# forced brood break



## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

You can trap her in a push-in cage for 14 days within the hive. This will allow a very brief brood break. 

Another method: If you have a honey super that is full of honey and/or capped frames, put her in the honey super on a single frame of drawn comb above a queen excluder. At the end of 14 days, remove the excluder and the frame of drawn comb she has been laying in. I would put the frame of drawn comb in the freezer in order to kill the mites that have migrated to that single frame. This may work better with a drawn frame of drone comb, as mites seem to prefer drone comb.


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

psm When do you usually time it? 

What are the chances that the girls will draw out queen cells in the brood box when the queen is moved to the supers?


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Jadeguppy said:


> psm When do you usually time it? I do it about now. When the nectar flow comes to an end and I am waiting on the bees to cap off the frames. In full disclosure, I do this in conjunction with an OAV treatment after the 14 day sequestration of the queen. I release her back to the brood box and pull the honey supers off before I OAV. I realize that this is the TF forum, but wanted to give you the full picture of what I am doing when you ask about timing.
> 
> What are the chances that the girls will draw out queen cells in the brood box when the queen is moved to the supers? That could happen, but it has not happened to me or to another beekeeper I know well who does this much more than I do. I keep the queen on the super that sits on top of the brood nest (separated only by the excluder). If you put her in an upper super, when more than one super was on, that may cause enough separation from her and the brood nest to encourage queen cells. A check of the brood nest for QCs after the first week of sequestration should ease your mind about that.


nm


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## Swarmhunter (Mar 5, 2015)

there is a utube presentation by Ralph Buchler at The National Honey Show on sustainable Mite control by caging the Queen for a 30 day brood break. He explains how Italian beekeepers use a variety of ways and timing to do it. Similar to OTS except they're doing it for mite control with honey production. Quite interesting
Jerry


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## Robert Holcombe (Oct 10, 2019)

Unfortunately the "brood break" is not a timed, coordinated effort amongst beekeepers. I executed a brood break in late September. OAV'ed the hive and killed 291 Varroa as verified by counting a dead drop, post treatment count. I then watched over 1000 mites migrate into the hive over a 3 week period as well as in all my other hives except one. This big hives as well as most of my other hives were robbing from weak hives in unknown locations. It is a good idea but it has to be regional and timed. In a densely populated area with the well known diversity of opinons in beekeeping, newbies with packages, how do you get everyone to brood break and treat at the same time? 

I am rethinking and giving consideration to a brood break in late November followed by a 2X OAV around Dec. 1 to 15. This should get me zero to near zero Varroa residents for wintering and spring-summer but does not protect development of my winter brood/bees from Varroa Bombs. I stink at finding queens and it has to be quick in Nov. Anybody use RFID tags on queens??


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## Swarmhunter (Mar 5, 2015)

Everyone doing brood breaks at the same time would be a hard concept to convince everybody to do. I do see that beekeepers who live in areas that don't have an extended cooler period would have a tougher time utilizing brood breaks for mite control. I know RI has some winter. How did you get a brood break done in Sept. Did the new queen have time to lay enough brood for winter bees.
You might want to look at Mel Dissoelkoens OTS method. It utilizes 2 brood breaks a year in Spring and summer. Finding queens can be trying but a hive in the Spring with low bee numbers can help.Brood breaks are not really brood breaks unless they go 30 days without a Queen. Good luck!


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## Robert Holcombe (Oct 10, 2019)

We have real winters but not this year. More often some good cold spells including below 0, sometimes deep snow, occasionally snow for 4 months but almost always a long cold, frosty spring. Inland warms up a lot faster then by the ocean but Falls are nice and long. 

Winter bees / brood break (and in this case queen replacement): On a strong hive, after removing supers, install QE's to isolated queen to one box ( I can never find her- old eyes); my standard brood chamber is a medium+deep+medium with a QE on top when supering. Wait a week or more after QE installation, determine which box she is in and move the brood box / queen out as a new colony - next door (foragers leave and go home, nurse bees stay behind). Verify no eggs or larva and add a new drawn-out replacement box to the hive. OAV once or twice ( 4 day cycle), and then install a mated queen to the treated hive; original queen or new mated queen or merge a nuc. Undesired queen can be pinched with bees merged to a weaker hive or setup in a nuc, OAV'ed and fed syrup for winter; if necessary give her a frame and use as a brood resource come Spring. Still learning and evaluating brood break but Fall Varroa migration here is a killer.

