# Drone comb loaded with mites



## jfb58

I checked my back yard top bar hive which was started with a feral swarm. It seems to be doing well, though it has stopped expanding after filling about two thirds of its four foot length. I have harvested about a bar of honey over each of the last two months, and added a bar to the brood nest 4 times. Yesterday I pulled a heavy bar of capped honey--the bottom third was drone comb. I was a little surprised to find 2-4 mites on each of the drone larvae.

I haven't done an alcohol wash. Does the count in drone brood correlate with a dangerous level of varroa indicating need for treatment? How effective is drone comb culling in controlling mites?


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## crofter

I think it is high. Worker cells will be lower rate of infestation than the drone cells, but in my climate with cool spring I think that load of mites would really slow down buildup. Here is a pic of some drone comb I culled in August. Did not find _any_ visible mites. The culling was mostly to check the effectiveness of the OA vaporization I did in April.


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## jmgi

What I would do if I found that many mites on the drone brood as you did, is take your capping scratcher and go throught the hive and scratch open all the drone brood so the bees will remove them and the mites.


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## ken rice

Remove the drone comb and freeze it


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## Oldtimer

If 25% of drone larvae have a mite in them, at that level it is likely that 6% of worker brood will have mites in them.

But you have to sample around 100 drone cells because the mites can "cluster" in one small area of comb and give a wrong reading in a small sample.

The 25% drone brood infestation is considered a critical level for the hive, the level at which many textbooks recommend the hive is treated. For you though, it is a simple matter to remove the drone brood thereby removing a good portion of the mites. As above, the comb can be discarded, or frozen then returned to the hive.

Just to complicate things , there is a body of thought in the treatment free community, that mite levels should be left to run their course in the hope that maybe the hive will throw off the mites. However if this is your only hive & you want to play safe you would treat it or at the very least remove drone brood and continue to monitor.


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## Dave Burrup

You will need to completely remove the drone brood. If you just scratch them open and leave them in the hive the mites will crawl out of the opened cells and into another one faster than the bees can remove them.
Dave


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## crofter

I have frozen complete deep frames of drone and returned it to the hive. It was a bad experience since the bees seem to dump most of the carcasses within a few feet of the entrance. That amounts to 4 or 5 pounds of stinking mess that attracts flies, ants, hornets etc. Even covering it with ashes the smell lingered for a long while. 

You can uncap and blow the larvae out with air hose or a water hose sharp spray nozzle but that is a bit of a mess too, including your glasses. I tried a few foundationless frames and they get drawn out quickly and you can just cut the whole slab out leaving a fringe on the top bar and throw it back in immediately. My chickens enjoy cleaning the comb for me!


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## jfb58

My fish pond took care of the drone larvae--no chickens. Are bees the gateway drug for chickens or vise versa?

The section I removed was the only drone comb I saw and there had to be at least 300 mites in that section of about 150 cells with an estimated 90% infestation rate. Guess that means treatment, but I'll try my first alcohol wash tomorrow to confirm.

Thanks for the responses.


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## Michael Bush

>I was a little surprised to find 2-4 mites on each of the drone larvae.

That is high.

>I haven't done an alcohol wash. 

A sugar shake won't kill the poor bees...

>Does the count in drone brood correlate with a dangerous level of varroa indicating need for treatment?

It is a high level of mites.

> How effective is drone comb culling in controlling mites? 

You would remove the mites that prefer drones... which would select for mites that prefer workers...


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## beemandan

Michael Bush said:


> which would select for mites that prefer workers...


Good idea! Then the remaining mites....those that prefer worker brood.....would have a much lower reproductive success rate and the mite loads would grow much more slowly.
I like it.


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## jadebees

The mites prefer drones, and a new natural method of control is to introduce foundation sized for drones, and then remove and destroy it, therby lowering the colony mite population. Try it on purpose, you seem to have the perfect hive to experiment with. Good luck!


