# Varroa Explosion



## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

'K, southern oregon coast, fairly mild weather so far, feral swarm caught in July, built out to about 12 bars... Been feeding for a month, started with all they would take but now that it's colder and getting wetter I've been feeding about a pint of heavy syrup a day. I just don't know if there was plentiful forage for them, they were bringing in pollen but stores seemed weak at the start of the month and when they finally discovered the feeder it was madness. The hive check on 10/7 looked fairly good (http://topbarhives.info/get-a-swarm/2014-10-07/, but a few weeks later a hasty check on a cool slightly rainy day and looked like there was little or no brood. I thought perhaps I'd lost the queen but they were not cranky so I've let it be, not much I can do this time of year anyway.

The hive has a solid bottom, with a removable tray out of white frp, and above that a removable screen. I check the tray every few days.

http://topbarhives.info/wp-content/gallery/2014-07-08/DSCF9109.JPG

I've been keeping an eye out for stuff I don't want to see on the tray, and today, bingo! I'd say 200-300 dead varroa. None on the screen, so even though it's just regular window screen they're falling thru just fine. Pics:

http://topbarhives.info/varroa/01.png
http://topbarhives.info/varroa/02.png
http://topbarhives.info/varroa/03.png
http://topbarhives.info/varroa/04.png

So what should I do here, given the time of year and all... I'd prefer to stick to more "natural" cures.

Wondering about the grease wintergreen patty angle:
http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/varroa/2010/Grease Patties 2010.pdf

Is this recipe similar to honey be healthy? Will it do anything for them in this situation?
http://www.gardenfork.tv/essential-oil-recipe-for-honeybees

And, no, I hadn't done any varroa checks. Smack me later. ;-) Maybe they should be doing better, my first year so I just don't know...

And I'm stressing a bit that I won't be able to do anything in the next few days, traveling tomorrow to cook turkey for friends, be back Sunday, probably.

Thanks!


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

My sense is that neither the wintergreen patty nor HBH will do anything for mites. If they actually worked we'd all be usng them in that way, as who really wants to put any chemical in one's hive? 

If you've got mites, and you want your hive to have a fighting chance, then I think you must treat with something effective. Of course if you won't be unhappy if they die and want to take that chance, then go ahead and leave it to Mother Nature. However your neighboring beekeepers, and any unmanaged bees living nearby, won't be helped if your hive becomes a festering mite bomb. At least put a robber screen on your own hive to keep healthier bees out while you see what happens.

The possible realm of treatments depends on very much on your temperatures. Where I am in northern NY, my only possibility right now is oxalic acid vaporization. You might be able to do an OA dribble if you can still open your hive safely (I can't due to temps). 

But, I am puzzled by one thing: you say you have 200-300 mites: which is it, that's a pretty big range? I couldn't tell that from your pictures. Did you actually count them? From the amount of debris on your board, it's been in for more than few days. I'd stick the board in again and do a 72 hour _count _- emphasis on the count. Yes, I mean pick each mite up with a toothpick and set it aside and then group into tens and count and divide by the number of days you did the test. That will give you a 24/average drop count which will tell you more than just making a guess. Maybe you are overestiimating the mite numbers.

The risk of leaving them untreated are the diseases vectored by the mites and the chronic weaknesses that entails. That would not be OK with me. 

Don't fool yourself into thinking that you're doing some grand breed-a-better-"survivor"- bee science experiment. If you have a single you're not breeding anything, even a small apiary is probably too small considering the reproductive biology of honeybees.

May I suggest you do some reading at Randy Oliver's site (Scientific Beekeeping)? He has tons of info about mites and ways to deal with them. And what actually works, and what doesn't. 

Good luck to you and your bees. Mites, and the problems they bring, are simply awful. 

Enj.