Why 30 days for a brood break versus 14 or 21? I do not see how brood breaks in Spring and summer stop the primary problem of the Fall Varroa invasion. Winter OAV in Dec. - Jan when near brood-less or brood-less with low Varroa counts really cleans the house. Clean until September as verified by checking capped drones and worker cells.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Robert Holcombe said:


> Unfortunately the "brood break" is not a timed, coordinated effort amongst beekeepers. I executed a brood break in late September.


A brood break in September, where do I start. Lets start with some simple bee biology arithmetic. 20 days from egg to emerge, call it 3 weeks for easy figuring. Summer bees live 42 days on average.

When you stop the queen from laying, for the first 3 weeks you will see no difference in bee population, brood is emerging and bees still die off, population is stable. 3 weeks after you stop the queen from laying, things change. No more replacements emerging, but old ones still die off. Now here is the problem, those bees that _should_ be emerging in late September and early October are the ones that would be your long lived winter bees. If your break was 3 weeks, then queen starts laying again in late September, and another problem shows itself. As you move farther and farther into the round of brood being laid up, there are no more correct age nurse bees, so those larvae are being fed by older bees forced to revert or remain nursing, leaving you with a rapidly declining forager population. So as we reach the point of 6 weeks past the time you stopped the queen from laying you now have a colony with a population roughly half of what it should be, and to top it off, they are all older bees a population completely out of wack with the normal population distribution in a bee colony. So there is a round of brood emerging that's been fed in a sub standard way because there weren't correct age nurse bees to nurture them as larva, and to top it all off, now winter has arrived.

IMHO, a brood break in September is a fabulous way to end up with a weak / poor colony in mid to late October, and blaming other folks for the demise of that colony is a sure sign of somebody that doesn't really understand how bee colony populations progress thru the season.

The reason you will never get a co-ordinated brood break amongst beekeepers is those that have been doing this for years full well understand, there is no more effective way to weaken a colony than stopping the queen from laying for a period of time. You want a strong colony for the spring, you need a fresh young queen laying up sheets of winter bees in early September, and the time to prepare for that is in July.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Good rebuttal to the whole brood break idea. Not in that camp at all as a means of mite control unless combined with a treatment once all the mites are phoretic. (See psm1212's post above.) Look at the life cycle of the mite, not the bee, and one can see why. The foundress mite lives through two breeding cycles so a 15 day break will have almost zero impact on mite deaths, and only a very short term affect on total mite numbers. Once the brood break is over, all the mites (now living on the bees) will invade the new brood "en masse" and begin the reproductive cycle once again. Any observed decrease in mite infestation is, in my opinion, due to the mites migrating to someone else's hives that are not, as the mite would see it, dying. Overall, I think drone comb removal would.have a better impact for those wishing to remain totally TF as it physically removes mites from the hive and kills them.

Are there any scientific studies in an isolated area that prove that a brood break is effective at actually reducing total mite numbers as opposed to simply redistributing them to neighboring apiaries?


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## Swarmhunter (Mar 5, 2015)

I agree Sept brood break - a disaster. There is no time for the proper numbers of winter bees to be raised
1st- An Ots method of a brood break has a new queen being raised after the old queen has been removed. She will be laying 25- 30 days from when the old queen was removed. This is done in May and in July. The new July Queen will be laying the beginnng of the winter bees.
2nd- Now how does this remove mites? Three weeks after The original queen was removed all the mites are on the bees. there are no mites under caps. the new queen starts laying. On the 8th day the mites go bonkers. All the mites in hive try to get into cells before they're capped on the 9th day. They literally pack into those 8 day larvae cells, killing the larvae but also killing themselves. After 2-3 days a high percentage of the mites will be dead. Proof is easily seen by looking at those frames where that new queen was laying will show a round area in the frame where the 1st laying took place where the larvae is all dead and full of mites. After 2-3 days the new queen will continue to lay and brood will be normal.Mite counts have shown these results
Now this doesn't stop mite migration from happening in the Fall. - but it does stop the mites from migrating from your hives


