# TF and mites



## FlowerPlanter (Aug 3, 2011)

>Think I will try to Oxalic dribble and see what I find. 

Dribble is hard on your bees, you can only do it once to your winter bees or you may kill them.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

While this is quite true, southern bees do not need to survive nearly as long a winter as northern bees, so dribble is much more usable for us. The key to using dribble is knowing your hives well enough to know when they are most likely to be broodless or nearly so. I use it twice a year--March and late November and have very good mite control so far. I have a heavy VSH presence in my hives, which certainly contributes to that control. 

BTW It is my understanding that OAD shortens the lifespan, which is why it works for us Southerners better than you Northies who need bees to live for months and months. By comparison my hives are broodless for a few weeks at best. Many years I have brood year-round.

HTH

Rusty


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

Rusty - If i used dribble I have some questions. Do you mind answering some questions I have. You could PM me your answers if you want to. 

So will it kill just open brood? So will it kill just capped brood? Several of my hives didn't go broodless like you so will it kill all the brood? Will they just clean out the dead and keep laying? If you don't mind can you share what you have seen in your hives and anyone else can too, but leave this to what you have seen, not read. Sadly what all we read on the internet is not always true. So I am asking for what folks have seen.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

It has no direct effect on any brood in the hive nor does it have any effect on any mites contained in the brood unless perhaps they are due to emerge in the next few days. It's a very effective treatment if the hives are strong and have little brood in them. A strong hive just seems to absorb it and a day later shows no ill effects, a weaker hive just seems to have trouble dealing with it and appears wet and stressed for several days following treatment. It's not a miracle mite killer but it is pretty darn effective when used in the right situation. 
I'm aware there is at least one study that claimed future brood rearing was curtailed somewhat. My experience in spring use when queens are in peak egg laying mode is that it doesn't seem to faze them at all. I've even seen them in swarm mode 6 weeks later.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

Jim - That is the type experience I was looking for comments on. Many thanks.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

My experiences seem to mirror Mr. Lyon's. My bee yard is MUCH smaller than his and I guess my hives are pretty strong because I have not had any wet hives after a November treatment and they seem to take off like gangbusters after the March treatment.

I should say that I don't treat every hive. Several of mine have never shown me a mite and so have not been treated at all since I added the VSH genetics to the mix. They still have their F1 queens. Now the F3 hives show a LOT of mites but respond extremely well to the OAD. Nonetheless they are getting re-queened in the spring. I already have my order in for some Pol-Line queens. I've pretty much decided that if I'm staying with VSH I need to keep only F1 and F2 queens and replace any F3s. For me at least, the F3 queens just don't seem to have the level of VSH necessary to thrive.

HTH

Rusty


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

Rusty - Thanks


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## bw200314 (Sep 3, 2015)

might not be the best idea but i used powered sugar for mite treatment. have a siffter and fill with power sugar and do the top of the frames. the bees lick the sugar off each other and mites fall off and out the bottom screen board. so far this has work really well for me. in third year


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

Powdered sugar worked very well on the mites for me, too, back when I tried it. But I created such an ant problem! The ants were harder to get rid of than the mites and all but overran the hives. I'm still finding and killing ant mounds.

Rusty


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## McCoslin (Dec 4, 2013)

Try checking out Randy Oliver's site. A lot of info on OAD and OAV. I went with OAV as my bees were not building up like they should this spring. I did a sugar shake and sure enough had mites, quite a few in some hives. After I used OAV they exploded. Good Luck!


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## AHudd (Mar 5, 2015)

I agree with Rusty about the F1 and F2. One colony of mine with an F3 just collapsed a couple days ago from Mite infestation. 

Alex


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## jadebees (May 9, 2013)

My trials with TF, caused hives with mites to be smaller and weaker in the spring. They wont build properly, and as Fall comes they generally collapse. Not treating those ****ed mites, has a predictable end. I dont keep a lot of bees, I just couldn't sustain the losses.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

marshmasterpat said:


> So what percentage of drone brood with mites would be a concern?


No exact figure can be given because other factors like time of year, existing virus load etc play a part but if you want some kind of rule of thumb to work with go with 25% for drone brood or 6% for worker brood.