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Don't know what your temperatures are right now but you could research mite away quik strips (MAQS). They kill mites inside the cells but sometimes have an adverse effect on the queen. Like enjambres said, clean the board and do an exact count for a specific time period, 24 or 36 hours. You will have a better idea what kind of mite problem you have. MAQS don't require equipment like OA does other than acid proof gloves and using care not to breathe the fumes, washing up afterward, etc. I have seen worse boards and the hive survived after treatment but it took time and I lost a lot of bees. Good luck and keep us informed.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Actually I think a 24 hour or 36 hour board won't give you a very accurate picture. Go for the full three days. I have spent a lot of time pulling boards on each hive every day for months at a time and I found that a single day or day and half is not a good-enough test to make treatment decisions on. There are all sorts of daily variations.

Sticky boards have their built-in limitations, but do give a decent idea of what's going one with the ite population, However relying only on occasional or short-period sticky board tests isn't as useful. In my experience you get the best information if you sticky board more or less constantly with a regular counting _and recording_ of the results every 72 hours. That way you won't miss the beginnings of the problem and will never be surprised to suddenly find 200+ mites. 

Better, quicker, and to many people's thinking, more accurate are the roll/shake tests. You can learn to do a sugar roll pretty easily from written explantions and watching a youTube or two. It doesn't kill the tested bees, (though I think it is still pretty stressful to the tested individuals.)

Rolls can give you a good fix on the percentage of your bees that are being predated by the mites, _right now_.

I have used MAQS (formic acid), too. I had no queen loss despite the reports of that happening for others. I was pretty careful to only use it in the 60-82 F range. Higher temps increase the problems with queen loss, or at least I have read that. It only takes a week and must be set directly over the brood area. It can used when you have honey supers on the hive. On the other hand, I found it was not particularly effective and even though I repeated it six weeks later, I still found it overall less than ideal. I used two strips the first time, but the second time on the advice of the maufacturer I only used one.

So I moved on to a full course of OAV. That seems to have been more effective. I still have a final clean-up treatment planned sometime in the next couple of weeks. Just waiting for the remainder of the mites after the OAV treatment to stabilize down and my hives to become completely broodless. OAV can be done without opening the hive and at temps as low as 40F, so it's ideal for a northern beekeeper at this time of year. It doesn't kill any mites protected in brood cells, so a broodless period is best for the single-treatment method.

It does require the purchase of an applicator which costs $125-$165, depending on the model last I looked. I have the cheaper one and it works OK. If a someone steals it, I think I would replace it with the more expensive model.

The equipment does raise the treatment cost, but the material for treating literally costs just pennies per application. MAQS and other treatments can cost $10-20 per hive, when purchased in small quantities by hobbyist beekeepers, so it doesn't take long for the overall cost to equalize. (Expensive equipment + stupidly cheap chemical vs. expensive proprietary chemical in little packs.)

Two things about OAV though: it is not an approved chemical for treating bees in the US. Though it is approved in the EU and Canada. And, please, if you are planning to vaporize the oxalic acid (vs using the dribble method), DO NOT SKIMP ON THE PERSONAL PROTECTIVE GEAR. It really _is _necessary.

Enj.


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## vdotmatrix (Apr 5, 2014)

OUCH!!

That looks pretty bad...

I think the time for au naturel may be over not that HBH or Vicks vapor rub will do anything at all... you need some medicine in there.I just finsihed a treament of APIVAR which should be coming out tommorow but i don't have any help to remove them so they will have to stay in until spring....but I had a similar explosion even after monitoring my hives every 2 weeks for mites using the IPM. But the IPM has many variables that can effect an accurate count but ya know, it is better than nothing.

We just did an Oxalic acid treament last weekend. looked like it went well....had to buy a heating device for using OA...not approved here in the US.

The APIVAR strips seemed to be what I could use this time of year but if your gals are clustered I don't know what you can do...
The formic acid QS I think are temp dependent ....seems a little rough on htem right now but I don't know. I think I just got in under the wire for FALL and these effin varroa mites. Good Luck man..I am sorry you are going through this SH*T so late inthe year but next cycle you will be more vigilant.