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

Beekeeping is regional. A September brood break is not the same as those expressing concern. You are in the northern regions. We don't even go a week during the winter without flying days most winters. The concept of winter bee needs here are a bit different than up there. One reason I have my hardiness zone in my signature is to help adjusting for regional differences. We don't even get snow. In fact, I can drive half way up the county and am in a different growing zone. Gulf winds are amazing at regulating our weather.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Sounds like someone is bragging .Good to see you back on the boards Heather.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Once the brood break is over, all the mites (now living on the bees) will invade the new brood "en masse" and begin the reproductive cycle once again. Any observed decrease in mite infestation is, in my opinion, due to the mites migrating to someone else's hives that are not, as the mite would see it, dying.


what would make you say that?? 
Of corce they are dieing, every day.. and every day they are not reproducing means a day the population is declining in stead of growing, and every day they are on the bees gives the bees a chance at grooming.

we see this all the time in cold climates, lots and lots of mites die over the winter brood break. Ross conrads's sare study showed this well https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne16-840/
but it also impacts the bee population, so done at the wrong time, you lose crop


here is the impact on the mites 60 days after you remove the queen and let a hive re-queen its self 










> Overall, I think drone comb removal would.have a better impact for those wishing to remain totally TF as it physically removes mites from the hive and kills them.


confining the queen to one comb post brood break will trap the vast majority of the remaining mites... drone brood traping can help, but 1st year hives fighting with mites aren't going to make much drone limiting its eftivness 
chemical free perhaps, but having the same drawbacks in turms of propping up sustibul stocks


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

So the supposed brood break mite levels diverge from the non brood break mite levels at day 23. Count forward the approximately 35 days it takes to get an E queen mated and laying, and you are back at the same mite level as before. Only now you have lost 50% of your bees. Sure there are not as many total mites as there would have been, but the mite load per bee has actually doubled. About the same as if you had not done the brood break at all. Besides that, stopping the graph at day 61 seems highly suspect as the first mites from the new brood would just be emerging (day 56). My guess is that the data from that point on was inconvenient.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

dup


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Besides that, stopping the graph at day 61 seems highly suspect as the first mites from the new brood would just be emerging (day 56). My guess is that the data from that point on was inconvenient.


sure, I manipulated the computer model just to pull the wool over your eyes:banana:
Plenty of studys out there on brood breaks, haven't found one yet to support your view, please pass it on if you find one.

here is 120 for you from a thread about 3 years back


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## Robert Holcombe (Oct 10, 2019)

"Good rebuttal to the whole brood break idea. Not in that camp at all as a means of mite control unless combined with a treatment once all the mites are phoretic." I missed all this discussion following my comment until now. I have trouble understanding the direction of the discussion about brood breaks without treatments. Creating a brood break and treating is precisely what was planned and completed - so I get confused. Second, my weather and flow supported a 14 day September break. Foraging continued for a couple more weeks, brood rearing restarts almost immediately after 14 days and OAV treatments - a 300 Varroa dead drop count is not chicken feed but actually a good number for mid-September. Having a hive with the second lowest level of dead mites out of nine hives for the yer is also not chicken feed. Winter bees are not all created in a two week period. To top it off the brood -break hive seems to be doing well today with about 4 weeks to go before Spring pollen shows up here. BTW, Jennifer Berry proposed this concept, Italians and others do this every late summer in a drought / no flow period. I ran a test. It seems to be working but had no benefit against the Fall Varroa Invasion. The idea of coordinated treatments, as done in Wales, apparently works well. So, I am left confused or I simply missed something.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Robert, this thread is in the treatment free forum so care must taken not to advocate for treatments, even as part of a brood break. Msl is also discussing a much longer brood break than what I was adressing, 35 days vs the 14, so there may very well be mite deaths in significant numbers over that period of time without the use of treatments. I am not sure the benefit of that is worth the cost in hive population when done soley as a means of mite control. If one is making splits, entiry different story.

The additional graphs provided are a much clearer representation of the data. The first was so narrow as to not relfect the exponential growth of the mite.


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## Robert Holcombe (Oct 10, 2019)

JwP Guess I "really" missed the big picture and for intruding.

