# Mite Load vs. Brood Cycle



## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Ideally the brood cycles should be interrupted for about 20 days and yes your quite correct an immediate requeen with a mated queen isn't going to do much to reduce varroa populations. If your nucs are sitting side by side with old queens the advantages may be negated. We have found a complete requeening operation with cells is adequate for a full season given that there are few if any "hotspots" of old queens that continue laying. In addition you should always be striving to use breeders that show low mite loads a year later in addition to regularly injecting new breeding stock from treatment free breeding programs where VSH tendencies are confirmed through pupal mite counts.


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## Hazel-Rah (May 12, 2013)

Do you wait 20 days to re-queen, or is that an ideal? And when you say 'complete re-queening with cells', do you mean you are taking your grafted and capped queen cups and putting them in the new hive? Does 'complete' mean your entire yard? Thanks


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Yes we requeen everything each year. A ripe cell is placed in 36 hours after queen removal. She is normally mated a short two weeks later and would have larvae of age for varroa invasion about a week after that. It gives a several day window to treat phonetic mites for those who choose to do so. We have found if your varroa numbers are low enough when nucing that the brood break in and of itself serves to knock the mites back enough to make it through the season.


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## burns375 (Jul 15, 2013)

jim lyon said:


> Yes we requeen everything each year. A ripe cell is placed in 36 hours after queen removal. She is normally mated a short two weeks later and would have larvae of age for varroa invasion about a week after that. It gives a several day window to treat phonetic mites for those who choose to do so. We have found if your varroa numbers are low enough when nucing that the brood break in and of itself serves to knock the mites back enough to make it through the season.


Jim, What time of year do you requeen and why?

Climate should be considered too. How are pupal mite counts normalized to account for other factors that may influence mite loads at any one time?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

I ran some experiments where I kept the queens confined inside the hives in cages for 6 weeks to cause a brood break. At the end of that and later I did mite counts and there was no significant difference in mite numbers. Just how to do the mite counts that would give true numbers was an issue, as before the brood break most mites would have been in brood cells and not available to be counted. then after 3 weeks there would be no brood and all mites would be phoretic so the count would be artificially high. Then, at the end of the 6 weeks all those mites would be looking for brood and go into as soon as it was available making it look like there were hardly any mites.

So because of these variables I am not 100% certain of my results but best I could tell, the 6 week broodless period made an insignificant difference. However I should say here that I have come to believe the bees we have here in my country are some of the least mite resistant in the world. If someone is using bees that have mechanisms for dealing with mites, it is quite conceivable that they may be getting dealt with in some way while phoretic, so that combined with a broodless period ie they cannot breed, may bear results.

Another issue is that each mite mother only breeds a certain number of times, then she dies, in keeping with her being inseminated only once, prior to emerging from the brood cell she was raised in. But if she does not breed often, it has been shown they can live for up to a year. So from that perspective, a broodless period is delaying things rather than curing them. However with mite control, that is about all we ever do anyway.

Question for you Jim, you requeen everything with cells, is that also split them and put cells in? If not, how do you make up the ones that didn't mate?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

That's an interesting observation OT. Without getting into an in depth debate about the possible mechanism that may be in play I will just say that I have no scientific proof that brood breaks work. For the moment I will simply relate what I do and what my results are. Last fall state testing showed our mite levels averaged 3.4% which was in the 45th percentile statewide pre fall treatment I presume the majority were doing some sort of spring treatment (but thats just a presumption). Perhaps the simple act of reducing the size of a hive allows hive populations to outgrow mite populations through the course of a single season. This is (I believe) the 5th consecutive year of following this treatment free spring/summer requeening program after doing a 20 day after queen removal OA program which I deemed as unnecessary because of a nearly undetectable mite drop. I felt the risks of disrupting the hive with a brand new queen just up and running outweighed the advantage of the small mite reduction I was observing. 

The hives that don't mate are rebuilt with a shakeout, a couple of frames of brood and another cell. That process normally gets us around a 50% take. After that a few may get another frame of open brood but most just get shook out and doubled up.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

burns375 said:


> Jim, What time of year do you requeen and why?
> 
> Climate should be considered too. How are pupal mite counts normalized to account for other factors that may influence mite loads at any one time?


Someone that actually does these mite counts (Adam where are you) can answer this question better. The process used in Baton Rouge is a microscopic analysis of a given number of pupae of a similar age in a hive. They feel it gives the best measurement of mite infestation in a hive. 
We requeen each year in late March in Texas because it's cheap, relatively easy and we see little summer and fall dwindle when following such a program. It would be difficult to do this without the extended season that being migratory gives you. The offshoot of being treatment free from fall to fall, and then using dedicated honey supers above an excluder that have never seen any type of miticides is that our honey hasn't shown any traces of miticides at the 1 ppb LOD now for 3 consecutive years.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Hazel-Rah said:


> As I understand it, one of the(many) pillars of 'treatment-free' beekeeping is being able to interrupt the brood cycle once or more times a year


This is not a pillar I use, and if I don't use it (nor does Michael Bush or Dee Lusby) then how can it be a pillar?

It is a method, one of many, but hardly a pillar.


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## gmcharlie (May 9, 2009)

My understanding of the key to the brood break is that when the queen resumes laying, the mites are overwhelming the first group of larve. which to me would me the real mite count would not drop until about 30 days later, when no new mites have emerged and all the phoretic have dropped off and died.....
Ignore Solomon, hes just trying to pick another argument....


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## Hazel-Rah (May 12, 2013)

Don't worry, I super hip to Solomon at this point... Thanks for the interesting conversation, keep it up! Jim are you grafting queens that you buy? Or do you have a mating yard? Re-queening every year seems to preclude you from breeding survivor stock, but clearly is an effective strategy for pollination.

I should add that my primary aspirations are in queen breeding, and how I would best manage a mite population in this practice. But I am enjoying this conversation. 

Solomon you do make me smile - unconscious self-parody is always funniest!


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Hazel-Rah said:


> Don't worry, I super hip to Solomon at this point...


YES!  I'm half way to being cool!

If an argument is necessary, then let's have one, otherwise, let's don't. I like to challenge assumptions, and I do that with my experience and practice. And it's always good to have at least one bona-fide treatment-free beekeeper in the conversation, especially in this forum.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Not treatment free, but a brood break with powdered sugar dusting would remove the mites.
Some people do cage their laying queen to produce a brood break.
Another way is to put the laying queen in a hive without capped brood, then powder sugar dust.


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