# How long a brood break is sufficient to break mite cycle



## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

The factor to consider is the drone cycle. From egg to emergence of a drone is 24-25 days. Most mites are in drone brood.

Suppose you do a simple split. One half has a queen and all goes on as usual. No mite break. 
The queenless half however has several different paths. If it must make a queen from an egg, then it will be about 1 month before the mites have new larvae to infect. The queen cycle is 16 days from egg to emerging from the cell, then a period of maturation, virgin flights and mating, then a while before egg laying starts. 30-40 days at best.

Sounds good, but a drone egg laid the same day of the split will emerge on day 24, eight days AFTER the queen emerged, and just a few days before she starts to lay. Most mites will be on young bees who are not flying, so attrition is low. Unless these bees are very serious about grooming and mite biting, the population of new, young mites is hardly reduced before they have new cells to invade. The older, adult mites are being lost during this period, but every day a new population of young mites is hatching along with the drones that are continuously hatching.

I would call this a 'pause' in mite reproduction, not a highly useful break. The queenright half got no break at all, and those mites are exploding and drift will carry them into the nearby hives.

It is even worse if the bees had a capped queen cell ready when you split, or if they swarmed. The hive left behind by a swarm will have capped queen cells ready to hatch, and the brood break is so short that drones are continuously hatching while the virgin is mating, returns and starts laying. Barely even a mite pause in reproduction.

Based on this I now believe my former thinking on brood breaks was naive and ill-informed. The mites are well-adapted to the bee life cycle and are prepared for normal events like swarms and queen replacements. Brood breaks of normal length will slow the mite cycle a bit, but not stop it. It's a 'better-than-nothing' intervention. 

What are my next steps for TF? This year, after finding a badly infested drone comb, I started seriously working to eliminate drone brood after the swarm season. Pluse a second brood break in late July.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

AR1 ; Agree. I am pretty isolated from other bees so once mite levels are ~zero I can manage to keep them there with little effort. I cull some drone larvae to look for mites. Usually negative. Not sure how colony cost effective large scale drone production and culling would be in a high mite potential environment.

There was a thread here not so long ago on the cost to the colony of a deliberate brood break. It is a very expensive if not negative benefit mite control measure. I made a quick try to search it up but obviously not the right search parameters.

Though you may not get all mites phoretic several OAV treatments will be _somewhat_ more effective than would be the case if there was no period of even partial brood interruption. Not a good tactic to depend on in a high mite environment.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

You two guys are touching on some very important things about brood breaks that many folks miss.
1. Not many mites are "dying of old age" during a brood break. Data indicates they live through 3-8 reproductive cycles and if they feed survive the winter on bees in the cluster.

2. Mel Disselkoen makes a good observation in one of his talks that when a brood break is over some mites are killed as a result of lots of mites entering the first couple days of brood produced and that larvae dying. 
Most folks don't see that since the dead brood is removed. The overall result is very negative in bee population and worker age distribution. 

3.A timely treatment during the brood break has the possibility to have a much more positive effect on mite reduction.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Mel's concept has never been proven
and simple math shows any efect is minumal...

the mite pop grows (reproduction rate - death rate) at 0.025 a day it dies at 0.009% a day
if you start with 1,000 mites you will have 800 after a 30 day brood break, if you don't do the brood break you will have 2,000 mites.. that a big difference from flattening the curve..

now if you take mels methods, you break the hive in to 4 nucs
now each nuc only has 200 mites 
at this point you have also 4x the brood out put as you have 4 laying queens, so you can stay ahead of the mites for a bit.


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

Point taken and was understood before hand.
My point was not to say that Mel had the answer, it was to point out that whatever the reduction of mites or mechanism for it, the reduction in bee population since the queen is not laying and the imbalance in worker ages can have a pretty negative overall effect.
30 days at 1000 eggs a day is half the population of a fairly strong hive.
On the plus side since there is no larvae to feed for a while incoming resources can get stored so like lots of things in beekeeping the answer is it depends.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

crofter said:


> Though you may not get all mites phoretic several OAV treatments will be _somewhat_ more effective than would be the case if there was no period of even partial brood interruption. Not a good tactic to depend on in a high mite environment.