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## Oldtimer

Jfb58, if you do go the treatment route, might I recommend Apivar (not Api-Life-Var, a different product). This is because there are many pitfalls treating hives especially in a TBH. Some treatments such as thymol based ones or organic acid ones are virtually impossible to do effectively in a TBH.
Apivar is pretty fullproof, you just hang the strips between the combs, 2 or 3 strips would do for an average TBH, and you leave them there 8 to 10 weeks. Over that time they leach a chemical that kills the mites. Doesn't get the ones in brood cells so an 8 week time period is to catch 2 drone brood cycles just incase some mites didn't get caught first time around.
The active ingredient is called Amitraz, it is an artificial chemical, however it has a very short 1/2 life, ie, once it is out of the strip and among the bees it is chemically unstable and breaks down in a few days so does not remain in the hive for years like some other chemicals do.
With your high mite count, the hive may already be in more trouble than you realise, with possibly all the worker brood affected as well, and sometimes it can be too late to save such a hive even if all mites are removed because they cannot get a cycle of healthy brood through. So if you do decide to treat, do it soon as.


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## Michael Bush

>Then the remaining mites....those that prefer worker brood.....would have a much lower reproductive success rate and the mite loads would grow much more slowly.
I like it. 

But Apis cerana has the opposite arrangement and survive Varroa quite well. The Varroa only prefer the drones and the workers are not damaged. I think you already have the problem that they don't perfer the drones enough and that's why your workers are damaged. Less mites does not necessarily mean less damage as the cerana have shown us.


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## jfb58

I did a count, had 7 mites on 203 nurse bees, 3.5%. These are locally adapted survivors from a swarm trap collected 6 months ago: not too bad to work with, but they were plenty p-o'ed when I brushed off a brood comb. This isn't my only hive, and no monetary risk, seems like a good opportunity to watch and see what happens. Mr. Bush, I look forward to meeting you in Arizona next month, hope you are still coming!


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## Oldtimer

Let's know either way in due course jfb58, I'd be interested to see if they can throw off an infection that bad.


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## beemandan

Michael Bush said:


> The Varroa only prefer the drones and the workers are not damaged.


In A cerana, I don't think 'preference' enters the picture. I believe that varroa are unable to successfully reproduce in worker brood.


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## Michael Bush

http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/89/07/44/PDF/hal-00890744.pdf

That does seem to be the common view, but in this study they said they COULD reproduce contrary to what had been thought. Of 720 worker cells, 3 cells were infested with Varroa. of 132 drone cells 18 were infested. That is a ratio on workers of 0.0041666666666667 and a ration on drones of 0.1363636363636364 or a 32 times preference for drones... I would say they prefer drones and it looks like that is the reason they can tolerate them.


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## WBVC

Oldtimer said:


> Let's know either way in due course jfb58, I'd be interested to see if they can throw off an infection that bad.


Can Amitraz be used when honey supers are on? In vet med with respect to mammals it is considered quite toxic.


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## DPBsbees

WBVC said:


> Can Amitraz be used when honey supers are on? In vet med with respect to mammals it is considered quite toxic.


No. The only commercial miticides that can be used with supers on, that I am aware of, are MAQS and HopGuard.


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## beemandan

Michael Bush said:


> this study they said they COULD reproduce contrary to what had been thought. Of 720 worker cells, 3 cells were infested with Varroa.


Three worker cells containing a foundress mite hardly indicates that they can successfully reproduce in them. 
You implied in an earlier post that culling drone cells would put selection pressure on those who reproduced in worker cells. The purpose of my initial response was to point out the silliness of such a 'hypothesis'. Getting bogged down in an equally ridiculous debate is a waste of both my time and yours.


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## jfb58

>The mites prefer drones, and a new natural method of control is to introduce foundation sized for drones, and then remove and destroy it, therby lowering the colony mite population. Try it on purpose, you seem to have the perfect hive to experiment with. Good luck!

This is a top bar hive, so I don't know how to induce drone formation. Might try a piece of plastic "drone foundation" wedged onto a top bar. 

>Let's know either way in due course jfb58, I'd be interested to see if they can throw off an infection that bad.

Me too!! The people on this forum who have reported success in snatching the brass ring of treatment free bees often seem to have done so with hot climate, swarm prone colonies. I have been happy so far in the productivity without feeding or chemicals, and they don't seem too mean to me. The mite load was a sobering, wish I would have checked for mites before


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## Michael Bush

>Three worker cells containing a foundress mite hardly indicates that they can successfully reproduce in them. 

