# Concept behind breaking brood cycle for mite control



## Sundance (Sep 9, 2004)

I can explain the concept a bit. In 
simple terms the life cycle of varroa
is dependant on brood. By disrupting
the brood cycle you do not allow an
area for mites to complete their own
cycle. Thereby lowering the mites
population.

Others will probably have a more in
depth explanation....


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

In part, several items come into play. They can be part of a larger picture of splits, hive building, and maximizing honey production.

If you were to run averages of mite counts over some time frame, it would look like this....

April....1
May......2
June.....4
July.....6
August...12+
September.24+
October...48+

Through brood breaks, these numbers can be slowed. The key area of mite explosion is from the beginning of August to the end of September. normally the counts at the beginning of August will multiply by at least 4 or more during these 60 days.

A few comments at this point. Mite numbers are low in early part of the season as bee overall numbers expand very rapidly. As the bee numbers growth slows at mid-season, the mite numbers continue to grow. The bee numbers start declining in fall and winter and the mites per bee also increases.

With that said, if you could maintain the numbers lower than the "normal" increases as stated above, by just cutting the brood cycle, it will delay or set-back the numbers. Early spring splits, summer splits, honey management that works with broodless periods, requeening, etc., all work at keeping the numbers suppressed. The broodless period does not "lower" any actual mites within the hive. The mites per bee ratio does not somehow get lower based on this act of broodless period. Unless the bees are cleaning and discarding and thereby lowing the number. Would this be effected by some lines of bees more than others? I think the numbers getting lower depends on the bees and not for the mere fact of a broodless period.

AHB are great at mite suppression. The mere fact they swarm constantly may play into it. Do AHB's and other strains, if presented a "lower" average of mites than the normal model would suggest, use their hygienic and grooming behavior more effectively? Do some bees take on grooming "jobs" or do all bees take part? Is there a shift in job roles if brood nurse bees were not needed due to a stoppage in egg laying? More grooming or house chores?

If you could suppress the natural mite numbers and their ability to multiply at some given rate, could bees ability to suppress the mites by grooming and hygienic behavior be enhanced even further? 

I think the mites need to maintain some sequence for breeding, that being the right age mites, and the cycles timed out etc. The break in the amount of "young" bees (they smell different) also comes into play. Without the proper cycle of bees, do mites pick the wrong host? Do they also choose bees that are more adaptive at cleaning themselves such as older bees?

I know many things are happening when this method is used. I use it and have seen success. (There is a reason some huge producers in Texas claim no mite treatments, all the while splitting their hives neumerous times each year.)

It is hard to suggest or nail it down to one actual event. I think many items are working in conjunction with each other.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Basically if you skip one brood cycle (three to four weeks) you skip one whole generation of mites. Meanwhile some get groomed off, die of old age, etc.

As far as how, there are several things you can do. One is to take the current queen and bank her in a small nuc (two frames will do) and let them raise a new queen. By the time the new queen is laying you will have skipped four weeks or so of brood rearing and now you have a new young queen.

Another method would be to cage the current queen and just leave her caged for three or four weeks.

Remember a worker brood cycle is 21 days. A drone brood cycle is 24 days. So 24 days would be the optimum time to have all the brood emerge.

Also if you intend to treat in any way, broodless is the time to do it:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesvarroatreatments.htm


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## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

The key (as I understand. Is to trap what ever mites are left with drone comb at the end of the broodless period (just before the new queen starts laying. The drone comb (open with drone brood) has to come from the nuc or another hive. All the phoretic (sp?) mites will jump into the drone comb and you can then pull it and freeze it - this is suppose to get 90% of your mites.

Eric


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## magnet-man (Jul 10, 2004)

I had one idea that I have been toying with. Unfortunately I think it would be too much work but maybe not when compared with traditional sucrocide treatment. 