To get really good results you would need to wait 25 days after queen removal, or you will have constantly hatching mites coming out of drone brood. Every treatment will help, some. The question is what does a good job.

This year I am trying brood breaks plus drone removal. Still no chemicals, but that may change as I get into late July and see how things look.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

msl said:


> Mel's concept has never been proven
> and simple math shows any efect is minumal...
> 
> the mite pop grows (reproduction rate - death rate) at 0.025 a day it dies at 0.009% a day
> ...


Your first two slides show what I was referring to when I said it was a mite pause more than a break. The upward curve is delayed a few weeks. In the second slide I am assuming the numbers across the bottom are days...? If so that shows increasing mite numbers right up until the last few drones emerge, then declining mite numbers.

I have read that mites prefer young bees, that will stay near brood. Older bees are less likely to be attacked. So, perhaps pulling the queen and doing a flyback split, where all the foragers, old bees, return to the queenright colony, but without brood hatching, so the mites face a more serious decline in numbers. You would have to separate the queen from brood right off the bat to prevent mass reinfection. I'm just rambling here, throwing out ideas.

I could split all my nucs again in late July and probably do Okay. But that would only allow me to have nucs overwinter. That worked fine last winter, but I am hoping to allow a few of these hives to expand and make some honey this fall.

Or, I could pull several of the queens into nucs and combine most of their bees into one queenless super-colony, hoping to get honey off of that. Leave the supercolony queenless for a while. How long? Have to think more. Maybe I'll put a queen in the TOP box with an excluder under it. Then I can easily manage her, and cull drone brood much more easily without having to lift lots of boxes.

So here's what I got:
1. 1st split in May, make up as many nucs as you can. I did that.

2, After the split/swarm season start removing all drone brood. I use a medium frame in my deep boxes to make this easy. Most of the drone brood is placed under the medium with only a few scattered singles or patches of drone brood elsewhere.

3. By end of June all those nucs should be queenright and full of bees. Some of mine were not queenright and got extra frames of brood, so the nucs are full of bees regardless of whether there is a queen present or not. 

4. In July pull queens back into new nucs, flyback split style, so they all end up with their forager older bee population and few mites. These will take time to make comb before the queen can lay, so they get something of a brood break and should be mostly mite-free bees to begin with.

5. Combine all the now-queenless nucs into large-population hives. Most or all of the brood will be going into these large hives. Pull out any queen cells they make into small nucs to increase hive numbers. This hive can remain queenless or get a queen added later.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> Mel's concept has never been proven
> and simple math shows any efect is minumal...


And so Mel should run out of his bees long ago.
Not the case.
How is he still getting by?

Did not take me long to have 100% loss.
Why doesn't Mel report 100% loss?
I very much trust Mel is an honest man.

So, this is a the part of the "logical" # crunching and graph building that just never adds up in the end.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> The factor to consider is the drone cycle. From egg to emergence of a drone is 24-25 days. Most mites are in drone brood.
> 
> Suppose you do a simple split. One half has a queen and all goes on as usual. *No mite break.* .


Unless you do a brood-less split.
I don't know why people don't practice brood-less splits.
Brood == mite factory.

This year this is my standard practice.
Being brood-less is an obvious setback but it has benefits - 1)the situation triggers certain swarm-like urgency directed towards the nest reconstruction (very good) and 2)it also provides mite shedding compatible to swarming.
Brood-less split is even more effective when combined with forcing them into complete/partial comb rebuilding - they indeed behave similar to a swarm.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> The factor to consider is the drone cycle. From egg to emergence of a drone is 24-25 days. Most mites are in drone brood.
> 
> Suppose you do a simple split. One half has a queen and all goes on as usual. No mite break.........
> ..........
> ...


This the experimentation that I did with my May 12th swarm (it was getting ready to swarm, anyway).

A variation of fly-back split but brood-less.