Spring is coming - in a few more weeks


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

during our summer dearth here in northeast alabama we can see a dearth induced brood break lasting for a couple of months. the reduction in population is helpful in terms of not so many mouths to feed and conservation of stores.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Open discussion, all comments are welcome. I jumped in later than you did so if anyone is intruding, it is me.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

squarepeg said:


> during our summer dearth here in northeast alabama we can see a dearth induced brood break lasting for a couple of months. the reduction in population is helpful in terms of not so many mouths to feed and conservation of stores.


In your area with the summer dearth it sounds like the forced brood break could be a plus. Not so in our short season with a gradual flow and no fall flow.

In conversation with WWW from central Ohio; he planned the break to reduce populations during the dearth then planned to requeen in time for fall rebuild of bees but found abysmal queen mating results. Cardinal birds, dragonflys and robbing. Local conditions might put the lie to what is a good idea somewhere else.


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## Jack Grimshaw (Feb 10, 2001)

In the equipment forum,we were having a similar discussion on brood interruption and grozzie brought up this study.

Evaluating the Efficacy of Oxalic Acid Vaporization and 
Brood Interruption in Controlling the Honey Bee Pest 
Varroa destructor (Acari: Varroidae)
Cameron*J. Jack,
1,3, Edzard van*Santen,
2
and James*D. Ellis1

I spoke with Jamie last Sat about getting a copy and he said to send him an email request.I did and had a pdf by noon Mon.

mailto:[email protected]

Mortality rates for brood interuption were very high.
A quote:
"Florida has 
prolonged warm seasons and very mild winters; therefore, we hy-
pothesized that brood interruption would be a safe treatment even 
during the early fall. However, based on the high level of colony 
mortality, we recommend that brood interruption only be attempted 
during the summer months or possibly not at*all."


In the accompanying graphs,all treatments,including controls showed a pretty good decline in the numbers of bees and brood during the roughly 2 mo period of the study.This suggests to me that even though Fla has warm temps in the fall,the decreasing forage results in decreased brood rearing as the bees prepare for the Fla version of winter.A brood break at this time turns out to be disastrous.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

crofter said:


> In your area with the summer dearth it sounds like the forced brood break could be a plus.


my take is that the dearth conditions force the brood break so the beekeeper doesn't have to. i think this weather pattern tends to drive local selection toward favoring a strain that down modulates brood rearing during times of dearth, and one of the side benefits of this is putting a dent in mite breeding as well. should decreased mite breeding be combined with the trait of grooming and mauling it could be that the colonies are able to reduce the mite infestation during the dearth and prior to the late season brooding up of the wintering bees. i hope to have enough time some day to undertake some careful observations to rule in or out such a paradigm.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

squarepeg said:


> my take is that the dearth conditions force the brood break so the beekeeper doesn't have to.


This is what I see here during the July/August dearth. I don't know the exact conditions that trigger the restart of egg laying, but I am guessing some sort of combination of day length and a rain event. Or the amount of stores or.......

Alex

Edit; I should say when I refer to a brood break, I am talking about an absence of sealed brood, not a total lack of eggs or larvae.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Jack Grimshaw said:


> In the equipment forum,we were having a similar discussion on brood interruption and grozzie brought up this study.


The part of that study that really stood out to me was the table of survival rates within each group. They used 10 colonies per group. Positive control got apivar. Negative control got nothing, just left alone. Oxalic acid two ways, first a single treatment, second 3 treatments at week spacing. Then brood interruption, and then brood interruption combined with each form of oxalic acid treatment. The numbers were not insignificant and all the combinations and permutations were run. Survival results


```
Treatment   Survival
=====================
Neg Control:  0.7
OA-1:         0.5
OA-3:         0.7
BI:           0.1
BI-OA-1:      0.4
BI-OA-3:      0.6
Amitraz:      0.999 *

* To calculate odds rations, survival cannot equal 1.  Thus, 100% survival is presented as 0.999.
```
I look at those numbers, Negative control and the two forms of OA have similar survival ratios, but the two that stand out completely from the rest, only 10 percent survival on the group that got just a brood interruption, and 100% on the group that got Apivar. The other thing that stands out to me, the 'Do Nothing' group fared as well or better than all the rest of the test cases, and FAR better than those that got just brood interruption.

