# MAQS Checkbacks



## swamper1

Tom, I only treated 40 hives with the MAQS strips. Out of the 40, I have had to requeen 28 of them because of lost queens. Also, I could not believe the dead bees in front of the hives. The temperature on application day and after averaged 82 degrees so I don't think temps were the problem. I applied the strips in early May and am just now seeing the remaining 12 hives starting to brood up again. I hope others are having better results than I did but I am pretty sure I won't be using those strips again. Losing good queens is a poor trade off for mite control.


----------



## Tom G. Laury

From what I have seen so far those are the same results I am getting. Thanks for the reply swamper.


----------



## c10250

Anyone have any good news?? I'm getting bummed.


----------



## RayMarler

Hey Tom and Swamp,
Thanks for posting, hopefully we get some more postings from others who've used this product. I get asked alot about what to do for mites and was hopeful that MAQS would be a good product. So far from what you are saying, my hopes are dashed.


----------



## Walliebee

I treated 12 hives in early April, lost 5 queens. That's a 42% loss rate! I lost no queens in the untreated hives.


----------



## c10250

I found something interesting:

From http://www.pacificcrestapiaries.com/id56.html

We applied MAQS on our colonies the last day in March of 2011. We were most likely one of the first apiaries to receive our order in California. We used it as directed, according to the label instructions. Unfortunately, we did have problems associated with its use. Proper ventilation is key, of course. However, what is not told is that the beekeeper must slide the top box directly over the queen excluder on top of the brood box, back about an inch to 1-1/2" to allow for more ventilation. This is not on the label and has just been discovered by those of us who have used it for the first time here in our area. Some beekeepers have experienced the same problem we have, however, I cannot be sure of the number who have experienced this problem with brood decline, quite a lot of brood death, queen loss, and supercedure. We did not lose any colonies to complete death, however, we experienced many with a loss of the queen.


----------



## alpha6

Hey Tom we saw a whole cycle of brood kill. Check out my posts from 5/11/11.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...S-result-on-hi-mite-count&p=656788#post656788


----------



## Hokie Bee Daddy

Thanks for posting this. I haven't treated with these yet but planned to this fall.

Of those that had queen and brood loss did you use one strip or two? The directions say to use two but I've heard of people only using one.


----------



## Tom G. Laury

I applied the product as directed by label and video, two strips, did not slide the upper box back as that was not instructed. I do however have two 3/4" vent holes in each hive body, that is four in a two story.

Dave I saw your post but thought maybe the brood mortality was from fungicides as you were also commenting on that in a different thread. I should have listened a little better.


----------



## Brent Bean

I applied MAQS to twenty hives in early May. Temperatures were between 70 and 90 degrees. Did not lose any queens or notice any brood mortality. In fact all hives have built up nicely despite the lousy weather we have had. A week after application cold and rain with daytime highs in the 40’s. Apple and Blueberries are a bust because of poor pollination. This week Black Locus is blooming and all hives are busy.


----------



## honeyshack

To those who have lost bees and queens from the MAQS, were the queens older than a year. I ask because the formic flash treatments are hard on hives with older queens.


----------



## Tom G. Laury

Mine are all one year or less.

Makes me wonder about the effects of humidity on vaporization.


----------



## John V

I'm on day 6 of treatment of three hives. It may be too early to tell, but at the entrance I see NO dead bees and NO brood being removed from the hive. I will check into the hives tommorow for further observations. The first few days, I saw decreased in/out activity at the entrance, with a little more than usual bearding in the evenings on only one hive. Today, I have seen more in/out activity from all the hives than I have ever seen since I started the hives last year, so they are probally working a good flow (finally). And NO, they aren't swarming... When I treated, I averaged an overnight drop of 5,760 mite on one hive, 4,800 on the second, and 4,160 on the other. Of course, these are overnight drops and don't reflect the counts after a brood cycle which is what I am really counting on for results. I'll keep you guys posted. I'm HOPING for a good outcome.

Later, John


----------



## Dragonfly130

I did find one queen missing in a recently treated colony. 3/4" entrance on this hive. All the rest have 3/8" entrances and this was a virgin queen the only virgin treated in this yard. They may have absconded as most bee's are gone also. No dead though. 1 of 16 but the 3/4" entrance versus 3/8" has me scratching my head as I've had no issues with the 3/8" colonies including some that had virgin's in them. is it possible with the 3/8" entrance they can move air through better than with the 3/4"? 