The queen-right unit:
- was left few frames with stores - no brood on them (I simply want them to finish capping the honey - then will remove).
- the bees occupying the honey frames are mostly young bees too but with the least infestation being outside of the brood nest - these honey handlers will easily revert back to the brood tending - so this provides for the reasonably well-balanced unit
- gave few empty combs checker-boarded with blank frames - give them work, but also provide space to immediately enable a new brood nest recreation

The queen-less unit:
- ALL brood was moved into here
- I harvested as much drone brood as was practical (there was good presence of mites in it; easily observed)
- also destroyed some drone brood in place - too old pupae are not harvest-able - just de-capped them with a fork and messed up pretty bad - to be removed by bees
- shook out some bees for my other projects - just a tangential benefit
- yesterday I removed ALL QCs (I hope I did as there were many; the better ones went directly into mating nucs) and introduced brand new eggs from a "superior" genetic line so that they create new QCs from zero again

In short, the queen-right unit was made as mite-free as possible (outside of chemical treatment - it was a perfect chance to use OA if I choose to do it, of course).
The queen-less unit was made as mite free as possible by removing the drone brood (present mite concentration) and the brood break was extended by resetting their QCs back to zero.

In late July/early August I want to try mite testing to get the rough infestation idea.


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

That is the annual cycle of the original host of the varroa mite, the Cerana bee:









So 3 months of varroa reproduction (in drone cells) – which means a brood break for 9 months. 

Also there are "winter mites" and "summer mites": there are long-living and short living varroa mites.

Morphological variation of Varroa destructor (Parasitiformes, Varroidae) in different seasons
V. O. Yevstafieva, L. M. Zaloznaya, O. S. Nazarenko, V. V. Melnychuk, A. G. Sobolta
Biosystems Diversity. Vol 28 No 1 (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15421/012003

https://ecology.dp.ua/index.php/ECO/article/view/1018

The chances are small, that you can influence a species through brood breaks, that is adapted to a 9 month brood break. :scratch:


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

BernhardHeuvel said:


> That is the annual cycle of the original host of the varroa mite, the Cerana bee:
> 
> View attachment 57131


Immediately, I can say this cycle of Cerana bees does not represent the Russian Far East.
Drone generation starting in September just makes no sense for that locality.
Rainy season in July/August is clearly meant for some other location - probably Indo-China or similar.
Flora availability in February makes no sense.
This pictured annual cycle is irrelevant for the northern populations of Cerana.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

thanks BH... I didn't go there as not to muddy things, but yes summer and winter mites.. summer mites live shorter and are more impacted by the break.. the break also alows grooming behaviors (like treatments) to be more effective as the mites are exposed, and exposed for a longer time.. Ie if the bees bite and kill 6% of the 20% mites that are exposed for an advrage 6 days phortic period (1% a day) they are only killing 0.2 a day, the mite repruction rate is being held back 1.2% but if those mites are exposed for an advrage 20 days the bees kill 20% o the mites, and thats with minimal mite biting




> And so Mel should run out of his bees long ago.
> Not the case.
> How is he still getting by


read the whole post 

mell's hypotheses of the mites crowding the 1st cells has not been documented, simple math shows shows any effect form it is likely minuminal with the bulk of the results caused by the brood break and then the division of the mite load in to nucs. 

no were am I saying it dosen't work, the math model show that it does!!
its a simple mater of a 4x increase in brood out put shifting the ratio of mites to bees, that is till the mites catch up.. but mixed with a fay back its quite efective 

with my stock (except for the yard that takes magor leage mite bombs) I can do a winter bloodless oxliac and a spring fly back split, break the brood in to 4 nucs and get by quite well and still make a crop 



msl said:


> Hive CF01, an IPM story
> 
> 2016 May 12 Caught as a swarm, moved to an out yard with a rabbit brush flow mid sept, nothing to harvest, Nov brood less dribble
> 
> ...


some people of corce treat the nucs when they go brood less but I don't have to... in the nucs are seeing too much mites you could FBS them again, or in the next year use a traping comb and jettison the 1 comb of brood


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> no were am I saying it dosen't work, the math model show that it does!!
> its a simple mater of a 4x increase in brood out put shifting the ratio of mites to bees, that is till the mites catch up.. but mixed with a fay back its quite efective


All I am suggesting is that the simplistic math models are that - too simplistic (albeit easy to understand as it appears on a 2-D plane, but are they true in a N-dimensional case?). For just one example, I wonder if gww's bees ever read the mite projections graphs. His bees should have dead many years ago by most any math projection.

