# Treatment of Varroa Durring Honey Flow HELP!



## John Russell (Aug 8, 2003)

Tough call. You can use FGMO with thymol durring a honey flow....check out the forum on this website.
If you are in dire peril then you should treat.That natural drop seems pretty high to me....
Try dropping a bee brush full in a jar of windshield washer fluid....then skim the dead bees off and check the bottom....the mites sink to the bottom. 
I'd also open up some capped drone brood for an indicator as well.

( My appologies for the killing method. Sugar rolls are non lethal, but in an emergency or if time is short, the above is a good last resort. )


J.R.


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## jalal (Sep 2, 2004)

i second the fgmo and cords


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## TwT (Aug 5, 2004)

could you use the sucrocide again, I thought they said it could be use when supers are on the hives


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## mackles (Jul 7, 2005)

I tryed sucrocide and it didnt get me very far. I also checked the drone brood and that was filled with them. On an entire frame of drone brood there must of been 20. Thanks for all your help, i dont want to loose more hives.


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

Mackles, you have 2 options, save the honey crop, save the bees. It is a tough choice but sometimes you just have to step in an pull the supers and treat. The succrocide only kills the mites that are out and present at the time of treatment and should be repeated to get mites from hatching cells. If you do not treat soon you will have a huge collapse, probably in August. If you have not seen it yet it involves hundreds, maybe thousands of worker bees running around on the ground with their wings chewed off. It is hard to say what to treat with as some mites are now resistant to both fluvalinate and cumophos. That leaves repeated succrocide or formic acid. Good luck what ever your choice.


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## peggjam (Mar 4, 2005)

You have another option. Do a powdered sugar treatment. This will take care of the mites that are present in the broodnest, but not what is in the cells. This should be repeated every 7-10 days for at least 3 treatments. You can leave your supers on, but it would be better to take them off for 24 hours while the bees clean up the sugar. Be sure to clean it (sugar) up as it will attract ants. Also if your not using SBB now would be a good time to start.

peggjam


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

The thing about Sucrocide, or powdered sugar, or FGMO, or thymol, or any other method for that matter is they are only going to kill the mites that are loose. In other words if you do a mite test today (a natural mite drop count or a sugar roll or whatever) and then do your treatment and a week later do your test again, it will probably be virtually the same number of mites. This is normal. They emerged since the first treatment. You have to treat again, every week for at least three weeks to see much difference. I would not assume the sucrocide (or anything else for that matter) isn't working unless you have evidence it isn't working. In other words, if you do a drop test after treating and there is no increase in dead mites then maybe the treatment isn't doing much and you need to do something more serious, but if it's killing a lot of mites (as evidenced by a jump in mite drop) then it may just be that you haven't killed the mites in the cells yet.


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## BeeBear (Jan 20, 2004)

I think the key is repeating the treatment. If it were me I would try Sucrocide, make sure you get good coverage, and repeat for three weeks.


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## mackles (Jul 7, 2005)

I jsut used powdered sugar, but do you want to know something interesting? My state (CA) outlaws the use of any non-approved mite control substances. They fear that using a treatment that hasnt been tested can improve the varroa mite resistence to other things. And since powdered sugar isnt approved, its acualy illegal to use as mite control! I'm using it to feed them, not mite control, wink wink.


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## dcross (Jan 20, 2003)

<<My state CA outlaws the use of any non-approved mite control substances.>>

And yet Amitraz resistant mites keep popping up...


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Greetings mackles . . .

What are the "approved" treatment methods in CA?

thanx,
Dave W


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## Flyer Jim (Apr 22, 2004)

What happened to oxalic acid? Has it fallen out of favor? I wasn't going to use it to kill mites, its not legal as I'm in CA too. But I was thinking of bleaching the inside of the hive bodies (wood bleach, get it?) 
JIM


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## Axtmann (Dec 29, 2002)

Oxalic acid is a natural ingredient of honey. If I have to bleach the inside of my hive bodies, in an emergency, I would put a newspaper or plastic between brood and honey. This gives a better result in the brood department because less room gives a higher acid concentration. After an hour I would remove the plastic but I wouldnt extract the next 10 days. No problem with capped honeycombs, OA doesnt penetrate wax.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I'm hearing all of the bee scientist at the bee gatherings talking about testing trickling Oxalic acid. There is talk of getting it approved for trickling. It works great as vapor. I've never tried trickling.


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## Axtmann (Dec 29, 2002)

I used the trickling method before the evaporation. During the brood free time the result is the same like the vapor but trickle not more than one time. 
If there is brood in your hive the liquid acid works like the vapor and you must treat several times (at least one brood cycle). 
With the evaporation there is no harm to bees but the liquid acid is hard on your bees, they must clean each other and the OA end up in their stomach. Bees age very fast and have a shorter live. In some areas there is a long winter and with two or more trickling treatments the colonies need a long time to recover from the acid, a weak hive will not survive.

The recipe for trickling; 35grams OA mixed with 1liter (1000grams) warm water than trickle with a syringe 35ml of the acid in a colony. Attention = 35ml for the whole hive not in each row.


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## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Hi, I'm posting our website all over, www.countryrubes.com We have pictures up showing us using powdered sugar treatments. Please try it 3 times, 7 to 10 days apart. It really knocks down the mites. We have done it twice so far on all of our hives, once in the spring, and a few weeks ago after our blackberry flow was removed. The way we do it is very easy and non-toxic. Our mites counts are between 0 and 20 a day and the hives are loaded with bees. We are now in the middle of a starthistle flow, and are on our 2nd honey super. They all have laying queens and lots of brood. We plan to do another treatment after we extract. 
If you have any questions, please write me.
Thanks, Janet


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## naturebee (Dec 25, 2004)

mackles, For emergency control, cut out all the drone brood.


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