Not really my point, but it was a conclusion of the study. My point is they prefer the drones by a very wide margin in cerana and that is why they don't have problems with Varroa.

>You implied in an earlier post that culling drone cells would put selection pressure on those who reproduced in worker cells.

How can it not?

>The purpose of my initial response was to point out the silliness of such a 'hypothesis'.

How much of an effect it is over what period of time, remains to be seen, but I think it's obvious that it would select for mites that perfer workers if you keep removing mites that prefer drones.

If I had the time to do all those uncapped mite counts I would be curious what the proportions are in large cell compared to small cell. A stronger preference for drones is likely part of why small cell works.


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## Oldtimer

Can you see commercial beekeepers going around their hives fortnightly and culling all the drone comb? Can you even see many hobbyists doing it? Since better than 99% of hives are commercial, and of the remaining less than 1% hobby hives just a tiny proportion would have serious methodical drone culling, I cannot believe drone culling is done to anything like sufficient extent to have an effect on Mite evolution. Not even a thousand years from now.
There is no harm at all in this hobbyist doing it on one TBH, culling drones is not evil, and his actions will not bring about the destruction of world beekeeping.
Just the time waste and difficulty of this procedure will ensure it will never be used to an extent big enough to outweigh other evolutionary pressures.

re the Amitraz in honey issue, no you cannot (according to the label) have honey supers on when using it. It's academic now because he says he will not treat the hive, but if he were to, it does not have honey supers on it. If there was surplus honey he could remove it prior to treatment, but store it incase the bees need it back during the treatment period.
The Apivar label says not to treat with supers on, that will save their butt should there ever be any legal challenge claiming someone was poisoned due to it's use. In practise, it was many years before Amitraz was ever detected in commercially harvested honey, due to it's short 1/2 life, this despite in reality hives do get treated with Amitraz with honey on, in it's legal, and illegal formulas. ( Formulae, for the spelling cops.  ) I personally, would have no difficulty consuming honey harvested from a hive with Apivar in it, honey does not readily absorb Amitraz, but if any does get in, it will not last long. Would I supply such honey to someone else? No. Not that I think it would do any harm, but more just a breach of faith type thing, if I am ethical, eventually people will perceive me that way.


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## beemandan

The mere suggestion that an individual beekeeper....or even a group of beekeepers could significantly alter the varroa mite/honey bee interaction, simply by culling drone brood is preposterous. The fact that anyone would attempt to defend this basic absurdity......astounds me.


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## jfb58

Oldtimer said:


> Can you see commercial beekeepers going around their hives fortnightly and culling all the drone comb? Can you even see many hobbyists doing it? Since better than 99% of hives are commercial, and of the remaining less than 1% hobby hives just a tiny proportion would have serious methodical drone culling, I cannot believe drone culling is done to anything like sufficient extent to have an effect on Mite evolution. Not even a thousand years from now.
> There is no harm at all in this hobbyist doing it on one TBH, culling drones is not evil, and his actions will not bring about the destruction of world beekeeping.
> Just the time waste and difficulty of this procedure will ensure it will never be used to an extent big enough to outweigh other evolutionary pressures.


In case you didn't notice, this is the Top Bar Hive Forum I also drain boils every day, not sure what your point is.


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> I cannot believe drone culling is done to anything like sufficient extent to have an effect on Mite evolution. Not even a thousand years from now.


And....even if you could get all the commercials and hobbyists (top bar included) on board....they'd have to cull 100%....and who'd cull the ferals? 
And once that was all finished....who'd there be to mate with the virgin queens?
But....let's not forget....the original statement was being applied to a single hobby beekeeper. Preposterous. And now we're debating the varroa habits within A cerana colonies....in an effort to support it.
Makin' my brain hurt.


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## Oldtimer

Jfb58 to answer your question re drone foundation, you don't need to use it. The bees naturally need a percentage of drone comb. If you cut out the drone comb and put those bars back in the hive, once the bees perceive they have less drone comb that they want in the hive they will build more.

The exception is for very weak hives, which will build only worker cells if they think their very survival is at risk and they cannot waste resources on drone raising.