All the brightest people on Earth (and their super-computers) are trying to figure out the COVID models right now - will probably take many years. AND COVID is a true and pressing high priority (vs. some mite most people still don't know about).


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Greg the model and the example hive show the reproduction rate of non resistant stocks, this shows OTS can and does work with "normal" bees.. proping them up the same as treatments 

We know there are many modifiers such as resistant stocks lowering the mite reproduction rate and proximity to other beekeepers increasing the immigration rate. You seem to take it in the shorts on both of those, while GWW seems to have at least one in his favor

Bolt Comfort and Webster feel location and management are the top players, followed by genetics. 
you can't change your location, so you are taking a hard look at what a management change can do for you and have reached out to get better genetics..
so you are on a good path 
modeling both bee hive population growth (linear) and mite pop growth (exponential) is fairly strait forward, that's how we arrive at action thresholds. 
it would be a simple matter to do 3 mounthly mite washes on GWWs hives and adjust to what ever mite reproduction rate he has. 
Randys model is great for that and has rates form TF stocks as well as a way to adjust the immigration http://scientificbeekeeping.com/randys-varroa-model/


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

By the way about all the brightest and their Covid rubbish, when an Irish Professor pulls all their theories apart in a Youtube interview it quickly gets censored by Youtube as it does not fit in to their mantra.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Youtube is Google and Google lets you see only what they want you to see. AT least they have not started censoring bee keeping videos, as far as I know anyway.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Quite frankly in my opinion a brood break in a colony is like the 15 minute half time break in a game of rugby where neither of the two sides gets an advantage over the other. The only advantage in the colony is if they receive a treatment of some sort when all mites become phoretic.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> Greg the model and the example hive show the reproduction rate of non resistant stocks, this shows OTS can and does work with "normal" bees.. proping them up the same as treatments
> 
> We know there are many modifiers such as resistant stocks lowering the mite reproduction rate and proximity to other beekeepers increasing the immigration rate. You seem to take it in the shorts on both of those, while GWW seems to have at least one in his favor
> 
> ...


OK; sounds reasonable, MSL.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

johno said:


> Quite frankly in my opinion a brood break in a colony is like the 15 minute half time break in a game of rugby where neither of the two sides gets an advantage over the other. The only advantage in the colony is if they receive a treatment of some sort when all mites become phoretic.


If your bees are very susceptible - not much you can do, break or no break (I want these bees just to be gone; don't care to own them).
If your bees are resistant to some degree - that is something you can work with (no work needs to be done in the most ideal cases, as this very forum demonstrates).


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The only advantage in the colony is if they receive a treatment of some sort when all mites become phoretic.


here are the results of brooded up OAV, brood break form 26 days caging, and OAV with a brood break form 26 days caging 








The problem is the same as we saw in ross conrads brood break work.. it can work and keep the bees alive, but the honey production tanks at that point why keep bees https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne16-840/


saying a brood break doesn't have a impact is like saying mite bombs don't exist or impact hives .. It just doesn't follow the science and field experience. 

arguably a break isn't enuff in many places, you need more... be it devideing the mite load , resistant stocks, using a traping comb, etc..

but at that point, you propping up poor stocks just like treatments


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Ja well no fine, I have been hearing these stories about resistant bees for the last 10 years, I have purchased breeder queens of this kind of stock and have had them and many other stocks in my yards but at the end of the day if I do not reduce the mite population those bees all fade out after a year or so. I will prefer to rely on my experience of bees and mites instead of looking for these elusive resistant bees.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

johno said:


> Ja well no fine, I have been hearing these stories about resistant bees for the last 10 years, I have purchased breeder queens of this kind of stock and have had them and many other stocks in my yards but at the end of the day if I do not reduce the mite population those bees all fade out after a year or so. I will prefer to rely on my experience of bees and mites instead of looking for these elusive resistant bees.


