# OAV fall treatment



## Downeast75 (Aug 6, 2015)

Hi everyone. I've been holding off for my fall OAV treatments. However im concerned it's been too warm this year and they may not be completely broodless. 2 reasons. They are still flying in numbers and I need them to be broodless. If I do a treatment and there are bees out will the treatment still be effective on them when they return ?


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Downeast75 said:


> Hi everyone. I've been holding off for my fall OAV treatments. However im concerned it's been too warm this year and they may not be completely broodless. 2 reasons. They are still flying in numbers and I need them to be broodless. If I do a treatment and there are bees out will the treatment still be effective on them when they return ?


Most of your mites are on the nurse bees... the youngest ones. If you that worried about it, do it closer to dusk. I don't know about your particular area, but mine seemed to start laying again shortly after the solstice, so it is a somewhat limited window in which to get it taken care of. At the very least if you do it now they probably have significantly reduced brood so you'll still get most of the mites. If you have sticky boards and you put in a clean one you will probably be able to see clear wax flakes if they are still brooding (and you aren't feeding them and there is no flow). Otherwise you can always look if it's nice enough... but I don't even like popping the tops to put sugar on, let alone pull frames this time of year. I would just do the treatment, you can twiddle your thumbs until February.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Downeast75 said:


> Hi everyone. I've been holding off for my fall OAV treatments. However im concerned it's been too warm this year and they may not be completely broodless. 2 reasons. They are still flying in numbers and I need them to be broodless. If I do a treatment and there are bees out will the treatment still be effective on them when they return ?


I wouldn't worry about the being completely broodless. Do it while it's nice out, if you wait, it could get really cold. I usually do mine around thanksgiving because it's convenient. This year its warmer than usual and I'm doing my final treatment this weekend. It's unlikely that you will ever kill 100%, but they can't start growing in numbers until the bees do, so if you leave a few mites, they can't increase in strength over the winter.


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## Downeast75 (Aug 6, 2015)

Thanks to everyone for the replies. I will be doing my treatment in the morning.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

"....so if you leave a few mites, they can't increase in strength over the winter."


This is not true. They can build up pretty fast when Spring starts again
because some breed of bees will give of the small patch of broods during the 
cold winter months. Do not underestimate the power of binary. But the mites do it in 3's at a time.
Mine are still having a significant number of mites that
hatched at each cycle say every 21 days give or take. So if you don't take care
of them in the winter time then in the Spring build up the mites will overwhelm
your hive and caused it to crash. Did it to me last year. So I'm treating them with oav at every hatch cycle now all the way until March of next year. My stationary oav gadget is not affected by the weather at all. As long as you have access to the hive you can treat them all year long.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Downeast75 said:


> I've been holding off for my fall OAV treatments.


With this exceptionally warm weather I have been holding off as well. Usually my winter treatment is done right around Thanksgiving, but I decided to wait a while longer until the weather cooled down. It still hasn't cooled down. Not complaining.  

So I did a treatment last weekend on all the hives to make sure I got one in before the weather does turn cold. The mite count was higher than I usually see after my winter treatment, so I'm assuming that brood rearing had continued further into the early winter season than usual. I'm planning to do another one around Christmas time and see what kind of counts I get then. It's not warm enough for me to pull frames and check on brood, so I'm just guessing on what is going on in the hives.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Robbin said:


> It's unlikely that you will ever kill 100%, but they can't start growing in numbers until the bees do,


I've noticed the same thing here too. If you do the best you can in mid winter to treat the hive at it's lowest brood point the mites that remain do not cause a serious problem during the spring build up. The hive has an explosive growth rate in the spring and will outbreed the mites. They usually catch up and need to be addressed mid summer when brood rearing starts to slow down.

But beekeeping is local and treatment schedules need to be adjusted accordingly.


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## Downeast75 (Aug 6, 2015)

Did my first ever OAV this morning before the bees were flying. I have to say its an easy process. Bees slightly ticked once I reopened the hive but soon calmed. Still crazy in Virginia with temps 72 degrees in December. Hopefully it was cold enough in the few weeks past they are without brood. Even when its warm I hate opening the hive in December. With our warm temps should I plan on doing another treatment next weekend ?


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## sc-bee (May 10, 2005)

My understanding is...Treatment depends on brood levels.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

Downeast75 said:


> Did my first ever OAV this morning ... With our warm temps should I plan on doing another treatment next weekend ?


Did you treat with anything else this past fall? 

Not sure what your situation is. If these are new bees from this spring and it's the first time they have been treated you may want to do 2 more additional OAV treatments a week apart, especially if they were Italian package bees. With the very warm temperatures we've had they are probably still brooding.


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## Downeast75 (Aug 6, 2015)

Hi Mike. I did treat with apiguard this fall. However I feel i was about 3 weeks late as the day temps dropped to the 60s and each treatment all of my hives never did empty the apiguard pans fully. So I feel the treatment was not 100%. I treated OAV today and plan on hitting the hives again next weekend.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

May want to consider doing a third treatment if you find a lot of mites on the board after treating. That will cover a full 21 day brood cycle, just in case they are still raising some brood.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I'm not sure exactly when I treated these nucs with OAV (something like a week ago), but this weekend it was warm (but pretty rainy and cloudy).
It was about 60 degrees Saturday so I started watching for the dead mites to get shoved out. They finally did start cleaning them out.

I snagged about 10 between the two nucs first thing in the morning and then later in the day went back out to take a look...




Who knows how many got hauled off into the grass.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

beepro said:


> "....so if you leave a few mites, they can't increase in strength over the winter."
> 
> 
> This is not true. They can build up pretty fast when Spring starts again


You said my statement was not true, then agreed with me? By all means, treat as many times as you see fit, I'll continue to treat just before I put the supers on following the bulk of the spring build up when my drop counts are really going up, Then again when the supers come off and a final treatment going into winter. It takes Brood for the mites to breed in, there is very little brood in the winter.


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## Robbin (May 26, 2013)

Downeast75 said:


> Did my first ever OAV this morning before the bees were flying. I have to say its an easy process. Bees slightly ticked once I reopened the hive but soon calmed. Still crazy in Virginia with temps 72 degrees in December. Hopefully it was cold enough in the few weeks past they are without brood. Even when its warm I hate opening the hive in December. With our warm temps should I plan on doing another treatment next weekend ?


Even in the fall with less brood, I prefer to treat several times a week apart. It certainly doesn't hurt anything.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Yes, I agree with you mainly because we are in a different 
region. Here with a mild winter environment my newly mated
September Italians/carnis queens will not go to rest. They are expanding
their Autumn nest now. So I know that the mites are still there when I did
a full hive check 2 days ago. The bees are healthy and so are the mites inside
with them. Though my mites are not as big as jw's. And the bees don't haul
them outside either. They got trap inside the uneven surface of the LP board
which is the bottom board. My mites are not that big either and quite destructive too. So I have to keep on treating at every hatch cycle hoping to make more winter and Spring bees. I'm experimenting with the oav gadget so do not follow the recommended rate of application.


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