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## Oldtimer

jfb58 said:


> In case you didn't notice, this is the Top Bar Hive Forum I also drain boils every day, not sure what your point is.


Just seen this, sorry you missed the point. The discussion over several posts previous to my comment you have quoted was re the effect of drone culling on mite evolution. There is nothing particularly precious about top bar beekeeping, varroa mite evolution is a beekeeping issue and is affected by beekeeping. Not just top bar hives. Get the point now? Some problems have to be approached holistically (big picture), whether we spend our day draining boils, or not. `

I had made a sincere effort to give you useful info in this thread and in fact think I have been very helpful. However if you think otherwise I'll let it go.


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> we spend our day draining boils


Ewwwww.....but I've guess everyone's got to be doing something.
Pretty neat how I took that quote out of context.....isn't it?


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## Oldtimer

LOL


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## Michael Bush

>I cannot believe drone culling is done to anything like sufficient extent to have an effect on Mite evolution. Not even a thousand years from now.

It's not evolution, it's selective breeding.

500 years ago the only horses that would trot were pretty much war horses. All the rest had been bred to not trot. Trotting was not considered a good trait. As roads improved and carts were common, trotting was more useful. In one mans life time the population of horses in the world were selectively bred from almost all not trotting to almost all trotting. That is not evolution. It's selective breeding. Evolution is an entirely different matter.


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## Oldtimer

Drone culling is done on (maybe) 0.01% of hives, probably less. Was the transformation of horses achieved by selective pressure on only 0.01% of horses?

No?

Then perhaps you will have to agree with my point. A little drone culling on an infinitesimally small number of hives bees will not affect evolution or outweigh other evolutionary or selective pressures.

I'll even bet that while horses were being selected for trotting during the time frame you say, human nature being what it is, there would have been a few hold outs not happy with the modern trotting trend, and selecting against trotting. Probably more than 0.01% of horse owners. Yet you claim horses were transformed into trotting horses. The 0.01% was not enough to change the tide, so if horse breeding illustrates mite breeding as you imply, you have shown that a person with a TBH need not concern himself with the selective issues around culling some drone comb from his hive.


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## Michael Bush

>Drone culling is done on (maybe) 0.01% of hives, probably less. Was the transformation of horses achieved by selective pressure on only 0.01% of them?

If a hobbyist or commercial person is doing drone removal religiously I'd say they are putting selective pressure on 100% of them or at least near that. And mites have much shorter lives and can be bred to a particular trait in a much shorter time. Having that in my yard is not what I want. Will it affect you in NZ? Probably not unless you are doing the same. We all need to be breeding for mites that live with the bees if we want to change things. Not the other way around.


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> Was the transformation of horses achieved by selective pressure on only 0.01% of horses?


OT...you see how easy it is to get drawn away from the real question? 
Any rational person following this knows that one beekeeper....or even a number of beekeepers..... doing drone cell culling isn't going to change the nature of varroa. And all of the attempts to make A cerana and horse analogies isn't going to erase the foolishness of the earlier post.


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## Dominic

Didn't studies say that 40 percent of varroa was on worker brood? Culling drones only deals with about half of your capped mites...


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## Oldtimer

Michael Bush said:


> If a hobbyist or commercial person is doing drone removal religiously.


Operative word IF. Almost nobody is. And as per you horse breeding illustration, that tiny number did not change the tide.

However I do understand where you are coming from but we also need to look beyond theory, and primarily look at what is actually happening. The guy with the top bar can cut his piece of drone brood, or not, I don't really care.


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## Michael Bush

>Culling drones only deals with about half of your capped mites... 

The half that prefer drones.


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## Oldtimer

Michael Bush said:


> The half that prefer drones.


A citation to support that exists?


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## beekuk

Michael Bush said:


> The half that prefer drones.


Drone brooding is for a relatively short part of the season, what happens to them when drone brooding ends.


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## jfb58

Oldtimer said:


> I had made a sincere effort to give you useful info in this thread and in fact think I have been very helpful. However if you think otherwise I'll let it go.


