used to quantify either past or present mite-loads. It will almost certainly confirm whether mites were present or not (which is 'past-tense' information), but without knowing - with some precision - what the effectiveness of the treatment was, it cannot tell you how many mites were present before the treatment, nor indeed how many mites remain alive.
LJ


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

What is so darn hard about doing sticky boards, sugar rolls or alcohol washes regularly? How come people who attracted to bees, a species which is the antithesis of laziness, seem to be so reluctant to make this small investment of time and effort to keep their hives healthy and alive?

At best, OAVing-as-a-test tells you if there are mites in the colony. Shoot - I can easily predict that right here on the internet: if you've got bees, you've got mites. 

OAVing as-a-test doesn't give you enough consistency or granularity to be a useful tool since it's basically a pass/fail test. And using a "high" (whatever that really means) mite drop after OAV-as-a-test to see if you need to treat is like having fire alarms that are designed to detect the presence of fire trucks, not heat or smoke.

I think you're looking at the concept of mite monitoring all wrong. Monitoring is not about knowing when to treat. It's about knowing that you don't need to treat right now because your existing mite suppression plans are still working adequately. Otherwise you just stay in a bust-and-boom siege with the mites.

All three of the existing techniques: sticky boards, sugar rolls and alcohol washes, if done regularly all season long will give you enough information to know if you can safely continue to "watch and wait" until the next, best time to treat. Because you will have to treat, and if you're thoughtful about it you want to treat the least number of times by treating in the most effective manner for your chosen methods. That's what monitoring does for you.

I get it that many beekeepers somehow believe that they will magically win the bee-lottery and not have a problem with mites. I know: their bees are special, they are better beekeepers, they've read somewhere on the internet that they won't have to treat if they just let their bees be bees, etc. So the inclination is to wait until you are faced with disaster (rejecting the experience of other beekeepers.) 

Just make up your mind that you will have to do something to suppress the mites, or your colonies will die from them. There's a whole range of possible suppression tactics, with varying degrees of efficacy, and with different levels of intrusiveness to the bees. Choose whatever kinds appeal to you, make a plan and execute it faithfully. And then monitor in some consistent way all the time to make sure your choices have been, and remain, effective. 


Nancy


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

enjambres said:


> I get it that many beekeepers somehow believe that they will magically win the bee-lottery and not have a problem with mites. I know: their bees are special, they are better beekeepers, they've read somewhere on the internet that they won't have to treat if they just let their bees be bees, etc. So the inclination is to wait until you are faced with disaster (rejecting the experience of other beekeepers.)
> 
> Nancy


the above statement by enjambres perfectly describes why no matter what you do, it's completely out of your control. If you have neighbors who's bees are crashing, no amount of testing is going to help, been there done that. You can test today, come back in a couple weeks test again and be way over the thresholds, my neighbor had 5 untreated hives that crashed, I caught it as the last one went under, pulled honey supers and started treating in Aug. managed to only lose half the hives that winter. The commercial guy a half mile up the road missed it, he had an easy time moving south as only one hive survived. But as to the question, according to studies 15% of the mites are not under capping, so I would take a chance, put a sticky in and treat with OAV and I would have to go look up what they say the effective rate on OAV is and count up the mites and come up with a reasonable guess as to the % of mites in the hives. And if you have many hives in a yard I would think you would come pretty close, and be a 1/4 way done to treating them if the counts were high.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Can anybody tell me that at the time you do a mite check what is the percentage of mites in the brood against the percentage that are phoretic, cause if you can't it is all thumbsuck. Just 2 or 3 grams of OAV will tell me how many phoretic mites I have in a colony much more accurately than an alcohol wash as far as I am concerned Besides the more you check in this way the fewer mites you seem to have, besides the fact that it is much easier to do a treatment without disturbing the hive than to open the hive to the brood in a dearth when robbing can begin at a drop of you hive tool and kill your colony quicker than any mites can.
Johno


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

johno said:


> Can anybody tell me that at the time you do a mite check what is the percentage of mites in the brood against the percentage that are phoretic, cause if you can't it is all thumbsuck. *Just 2 or 3 grams of OAV will tell me how many phoretic mites I have* in a colony much more accurately than an alcohol wash as far as I am concerned Besides the more you check in this way the fewer mites you seem to have, besides the fact that it is much easier to do a treatment without disturbing the hive than to open the hive to the brood in a dearth when robbing can begin at a drop of you hive tool and kill your colony quicker than any mites can.
> Johno


No it won't - it'll tell you how many you *HAD*, not counting a few which may somehow have mysteriously survived (if any). My approach is not to bother checking/counting - just hit 'em hard with VOA over winter - which I find is enough to keep them under control. I no longer see mites as being a 'problem' - other than the time it takes to vapourise OA - and even that now looks like being a problem of the past, thanks to you Johno.
LJ


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

> What is so darn hard about doing sticky boards, sugar rolls or alcohol washes regularly? How come people who attracted to bees, a species which is the antithesis of laziness, seem to be so reluctant to make this small investment of time and effort to keep their hives healthy and alive?


Wow did we hit you on a bad day !! If this could work it would be a great tool for those of us that don't have the time to do a strict regiment of sticky boards and alcohol washes every day like you do , alot of us are working full time sometimes away from home for extended periods of time , I'm all for it we all know that the regular monitoring of wash's and sticky boards don't tell the whole story .


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

enj>>
there is more than one way to skin a cat, and some of the other ways take less time. for many with jobs or 
with larger one man operations time is already in short supply.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

johno said:


> Can anybody tell me that at the time you do a mite check what is the percentage of mites in the brood against the percentage that are phoretic, cause if you can't it is all thumbsuck. Just 2 or 3 grams of OAV will tell me how many phoretic mites I have in a colony much more accurately than an alcohol wash as far as I am concerned .
> Johno


QUOTE=wildbranch2007;1611517]according to studies 15% of the mites are not under capping[/QUOTE]


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

> I think you're looking at the concept of mite monitoring all wrong. Monitoring is not about knowing when to treat. It's about knowing that you don't need to treat right now because your existing mite suppression plans are still working adequately.