One problem with breaking the brood cycle is that you temporary decrease your colony size with the hope of having fewer mite loses down the road. There is nothing wrong with this approach. What if we could break the brood cycle without the loss of new bees? Would this be worth a little bit more work?

The first thing to do is to build a very large incubator. Go through all hives and pull all capped brood and place in the incubator. Take a few nurse bees to feed any brood that is not yet capped. Now the incubator has one conical bee escape exit that goes into screen box. As the bees hatch and become field or guard bees they will enter this screen box. Every few days take the box and spray all bees with sucrocide. The next day spray the bees with sugar water and dump in front of various hives. 

I think it would work but I am not sure it is worth the trouble.


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## hummingberd (Aug 26, 2006)

I'm just starting to toy with the idea of interrupting the brood cycle. Is there alternative to catching the queen? I'm still a pretty novice beekeeper, and I'm not sure I could accomplish this without damaging the queen. 

I am however thinking about requeening. Would this sufficiently break the brood cycle? Thanks!


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

*Here is the method used to kill 95% of the varroa mite in a hive *

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jtemp/dronemethod.html

For the effectiveness of drone comb removal in controlling varoa also see the following study. I would post the graph here if it would let me but take a careful look at the last graph in the article. It compares three groups over the course of a season: control (no treatment), monthly drone comb removal, and a single drone comb removal during a broodless period.

The varroa population just never recovers after being *slammed* by that single well-timed removal. That is what I plan to use followed by a sugar dusting to clean up any stragglers and devastate their population going into winter.

I am looking for other studies to confirm this one but it looks pretty good.

http://beebase.csl.gov.uk/public/BeeDiseases/ModellingVarroaTrapping.pdf


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## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

http://www.betterbee.com/resources/images/dronereport.pdf

This is an easy system to use drone trapping.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Is there alternative to catching the queen?

Not really if you want a break in the brood cycle.

> I'm still a pretty novice beekeeper, and I'm not sure I could accomplish this without damaging the queen. 

Practice on drones.

>I am however thinking about requeening.

But that will require catching the queen.

> Would this sufficiently break the brood cycle?

Not really. Unless you cage the new queen for a few weeks.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

wintered queens will slow the egg laying as the season progresses, yet the mites dont. This causes a compounded problem increasing the # of mites per bee later in the year, that will cause a colony get run down with mites.

They say that a queen mated later in summer will not slow down her laying, and tends to avoid this problem, 
It is also said that this is one of the reasons why swarmy type of bees tend to tolerate the mites presence better than none swarmy bees. The caste offs creates a condition where the hive replaces its queen providing a fresh layer that doesnt stop till fall.
Africianized bees do this and so do the Russians, along with carnis

This is what I have found, and becasue of it I have been trying to stay ahead of my losses by using replacement nucs made up from the previous year. Eventually its going to catch me, but what else is left ?


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## Jim Fischer (Jan 5, 2001)

keqwow asked:

>> Is there alternative to catching the queen?

Mike answered:

> Not really if you want a break in the brood cycle.

*Of course* *there is an alternative* to "catching" the queen!
Simply use a push-in queen cage (costs all of $3.00) and
you don't have to handle the queen at all. The amount 
of brood under a push-in queen cage is certainly not zero,
but it is small enough to be negligible in terms of mite
control.

>> I'm still a pretty novice beekeeper, and I'm not sure I 
>> could accomplish this without damaging the queen. 

> Practice on drones.

You don't have to learn "queen handling" to
control your mites. Finding the queen is hard enough
for new beekeepers.

New beekeepers are very very hesitant to handle the queen,
and rightly so! Learn to handle frames of bees smoothly
for a year or so, and THEN move on to advanced tricks like
picking up a queen off the comb.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Of course there is an alternative to "catching" the queen!
Simply use a push-in queen cage (costs all of $3.00) and
you don't have to handle the queen at all. 

