# Mite bottom board counts and my experience with oav



## Norcalkyle (Apr 23, 2015)

I love checking after the OAV treatments and seeing the mite drop... I swear sometimes I think the bees are smiling at me after OAV.


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## johnwratcliff (Feb 24, 2015)

I'm of the opinion that it almost doesn't matter. I don't count mites. There is too much of a gab between what we see and should be happening according to research. Now I have jumped on the oav band wagon and did my three treatments in September. These high counts are mind blowing. It's making my head hurt!


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

Yes... I have not seen any negative impact at all on the bees... hope oav is what I have been looking for. I have really enjoyed having a hive in the backyard and studying it.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Looks like you were on a repeat of last year's mistake. Good thing you found out about oxalic acid. At this point you still need to treat. Ideally you need to get those numbers down to single digit daily drops after treaments. Hopefully sooner rather than later, those numbers should drop rapidly.

On a slightly different topic, it seems you did not know about oxalic, but you knew about mites because you were told post mortem? You were told you lost your colony because of a high mite load, 12%. So I presume the State inspection fellow or gal told you about varroa. Then they would have said something to the effect of the different treatment options. I would like to understand how come you waited so long to take action? 

Jean-Marc


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

Yes... all the chemical options scared me a bit, and everything sounded so intrusive and scary. This year I decided I was going to at least wait until I took off my honey but that didn't happen till early September. Because I decided to wait until the supers came off I kicked the can down the road in learning about all my options. As of right now I have read enough about the options that I feel I am now on the right track and done with the snake oil options. I am fully on board with keeping the girls clean year round. It really came down to knowledge and time spent in seeking to expand it on this subject. P.S a good friend that started this with me was informing me on this topic and he is stuck on essential oils and bb... He lost his last winter as well... I decided to look in a different direction myself. After hearing about the results he is now vaping as well.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

You've knocked off roughly a 15% mite load. 
Have you seen any viral signs?


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## agastache (Jun 27, 2013)

Michael Bush has a simple math-based explanation that suggests that treating when there is capped brood simply keeps mite populations from growing much, but does not reduce them much. It seems to hinge on the idea that when brood hatch, mites are released that then enter to-be-capped brood fairly quickly (in a timeframe that is shorter than the 7 day treatment cycle) after a phoretic phase, let's say 4 days. If this is correct, then you will not see much of a reduction in counts until you stop having brood/have much reduced brood for the mites to enter. It seems from the experience of many who are using OAV here that holding the mite population down without completely obliterating it (assuming this is what is happening per MBs explanation) is beneficial, and a treatment when the colony is broodless is really beneficial. Treating somewhat earlier in the year might knock out enough mites to prevent an overwhelming population later.


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

I've been battling mites in my colonies since the middle of Sept., and have been religiously counting the bottom boards. I find your counts to be very similar to what I've been seeing. I started adding up the 5 day counts between treatments, and that number has grown every treatment. Yesterday, I did my 8th treatment. Between the seventh and 8th treatment, I killed 1901 mites in one hive. I have killed 9253 mites in that one hive since I started. Last week, I found a mess of capped drone brood that was full of mites. I cut it out and discarded it. I have a lot of capped worker brood in there, too, and is seems there are mites in that, also. I increased the dosage a bit yesterday and will go count in a couple hours. I've been considering making some changes to my treatment techinque. I think treating every 3 days may be better, rather than every 5. 

Please continue updating your daily counts here. I've found there is not much data on this. Evidently most people just do 3 treatments and call it good, without knowing if it was really effective or not. 

craig


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

Agreed, I am wondering when varroa emerge and detect OA if some return to be capped as quick as possible? Have you noticed the daily drop off in mite count after each treatment is more rapid . If you look at my numbers the drop off is more rapid after each treatment (after the 2nd day). No sign of viruses. Been in there a couple times over the last 17 days.
At this point I think a broodless vap is a must in December.


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

I think I will do a no ther vap on Thursday or Friday night... I switched from the morning to night because the temperature is much higher and worry that they are balling in the morning.


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## snl (Nov 20, 2009)

jean-marc said:


> Looks like you were on a repeat of last year's mistake. Good thing you found out about oxalic acid. At this point you still need to treat. Ideally you need to get those numbers down to single digit daily drops after treatments. Hopefully sooner rather than later, those numbers should drop rapidly.


Totally agree.


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

Between the seventh and 8th treatment, I killed 1901 mites in one hive. I have killed 9253 mites in that one hive since I started. 

craig[/QUOTE]

Yikes...


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## Agis Apiaries (Jul 22, 2014)

johnwratcliff said:


> I'm of the opinion that it almost doesn't matter. I don't count mites.


Bingo! :applause:

If you have mites, treat. It's pretty simple.