Another useful number, or rough figure anyway, is that in a hive with a reasonable amount of drone brood, the drone brood produces more mites per larva, but around 40% of the mites will be in the drone brood and around 60% in the worker brood. However there is normally a lot more worker brood so the mites are spread more thinly among it.

In my hives I run combs of pure drone to make drones for mating purposes. A while back I spiked and pulled all the larvae on one side of a comb, no mites I thought that was pretty good. Pulled the larvae on the other side then near the end there were 2 only cells with mites but lots of mites in each one, the only sensible reason I can think why the mites would come together in just 2 cells would be for group mating among the offspring. The cells were newly capped so all the mites would have been foundress mites. Point being, if I had stopped after doing the first side I would have thought the hive virtually mite free.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Oldtimer said:


> No exact figure can be given because other factors like time of year, existing virus load etc play a part but if you want some kind of rule of thumb to work with go with 25% for drone brood or 6% for worker brood.
> 
> Another useful number, or rough figure anyway, is that in a hive with a reasonable amount of drone brood, the drone brood produces more mites per larva, but around 40% of the mites will be in the drone brood and around 60% in the worker brood. However there is normally a lot more worker brood so the mites are spread more thinly among it.
> 
> In my hives I run combs of pure drone to make drones for mating purposes. A while back I spiked and pulled all the larvae on one side of a comb, no mites I thought that was pretty good. Pulled the larvae on the other side then near the end there were 2 only cells with mites but lots of mites in each one, the only sensible reason I can think why the mites would come together in just 2 cells would be for group mating among the offspring. The cells were newly capped so all the mites would have been foundress mites. Point being, if I had stopped after doing the first side I would have thought the hive virtually mite free.


Great post OT. Tested a couple hives (10% of what I have) for mites. Each one was at the 2-3% level so just assumed they all were infested. Treated them and moved on. Anxiously waiting for spring to see how well the treatment worked and how well the bees took it. Knowing that there probably was about to be a mite-explosion makes me fell a lot better about doing the treatments and the cost. $4 per hive seemed like very cheap insurance (if it works).


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## Ski (Jan 18, 2007)

We were taught to treat hives early enough so that you will have at least two brood cycles before the queen cuts way back on laying. The reason behind this was that you don't want sick bees taking care of your winter bees. So the saying was you want to take care of the bees that take care of the bees that go into winter. So I am not sure folks in Illinois will get two brood cycles before the queen cuts back on laying so there maybe sick bees taking care of bees that will go into winter which may skew any results in the spring. 
This was just a thought that I wrote off the top of my head so if it doesn't fit here just ignore it.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

OT - Thanks for that information, makes a lot of sense. 

Due to where I am located, we still have heavy flow going as well as nice weather, nights have not hit 50s yet. Probably have another month and a half of brood weather and brood area is still being filled with eggs as capped brood emerge. They will slowing down soon I hope. However the nucs are showing no evidence of slowing down brood production. 

I may hold off doing OAD for another month. Letting more winter bee emerge I hope.

Hacked some drone brood comb yesterday and feed to the ants. Figure if I take 1 mite or 100 it still is helping the hives.


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## erlaita (Jan 17, 2015)

pardon my ignorance: what is TF?


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

erlaita said:


> pardon my ignorance: what is TF?


Treatment free.


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

Ski said:


> We were taught to treat hives early enough so that you will have at least two brood cycles before the queen cuts way back on laying. The reason behind this was that you don't want sick bees taking care of your winter bees.


I think this one of the most important and most overlooked aspect of successful beekeeping. The importance of a strong, healthy winter cluster has become the whole focus of our season. Having healthy bees of the correct caste that don't have higher mortality rates due to pierced exoskeletons and reduced morale increased disease from mites is critical. This two brood cycles goal means if a beekeepers is thinking about mite treatments in September when the honey comes off the ship has already sailed. When we ran our TF yard to improve our own stock we had hives that went into winter with scarry mite loads that came out alive in the spring, those hives we wanted. We found that in many cases successful genetics meant hives that could carry larger mite loads successfully not hives without any mites, an unrealistic goal. The hives that crashed we considered a success as well (it is painful until you grasp the mindset)as we were weeding out the weak genetics.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

good post joel. do you find that there is an infestation rate beyond which even successful genetics cannot overcome?