You can "catch" her with a hair clip queen catcher too. You still have to catch her with the push-in-cage or the queen catcher. You still have to find her and you still have to confine her somehow. You can play semantics with "catch" but one way or another you're still catching her.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

How about catching her with some tweezers?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How about catching her with some tweezers?

By what? The wings? I'd be afraid of damaging her. Definitely not the legs. Definitely not the body.

A hair clip queen catcher works well.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

> By what? The wings? I'd be afraid of damaging her. Definitely not the legs. Definitely not the body.


..That doesn't leave much. 



> A hair clip queen catcher works well


.

What is that and where can they be found?


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

*hairclip queen catcher*

Mannlake has Hairclip Queen Catchers at this link...

http://www.mannlakeltd.com/catalog/page39.html

Item # HD-100


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## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

Michael Bush said:


> Basically if you skip one brood cycle (three to four weeks) you skip one whole generation of mites. Meanwhile some get groomed off, die of old age, etc.
> 
> As far as how, there are several things you can do. One is to take the current queen and bank her in a small nuc (two frames will do) and let them raise a new queen. By the time the new queen is laying you will have skipped four weeks or so of brood rearing and now you have a new young queen.
> 
> ...


I have a question I can't figure out.....If brood breaks decrease mites, why don't all the mites die in the states where winters prevent brood rearing for several months? Just curious.


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## JustBees (Sep 7, 2021)

I'd venture that those colonies would be experiencing a very low mite count at that time of the season.

Not many mites need to survive as they can build population 3 times as fast as bees.
Mites get shipped around in packages and trucked via migratory pollinators.
High density hive population allows drift.
There are many avenues for the mites to travel.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

snispel said:


> I have a question I can't figure out.....If brood breaks decrease mites, why don't all the mites die in the states where winters prevent brood rearing for several months? Just curious.



great question....

GG


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## AR1 (Feb 5, 2017)

snispel said:


> I have a question I can't figure out.....If brood breaks decrease mites, why don't all the mites die in the states where winters prevent brood rearing for several months? Just curious.


The mites are very well-adapted to the life cycle of their hosts. A few weeks brood break in the summer won't do much good. See this thread:








How long a brood break is sufficient to break mite cycle


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...




www.beesource.com


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

I thought the point of a brood break was to pair it with a mite treatment while the mites are phoretic (exposed).
Here are natural brood breaks in the season (mid-summer dearth, and winter) that allow for the same thing.
Seems like an extreme manipulation to me, and it has to be timed just right if enough bees to make up a strong winter cluster are to be made.


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## elmer_fud (Apr 21, 2018)

snispel said:


> I have a question I can't figure out.....If brood breaks decrease mites, why don't all the mites die in the states where winters prevent brood rearing for several months? Just curious.


FYI, This was a 13 year old thread.

I suspect the bee activity during the brood break may also make a difference. If you have a brood break during the summer when the bees are flying some amount of the mites are carried out by bees leaving the hive and left elsewhere. During the winter when the bees are not flying and raising brood the mites are not increasing, but they also are not being hauled out by the flying bees. 

There may also be a factor that that some of the dead bees that are carried out by the undertakers also have attached mites that are dropped with the dead bees during the summer. The mites on the dead winter bees may not be carried out quickly and may migrate to the still living bees.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

We need to get mythbusters into this story, the only advantage of a brood break is to force mites into a phoretic state. If nothing is done at this time it is just like a half time break in a soccer game, the score does not really advance for either side. The mites do not increase in number and nor do the bees, however mites are more likely to outlive summer bees anyhow so not much gain for the colony. Ad some OAV at this stage and the whole story changes cause you can bump off maybe 95% of your mites with minimal losses to your bees. If you do not treat at this stage you are just wasting your time.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

Johno says...
"We need to get mythbusters into this story, the only advantage of a brood break is to force mites into a phoretic state. If nothing is done at this time it is just like a half time break in a soccer game, the score does not really advance for either side. The mites do not increase in number and nor do the bees..."