Boy, you are touchy for someone who posts as much as you do. I don't think I mentioned evolution, I'm thinking of palliative surgery--the varroa infested hive as a disease ridden organism--cut or chemo? Are you thinking of your fans elsewhere: New York, Nebraska, England? Maybe you can change your title to Old F**t. My next suggestion is to candle combs to find areas of infestation. Got a horse analogy for that one?


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## Oldtimer

jfb58 said:


> Boy, you are touchy for someone who posts as much as you do. I don't think I mentioned evolution, I'm thinking of palliative surgery--the varroa infested hive as a disease ridden organism--cut or chemo? Are you thinking of your fans elsewhere: New York, Nebraska, England? Maybe you can change your title to Old F**t. My next suggestion is to candle combs to find areas of infestation. Got a horse analogy for that one?


 Too much coffee or something?

Sorry for troubling you.


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## beemandan

Michael Bush said:


> The half that prefer drones.


Nope. They all prefer drones. Half just get lucky.


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> Too much coffee or something?


If I drained boils all day.....I'd be pretty cranky too.


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## Michael Bush

>>The half that prefer drones.
>A citation to support that exists? 

A citation to prove that the ones that, when faced with drone or worker brood, infested the drone brood. That they prefer drones? I'm confused. They sorted themselves out.

>Drone brooding is for a relatively short part of the season, what happens to them when drone brooding ends. 

And that is exactly the right question. If they did as they do in cerana, they would do nothing when there was no drone brood.


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## jfb58

Oldtimer said:


> Too much coffee or something?
> 
> Sorry for troubling you.


Actually, too many beers after golf, apologies.


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## beemandan

Michael Bush said:


> If they did as they do in cerana, they would do nothing when there was no drone brood.


Absurd.


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## NeilV

There would only be selective pressure if there is a genetic basis for mites getting into worker brood. If there is no such genetic link, and it is chance that some mites end up in worker brood, then there is no possibility of selecting for mites who prefer worrker brood. I have no idea whether there is a genetic basis for varroa mites selecting worker vs. drone brood, or whether they all genetically prefer drone brood and some just end up in the less desirable worker brood. I don't know if anybody in the world can answer that question.

Also, it does not necessarily follow that selecting for mites that prefer worker brood would be bad, and it could very well be good. Mites don't reproduce as well in worker brood, so maybe it would be good if we could breed a mite that is not attracted to drone brood. For all I know, that could be the silver bullet to Varro mites (although I doubt it). Once again, I don't know if anybody in the world really knows the answer to this question.

Bottom line, I don't think anybody has any actual knowledge about these factors. 

There is evidence that drone removal is effective in the short-term, and it is most certainly chemical-free. I do know one top-notch beekeeper who has been removing dronce comb (and breeding resistant bees) for a lot of years now, and he has very healthy bees, with no sign of breeding nastier mites.


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## jfb58

Videos about drone removal as part of hive management:

http://beetime.eu/rotation-beekeeping-system/

Presentation of special frames developed by Randy Oliver:

http://nwba.njbeekeepers.org/documents/education/varroa_management/Varroa_Management_Using_Drone_Brood_Removal.pdf


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## AR Beekeeper

According to Calderone, they tried to select for varroa that preferred worker brood but they were unsuccessful.


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## beemandan

NeilV said:


> Bottom line, I don't think anybody has any actual knowledge about these factors.


And I think you are right on the money.


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## jmgi

I think what we need here on the forum is a top notch entomological geneticist who can sift through all this speculation and give a once and for all answer. But something tells me that even then there will be some who think they know more than that person and will disagree.


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## jfb58

jmgi said:


> I think what we need here on the forum is a top notch entomological geneticist who can sift through all this speculation and give a once and for all answer. But something tells me that even then there will be some who think they know more than that person and will disagree.


This ultimate arbiter is driven by pressures to publish and obtain funding. Forums are free, but don't pay well, or add to resumes. Fortunately, some knowledgeable folks do post, and those are a real treat, and appreciated.


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## NeilV

It is amazing to me that honey bees are probably the most studied insect on Earth, yet we still don't know so very many things that would be very helpful to know. And we know even less about honey bee pests and diseases.


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## jmgi

Not all are appreciated, especially when they disagree just for the sake of disagreeing, or maybe a grudge, or envy.