If one reads the study, colonies were made equal before things started, but once started, there was no transfer of frames etc between colonies.

There is one thing I do take issue with on the way the study came to these numbers, but it's not the fault of the investigators. Label for Oxalic Acid in the USA apparently says 1g per brood box. Label here in Canada says 2g per colony. I cant help but wonder if the poor showing for OA is due to under dosage. But no matter how you twist the data, the groups that had a brood interruption fared worse than those who did not get a brood interruption, but all else the same.

My ultimate takeaway from this study tho is irrelavent of the OA methods or applications. The 'do nothing' group had 70% survival, the group getting just a brood interruption had 10% survival.

I stand by my statements earlier. A forced brood break in September is a great way to kill colonies. The study by Dr Ellis at al confirms this. 

People can wish and hope and postulate about things in ways that sound great forever, but in the engineering world there is a quote I am fond of. 'One measured test result is worth a thousand expert opinions'. This study provides a measured test result in a controlled environment, and the results are quite definitive. Brood interruption does not control mites, and it does kill colonies.


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

In my area, a 24 day, forced brood break in September would mean the delay to the start of long lived Winter bee production. If the Queen was laying a mere 500 eggs per day that would be the loss of 12K Winter bees. 
I can see how that could spell doom for a colony.

Alex


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## Swarmhunter (Mar 5, 2015)

Why would anybody do a brood break in Sept? Spring and early July only, Mel Disselkoen's book explains why.
Jerry


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## Jaljala (Jun 2, 2017)

A brood break itself is not what makes the Varroa population decline (they can survive longer than 2 months as phoretic mites), it usually the treatment following it to kill the mites that are then mostly phoretic.
In a treatment free approach, a different method is called "brood trapping" that DOES greatly reduce mite population (method explained in details by R. Büchler in his presentation at the 2019 UK Honey Convention available online), where you isolate the queen on a comb where she can still lay (but she cannot move to another comb) when the comb is full of eggs you take it away (replacing it with another empty comb for the queen to keep laying) and you place it in the brood nest for nurse bees to take care of it. 9 days later (fully capped) you take it away and freeze it. You repeat that comb trapping for 3 cycles (27-28 days) and up to 95% of mites can be destroyed. It can also be combined with a treatment at the end for the remaining phoretic mites. This method has to be used about a month before the usual honey collecting time, so that you don't affect the winter bee population.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> A brood break itself is not what makes the Varroa population decline (they can survive longer than 2 months as phoretic mites), it usually the treatment following it to kill the mites that are then mostly phoretic.


that's not what the science shows as Dr Büchler notes the Italians have done a LOT of work on it. many many studys, and they show a dramatic effect, far more impact then even a few brood on OAVs 
here is a 26 day caging







https://www.apimondia.com/en/compon...UWhxjxLrLtrL6mtB02YHpYuh7vlBa2WE0lxTg9w8DtoAy

but just going by your example.... if a mite lives 60 days every day of a brood break means a 1/60th reduction in the mite population as mites are dieing and not being replaced so at a spit ball 30 days of a brood break leting a hive re queen its self, all the mites 30 days and older when it started will be dead and didn't get to reproduce

the main issue is on a commercial scale its a PITA and a lot of labor, Elizabeth Walsh with Texas AM has been working on a Refrigerated storage project to test its viability to create a forced brood break on a large scale as part of an IPM program


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## Jaljala (Jun 2, 2017)

I don't understand your statement (and I think we totally agree on the results), because the graph you show is exactly telling that Queen caging + Oxalic treatment kills double the amount of mites compared to queen caging alone... (what I have said in previous post).


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

"A brood break itself is not what makes the Varroa population decline (they can survive longer than 2 months as phoretic mites), it usually the treatment following it to kill the mites that are then mostly phoretic."

In his presentations, Büchler clearly states that during the brood interruption 1% to 2% of the mites die per day which is around 40% to 50% of the total mites before a comb trapping or oxalic treatment.


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

Keep in mind that I am in zone 9a. Bees are flying throughout the winter.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

My bees fly year round also. My opinion is that it is would be ****ed hard to find all the queens to cage.