I really don't understand the difference. Monitoring gives you the data needed to decide whether treatment is necessary right away, or if you can wait to treat. Either way you look at the concept, you will be evaluating the numbers and reacting to it by making a decision to either treat or wait. 



> All three of the existing techniques: sticky boards, sugar rolls and alcohol washes, if done regularly all season long will give you enough information to know if you can safely continue to "watch and wait" until the next, best time to treat. Because you will have to treat, ....


I've done my share of monitoring over the years and every year, with very few exceptions, mite numbers skyrocket in August and treatment is necessary during the August-September months. It's the same pattern every year. The colonies come out of winter in pretty good shape as far as the mites are concerned. Then the mite population slowly increases over the summer months, and finally explodes during the late summer dearth. This is fairly predictable, and I can't remember ever "not treating" a colony in the Fall because the mite load was low. This is unique to my area, but I've done enough homework to know what to expect.

I'm not discouraging attentive monitoring, we need to know what's going on in the hives. I'm just saying that after years of seeing consistent patterns in mite development there is less value in constant weekly testing of mites. I'm fairly certain whats coming, and when. 

Not everyone is "lazy" who doesn't religiously monitor for mites, I don't think it's fair to dump them all into the same bucket. Every person has unique circumstances in their life. Some people travel for a living, or work tremendous hours at their day job and do not have the luxury of getting into their hives constantly. That does not make them bad beekeepers or irresponsible. As long as "enough" monitoring is done to keep the bees alive and healthy that's all that matters. The days of placing hives in a field and expecting them to survive without help are long gone.


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

Mike, I built an online calculator to help determine mite loads for people treating with OAV. Each season I tweak the formula a bit based on my own testing, but it's gotten pretty good and for the last couple years its predictions have closely matched my sugar rolls.

https://www.mitecalculator.com/

I know there are naysayers, and I like that because it challenges me to keep gathering data and refining the algorithm. But I'm telling you, for me it's been a very useful tool to know my pre-treatment mite loads, which in turn helps me make an educated decision about follow-up treatments.


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

Little john are you saying your able to keep mites under control with only one treatment a year in the winter and don't need to hit them during the dearth , I don't think my bee's would make it if I didn't treat in the summer dearth and then again in the beginning of winter .


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Oh come on, I don't sticky boards every day - and I don't advocate that anybody else should do that, either. And I only do sugar rolls monthly from April through October. 

(Once as a special project to learn about sticky-boarding, not just the mite counts, I did pull boards daily on five colonies for a whole year. But I'm not suggesting that as a mite monitoring tool. I was just interested in discovering what else could be learned from a sticky board. The answer I found was quite a lot, though I have not yet decoded it completely. I am still studying what I see, which always delays me when I am pulling boards.)

And sticky boards and/or sugar rolls do tell me the whole story of what I need to know. Occasional or infrequent use of any of these tests (including the vaunted alcohol wash) leaves you with not enough data to make really informed treatment decisions including, most critically, that you do _not_ have to treat at the moment. 

The reason people don't think monitoring is effective is that they don't do it often enough to get the complete picture. The test result numbers (whether drop counts or "percent infestation on the sampled bees") are just surrogate numbers. They don't tell you squat about the actual number of mites in your hive. A round of OAVing-as-a-test tells you even less. All of these numbers are only useful if you can compare them with what you saw at the last testing interval(s), and also to some extent with neighboring hives in the same yard during the same interval, although there is more variation there than you might think. Any individual test can be inaccurate, but a series of tests isn't going to be. 

Testing interval is critical choice. Daily sticky boards yield too much, highly variable data that is just noise. Week-long sticky boards are often covered with too much other debris to make reading them fast and accurate. Three-day boards are a nice middle point, though I often run four-tests, as well, particularly in the winter when my fingers get cold pulling the boards. Doing sugar rolls monthly spans about two bee brood cycles which is how the mite population is naturally increasing inside a hive. But mites can come into the hive, too. I have wondered but not resolved whether shorter intervals might be better, particularly later in the season when migration of mites would be the primary driver of an increasing population that needed a quick swat down.

Running both kinds of tests concurrently gives me a fuller picture, particularly as the mite population peaks and then inevitably shifts, percentage-wise, to a more phoretic state as the bee brood production slacks off.

Examples: It's around Labor Day and my mite counts have been steadily increasing over a couple of weeks. What's up? Less bee brood= more mites out of the cells and likely to get groomed off, or clumsily fall down on to my boards. 

Another example: it's mid October and there is a sudden sharp increase in mites on some of my boards. What to do? A quick round of sugar rolls tells me that relative to the previous weeks data (remember I sugar a few of my colonies every week) the infestation rate is soaring. My bees have obviously been out knocking over a failing hive and brought home more than stolen honey, so I hit 'em with another short series of OAV to take care of a problem that I might have missed after doing my late summer treatments and verifying the results afterward.

Another example: It's early spring and I have been watching a colony drop a steady, but unconcerning number of mites for a few weeks, and then there's suddenly almost none of them. Have I somehow bred a new race of mite-resistant bees? Nope, the bees have just ramped up the drone-brood rearing enough so that all the Mama-mites in the colony have found a nice, cozy home to raise some kids. And in two weeks I can expect to see a sharp jump. A sugar roll now will be misleading, if that was the only one I did and concluded I have no spring mite problem.

My point is that unless you are watching more or less all the time you don't have enough context to understand the results of any single test. Only sticky boards give you an easy, non-invasive, way to monitor on very short intervals. But they are subject to a lot of non-population based variables that can confuse the picture. Sugar rolls (or alcohol washes) give you a direct, instantaneous, measurement of the level of phoretic mites on the bees most likely to be in contact with brood, which happens to be where the mites like to hang out waiting for a chance to slip inside just before the cells are capped. But each of these tests only tells a part of the story. Together they give you a richer, more accurate - even if it is not _perfect_ - understanding of what's going on. So you can better decide to carry on or make a change to your plans. 