I've never seen someone make their dog stand over a grid to "count" fleas to determine if they should help the dog out or not either. Makes about as much sense as conducting a big scientific study to determine exactly how many mites your hive has.


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## Agis Apiaries (Jul 22, 2014)

..


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

Agis Apiaries said:


> Bingo! :applause:
> 
> If you have mites, treat. It's pretty simple.
> 
> I've never seen someone make their dog stand over a grid to "count" fleas to determine if they should help the dog out or not either. Makes about as much sense as conducting a big scientific study to determine exactly how many mites your hive has.



From what I've read and seen, every hive has mites. There's no getting around them. 

So are you of the opinion you should just routinely place chemicals into the hive, with no idea what you are dealing with. It seems that a lot of beekeepers are doing just that. Prophylacticly. That's kind of what caused the first two or three mite treatments to become ineffective on mites. Over use. Mites built up resistance to them very quickly. 

I think it's important to know what you are up against in order to make an informed decision on when to treat, what to use, and how much.


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## Agis Apiaries (Jul 22, 2014)

Gumpy said:


> From what I've read and seen, every hive has mites. There's no getting around them.
> 
> So are you of the opinion you should just routinely place chemicals into the hive, with no idea what you are dealing with. It seems that a lot of beekeepers are doing just that. Prophylacticly. That's kind of what caused the first two or three mite treatments to become ineffective on mites. Over use. Mites built up resistance to them very quickly.
> 
> I think it's important to know what you are up against in order to make an informed decision on when to treat, what to use, and how much.


How do you suppose someone with 10,000 hives handles that? They don't. If they have mites, they treat.


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

I am counting because I have 1 hive and if I am going to use OAV in the future I want to know how it generally works and what the general results I can expect in differing situations without always counting. I wanted to provide something to this forum because I have gained much from other peoples observations. 
In the future I hope to maybe just look at the bb to see if I am getting standard results based on my and other beekeepers posted data. By some keeping track we can find best practices for different times of year and what results to expect if not counting every time. Trust me the counting is tedious, but I am too far into this to stop.


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

Agis Apiaries said:


> How do you suppose someone with 10,000 hives handles that? They don't. If they have mites, they treat.


I don't have 10000 hives. Most people on this board don't have 10000 hives. But even if you do, if you don't know how effective your treatments are, why bother to treat at all? 

The conventional OAV wisdom is the do 3 treatments every 5 to 7 days and then wait two weeks and do a sugar roll or alcohol wash. 

A sugar roll is not necessarily accurate, and waiting 2 weeks to find out if you were successful will possibly just allow the mites to recover. 

If I had stopped treating at 3 treatments, my hives would be dead. I've killed more than 8500 mites in the subsequent treatments, and the numbers keep rising. 

After 8 treatments, I had 612 mites on the board this morning. I'm over 9800 total on this hive, so far.


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## JClark (Apr 29, 2012)

I kept tallies like this when I first used MAQS. Amazing. When the bees tell you that they have a mite problem it is almost too late. I only treat once a year but try to get the #s knocked down before winter bee production kicks in. The goal is to have fat and healthy winter bees. I didn't have a temp window for MAQS this year so I tried the Apivar strips. Seems good so far. Not sure I would want to use these if I had heavy agricultural activity around me though due to possible synergistic effects (see info on the scientific beekeeping site).

By the way, since you started late I'd make sure to have dry sugar on top of the frames in case the cluster becomes too small to move to the side capped honey stores this winter.


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## wdale (Jun 27, 2014)

Tom
I ran your "Mite Load" though the mite calculator here is the results KEEPING treating to get your mite load down to a level below 3 per day

****************
You selected Natural Mite Drop
775 Mites detected over 7 days 
Month: October, Season: Long, Drone Brood level: Medium 

Average Daily Mite Fall = 110.7 varroa mites
Estimated number of adult varroa mites in the colony = 7800
Treatment is recommended as soon as practically possible.
Important Note:
Remember - the situation can change rapidly, especially if mite (re)invasion occurs. You should carry on monitoring regularly. 

The model predicts when the varroa numbers are likely to reach a critical level that requires treatment. The above is based on an estimate of how long it is likely to take before the varroa mite population reaches 1000 - a level where treatment is recommended to avoid varroa causing significant adverse effects on the colony. We have intentionally set the threshold level of 1000 mites to give a cautious approach, bearing in mind that monitoring methods are not always accurate. The results can depend on many factors including the size of the colony, so a range may be shown above. However, for various reasons, a small colony may well be more susceptible to a given level of varroa mites than a large colony. Where a range is given, a cautious approach would be to treat within the shorter time period. If the model predicts that treatment is required in mid-winter, it would normally be prudent to treat in the Autumn to avoid disturbing the bees in mid-winter. It should be remembered that the above predictions are based on sampling and estimates, so the recommendation is a guidance to help the beekeeper make a decision. If the beekeeper has good evidence that the mite level is higher than the estimate, and/or colony damage from varroa mites is already evident (eg deformed bees), the beekeeper should not delay treatment unnecessarily. 