Easier would be to have a drone comb at the edge of the brood box which could be periodically removed and destroyed (fed to the chickens?) This would work really well if you, unlike myself, used plastic foundation so the bees can't raise drones everywhere. To get the drones just insert a frame with no foundation at side of the brood nest--position 2 out of 10 frames. 
Guaranteed that they will build drone comb in that frame. I know MB, if he's around, will object.


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

Gino45 said:


> My bees fly year round also. My opinion is that it is would be ****ed hard to find all the queens to cage.
> 
> Easier would be to have a drone comb at the edge of the brood box which could be periodically removed and destroyed (fed to the chickens?) This would work really well if you, unlike myself, used plastic foundation so the bees can't raise drones everywhere. To get the drones just insert a frame with no foundation at side of the brood nest--position 2 out of 10 frames.
> Guaranteed that they will build drone comb in that frame. I know MB, if he's around, will object.


Looks like we have similar situations. I stopped buying foundation a couple of years ago, but it isn't too hard to cut out drone comb. I may give that a try this year. Yes, finding all the queens is an issue. I'm sure the chickens would love drone comb. Although, I have wondered what it does to them to be eating wax. I have one smartie that tried to follow us around so she could get the bees falling off the lids. She loved it when hubby put a lid down, bees facing toward her. Had to reposition that quickly. What do you use for mite control?


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Delta Bay said:


> "A brood break itself is not what makes the Varroa population decline (they can survive longer than 2 months as phoretic mites), it usually the treatment following it to kill the mites that are then mostly phoretic."
> 
> In his presentations, Büchler clearly states that during the brood interruption 1% to 2% of the mites die per day which is around 40% to 50% of the total mites before a comb trapping or oxalic treatment.


But how many bees are dying each day? The brood break obviously ceases reproduction of not only the mite but also the bee. Have you reduced the mite-to-bee ratio? 

And when your queen starts back laying, your mites are going to out-breed her 2 to 1.

The UF study (Ellis, Jack, Santen) is troubling. I have a lot of nits to pick with it (24d break, Season, etc.), but you cannot escape the fact that the control group (no brood break) out-performed all groups with brood breaks, even those that received OAV during the brood breaks. You can't ignore that.

How healthy is it to force all of your mites and all of those viruses, en masse, onto your adult bees within a 2 week period? I think we may have been overlooking the negative impacts of forcing these events on our bees. 

As always, we will wait on the research to tell us more. Proceed with caution.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

well, I find that study a bit convoluted and I draw a different conculdstion then you do 
https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toz358/5697464
"In general, colonies with caged queens had statistically lower mite fall levels than colonies with uncaged queens starting from day 24 (P = 0.032) and continuing throughout the rest of the experiment (days 31, 35, and 62—P < 0.001). However, we did not observe any significant differences in mite fall during the OA treatment periods (days 8, 16, and 24) between colonies with caged and uncaged queens that were treated one" 

they did not see a difference in mite drops between broodless and brood on hives... this suggests there is a huge problem with the OA's effectiveness in this experiment
a conculstion they also reached 
" colonies receiving three applications of OA still had high mortality rates and colony strengths similar to those of untreated colonies. Our inability to control Varroa effectively regardless of OA treatment suggests that the current labeled dose of 1 g per brood chamber was ineffective, at least under the conditions we maintained in our study."


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

Take the OA out of the equation.

The control colonies with no brood break and no OA had a .7 survival rate.

The colonies with a brood break and no OA had a .1 survival rate.

I do not think this part is convoluted at all. The only variable is that 10 colonies had a brood break and 10 did not.

My only question is whether you would get the same result in the spring vs. fall.

My takeaways from the Ellis study:

1. If you are going to make them broodless, you **** well better kill the mites while they are broodless. Otherwise, you probably just stressed your bees for no net benefit.

2. OA treatments using 1g per brood box will not give you a sufficient mite kill -- even when broodless.


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

psm1212 said:


> You can't ignore that.



Many will because they dont want to look at the facts, they just want to cherry pick out any pieces that may re-inforce a belief system, and trash anything that doesn't do that. they will be quite happy to ignore the 10 percent survival of the bees managed with just brood breaks, and find lots of fault with the improved 70% survival of the negative control 'do nothing' colonies in comparison. And they will give absolutely no credence to the little detail of the positive control colony set, 100% survival given apivar strips.