If you're concerned that opening a hive might ignite robbing in a dearth, then go with the info gleaned from your regular sticky boards during that period. I keep bees in northern NY, so obviously I don't do sugar rolls in cold weather. Sticky boards are my only source of mite info from November through the first weeks of April. And I treat, and if necessary re-treat, on the basis of those counts in December and January. 

How much time over the course of a year are you willing to invest to make sure your bees are, and stay, healthy and alive. Is five hours per hive too much? (That works out to an additional 25 minutes per hive, per month or about six minutes per week per hive.) You could easily sticky board once a week and do six or seven sugar rolls over the course of the season for that kind of time investment. (Most of it would be spent in checking the sticky boards.) I picked the five hours _per hive_ number because I wanted to make it sound big - because at the beginning before you have a routine and build some skills, it will take you longer - but in reality it should take far less time than that. 

Because I have done hundreds and hundreds of times I can pull and look at and count a sticky board in less than a minute, because I do it all the time, and because I am only looking at three days' of debris. I can spot all the mites quickly because there aren't usually more than a few. If I look down and say, "oh, crap" because the number is large enough that I can't just count them by eye - I may have a problem brewing - but that is pretty rare. A quick scrape of the board and I can pop it in again for another test. (No, you don't have to oil them every time if you are running tests frequently.)

Sugar rolls take more time, but I do them on a rolling (pun intended) basis as part of my regular hive work. At first they can take 20 minutes per hive. But since I expect to do some during every inspection day I have all my equipment at the ready and it's just part of my routine. Usually I do it as I am closing up the stack because most often by then I know where the queen is. Finding the queen is the only time consuming part of a sugar roll if that is all you are opening the hive to do. A quick shake of the chosen frame; dump the bees into the jar; roll 'em; rest 'em while I put the last box(es) on; shake the mites out and dump the sugared bees back in and close the top. Then I look at the collection surface to count the mites and scribble the number down and move on.

Of course, once you get above a certain number of hives, and about 15-20 hives looks to me the like transition point, then you have to rely on sampling only a portion of your colonies instead of doing every one in each interval. That can work well, too, though I have no personal experience doing it since I have never had more 16 colonies in my yard. I have just looked at my data sets to see if a sampling would have resulted in the same results, and it looks OK. But if you have less than 10 then you probably need to sample each one in order to have a large enough sample size to draw good-enough conclusions about the state of affairs to be confident of your results

I didn't mean to ruffle feathers, but I do think there is a curious amount of energy invested in arguing against monitoring and a concomitant lamentation over the difficulties of the struggle against mites. I found that regular monitoring makes it easier to combat them, enlarges your opportunities to treat less, and/or more effectively. And it reduces my own worry that I am about to be ambushed by a mite problem that harms my bees.

Apologies for typos and non-sequiteurs. Gotta run to the PO to get a package from SNL - more mite suppression equipment!

Nancy


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Bee Arthur said:


> Mike, I built an online calculator to help determine mite loads for people treating with OAV. Each season I tweak the formula a bit based on my own testing, but it's gotten pretty good and for the last couple years its predictions have closely matched my sugar rolls.
> 
> https://www.mitecalculator.com/



Now that's what I was looking for. Great work, and thanks for sharing!!


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

laketrout said:


> Little john are you saying your able to keep mites under control with only one treatment a year in the winter and don't need to hit them during the dearth , I don't think my bee's would make it if I didn't treat in the summer dearth and then again in the beginning of winter .


Yes - absolutely so. One year I skipped the winter dose and later the following season had a single colony go down with DWV - so that one had multi-doses in mid-season. That's the only time I've ever done a mid-season treatment. But - lesson quickly learned - don't skip treatments.

Environmental context might be worth commenting on. I live in a fairly remote spot - there *are* other beekeepers 'within range', but AFAIK, they all treat with something - probably Apivar, as not everyone has yet woken up to the near-miracle characteristics of VOA.

If anyone lives within range of a Varroa 'Typhoid Mary' - then you'll have a far more complex problem to deal with.
'best,
LJ


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

Mike Gillmore said:


> Now that's what I was looking for. Great work, and thanks for sharing!!


You're welcome. Glad it's what you were looking for.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

If I accept Wildbranche's figure of 15% phoretic mites and I believe 15% is an average of an average I will still see that 15% dead on the floor with just 30 seconds of OAV against a 5 minute alcohol wash of 300 bees which will give me a percentage of mites on 300 bees, so if the colony numbers 60,000 you will be sampling 1/200 of the colony with 2 mites per sample it would indicate phoretic mites at 400 that is if the rest of the 199 samples remained the same which I doubt. With the OAV treatment if you wish to do a count I am sure the results would be more accurate than the 300 bee sample and besides you have killed off 15% of the mites anyhow. Win Win as far as I am concerned. 
Johno


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

You know, I almost never see any surge of dead mites until late in the second or even third day after doing an OAV. It's always a bit anti-climatic after treatment. And I use whacking great doses, too, because my stacks are tall. I don't know if it just takes treatment-day killed mites that long to fall down through the screen mesh, or if they die over the days immediately after the treatment due to residual effects. 

And during that two-day wait about an additional 15% of total number of mites in the hive will emerge from their protected, non-phoretic existence under the cappings. (Roughly 7.5% of the total mites in the hive emerge each day given a steady bee brooding rate and a mix of drones and workers and a hypothetical assortation of 15/85 for phoretic mites/mites under cappings. This 15/85 split is highly variable though, but I go with it for the sake of discussion.). So are any of the dead mites I see on the board part of the non-phoretic cohort, or are the dead 'uns only the ones that I clobbered with OAV on treatment day? 