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## PatBeek

.

I'm backing Michael Bush's reasoning in this matter based on his results for the past 10 years of beekeeping - treatment-free - and almost 30 years of beekeeping previous to that - probably mostly treatment-free, as well, before the varroa arrived..

.


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## Delta Bay

I don't see that commercial colonies leave much room for drone production other than between frames. Breaking boxes apart could be considered a subtle form of culling.


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## palangi

The practial (read lazy) beekeeper _would_ skip culling if the bees can thrive without it. Why not?

On the micro-level, will the bees in your apiary become more hygenic or mite-resistant if you keep culling drone cells? --I guess I don't want to bring up the selective breeding argument again, but this seems logical to me. If they're dieing from mites, maybe they should die. There certainly are bees thriving without treatment/culling. That seems like ideal selective breeding to me.

Lastly, I am convinced by those who say that the bees naturally prefer a certain percentage of drones/drone comb in the hive. I don't want my bees spending all their time/resources building new drone comb because I keep cutting it out making them feel unbalanced.


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## Duncan Thacker

WOW lets remember the Top Bar Hive was attractive as a more "natural" bee driven way to "handle" bees. Overthinking it totally defeats the purpose. If you want to or "have" to save a colony from mites culling the drone brood is by far the best way to DECREASE the "Mite Load" (remember these key terms). WHY because TBH bee handling is suppose to be SIMPLE and FUN. Get back to the basics! Who cares what brood mites prefer.....common sense would dictate and we know they prefer drone brood and some end up in worker brood, again SO WHAT. Its not where they are its the "LOAD" they place on the colony's ability to fight off viruses. Culling drone brood and powdered sugar treatments WORK the best at DECREASING the load and neither one involves harsh chemicals. If its not broke DON'T fix it........NOW my answer is the most effective and selective. Select for STRONGER bees, select to not have the mites........CULL the colony. Just my two cents worth.


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## Phoebee

Michael Bush said:


> >I was a little surprised to find 2-4 mites on each of the drone larvae.
> 
> That is high.
> 
> >I haven't done an alcohol wash.
> 
> A sugar shake won't kill the poor bees...
> 
> >Does the count in drone brood correlate with a dangerous level of varroa indicating need for treatment?
> 
> It is a high level of mites.
> 
> > How effective is drone comb culling in controlling mites?
> 
> You would remove the mites that prefer drones... which would select for mites that prefer workers...


I was looking up actual scientific papers on powdered sugar last night. They pretty much concur. A really heavy application can harm larvae, particularly at 8 days, but a light dusting is apparently fairly safe. And it can get mites off of adult bees. But what they don't say, and I'd like to know because it addresses the real crux of the issue, is does powdered sugar applied to late-stage larvae protect the resulting pupae? That's evidently where the nasty little rascals breed, in capped brood.

"Only large amounts of powdered sugar applied directly to brood cells harms immature honey bees"
Nicholas P. AlianoUniversity of Nebraska - Lincoln
Marion D. Ellis University of Nebraska - Lincoln

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/entomologyfacpub/179/


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## Duncan Thacker

Never saw it harm the brood. The benefit outweighs the risk exponentially anyway. Again overthinking it would be a shame, it takes all the fun out. Remember for every scientific paper that says one thing there are several that say something different. Here is a simple rule to follow. If you hear about something TRY IT FIRST, do your own experimenting and share, share, share your results so that everyone may benefit. The beauty is in the experience, if you want to read journals go to the library. Want to learn about bees go to the apiary!!!!!!


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## Duncan Thacker

OH, I am a fan of both of the Ellises I find both of them very objective.


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## Phoebee

Duncan,

Yeah, but HIVE+ and I have been having a PM discussion about methods, so getting in to the papers from formal studies helps us decide which methods we can actually handle. Maybe I can't evaluate correlation between hygienic behavior and certain volatile compounds emitted by dead pupae, because I don't have GC/MS, but I can certainly build the cages from wood and hardware cloth used in this study by the same guys who did the heavy sugar study above.