I disagree just a little bit. Doing a brood break with nothing else, when brooding is started again, now there is many more mites as a percentage per brood than there was before the break. This might be even a little bit worse than if a brood break had never been done. If not, then yea, there's no advantage to either side.

I've always stated, a brood break by itself is not a way of mite control that has any value, at least it never has for me.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Some of the presumed but unconfirmed theories behind the broodbreaks:

IF the bees show the grooming/mite-biting behavior then these bees _might_ reduce the mite population while the mites are accessible
per Mel Disselkoen (the OTS guy), the mites flood the very first round of the brood after the brood break, thus, killing the brood AND killing themselves too - thus cleansing the colony of the mites;

Anyway, I did not find these to be working for me over my five (5) year TF experimentation.
The brood break was at the very heart of my attempt - nothing to show for it.
Even the VSH bees at my location can NOT survive on the brood breaks alone.

As far as the Mel D's theory goes - the mite do flood the very first brood after the break.
But the colony will still die; the Mel's theory did not work for me at this location.
I was able to get a very high mite concentration onto the brood (pictures) AND I even removed that affected brood (and the mites with it).
No use - the said colony still died off just the same as enough mites still stayed in it to damage the winter bees.

PS: this season I am testing the combination of the brood breaks AND organic acid applied during the brood break - now this is something I am optimistic about;

PPS: very well possible that IF one has good genetics combined with the location - that's where the brood breaks could help to move the needle; but have to have the primary factors first - the genetics and the location that supports the genetics.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

A brood break then treat or feed the first frame or 2 to the chickens may help.

Agree JUST a brood break does,, not so much,, as was wisely asked "isn't winter a brood break" so why do we still have issues if this is the "fix"

GG


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## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

elmer_fud said:


> FYI, This was a 13 year old thread.


Is there something wrong with replying to an old thread? I'm confused why that matters.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

snispel said:


> Is there something wrong with replying to an old thread? I'm confused why that matters.


Actually, nothing is wrong replying to certain threads (because the topics are still relevant).

It is just sometimes people actually respond to a question posted say 10-15-20 years ago (pretty much the same as responding into nothingness).


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## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

Ah....I was pleased with the generated discussion. So, I guess I didn't see a fail to know that.


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## snispel (Feb 10, 2020)

So....how do the wild bees out there survive the mites? Are there any bees living out there that aren't in a man made hive?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

snispel said:


> So....how do the wild bees out there survive the mites? Are there any bees living out there that aren't in a man made hive?


This is almost a rhetorical question by now and has been rehashed N times..
There are volumes to read for you:








Treatment-Free Beekeeping


Discussing and formulating honeybee management methods that cooperate as much as possible with natural bee biology without resorting to the use of chemicals and drugs.




www.beesource.com


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## elmer_fud (Apr 21, 2018)

snispel said:


> Is there something wrong with replying to an old thread? I'm confused why that matters.


not so much, I try to call it out when I see it. Some portion of the old thread revivals are asking questions to posters that are no longer around.


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## RayMarler (Jun 18, 2008)

snispel said:


> So....how do the wild bees out there survive the mites? Are there any bees living out there that aren't in a man made hive?


As beekeepers we like to keep the hive alive and in good shape year around year after year. I don't think that's how nature works in the wild. Hives die out and new bees move in later on. In-Between, that time when it's empty, maybe wax moths clean out old comb (or maybe not) and maybe something else goes on as well (or maybe not) before a new swarm moves in. But as far as casual observations by us? It may look like it's been there and ongoing for years, but maybe it hasn't.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

snispel said:


> So....how do the wild bees out there survive the mites? Are there any bees living out there that aren't in a man made hive?


some live Some die.
Hopefully they spawn as many swarms as the loos to mite to stay even.

I Recall a study from Seeley more than half the swarms do not make the first winter, like 70 percent I think.

If they all ived there would be bees in every tree.

GG


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