I have no idea, which is why I think trying to use OAV as a testing tool is fraught with difficulties. I can see the exact count of mites on my boards after three days. I can see the exact number of mites I shake out of a sugar rolled sample of bees in about six or seven minutes. Plus these numbers are usually small and easy to count. Unless you have settled down to count a few hundred mites, you have no idea how tedious a job that is. (I've done boards with more than a thousand and it can take all afternoon to do that.)

And as far as the question about using regular monitoring to confirm there is no need to treat vs. using monitoring to confirm need to treat. It really does allow you to plan for a minimal treatment program, while being very watchful to make sure that low-input plan will do the trick. 

I have never had to treat in the spring before, but I need to do that this year because I was too sick to do so when I normally do my usual broodless period one-shot around Christmas. The very first day I was out of the hospital I was out there with my Varrox wand, but it was late in January by then and I feared that my bees had already started brooding up. Which apparently they had, because my drop counts numbers have been higher than I like (more than 1 mite /24 hours during most of my Feb/Mar tests. Normally at this season it's about 1/_month_. That is if I have treated successfully in Dec.)

But my steady monitoring has allowed me to identify this divergence from normal, and also to safely delay treating while we've had a miserable cold and nor'eastery period over the last month. Things are changing now and I will see what a quick 4-treatment/5-day-interval round of OAV does. By the time I am finished, it will likely be warm enough again to do sugar rolls and assess things more closely. But I suspect that I will see the reverberations of that lack of the December treatment for many months to come, including likely an earlier than normal need to treat this summer. But I am not going to be guessing about that - I will have regular testing to tell me where we're at. Most springs/early summers I just use the weekly stickies and first sugar rolls to reassure myself I'm good to go without any treating.

Nancy


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## Swarmhunter (Mar 5, 2015)

How come everybody here keeps talking about OAV like it's a single treatment cure. OAV should be done on day one- day 6-7- day13-14. Anything less is just a bandaid. Get them before they crawl back in the open brood. The only time a single treatment is effective is when they're broodless.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Swarmhunter you miss the point. A single treatment that produces very few dead mites tells you that the mite load is low on that particular hive, whereas a heavy mite fall would indicate a regimen of OAV treatments. Of course the size of the colony needs to be taken into consideration, its as simple as that. I have always seen the greatest mite fall when checked 24 hours later.
Johno


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## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Not for me we can have supers on for three months can't use OAV with the honey on.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I suppose it depends upon your location, my flow will not begin until mid to late April and will be over in early June and thats it for the year. I should imagine that my 2 treatments in winter while broodless will give me a good start to the season and I do not have to worry until after I have harvested which will take me into july by then a treatment will tell me if there are any heavy infestations. This year I will try to split all colonies at this time and moving the queens with open brood to another yard treat them and wait 20 odd days to treat the other half of the splits, after that we will see.
Johno


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I will mention that I have formic acid in the refrigerator and will use it on shop towels or meat pads if at any time I feel unhappy with colonies with supers on but have not have had to do so at this time.
Johno


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## Biermann (May 31, 2015)

Hello Mike,

Thank you for starting this and it has been on my mind since I started bee keeping.

Can we put this on a practical level, perhaps my own, since I know that one.

With my first two brood boxes, purchased in Late April 2014 I knew very little more than the black letter of the bee manual and assumed the hives had been treated and since they were new to me I dare to do a wash test. After that, using Apivar, I did wash tests in the fall, but still dare to do them in early March when they are starting to recuperate. Also, now in March, I want to know the mite count but don't want to loose 300 bees from my ever so small population and don't want to wait until the hives have build-up in late April. 

So the bottom board, sticky board or what ever collection method one uses is certainly a good way to get a feel for the contamination in a hive. Also, with still below freezing in my area, I don't want to rip my hives apart. Pulling the entrance reducer, installing the board and a smaller stick to seal the entrance, than doing the OAV through the back side 3/8" hole and keeping the entrance closed for 15-30 minutes. Removing the board after this time should give a very good indication of what is going on inside, to be verified later in April when the weather is more cooperative. Edit: sure one can leave the board in for a day with a reduced entrance and than count later.

It is good that we are all different in our approaches, but we still have the same goal, healthy bees. Who doesn't, will not do this long and I feel sorry for the bees. Treating for 0 or low count mite infestation from October to April is the key for heatly hives beside all other disease checks, but I believe we all can agree that a strong May/June hive can weather some hits, not so the winter hive.

Summa summarum, I think it is a great additional tool, but should not be the only one.

Cheers, Joerg


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

This morning's comments have highlighted two interesting areas:

1) When does the maximum mite drop appear on sticky boards after a dose of OAV? How long does the treatment-driven mite drop last? What factors might affect this: type of OAV equipment, dosing strength, number or size of boxes, strength of colony, state of brooding/time of year, vertical position of bees within a colony (i.e. bees physical proximity to the delivery point of the OAV), outside air temps?

If the idea of using a one-shot of OAV as a form of mite monitoring by observing the number of mites killed by it is to have any use, then some standards of when to make the observation and perhaps some adjustment for other factors has to be considered if they make a difference.

2) The location-based differences of when OAV in most effective, or can be conveniently used because the supers are off. Johno noted above that his flow is over, so his supers off by mid-June - he is in Lottsville VA; Dan the Bee Guy keeps his supers on for three months - he is Rib Lake, WI. These two users are responding to very different seasonal patterns. One can easily imagine the differences between (as an example) Caribou, ME and Tucson, AZ, simply because they will have very different plants, as well as seasons. But Lottsville, VA and Rib Lake, WI will have a much more similar, overlapping set plants, yet they are quite different in flow patterns. What drives those differences interests me. But the practical difference in when use of OAV works best is even more interesting. Perhaps we can sort out and articulate some geographically-based guidelines best-practices for OAV.