Resistance is not a binary choice (T/F) but rather a wide range of values spread across several dimensions.
What we've been saying for while now, even in this exact thread, just above.
Everyone needs to study their own case and understand it and see what is possible for *them*.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

"Everyone needs to study their own case and understand it and see what is possible for them." 

This is a tall order indeed. Very elusive target, this understanding bit. Very much open to subjective conclusion and small sample size error. I have seen so many with complete conviction that they had the holy grail of methodology and genetic fortune and in a year or in some cases a month or two later, had done a 180 and going the opposite direction with equal enthusiasm and certainty. 

The few who have apparently found the path and been on it for a considerable period of time, often do not know exactly what to attribute their success to.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

crofter said:


> "Everyone needs to study their own case and understand it and see what is possible for them."
> 
> This is a tall order indeed. Very elusive target, this understanding bit. Very much open to subjective conclusion and small sample size error. I have seen so many with complete conviction that they had the holy grail of methodology and genetic fortune and in a year or in some cases a month or two later, had done a 180 and going the opposite direction with equal enthusiasm and certainty.
> 
> The few who have apparently found the path and been on it for a considerable period of time, often do not know exactly what to attribute their success to.


Basically why I have been catching the bees and then watching what will happen - otherwise, just impossible to believe anyone.
It appears, there is no binary choice - treat/don't treat.
Those on the far ends of this discussions present it as-if a simple binary choice.
No, not binary.

I don't treat - my bees die.
GWW/SP don't treat - their bees live.
And so on... 
Both outcomes are true.
Many cases are in the middle.
It is more complicated than simple treat or not treat.

As for me, 50% survival be just great, if it is reasonably easy and reasonably consistent.
Some kind of methodology that is clean and producing enough return for the labors.
Some kind of 20/80 approach for the effort/payback.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I am isolated by about three miles from other bees and then only a handful of hives in those cases. No feral bees and no movement through of pollination bees. I have bees from a reputable bee producer and have no problem with dilution of my genetics. I dont have a big battle to control mites and probably could manage with IPM methods but not so inclined. No wax moths and no small hive beetles.

There seems common enough to be a pattern of good survival TF developing and then a crash. Maybe something like the cycles of arctic voles and hares. Population booms, disease and predation peaks, collapse and cleansing, recover, rinse and repeat.

I dont possess the tranquility that GWW has to tolerate the "go with the flow and observe''! Maybe it is an illusion, but I have to feel that I can be in control of the outcome.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Maybe this treatment thing has its disadvantages such as , I have 5 ten frame nucs I cannot sell for $100 each and I also have a surplus of 15 colonies comprising of 3 eight frame mediums That I cannot find buyers at $250 each. Maybe I should just stop treating and they will go away or last resort is hot soapy water . I am starting to get where beekeeping sucks.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> I dont have a big battle to control mites and probably could manage with IPM methods


I don't understand why people say things like that, IMP includes the nuclear option, full synthetic miticides as/if needed.. but yes it is also things like making a flyback split to give an overwinered hive a fresh start, with out chemicals 



GregV said:


> Many cases are in the middle.
> It is more complicated than simple treat or not treat..


correct... IPM is the middle, built on sold foundation of resistant stock...

You don't treat, I do 1-2 times a year, johno does about 20
We have 3 approaches
TF, IPM, Treat on a schedule... different locations, diffrent methods, different goles 
I like the middle ground.. gives me data to make selection decisions and I treat when needed to protect valuable genetics and resources. 
This alows me to leverage what I have to improve my lines and try to enact change on a landscape scale

but the middle takes more work then turning a blind eye to the mites or treating blindly


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

msl said:


> but the middle takes more work then turning a blind eye to the mites or treating blindly


I agree; I am lazy and not imbued with the pursuit of "natural". This is second year of using partial worker comb wit drone areas each side so plenty of drones. I dont cull drone to kill the concentrated mites but to assess their level. So far have seen only ONE mite and I have pulled many thousands of drones.