The data doesn't fit a pre-concieved belief system, so, they will just twist it and re-intepret until they can make it fit.

Personally, I've read, and re-read that study. I've been using Oxalic and Formic for years, and my overall results have been similar to results from this study. We expect 70% survival from our treated colonies, it's about the average year over year. 10% survival for untreated, seen that. What catches my eye more than anything else from that study, 100% survival of the colonies that got apivar.....


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> What catches my eye more than anything else from that study, 100% survival of the colonies that got apivar.....


keep in mind it was a short study in a place with no winter, 100% survival over 60 days, the study didn't go any further
In my location a Sept brood break would likly kill my hives, seems like its not so good for FL either 



> The data doesn't fit a pre-concieved belief system, so, they will just twist it and re-intepret until they can make it fit


That cuts bolth ways, 
In this case the data dosen't fit the trends of other studys, of witch we have many. 
People are gravitating to a study that fits there per-concived views, but it seems to be the lone outlier. 
Just like small cell fokes hold up the one study thats showed postive results with EHB, ignoring the massive stack of ones that say it has a negative or no effect



> will wait on the research to tell us more. Proceed with caution


I can agree with that. 
Now if we see this in 2-3 other study's then its a trend, not an outlier 



> OA treatments using 1g per brood box will not give you a sufficient mite kill -- even when broodless.


but 5-6 years ago it did. The Failure of OAV here, while broodless, suggests the possibility of resistance, Or humidty issues, or? 

Further more we know form Toufailia (2016) the dose volume dosen't matter that much with OAV in singles they got 89.2% mite drop from 0.56g and 89.7% drop from 2.25g


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

I definitely think that Jamie should replicate this study during spring build up and see what the data show.

It certainly shook my preconceived notion of the effects of OAV on a broodless colony.


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## Jadeguppy (Jul 19, 2017)

Thank you to those who posted studies. Very helpful in the discussion. The survival rate for apivar caught my eye. Florida has a lot of climate zones. Nearly the same latitude change as going from Tallahassee, Florida to Northern Georgia as going from Northern Florida to Southern Florida. I wish mangos and coconuts would grow here. Does anyone happen to know where that study took place?


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## grozzie2 (Jun 3, 2011)

Jadeguppy said:


> Thank you to those who posted studies. Very helpful in the discussion. The survival rate for apivar caught my eye. Florida has a lot of climate zones. Nearly the same latitude change as going from Tallahassee, Florida to Northern Georgia as going from Northern Florida to Southern Florida. I wish mangos and coconuts would grow here. Does anyone happen to know where that study took place?


Gainsville Florida


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## Amibusiness (Oct 3, 2016)

Well... Late to the conversation but a couple thoughts. First, gino (i think) posted about drone brood culling. I like the idea of feeding the chickens but: there is a chance of reinfestation as the foundress mites will still be alive. Best to freeze them first. Not sure if the chickens want dead larvae after freezing. They won't eat the wax so don't worry about that. I'm not sure I agree with drone culling. It will deffinitely reduce mites without chemicals. But it seems it ultimately puts selective pressure on mites that prefer worker larvae. The idea of confining the queen in a broodless colony to a frame and removing/ freezing it when capped would probably "naturally"
remove most mites as they would be eager to infest the new brood. Would be necessary to remove it before the bees started uncapping dead pupae to clean them out as the foundress mites would be released. Any studies? And would be a pita for anyone with many colonies....
Grozzie, We have had 0-85% overwinter loss of untreated colonies. When we ran under 20 colonies our losses were 15% average. Running 60-90 colonies our losses are more like 30-40%, untreated. With one frightening(!) year at 85% loss. I had to think long and hard if I would still remain tf! So I am heartened that our treatment free bees overwinter about as well as yours. And why I write this is that experiences in different places are different. For the study in Florida using any bee is fine for comparison in that situation. However, anyone attempting tf should be getting local tf stock, or as local and tf as possible. And the background genetics will play a role. So no, it probably won't work in all locations, but my experience is that it works fine here. Our colonies usually get 2 brood breaks per year (winter +1) of about 3-4 weeks (when I am behind this is from swarming!). No drone brood culling, no queen caging, no routine requeening (we do of course requeen underperformers). We have bees to sell and more honey than we can get rid of at this point. Working on that!


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