Apismellifera said:


> 'K, southern oregon coast, fairly mild weather so far, feral swarm caught in July, built out to about 12 bars... Been feeding for a month, started with all they would take but now that it's colder and getting wetter I've been feeding about a pint of heavy syrup a day. I just don't know if there was plentiful forage for them, they were bringing in pollen but stores seemed weak at the start of the month and when they finally discovered the feeder it was madness. The hive check on 10/7 looked fairly good (http://topbarhives.info/get-a-swarm/2014-10-07/, but a few weeks later a hasty check on a cool slightly rainy day and looked like there was little or no brood. I thought perhaps I'd lost the queen but they were not cranky so I've let it be, not much I can do this time of year anyway.
> 
> The hive has a solid bottom, with a removable tray out of white frp, and above that a removable screen. I check the tray every few days.
> 
> ...


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

The mites at this season are all phoretic (living on adult bees). This makes eliminating them easy. Any irritant to the bees will induce grooming will remove a good percentage. The gold standard for the soft chemicals in the winter is "oxalic acid dribble" -- 3.2% solution (w to w), 5 ml per seam, 50 ml per colony. The fumigants are mostly below critical threshold temperature, even oxalic vapor condenses too quickly in the winter.

In this season, the normally ineffective "folk" remedies will work to **some** extent -- sugar dusting, chaparral/walnut leaf/juniper smoke/ wintergreen patties, and all others of that ilk. This is because they are mechanical irritants, and grooming will cause the mites to drop. You can educate yourself by doing the folk remedy and then hitting the hive with a known effective treatment. You can compare the "folk" remedy drop with the subsequent highly effective drop. 

Your hive is broodless (a normal winter condition). You want to remove the phoretic mites completely, so the hive goes into the spring without any foundress mites. If the present mites damaged the colony it is too late to do anything about it. You should hope the colony is reasonably healthy, and starting with a clean slate in the spring will give you health and vigor. The winter bees, the ones that will live until February, are already adults -- they are infected or not with virus the mites propagate. The barn door was left open.

You have been presented with an opportunity to eliminate the foundress population -- you want to do that as effectively as possible. In total lifecycle loading -- cleaning the hive in the winter of the Varroa population will reduce the need to manage when honey for consumption is on the hive.


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## vdotmatrix (Apr 5, 2014)

Last monday was 71 degrees here and that's why we had an oxalic acid window....


JWChesnut said:


> The mites at this season are all phoretic (living on adult bees). This makes eliminating them easy. Any irritant to the bees will induce grooming will remove a good percentage. The gold standard for the soft chemicals in the winter is "oxalic acid dribble" -- 3.2% solution (w to w), 5 ml per seam, 50 ml per colony. The fumigants are mostly below critical threshold temperature, even oxalic vapor condenses too quickly in the winter.
> 
> In this season, the normally ineffective "folk" remedies will work to **some** extent -- sugar dusting, chaparral/walnut leaf/juniper smoke/ wintergreen patties, and all others of that ilk. This is because they are mechanical irritants, and grooming will cause the mites to drop. You can educate yourself by doing the folk remedy and then hitting the hive with a known effective treatment. You can compare the "folk" remedy drop with the subsequent highly effective drop.
> 
> ...


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## Apismellifera (Oct 12, 2014)

Yessssss... Thankyou. It's clear that the oa dribble is the way to go. Economic, simple, apparently quite effective, no accumulation in wax or nastiness, no weather contraindications, easy to apply. I've got syringes and looks like I ought to be able to get the wood bleach oxalic acid locally.

I mixed up some hbh analog, the bees are not going for the syrup with this added so much... Could be temps, could be it's too thick, I did a 5-3 and I could see they were havin' a helluva time trying to clean up. I figured I'd keep giving 'em syrup for as long as they'll take it? Here's our temps:









I'm gonna go for the trifecta and do some grease patties with tea tree also.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!


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