Hope this gives you something to work with by the looks of what I see in your count you are about 1/2 done I recommend that you treat 5-6 days apart now for 3-4 weeks, THEN about November into first of December do anther OV shot to get best results of getting them all. You may have a large count of mites in each brood cell eg 1 male and may be up to 3-5 female mites in each Capped brood cell lets say 3-4 frames of capped brood? = 4 female mites per cell X 1500 cells? = a load of about 6500 mites
Next year I would start the mite treatment earlier in the year ( end of August / September


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## mbc (Mar 22, 2014)

This oav when there is brood band wagon will probably be a thing of the past in a few years time, the mites just keep breeding! 
To my mind something a bit more persistent is better when theres brood, formic acid mite wipes or thymol both give reasonable control and dont let mite numbers escalate, giving the bees a chance to raise winter brood freeish from mites. OAV is the ideal tool to mop up any remaining mites once the bees are broodless.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

I am in agreement with mbc on his 5-6 points. However with Tom1617 and Gumpy, at the point where they are they gotta do what they gotta do. Evidently they waited too long to start OAV. MAQS could have been good at that time, thymol as well, but they chose a different path and they are in to deep to turn around. Thymol and MAQS may not work so well now because of temperature issues. The only option is too keep smoking them, in more ways than one.

Jean-Marc


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

Gumpy said:


> I've been battling mites in my colonies since the middle of Sept., and have been religiously counting the bottom boards. I find your counts to be very similar to what I've been seeing. I started adding up the 5 day counts between treatments, and that number has grown every treatment. Yesterday, I did my 8th treatment. Between the seventh and 8th treatment, I killed 1901 mites in one hive. I have killed 9253 mites in that one hive since I started. Last week, I found a mess of capped drone brood that was full of mites. I cut it out and discarded it. I have a lot of capped worker brood in there, too, and is seems there are mites in that, also. I increased the dosage a bit yesterday and will go count in a couple hours. I've been considering making some changes to my treatment techinque. I think treating every 3 days may be better, rather than every 5.
> 
> Please continue updating your daily counts here. I've found there is not much data on this. Evidently most people just do 3 treatments and call it good, without knowing if it was really effective or not.
> 
> craig


Sorry it's taking me a day to get back. On the 19th my mite count was 273. This was a break in the pattern of the second day after oav being the highest. It in fact dropped by about 250...
Today the my count was 114. So I decided to hit it again tonight. I'll be back with the results tomorrow. This might bee the break I was looking for


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Looks like you might be winning this one. Way to hang in there. Always interested in these results.

Jean-Marc


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

This is a continuation of my count and what has happened since.
I will continue on day 17 this was the 2nd day after my 4th vape. I am now vaping at night due to the temperature of the morning. All inspection are 24hrs apart. 
19th oct 273 mites = 11.4 per hour 3912 total mites
20th 114 mites = 4.75 per hour 4026 total mites
20th I vaped again at 7pm...
21st 264 mites = 11.0 per hour 4290 total mites
22nd 20 110 mites = 4.6 per hour 4400 total mites
23rd 63 mites = 2.6 per hour 4463 total
24th 53 mites = 2.2 per hour 4516 total
25th 23 mites = 1.0 per hour 4539 total
I vaped on the 25th at 7pm
OCT 26th 100 mites 4.1 per hour 4639 total
27th 44 mites = 1.8 per hour 4683 total
28th 25 mites = 1.0 per hour 4708 total
29th 12 mites = .5 per hour average 4720 total
30th 15 mites = .6 per hour 4735 total
31st 7 mites = .3 per hour 4742 total

I am either going to end it today or vape one more time. I feel I might be at the point of diminishing returns. At this point I will vape in the middle of winter when I feel there's the least amount of brood. I will never let this get that out of control again. I will vape the spring before I put a honey super on, again in fall after i take honey and in the middle of winter... I have seen no negative effect on the bees at this point.


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## Gumpy (Mar 30, 2016)

Thanks, Tom. Your numbers are looking better, but you still have over 200 dead from the last treatment. I'm on a 3 day interval now. I'm hoping to complete my treatments in 2 or 3 more, and hope to get it below 100 per treatment cycle. Last cycle was 330 and 439, so still a ways to go. I haven't seen any data to suggest where a good cycle count would be, but if the dead mites represent 15% of all mites as others have suggested, then 100 dead would represent about 666 mites in the colony. That may be optimistic, so will see as I go forward.


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## Tom1617 (Oct 17, 2016)

I should have done it a few days ago... I think I will do it tonight


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