I'd like to tackle the post-OAV-treatment mite drop timing issue. I'll start a new thread to see if we can sort that factor out.

Nancy


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## Biermann (May 31, 2015)

Nancy, one very quick note: it seems to me logical to treat and free the hive from varroa when the population is low, preferable no brood in any form rather than tackle the big problem in June with 60.000 bees or more.

Joerg


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Joerg,

Of course it would have been better to treat in December, but I was too sick to do that for nearly 6 weeks. So, I have to treat now as it will be more effective now than later on. 

As far as the difficulty of reading sticky boards in winter (which I do every week all year, even in my cold northern NY climate) I set my stack up in fall to allow this. I run with two bottom boards (a solid underneath a screened one) all year, but in summer the access slot for the board opens towards the rear. It is more convenient to be able to tend the boards from behind the hives, and less risk that bees will fly into the slot -becoming trapped - while I am pulling, reading, scraping and replacing the board. In the winter my hive insulation panels go all the way down to the base of the stand on the back side, so access would require removal of the panels to check the sticky boards. Which, as I discovered in my first winter, was a colossal PITA. (Luckily I only had three colonies that winter.) 

Nowadays as I prepare my stacks for winter, I rotate the lower, solid bottom board from front to back, which puts the access slot for the sticky board underneath the front opening of the hive. Since the bees are generally inside in the winter, I can service the boards with little fuss. This rotation of the bottom board creates an extra open slot in the back which I close up with a piece of insulation foam, and tape over, and then staple hardware cloth over to keep mice out. (Learned that lesson the hard way!)

There are a lot of different designs out there for solid and screened bottom boards, so yours are likely to not be the same, but there's no Law of Beekeeping that says you have to use them only one way. So if you were interested in following your mite numbers during the winter you may be able to work something out that gives you easy access with little or no disturbance to the bees. Sticky boards in the winter also give you tons of other very interesting information about whats going on in the hidden depths of the hive. For instance, I can usually see evidence when my bees have resumed brooding simply by careful study of the debris, long before I would ever dare to open the hives and inspect. When other beekeepers are wondering if their colonies are OK, I often know mine are queenright and brooding in late January/ early February when the outdoor temps are well below freezing all day.

Before I insert the sticky board for a test, I remove the mouse guard and pull out the entrance reducer and sweep out any accumulated dead bees so the screen is clear for anything to fall down below. It takes only a few minutes and my bees rarely even come down to investigate my poking around. Since cold air falls, I doubt it has much effect on them. In really brutal weather I will delay simply for my comfort.

Nancy


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

enjambres said:


> If the idea of using a one-shot of OAV as a form of mite monitoring by observing the number of mites killed by it is to have any use, then some standards of when to make the observation and perhaps some adjustment for other factors has to be considered if they make a difference.


I'm not sure you could ever come up with a broad standard for using OAV mite monitoring that covers all the various regions and differing climates. That's why sugar rolls or washes are probably the best choices for "any" location. If OAV would also be used as a monitoring tool the timing would need to be adjusted to meet each persons local conditions. 

So many variables to consider, and you would have to completely understand the intricacies your own region. On top of that you have differing management strategies within one's own area that would need to be figured into the equation. In my locality some beekeepers harvest their honey crop earlier in the season, July time frame. Others choose to leave their supers on until the fall months, late September. That changes everything in regards to OAV treatment windows and timing.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Mike,

I know there are both inter- and intra-region variables. Your comment is a case in point: some people in your area (also in mine) harvest early, even though others keep their supers on all summer. 

What I am hoping to tease out is something like this: instead of saying when (with reference to the calendar) it's most useful to use OAV, couch it instead in terms of what's happening in your hives during the most useful times. This makes the suggestions more broadly useful. And it may open opportunities for treatment that may not be apparent in the calendar-based system.

An example: I often see the recommendation to do the winter one-shot around Thanksgiving. It's an easy to remember date, but I am not sure it's the best descriptor. I do mine when the brood is likely to be at its nadir AND the bees are no longer flying outside of the apiary, which usually occurs later than Thanksgiving these days. I know that much farther South brood by New Year's maybe already ramping up, so that would be too late. 

OAV is labeled for use only when there is no brood in the hive, though many people ignore that. Everybody seems to agree that it is less effective when there is a lot of brood, particularly drone brood. But I often use it when there is brood in the hive in fall, sinse I find it particularly effective at that time because as the brood rate slows during the course of treatment, more mites become phoretic and thus vulnerable my attentions. So, at the same amount of brood (area, # of cells, etc.) when the brood rate is increasing it may be less useful (especially with resumption of drone brood) than if done with same amount of brood when the brood rate is dropping off you are leveraging the effect. And a longish Fall series allows me to keep swatting down incoming surges of new mites as they appear in that season due to my girls robbing weaker hives.

Another example is to always seize any opportunity when your colony is temporarily queenless, and there is a resulting gap in the capped brood progression. Many things could cause this, but whenever it occurs there's a chance to radically change the mite population curve in that colony. This is a more subtle recommendation than just OAV your packages and swarms before the queen caps any brood. Both are true statements, of course, but they may not highlight the other opportunities that can come up unexpectedly during the year. 

I keenly remember being a very new beekeeper and feeling whipsawed by the endlessly conflicting advice that I was desperate to get. Some of it was different approaches, of course, so the conflicts would be inherent. That wasn't as confusing as different recommendations about when to do a particular task, even taking into count obvious seasonal differences based on geography. It was only when I started to tease out _why_ a certain task was being recommended that I was able to decide if it was the right time for me to undertake it. 

It makes my own suggestions here on BeeSource definitely "long-form," but I hope it also makes the underlying "why" more clear to readers, so they can better judge for themselves if my advice fits their circumstances.