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

I like that concept of a TF yard to improve my own stock. I am not seeing high levels in most my hives, but plan to do multiple sugar shakes later this month. That should give me a good idea of what is going on. 

So if the goal is shooting for 2 complete brood cycles of bees post treatments, that would be around mid September here. Could push to early September to be safe (start of gator season might be the target). Still looking at 8+ frames of brood in most my hives right now. 

Joel - Looks like your temperatures are stilling almost 15-20 degrees cooler at night with you breaking below 40, we have not gone below 59 at night yet. Have one hive still pulling comb. She is on the list to get queens from next year. 

Good stuff to put in my next year's calendar.

Thanks everyone


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> good post joel. do you find that there is an infestation rate beyond which even successful genetics cannot overcome?[/QUOTE
> 
> USDA guidelines tell us hives will suffer mite damage/collapse at from 3 to 10 mites per 100 bees in a colony. We are commonly seeing and average of 20/100 bees in our fall inspections and have reached a point we no longer consider that a threshold for collapse in our operation as we are looking at healthy hives. Our NY inspector looks at me and shakes his head when he does our fall mite counts. We have not established the "collapse" point but when we are seeing 30/100 and above we are usually looking at bald brood which is one of our indicators of a hives threshold. We have learned a couple of things along the way. 1st is to keep an open mind about what you are looking at. We were working to have bees which were able to wipe out mite populations. We have seen an observable increase in worker aggression on mites, a notable increase. More unexpectedly is hives carry mite loads which would have wiped them out 10 years ago. The 2nd thing is the road to better bees goes way beyond the genetics and management. Dr. Shiminoko from Beltsville (retired) back in the 1990's taught me hives succumb to disease and pest when they are weakened. Picture the hive as an organism like the human body, each caste within the hive (nurse bee, worker bee and so on) represents an organ within that organism such as a heart or a liver per se. Now think about the organism with a weak caste system, maybe not enough nurse bees, a weak heart, now add a pesticide impact to field bees, weak lungs....you get the picture. Running well caste balance hives that are stong in population we think is critical to success in making better bees. We identified stressors we manage in order to avoid or minimize those stressor. How we make our nucs/splits, when we transport our bees, the times of day we choose to open hives-when we feed and more importantly what we feed are all aimed at reducing stressors and keeping healthy hives. One of the biggest stressors in every season is the long dearth we call winter. We developed a feed supplement for our bees that they like so well if there are remnants still in the hive during the spring honey flow they will still finish the feed, all of it. Finally, we will intervene when necessary but use the minimum impact we can. Our goal is not to wipe out mites any more, it is to keep them below the threshold. This allows the host and the pest to work towards a symbiosis. We intervene with hives which have gone above and beyond the norm. Finally, breeding stock is so important. We must bring in new stock to freshen ours and in our operation that means a lot of stock. This means a ton of testing as we rotate through breeders. We use stock which has target genetics, a good reputation and then has been proven for three years in our operation before we use it for any breeding. Is our system perfect, not by a long shot. We have setbacks, we treat as necessary, we have some romping failures and set backs. All in all our stock is so much better than it was 10 years ago. Additionally our stock is carrying high counts of DWV and yet we do not see issues in our hives. 8 years ago hives with DWV were dropping like flies. Barry makes the point that using treatment on the path to success is important. We think that and well balanced, strong healthy hives are the best avenue. Super bees to super things we've found. We are fortunate in the sense we are a small fish in the big pond when it comes to commercial. I spend time in big operations every spring and knowing what is going on in 2000 or more hives is much different than knowing what is going on in a few hundred. It may surprise many but I meet few "big" operators who are not of a similar mind set.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

that's awesome. many thanks for the thorough response joel, i'm looking forward to more of your posts. 

i also believe nutrition plays a bigger role than it is often given credit for. is your feed formula proprietary or something you can share here?


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## Joel (Mar 3, 2005)

It is proprietary because we are working on marketing it but frankly with some good research on Randy Olivers web site anyone can come up with an adequate supplement. Those that don't want to order and mix all the necessary ingredients or experiment could consider purchasing ready made. The run of the mill ones on the market are shy some pretty important ingredients so make your own or buy the best.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood joel. thanks again for sharing your experiences with mite/virus resistance here.


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