# Walk away splits, brood breaks, and OAV



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

If you can see mites on a new queen then you have a mite problem. I have treated nucs with virgin queen in them I use 1/2 gram for a 5 frame deep nuc. I have never had a queen problem from doing so. While on a brood break a single treatment will get better than 99% of the mites.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

First, it's not a cup of bees, it's half a cup. And they are not harmed (more or less) by a _sugar_ shake. And you don;t need to do any small or weak colony, just do the stronger ones, for now. But treat them all whenever any one colony needs it in the same yard.

I'd wait until the virgins get out and mated and are back laying (another 7 -10 days), but before she has any capped larvae, hit them with OAV. Before any larvae are capped, all the mites in the hive are in the phoretic state on adult bees, and so highly vulnerable to the treatment.

Use this time to organize your OAV equipment and test it. Be ready soon after you see eggs. The baby bees are eggs for 3 1/2 days and open brood for an additional 5 1/2 days, so those 8 or 9 days are your window of opportunity. Any larger colonies with capped brood will need a series, but the broodless ones, will be fine with a one-shot, for now.

And keep in mind queens with visible mites may have already been infected with viruses that will shorten their lifetimes, so plan ahead for that down the road (next year, for instance).

And a lesson learned: don't make unforced splits from colonies that you don't know are in the best health and mite free to begin with. Sometimes you are forced to split (queen cells discovered, etc.) but planning your year-round mite control program so that in the late spring the bees are in the best shape possible, with very low mites, _and no need for immediate treatment_, allows you a lot of flexibility to raise clean, healthy queens (and drones) with the least exposure to pesticides when they are young.

You are in a position to do that, if you do one last OAV, late season treatment once your bees are finally broodless and flying weather has ceased. You may still have to do another series of OAV this fall to keep knocking back varroa. But that broodless treatment after Thanksgiving, before Christmas in my area most years, is the most powerful one of all because it not only cleans out most of the remaining mites and insures that your wintering bees are free from them, but it also means that your spring bees are clean because bees in the the north don't fly around in cold weather, so no new mites will come into the hive for months.

Next season start a regular program of sugar rolls, rotating through all your hives so that you always know what your infestation rate is and can plan ahead.

Enj.


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