Once you get mite levels near zero and have no in drift from other colonies it is not hard to keep that level. Not a matter of being clever at controlling mites; just a very uncommon set of "local conditions". If that situation changes the response would not be gradual escalation.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

crofter said:


> There seems common enough to be a pattern of good survival TF developing and then a crash. Maybe something like the cycles of arctic voles and hares. Population booms, disease and predation peaks, collapse and cleansing, recover, rinse and repeat.


You hit the nail! Without disease control any population will crash occasionally, whatever species, wild or domestic. With an apiary packed with multiple hives it is similar to feedlot cattle. If you are isolated and start with disease-free stock you might go years without problems. If you have stock coming in regularly it's rolling the dice when a disease will show up.

We have it far worse with bees, given that something like half the bees are taken to Cali every year then redistributed throughout the US. Every possible disease is concentrated in one location and then sent out again. There will be no permanent solution if migratory beekeeping to Cali is allowed. So, there will be no solution. The bee stock will get more resistant to whatever is currently a problem, but something new will always be coming.

TF will never be easy in the US.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Every possible disease is concentrated in one location and then sent out again. There will be no permanent solution if migratory beekeeping to Cali is allowed


disagree
as you say


> If you have stock coming in regularly it's rolling the dice when a disease will show up.


the real problem for most of us is the whole sale importation of out of state bees for the hobbyist market

The local shops with in a 30 mile radius of me brought in something like 4000+ packages this year... just like every year
here is a drop of 975






one of many


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

msl said:


> disagree
> as you say
> the real problem for most of us is the whole sale importation of out of state bees for the hobbyist market


That is certainly an additional factor tending in the same direction.


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## Sickdog5 (Jun 8, 2016)

ive had good overwintering success doing brood breaks combined with powder sugar treatments. NO chemicals what so ever. I also only run like 5 hives.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Sickdog5 said:


> ive had good overwintering success doing brood breaks combined with powder sugar treatments. NO chemicals what so ever. I also only run like 5 hives.


How many years?


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## BernhardHeuvel (Mar 13, 2013)

FYI

Conlon BH, Kastally C, Kardell M, Kefuss J, Moritz RFA, Routtu J. Selection for outbreeding in Varroa parasitising resistant honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. Ecol Evol. 2020;00:1–6. https://doi.org/10.1002/ ece3.6506

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ece3.6506


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I love how C12H22O11 "isn't a chemical" but some how C2H2O4 "is a chemical" ? 

my town has about the same population as sick dogs county

Littleton CO-13.75 sq mi and a pop of 48,065

Montgomery County, New York 410 sq mi pop 50,219

location maters


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Thanks to Litsinger for posting this study (open access):
https://www.cell.com/trends/parasitology/fulltext/S1471-4922(20)30101-X# 

I am thinking particularly about the following paragraph:

Viruses, Varroa Thresholds, and Virulence Management
If virulence is not punished, it will proliferate. Keeping weak colonies alive during winter, through intensive varroa management or by combining with strong colonies, encourages the transmission and survival of virulent varroa and virus traits, much like reinvasion [40
]. One of the most important, and least adopted, practices in virulence management is culling, which is largely absent in beekeeping other than for American foulbrood (AFB). Since the only host for varroa is the honey bee, which is overwhelmingly controlled by beekeepers, culling would be particularly effective for removing inadequate honey bee genetics and virulent varroa-virus traits...



I am considering using my second yard for a low-management trial. Observe mite numbers and pinch queens from those hives that appear more susceptible. Not bond in the sense of letting them die. Pinch and requeen. Maintain my home yard for more intensive observation and intervention. 

Currently I have only one line of queens, all descendants of a single swarm, so that's a serious limitation right now.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> ...Pinch and requeen...


May end up wasting good queens, I think.
I have.

From my experience, no good queen can turn around things that progressed too far (unless you catch them early - which is not usually possible because you simply don't see the problem yet; when you finally see the problem, it is too late to re-requeen).