Nancy


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

Mike my bee's come through winter in good shape mite wise as long as the August and thanksgiving (this year it was New Years ) treatments go well. But I am always concerned after the long winter and wondering how bad the mites are building up and have considered a early spring oa treatment to just knock them down a bit until we get back into August for a series of treatments. But at this point they have been brooding up for a while now and alot of the mites are in the brood and the oa isn't going to reach them and normally there's no problem waiting to treat in August anyway . Might be interesting to give them one shot of oa now and run it through Bee Arthurs mite calculator and see what turns up .I f we get a big drop count you would know right off there is trouble and if we get a very low number the calculator might shed some light on the real mite load .


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

Good discussion. Unfortunately I don't have time to contribute to each point, but I will quickly address one.

I often hear people concerned with when the most mites fall after an OAV treatment. A lot of folks say the most mites fall during day 2, or day 3. Whether or not that's true, the nice thing about my calculator is that it doesn't matter when _most_ of the mites fall. It's designed to be agnostic to the total number of mites that fall out of the hive post-treatment. What matters instead is how many mites fall during the first 24 hours. That's the sample size; it' the measure I've used when crunching numbers with the corresponding sugar shakes, which in turn drives the formula. So at least for my tool you don't need to worry about the mite drop 3 days after you treated--you get to do it the next day and move onto other things.

And regarding the difficulty in counting mites on the sticky board, I agree it can be tedious if a colony is heavily infested. I've got a simple grid I carry around that makes my counts easier and more accurate. It divides the board into 6 sections so you don't have to eyeball the entire board. https://www.mitecalculator.com/bee-yard-blog/2017/11/7/nov-1-2017


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

laketrout said:


> Might be interesting to give them one shot of oa now and run it through Bee Arthurs mite calculator and see what turns up .


I've had similar thoughts about doing one treatment now to see what kind of drops I get, at least on a few colonies. After I buttoned up the hives last year we had an extended mild Fall, not typical at all. There may have been more sealed brood in the hive than I thought when I did my winter clean up treatment.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Bee Arthur said:


> I've got a simple grid I carry around that makes my counts easier and more accurate. It divides the board into 6 sections so you don't have to eyeball the entire board. https://www.mitecalculator.com/bee-yard-blog/2017/11/7/nov-1-2017


That is a great idea. Most of the time mine will be in rows where the mites fall between the frames, but everything can still run together and get blurry if there are a lot of mites to count.


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## baybee (Jan 10, 2016)

Mike Gillmore said:


> ...
> 
> Seems it might be a more reliable assessment of the phoretic mite load than the other methods, and less intrusive. Along with the added bonus of reducing the phoretic mite load in the hive in the process.
> 
> ...


Just like an alcohol wash, OAV targets phoretic mites, therefore both methods should give comparable estimates of infestation. If it is true that nurse bees, which are collected for alcohol wash, are preferred hosts by varroa mites, then the OAV drop after some calibration should give the same counts without the danger of rolling the queen.




> ... antithesis of laziness...


 Have always been wondering how true this was. My other book on bees says:



> The last aspect of age polyethism which has been noted by almost all researchers is that workers spend most of their time either patrolling the nest or resting.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I did a quick round of OAV at my home yard yesterday and checked the hives with sticky boards on the bottom and then using my secret formula I converted to the results of alcohol washes. The total of all mites found on the 7 hives out of 14 was 0 so using my formula my alcohol washes would also be 0. The conclusion of this exercise is that it is futile to treat hives that have been well treated in the fall and winter broodless periods, but has the advantage of relieving some poor beekeepers stress levels. I also took a look at Bee Arthurs calculator but was unable to get anything from it. The reasons for such a poor mite turnout could be construed as 1 all the mites are in the brood 2 there is so much winter detritus on the bottom screen that no mites could fall through 3 One of the hives has a young queen who has just commenced laying so would not qualify for number 1 4 All of my mites are visiting someone else's bee yard.
Johno


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Johno:



> All of my mites are visiting someone else's bee yard.


Send me your snail addy ASAP and I'll send you some fresh ones, because if "you don't have mites, you don't have bees." 

Nancy


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

I would be foolish to believe that my bees are totally mite free, however with rigorous treatment I am sure that these pests can be reduced to very small amount which would be practically difficult to measure in the early spring. That they can multiply rapidly is beyond question as you may see the result in the USA after a few became loose. They are also survivors and it would be difficult to totally eradicate them. Have you never done an alcohol wash that has produced no mites, as a matter of interest I have, so if you want to send me some mites I would prefer it if they were dead mites.
John


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

Johno good to hear but I need to see for my self , I had one hive that kept dropping mites after three treatments 5 or 7 days apart but they just kept coming the rest were good so I stopped treating , I believe I hit that hive one more time in early winter and still got mites so I'm curious what it would show now it made it through the winter so far , if I can get time today I will do a quick treatment and use the bee calculator and see what turns up .

Johno are you treating from the top still , the oa fog is definitely seems more apt to go down rather than up in cool weather so treating from the top seems best in cool weather, is this going to change when the weather warms up and we will be better off treating from the bottom like we use to , what are you seeing in this regard .


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Laketrout I have treated with OAV far more than that, In the late summer and fall I did 2 series of treatments with OAV the first was 4 treatments 7 days apart followed some 3 weeks later with If I remember correctly was 5 treatments 5 days apart and then a treatment in December and another treatment in January. I have watched treatments in my observation hive and find there is a 5 minute disruption at most with no observable damage to bees or brood. In my hives I use about 3 grams of OA per treatment instead of the normal 2 so they are well and truly smoked and as treatments now are so quick and trouble free it is a breeze to do. This last treatment yesterday was from above the brood chamber and I will check every morning to see if I can find any mites lest I forget what they look like LOL.
Johno


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

johno said:


> I did a quick round of OAV at my home yard yesterday and checked the hives with sticky boards on the bottom and then using my secret formula I converted to the results of alcohol washes. The total of all mites found on the 7 hives out of 14 was 0 so using my formula my alcohol washes would also be 0. The conclusion of this exercise is that it is futile to treat hives that have been well treated in the fall and winter broodless periods, but has the advantage of relieving some poor beekeepers stress levels. I also took a look at Bee Arthurs calculator but was unable to get anything from it. The reasons for such a poor mite turnout could be construed as 1 all the mites are in the brood 2 there is so much winter detritus on the bottom screen that no mites could fall through 3 One of the hives has a young queen who has just commenced laying so would not qualify for number 1 4 All of my mites are visiting someone else's bee yard.
> Johno


LOL...it's a bit unfair to judge me so harshly based on a null result.