"A strategy for using powdered sugar to reduce varroa populations in honey bee colonies"

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=entomologyfacpub

Determining varroa on capped brood is best done by sacrificing the brood, but that's what you do with the drone brood strategy anyway. Instead of feeding the brood to the chickens, evidently you drown them in alcohol to kill and dislodge mites (at least, that's what these researchers do with samples of adults). A mason jar of moonshine ... uh, I mean denatured alcohol is evidently good enough labware. Hey, drones either get kicked out to starve or die the first time they have sex. Maybe drowning in booze is not a bad option.


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## marshmasterpat

Phoebee said:


> Hey, drones either get kicked out to starve or die the first time they have sex. Maybe drowning in booze is not a bad option.


I will drink to that.


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## Duncan Thacker

A perfect example of my point: the whole idea of "heavy" treatments with powdered sugar is a moot point. Experience already tells us powdered sugar is dusted on, Thomas Dowda's method perfected by Dennis Murrell. Always worked for me anywhere there are mites. Why? It removes mites from the colony when a mite count tells you the hive is approaching the economic threshold. Removing mites DECREASES the mite load. This combined with drone culling works anywhere. Brood is usually covered with bees anyway and the benefit exponentially out weighs the risk and as you pointed out drones are a dime a dozen.

Not saying stop reading journals, just don't blanket apply them without observing and adjusting. Environmental differenced require it.


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## Phoebee

Like I said, I'm more interested in the methods. Some of you guys already know these tricks but I'm scrambling to learn. Ferinstance, Mr. Bush mentioned an alcohol wash and I was not familiar with it. But one of the papers used the method, described what they were looking for, and now I know it is not some benevolent way of getting you bees all nice and clean and refreshed. But it gives the ability to count mites accurately on a sample of unfortunate bees, when otherwise you'd hardly spot any by just eyeballing frames.

If I want to study one of these factors that has not been looked at yet, I need to learn these methods. 

Whatever I can learn hanging around this forum, or in bee class, or from a soon-to-be-assigned mentor is great as well. Fact is, I'm wallowing in this stuff and can't wait for mid-April when we pick up our nucs. Sorry, Duncan, I can't learn from my bees yet 'cause all I got is a couple of empty 8-frame hives. So instead I'm hitting the books, etc, and getting the stuff ready to go. Really pretty paint job on my supers, though.


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## Michael Bush

Actually someone else mentioned an alcohol wash. I countered with a sugar shake... I don't like killing bees on purpose...


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## Phoebee

Michael Bush said:


> Actually someone else mentioned an alcohol wash. I countered with a sugar shake... I don't like killing bees on purpose...


Looking back, I believe you "mentioned" alcohol wash, but that mention was that you had not done it. 

If I freeze drone brood I will have already done the murder ... might as well count the mites. I don't have chickens or a fish pond as some have suggested, and the last time I tried feeding bark beetle larvae to the birds, the ants got 'em first.


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## Duncan Thacker

Sorry I assumed.....But you are in for a fascinating ride. Good luck and be ready to report your observations because any one of us can learn something new, you may be the one who sees something I did not. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!


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## KQ6AR

Trying to attach a photo we took of mite infested drone brood.


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## BeekeepingIsGood

> The section I removed was the only drone comb I saw and there had to be at least 300 mites in that section of about 150 cells with an estimated 90% infestation rate.





> I did a count, had 7 mites on 203 nurse bees, 3.5%. These are locally adapted survivors from a swarm trap collected 6 months ago: not too bad to work with, but they were plenty p-o'ed when I brushed off a brood comb. This isn't my only hive, and no monetary risk, seems like a good opportunity to watch and see what happens. Mr. Bush, I look forward to meeting you in Arizona next month, hope you are still coming!


Thanks jfb58 for the numbers. I've been curious to what extend varroa prefers drones. There are summaries of numbers that come up when I do web searches, but I'm digging deeper to find the context for those numbers.

My current situation is similar to yours. Drone production is dwindling right now. I uncapped the small patch of remaining drones and found maybe 50-66% infested, often with multiple foundresses. As drone production dwindles do pretty much all remaining drone cells get infected? 

About a month ago I did a full colony sugar dusting after a drone comb emerged and about 35 mites dropped. I sugared them twice since then and got little to no drop. Yesterday, after uncapping the highly infected drones, a full colony sugar dusting yielded 1 mite. 

