# Breaking Brood Cycle



## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

I don't think that's a long enough time to make a serious dent in the mite breeding cycle. I've read about doing this by taking the queen away and making up a new nuc with her, and letting the main hive raise a new queen from eggs or newly hatched larvae. By the time their new queen is laying, it's been almost a month and that would supposedly seriously crash the mite population. This can be done in the late summer, so Spring honey harvest would not be effected, and you'd then have a low mite population heading into Fall. A fresh new queen can quickly build the bee population up again by Fall.


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

I've heard of the 'queen arrest method' where the queen is temporarily confined to a single brood frame or portion thereof. This method is labour intensive, slows down colony development and may only be suitable for the dedicated, small time beekeeper. The confinement time frame is 21 days.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

If you confine the queen two weeks before the main flow (or at the latest right AT the main flow) you will actually get more honey than if you don't because there will be no open brood to care for freeing up nurse bees to forage. If you confine the queen earlier it will hurt honey production. If you confine the queen later it will cut into young bees for the winter.


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## megank (Mar 28, 2006)

Micheal, Not knowing brood production in your area, but I have pictures of a five framer nuc with a queen mated early October and there's three frames of brood and she's still in full laying mode.

Sorry to the Mods for the shameless plug

http://orsba.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=2787


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

I've done some experiments with this, as I saw published that mites live 100 days, so tried different length brood breaks to see if it would eradicate or partly eradicate the mites. Didn't work very well, and I've decided that mites must live quite a bit more than 100 days.

I've read quite often on Beesource that a brood break while they are raising a new queen, which would be around a month, will greatly hit mite numbers. However my own experience is a brood break of a month makes little difference.

In places like Canada, where they have a long broodless period in winter, the bees can still have quite a few mites when brood raising starts again in spring, relative to what they went into the winter with.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

Oldtimer is probably right. What I do is once I get the colony broodless, then I can use powered sugar to knock the mites off. This is probably one of the only times that PS is really effective against mites.


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## Mtn. Bee (Nov 10, 2009)

Michael Bush hit the nail on the head!
A lot more honey if all they have to worry about is honey!

I have been using the http://www.mdasplitter.com/ technique for several years now and only counted
3 mites in my hives this season.
Works great and you gain by not using costly meds. and by increasing your colonies. :thumbsup:


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

My own thought is there are many aging mites that have reached their final reproduction cycle during the brood less period. That portion of mites die before brood is available to realize their chance to add to the mite population. It's really more about the percentages of mites that are at the back side of the 100 days rather than young mites. 
I think there are also other things going on in the colony during a brood break that may not stand out like increased grooming/cleaning where mites are disposed of outside the hive. What is being accomplished is a mite level that is tolerable for the colony without the use of miticides. 
The other thing to consider is the effectiveness of a brood break when comparing bees that have not had miticide treatments for several generations over bees that are just coming off of treatments. My experience is the later bees don't respond as well.

To get the very best results out of the brood break it is important that all brood is capped at the start date. You can not get a decent break by just caging the queen when their is open brood of all stages unless you extend the time she is caged.


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## Fuzzy (Aug 4, 2005)

Just thinking out loud here.....

If I wanted to significantly reduce the mite load it would seem most efficient to remove frames, shake bees into box and replace ALL brood with drawn comb. This essentially sets the hive back 3 weeks but it is immediately broodless. The removed frames could be frozen and then cleaned out. 

Fuzzy


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## Mtn. Bee (Nov 10, 2009)

The good thing about the http://www.mdasplitter.com/ technique is you also gain a nuc and you mock swarming.
I put the old queen with 2-3frames brood/bees in a nuc box and let the old colony produce a new queen from the existing brood, hence, breaks the mites cycle, I gain a new colony, and the old colony gets a new young vigorous laying queen.
I did this to 30+ colonies last year and left as is, the remainder of my colonies for "Honey Production".
The 30 colonies did great and not one of them swarmed (I mark and clip my queens). The remaining honey production colonies swarmed and kept producing swarm cells.
I only found 3 mites in my colonies last year, when in years past I had high mite counts in my colonies, but since going to Mel's tech. I am almost mite free and have been med free for 3 years!


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## bevy's honeybees (Apr 21, 2011)

How long can you confine a queen in a hair clip queen catcher? Have it hang between frames for nursebees to take care of her? I'd like to try this during orange blossom nectar flow in spring--or I may start 4 or 5 nuks with queens from my strongest hives--that might get a higher honey crop from original hive? I am blessed, my bee's honey is selling more than I have harvested so far. I have 8 hives and just finished my second year. 

A side track; I have 2 hives that lost queens somehow and made their own queen, and this happened in October for one and November for the other. I am in SW Fl, is it not a good thing for those colonies come spring?


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## ralittlefield (Apr 25, 2011)

Delta Bay said:


> To get the very best results out of the brood break it is important that all brood is capped at the start date. You can not get a decent break by just caging the queen when their is open brood of all stages unless you extend the time she is caged.


Excuse my ignorance, but how does one get to the point of no open brood at the *start* of a brood break?


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

I generally followed the MDASplitter method this year too, I see the logic in it.
I'm too small scale to see the results much yet, but so far so good. 
Will be able to test it more next year if I have at least two survivor hives from my 5 colonies.


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