# another mite treatment in order?



## Dan the bee guy (Jun 18, 2015)

Yikes do a sugar roll that seems like a lot of mites to drop. FYI I treated with MAQS and it failed me.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

I am ~700 mi north of you (Zone 8, Seattle area) and my Carniolan hives still had capped worker brood and open brood as of 10/31. Last year, after one round of OAV in August, mite levels quickly bounced back to high levels, so I started “numerous OAVs” (every 2-3 days) starting at the end of September. Mite drops (at 48hr) kept rising throughout October then fluctuated between 100-500 throughout November then rapidly declined to 5-15 in early December. So I guessed the earliest time to start effective round OAV treatment in my hands here is mid November. This year, after treating with MAQS in August (which did bring mites to very low levels), I had a hive in which mite counts suddenly increased by several folds in a week, in mid October. I thought about doing a half dose MAQS but decided to try Apivar for the first time. So far, it seems to be working.


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

This is the problem I am seeing as well. Even though your hives were treated, and the mite levels looked good a few days or weeks ago, the neighbors did not treat and their mite problem keeps getting sent to your hives. I do not believe it is enough any more to do one treatment in the fall. It appears that a series of treatments is the future.


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## baybee (Jan 10, 2016)

Kuro said:


> I am ~700 mi north of you (Zone 8, Seattle area) and my Carniolan hives still had capped worker brood and open brood as of 10/31.


My bees here never stopped brooding last winter, which explains why OAV wasn't really effective. This Sept I applied full-dose MAQS, and it worked well except that one month later the mite level are pretty high again. I can't use Apivar because I want to take advantage of the eucalyptus flow which has started earlier and is stronger than last year.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

Eucalyptus honey sounds good. I suppose you need to use MAQS. In my old (2015?) instruction sheet, they say that half dose application (a single pad) can be done every two to six weeks throughout the bee-keeping season, although in their website, I only found “7 day” (2 pads at once) and “21 day” (1 pad two weeks apart) options.


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## sjj (Jan 2, 2007)

baybee said:


> ..., and it worked well except that one month later the mite level are pretty high again. ....


I would say, it did not work well.


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## dudelt (Mar 18, 2013)

sjj said:


> I would say, it did not work well.


I would not agree with this statement at all. The poster believed it worked well and there is no reason to believe otherwise and here is why. San Mateo is just south of San Francisco. Many would call it the original home of the hippies and is a well known area for being very progressive in both thought and lifestyle. The area is also known for an extreme prejudice against anything unnatural and is one of the havens in the US for an "organic" lifestyle. I would bet that there are more treatment free beekeepers in the area than any other area in the country and probably in the world. It is probably also be an area with a lot of new beekeepers. This combination of factors creates an environment full of collapsing hives (mite bombs) in the fall. Baybee is not the first poster from the area to have this exact story. Randy Oliver, also from California, has also commented on the issue in his recent seminars. He specifically mentions the San Francisco area as having the problem. How many times do we see people that document huge mite drops after treatments that would equate to colonies with 20 and 30 percent infestations? At those rates, the colonies should be dead but are not. My guess is that the treatments are effective but the influx of mites from other colonies after the treatment period is the issue.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

baybee said:


> My bees here never stopped brooding last winter, which explains why OAV wasn't really effective. This Sept I applied full-dose MAQS, and it worked well except that one month later the mite level are pretty high again. I can't use Apivar because I want to take advantage of the eucalyptus flow which has started earlier and is stronger than last year.


Good call. I put Apivar in four hives near 92 and 101 on 9/5 and added a medium depth empty upper brood chamber. When I went this week to remove the strips they had filled the new upper brood chamber solid with Euc honey. FOR SALE: two buckets of Apivar contaminated honey.


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## sjj (Jan 2, 2007)

dudelt said:


> ... My guess is that the treatments are effective but the influx of mites from other ...


Mites in the vicinity. The neighbors. This argumentation technique is not new. We know it.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

The yellow bees will allow you to see the mites better than the grey carnis
bees. Since the drones are allowed to enter any hive freely when they are tf then the
mite infestation will go up including your hives. The only effective solution is to get rid of 
the mites on all hives on nearby vicinity. Without treating the hives all at once it will cause a 
mite explosion come this Spring time. The hives will surely crashed by then!


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## baybee (Jan 10, 2016)

sjj said:


> I would say, it did not work well.


Yes, I didn't do mite count before and after, so MAQS might have been less efficient than I thought. I believe it has worked because after initial heavy mite drop, which lasted about two weeks, natural mite drop later on was next to nothing. It was a great change.

I don't know how many hives there are in the vicinity, local backyard beekeepers prefer to stay low profile. Three closest BYBKs I know are 1, 1.5, 1.7 mi away. I believe the one 1.5 mi away doesn't treat, no info on the other two. I'm sure there are bees closer by judging by an occasional swarm.

The hive right next to the hive with high mite drops remains relatively free of mites. Go figure. The bees in these two hives are very different. One has very mellow and mostly grey and black bees; the other yellow and black and really testy bees.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

The testy bees are the mutted bees with the grey and black bees. Mixed yellow or mixed grey with the
yellow will produce nasty bees in general on their first generation--the F1. Subsequent generation will be
better unless there are AHB drones present. To keep all hives gentle in the future I will requeen with the
gently stocks only. This will avoid stinging the neighbors when the hive grow bigger in the Spring time.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

baybee said:


> I believe it has worked because after initial heavy mite drop, which lasted about two weeks, natural mite drop later on was next to nothing.


That’s how I determine whether MAQS did what it supposed to do, and in my limited experience it always did.

However, as pointed out by others in other threads, MAQS works quickly and that’s it. If you did full-dose MAQS on 9/1, you did not have any protection against the surviving mite population and/or re-infection after 9/7. When I treated a colony with full dose MAQS on 9/14/15, mites did not have time to bounce back to high levels before winter, when I started a round OAV treatment. But this year after treating two colonies on 8/11/17, mite drops began to increase steadily around mid September and then jumped up in one colony in mid October, so I am treating both with Apivar. Next year, I may try the “21 day method” starting early September (I want to harvest fall honey in late September) to provide some protection against rebound/reinfection. To be honest, however, I do not know what to do if I live in the Bay area where bees and mites breed all year……..


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