The entire unit just needs to go.
A fine option when you need to consolidate anyway (like at the end of the season).

OR - pinch and treat hard and then requeen.


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## Sickdog5 (Jun 8, 2016)

AR1 said:


> How many years?


 not very long 6 years. But i do notice a difference.But then again i believe its easier to keep mites under control running fewer hives that are not in close proximity. I overwinter with a single brood chamber and a me honey super


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## Tim Ives (May 28, 2013)

Brood breaks, Drone Comb culling or Small Cell does nothing for hygienic behavior against Varrao.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Sadly true. If the bees are not doing it themselves, all these manipulations and treatments are just scratching the edges of the problem. I am simply trying to keep some hives alive through next winter and go forward from there.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

A few days ago I did a complete, all frames inspection of a hive. This hive is from a small swarm I caught and put into a 5-frame nuc in June. It is now filling a 10-deep box with no supers. Good population.

I cut out large amounts of drone comb from the lower edges of 4 medium frames in the deep box. Relating back to the earlier discussion of Mel's ideas, that mites swarm into brood when given the chance, the youngest drone brood was essentially mite free. However, the older drone brood was mite-infested, some with multiple mites. There were also large numbers of dead drone larvae. It looks like the older drone brood 'caught' most of the mites. Interesting, many of the older drones were perfectly healthy-looking and had no mites.

Drone-culling is limited by the time the beekeeper has to manage the hive. I plan to continue doing it, but it's too time intense for anyone who had to make a living off their bees. It's also time-sensitive. If you miss a cull, you have just released a large population of mites back into your hive. Drones take about 23-24 days to emerge, so it's basically a monthly activity.

I need to break out the alcohol wash kit.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

Thinking of swarms and brood breaks. The swarm gets it's break, but the hive left behind is worse off than ever. It's like a hive in late fall, egg laying has stopped and the last brood is hatching into a hive with decreasing numbers of bees, piling mites onto decreasing bees. A month after a swarm, in the original hive, the new queen starts laying and those cells are going to be swarmed with mites.

Same with splits. If you pull a queen from a hive with lots of infested brood, the queenless half is going to suffer high mite counts.

This is all probably obvious to the experienced folks here, but it helps me to write it down while thinking about it.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

AR1 said:


> Thinking of swarms and brood breaks. The swarm gets it's break, but the hive left behind is worse off than ever. It's like a hive in late fall, egg laying has stopped and the last brood is hatching into a hive with decreasing numbers of bees, piling mites onto decreasing bees. A month after a swarm, in the original hive,* the new queen starts laying and those cells are going to be swarmed with mites.*
> 
> Same with splits. If you pull a queen from a hive with lots of infested brood, *the queenless half is going to suffer high mite counts.
> *
> This is all probably obvious to the experienced folks here, but it helps me to write it down while thinking about it.


Well, yes - to the mites swarming the new brood.
Well, not really to the mite count (as the overall estimates don't really change); the *measured *#'s maybe higher for obvious reasons - more phoretic mites.

But that was one main point of the Mel D's OTS method.
The over-whelmed brood gets killed by 2-3 mites in each cell (which in turn is supposed to be killing off mites or disrupting their normal life cycle - ???).
How the theory goes...

I posted a picture of how highly infested brood looks like (including a damaged queen).

Anyway, I have several hives this season that got double-brood breaks.
Is it bad? Or is it good?
Remains to be seen.


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

GregV said:


> Well, yes - to the mites swarming the new brood.
> Well, not really to the mite count (as the overall estimates don't really change); the *measured *#'s maybe higher for obvious reasons - more phoretic mites.
> 
> But that was one main point of the Mel D's OTS method.
> ...


Yes, I have seen what appears to be this happening, with multiple mites per cell. It is still a harsh situation for the left behind hive. 

I'd have to think back but most of my hives have given themselves a double brood break. After I split the original hive they then swarmed and swarmed again. Some of them look ready to swarm again, though at this point I hope they don't. Not much equipment to put them in. I am down to 5 frames not in use. I still have a few deep nucs not in use so I could at least box them up, but what a mess that's letting me in for later.


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