That is a good point about debris possibly clogging up the bottom screen. I bet most folks don't even consider that when they're coming out of winter.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Re debris on the SBB blocking fall of mites:



> don't even consider that when they're coming out of winter.


Well, if they are treating on top of the SBB, not under it, nor from an upper position, they will likely clean the surface off before inserting the wand. Otherwise they will find lots of burnt-on debris and gunk.

I make it a practice to not only slip a long tool in to clear out the dead bees and hive trash, particularly right now when it includes waxed paper from winter patty, but I also kneel down and look in the entrance with a flashlight to make sure there's no obstruction or festoon of bees hanging down.

Nancy


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

The bottleneck in my beekeeping operation is my limited time. Consequently, I have been using OAV to simultaneously monitor and treat for years, and, it works very well. To me, killing bees to save bees, such as by doing an alcohol wash, is as nonsensical as it sounds when you can instead kill mites to monitor mites. Especially since a precise infestation rate is unneccessary. And, for close calls I err on the side of treating.

I pretty much never count mites (but see the exception, below). Instead, I use the diameter of the mite fall pattern and the density of dead mites in the center of that pattern to estimate the mite infestation rate. I've inspected enough witness boards and hives to know that dead-mite-density scales with infestation rate. I do an OAV, and all I need to know about mite infestation is right there on the witness board. No need to open the hive. No need to kill bees. No need to risk killing/injuring the queen. I can tell just by looking at the dead mite density whether another OAV application is needed. And, I've already killed some mites, too.

I use solid bottom boards, and I slide a white Cloroplast witness board in to the hive through the front entrance for the mites to directly fall onto. Super easy and there is no concern about debris clogging a screen.

The only limitation is you can’t use OAV when honey supers are on. But I OAV monitor before the flow, further treat if necessary before placing honey supers, and remove honey supers when the flow ends, and so I am able keep on top of the mites.

Unless my bees rob out a neighbor's collapsing hive, I usually only need to do an OAV treatment once in November when my hives are broodless.

JMHO










.


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

The idea or using a brief treatment to monitor mites is not new. George Imirie suggested using Apistan for a short period for this exact purpose. That was 15 or 20 years ago. Using OAV in this manner works well and takes minimal time. To me, there is another component in mite testing that needs to be considered. When testing in early summer or spring, there is a lot of open brood available for mites to move into and little competition to find a host. My guess is that there is a fairly short phoretic period at this time. Short phoretic periods equates to few mites when testing. Once late summer comes and the brood rearing slows down, the available open brood is shrinking rapidly and there is competition for the mites to find a host. This means the phoretic period becomes longer due to the lack of available cells to mate in. Longer phoretic periods gives greater mite numbers when testing (even if the total population of mites remains static). Yes, there are fewer mites in early summer than in late summer but the testing make it appear that the number skyrocketed when the numbers were steadily increasing the whole time. The longer phoretic period just makes it look like there is a sudden spike in numbers. Thus, when testing, the time of year makes a difference in how you interpret the numbers.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

dudelt said:


> To me, there is another component in mite testing that needs to be considered. When testing in early summer or spring, there is a lot of open brood available for mites to move into and little competition to find a host. My guess is that there is a fairly short phoretic period at this time. Short phoretic periods equates to few mites when testing.


Good point, another variable to keep in mind.

In regions where there is a winter brood break, if the hives are treated at the appropriate time during that break, there should be no reason to worry about mites in the spring and early summer months. The colony is coming out of winter with very few mites, and with explosive spring brood expansion the bees are outbreeding the mites. If care is taken to treat at the correct time in the winter period there should never be a mite problem until later in the summer well after the major nectar flows.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

Mike Gillmore said:


> If care is taken to treat at the correct time in the winter period there should never be a mite problem until later in the summer well after the major nectar flows.


not sure I can agree with this, one of the best honey flows I ever had was before anything was blooming one early April, I had to put honey supers on early and got them filled, seems the yard up the street made it till spring and then went belly up, and all that honey came along with the mites. only happened once but I trust nothing any more. another example, a friend of mine is next to an apple orchard, during the apple bloom he had swarms hanging in all his trees and caught them, we treated the swarms and when we saw the mite counts, then treated his hives. invasions can happen at any time.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

True, there are always exceptions. I've never had that happen to me ....yet.


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

See what you guys think of this it does appear that good treatments when broodless in the early winter does a good job like Mike mentioned , I can't figure why one hive had a much higher count than the rest . Running it through the mite calculator as 1 deep of capped brood ( not sure this is correct I run all mediums but its the only logical choice available , went with a weak hive at 20,000 bee's for this time of year ,24 hr time frame , treated 6 hives 5 had 2 or 3 mites the stand out had 20 , so I went with a 20 mite count, calculator came up with 0.52 % phoretic mite load before treatment and a true overall mite load of 0.69 including mites under cappings .