So it's hard for me to correlate any sense of the two measurements without assuming almost all the mites were in the drone comb. Maybe I do have to do a sugar roll of nurse bees, or protect my bottom board from ants, to get a broader picture of the infestation % situation.


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## Oldtimer

What it may demonstrate is that sugar dusting doesn't really get them.


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## BeekeepingIsGood

Oldtimer said:


> What it may demonstrate is that sugar dusting doesn't really get them.


Thing is it did get 35 after the drone comb emerged. Earlier this year I sugared a split raising it's own queen during the broodless period and saw a similar drop. In both heavily and mildly infested hives I sugared last year(gauged my visibility of DWV), I'd see significant drops (60-100+) within 15 minutes. It definitely gets them sometimes.


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## KQ6AR

I find sugar dusting does a good job on broodless colonies also.


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## marshmasterpat

SO if I don't have much drone brood, sugar shake should help get some of the mites out.


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## Oldtimer

To answer that, goes like this.

First re drone brood, even in a hive with a natural amount of drone brood, about 40% of mites in brood will be in the drone brood, and about 60% in the worker brood, or at least that's what was found when someone counted them all. Of course the ones in the drone brood produce more offspring due to the longer pupal stage.

But in any average hive around 80% of mites are inside brood cells, and around 20% walking around on bees (phoretic). So if a sugar dust is done, only around 20% of the mites are available to be contacted by the sugar. Of that 20%, only a small % of those, are actually dislodged, and this can be demonstrated by doing an alcohol wash of a bee sample immediately after a sugar dust to see what was missed by the sugar dust.

Because of the way mite populations expand exponentially, often a mite population can be right back, or past where it was, very soon after a sugar dust.

However people still think it works, because they do a sugar dust and find some mites afterwards, so therefore it "worked". Many do not consider that finding 100 mites is not going to do much good if the mite population of a hive is 2000, which it easily can be. A better test than seeing how many mites dropped without knowing the total population, would be to see where the hive is a few months later.


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## BeekeepingIsGood

Oldtimer said:


> So if a sugar dust is done, only around 20% of the mites are available to be contacted by the sugar. Of that 20%, only a small % of those, are actually dislodged


Randy Oliver seems to feel it might be as high as 40% of the phoretic mites.




> However people still think it works, because they do a sugar dust and find some mites afterwards, so therefore it "worked".


In this context, I'm mainly looking at it to provide some indication of overall infestation levels. The problem is on 3 of 4 occasions virtually no mites dropped. Even if we extremely low-balled sugar dusting as only dropping 1% of the phoretic mites(20% of the overall mite pop.), and guess that despite seeing 66% infestation in the drone comb there's only a 9% total infestation, I'd still expect 14 mites drop in a hive of 80 000 bees. If we use Randy's 40% figure then I should being seeing 576 mites drop. 

Perhaps there's something else at play here? The reason why I peeked in the drone brood in the first place was because I saw an undeveloped worked getting pulled out of the entrance.



> SO if I don't have much drone brood, sugar shake should help get some of the mites out.


A small percent. Those that have found it useful were doing it at high frequencies before a serious mite problem developed, or during broodless periods. These are my notes on sugar dusting varroa.


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## Oldtimer

Yes agree. Based on your best case, and worst case calculations, you should have seen minimum 14 mite drop, and maximum 576. But "The problem is on 3 of 4 occasions virtually no mites dropped".

Which demonstrates that sugar dusting is not effective, or at least not reliable. That's the something else that's at play.

Having said all that, if someone wants to sugar dust I have no issues with it, other than it can damage young larvae although they can be quickly replaced with minimal loss to the hive, and don't rely on it to rid your hive of mites.


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## BeekeepingIsGood

> Which demonstrates that sugar dusting is not effective, or at least not reliable.


I will acknowledge this as a possibility, but I don't have any reason to believe absolutely that it's so incredibly ineffective.

There was a unique situation with 1 of 4 times that the sugar dusting did show a drop with this hive. Given the information available, I don't see why a low overall mite infestation in spite of the heavy drone infestation is not equally plausible.


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