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

laketrout said:


> See what you guys think of this it does appear that good treatments when broodless in the early winter does a good job like Mike mentioned , I can't figure why one hive had a much higher count than the rest . Running it through the mite calculator as 1 deep of capped brood ( not sure this is correct I run all mediums but its the only logical choice available , went with a weak hive at 20,000 bee's for this time of year ,24 hr time frame , treated 6 hives 5 had 2 or 3 mites the stand out had 20 , so I went with a 20 mite count, calculator came up with 0.52 % phoretic mite load before treatment and a true overall mite load of 0.69 including mites under cappings .


laketrout - That looks right to me. The 5 hives that only dropped 2-3 mites is what I'd expect this time of year from hives that have very low mite counts going into winter. The hive that dropped 20 mites would be a candidate to either re-treat or do a sugar roll in about a month before you get the itch to put honey supers on it. Keep in mind that the calculator spits out the pre-treatment mite load, so by performing that treatment you've already knocked that 1/2% down.


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

Bee A. Would you figure one medium box of brood this time of year in my area is about right , dont think I ever had them apart this early to know for sure ,I like your idea of hitting them one more time before adding supers, so it sounds like i'm in pretty good shape other than treating the one hive again buy the way zero mites fell on the second day thought the hive with 20 would have shown additional mite fall .Also if I'm correct there are only 0.17 % or less mites under cappings correct .

Well I am happy with the results didnt have to tear the hive apart and couldnt have this time of year anyway and I know how my hives are doing going into spring , seems like another way to stay ahead of the dreaded mites, thanks for your work with the mite calculator and also to Mike for his idea of using the oa to test for mites.


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## Bee Arthur (Mar 21, 2015)

laketrout said:


> Bee A. Would you figure one medium box of brood this time of year in my area is about right


Yep, I'd assume a single box of brood this time of year for a northern state. Then adjust as needed based on what you see during inspections.




laketrout said:


> Also if I'm correct there are only 0.17 % or less mites under cappings correct .


I wouldn't say "0.17 % or less." I'd say "about 0.17 %."

Here's a fun rabbit hole to go down...Just for the sake of playing with your numbers, let's say that means you have 34 mites under cappings in your hive with 20,000 bees. And let's say your OAV treatment killed 90% of the 108 phoretic mites that were in your hive. That leaves about 45 living mites still in your hive. Assuming the varroa's r-value (population growth) of .021, those 45 mites can turn into 1050 mites as we get to the end of August. If your colony was still only 20,000 bees, that would give them a mite load of 5.25%. But the colony will likely be twice as populous by then, so you'll still be over treatment threshold but horribly so. Now extrapolate out to the end of September and that hive has 1970 mites in it if left untreated. Even if you have a strong colony with 40,000 bees, you'll be sitting at a 5% mite load--but by then the bee population will probably be dropping, so the mite problem with be exacerbated as the ratio of bees-to-mites starts to go inverse. (Of course this leaves out some variables, but it's a simplified way to understand why late summer and early fall mite populations seem to skyrocket.)

For what it's worth, here I do my best to explain where I'm getting that capped mites data. https://www.mitecalculator.com/bee-yard-blog/2017/11/7/total-mite-load-recalculation

Since I wrote that post, I've also added a "Swarm Season" selection based on Randy Oliver writing that as many as 80% of the mites in a hive can be in the brood when there are a lot of drones being raised.


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

Wow very interesting and scary at the same time how fast they can multiply ,now i see how important the late summer treatment is if I would miss the August dearth treatment of every 7 days 3 or four weeks there wouldn't be any healthy bee's to go into winter with at all . Thanks for your incite .


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## JimD (Feb 3, 2018)

Last post was just before April1, 2018. 

I would love to hear what has happened these last 6 months to those who have posted on this thread and what has happened to their mite problems.

Thanks, Jim


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

The hives I had this spring were treated with OAV last winter during the broodless period and did very will this summer. As expected, the mite population was climbing in August, but I never had any crawlers or DWV issues. With work and vacation travel planned for late August and early September a consecutive series of OAV treatments was not possible. This time I treated with Formic Pro on August 18th. Mites are taken care of and the hives are in really good shape now. 

I'm planning to do a single OAV treatment in the 2nd half of October to see what kind of drops I get. If they happen to have been picking up mite hitchhikers from robbing out crashing hives I will do another series if necessary. Then the single treatment some time in December.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

So far so good, I lost 1 hive recently in an out yard that swarmed and the queen returned from a mating flight and took up residence under the SBB so the top dwindled and I guess the queen did not prosper under there. The rest of my hives are still over populated I guess I could split 90% of them but what am I to do with all those colonies. Did 5 treatments in July to August and there seems to be low mite counts all around the worry is how much all the bees eat with not much coming in will I be able to feed enough for winter stores or end up losing some to starvation again. So will be going into winter with 34 full colonies and 5 5 over 5 nucs, still cant get down to my 25 colonies.
Johno


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

I wasn't set up for OAV when this thread started but as soon as I got my Provap110 I did a "preliminary treatment". It would have been the first in a series but the drops were very low. Worst hive was about 50 mites after 24 hours and most were far less. So I waited a few weeks and did a three treatment series. Only one or two mites dropped per hive on the last treatment. I am so happy with the numbers that $150 worth of Apivar is still in its package unused.

By using the treatment as a monitoring tool, I am able to better allocate the limited time I have to actually care for the bees as opposed to creating detailed records of mite counts, no mattrer how useful they may be. And, the Provap, like JohnO's band heater, is fast. I can treat all 16 hives in the time it would take to do two alcohol washes. This year in VA the mites seem to have been on vacation, counts have been low at several of our clubs member's apiaries. Had I been monitoring last year or started treating earlier, I might not have lost 3 of my hives to varroa.

John, I'm four short of my goal of 20 production hives, so I'll reitterate my offer to remove, free of charge, any excess hives you may have. They will feel right at home at my place less than a mile from the beautiful Mattaponi River.

If you are going to have extra nucs for sale next year, contact the Ashland Beekeepers Association. The club's former president used to supply the club around 60 nucs each spring. He recently moved to Florida. I hope to produce around 20 next year to help with the shortage.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

When you do your treatment, perhaps select the queens with low mite numbers in the fall for propagation. Get the the source of the problem, lack of selection.


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