Seems funny 28 treated with 3/8" entrance, No trouble. 1 treated with 3/4 entrance queen MIA. No upper ventilation in any colonies other than a small upper entrance in the inner cover in most.

Both 2010 and 2011 queens.


----------



## John V

Copy and pasted from my other thread....

I checked all my hives today including the three I treated. I am VERY happy!!!! ALL hives have a vigorously laying queen in them. They all have eggs and brood of all ages. I even saw a few new bees emerging. There were no dead bees or dead brood anywhere in the hives or on the SBB. I did a complete inspection and everything looked good. Not even queen cells. At this point, I can say there has been no negative effects on the treated hives that I am aware of. I marked my calendar and will do another drop in 21 days.

Later, John

Forgot to mention, these queens are four months, three months, and three weeks in these three hives.


----------



## Tom G. Laury

Sounds good, John. How many colonies total?


----------



## John V

I'm just a hobbyist now with a total of six hives. Three were treated.

Later, John


----------



## wildbranch2007

how many boxes on the hives and if you have screened bottom boards would mayby help to figure out a configuration that works. randy oliver in his test used screened bottom boards and the temp range the first few days was on the low end of the recommended range.


----------



## John V

All hives have SBB. All hives have two deep brood chambers with ten frames each. 

The largest two hives have 3/8" entrances fully opened with the telescoping cover proped up a little with a stick. These hives also have one medium super each with a queen exluder. 

The smaller hive has a 3/4" entrance fully opened with a migratory cover NOT proped open. This hive has no other supers.

The temps during treatment were in the mid to upper 80's the first three days and then lower 90's for the rest of the week with had me worried because this was outside the treatment parameters (50-90). However, the treatment was only suppose to be active for the first three days, so i guess i was OK...or lucky.

Later, John


----------



## Tom G. Laury

OK; I have gone through them all now. 

Gotta eat a little crow here. Two locations had a big brood kill, both were the best flow spots at time of treatment. I did lose or kill some queens but some raised a virgin and some I introed a mated Q. Some locations had brood of all ages at three weeks which means there was not much slowdown. I can see what people mean about formic initiating a "clean up"' the wood and wax is scrubbed down.

Over all, the effects are much as advertised, with an abundance of pollen stored and now they are bouncing back with VERY well fed larva. If the mites are gone it will be worth it. I would use again witrh better ventilation.


----------



## John V

When you guys had the brood kill, how soon did you notice them? I checked on day 7 and didn't see any dead brood or bees. I don't know what the time frame would be of the dead brood such as there being a delay before I see them? I haven't noticed any ANY orientation flights since day 6 and that was almost a week ago, so now I'm a little worried. I'm definately anxious to get back in this weekend, and may be a little scared as well.

Later, John


----------



## Oldtimer

I haven't used MAQS but have used formic acid using my own home made fumigator boards, here's what I found.

Firstly, about mites, it can be pretty effective but for the way I was doing it temperature has to be right.

The bad news, it can be hard on queens. Best I could tell, the acid itself does not kill the queen, but it's the bees getting aggravated and killing her, and they can also sometimes be seen fighting among themselves during treatment. If I added 1/2 drop wintergreen EO per hive to the mix, this seemed to calm the bees and reduced queen loss to, in my case, zero. However, I've noticed that treated queens sometimes just don't seem to perform as well, as they did before treatment, although this has been hard to quantify.

About brood loss, there is a thin line between under treating, and over treating. If the treatment is strong enough to be effective, it will kill any point of hatching larvae, something to do with the development stage of their exoskeleton. If you don't see any point of hatching larvae dumped outside the front of the hive it means you probably didn't get all the mites. This loss of a few hundred larvae does not seem to affect the hive. But if temperatures are a bit hot then more larvae can be killed including unsealed larvae.

Formic acid vapor is heavier than air, and therefore a screened bottom board will likely let the vapor out too fast, I use a solid bottom board, plus restrict the entrance, depending on temperature.

Over all, there are pros and cons with formic acid. ( As there are with all treatments ). A big pro, is that I can treat a hive for less than a dollar. The main con, being the temperature dependancy of the treatment and therefore a degree of unreliability, plus possible negative effects on the queen.

Immediately after treatment, the hive can look rather unwell with some dead larvae and bees not quite normal. However, long as the queen is OK, give the hive a week or two and they seem to bounce back strongly, I think they go into recovery mode and it actually stimulates them.

Although it would not be viable for other than a hobby operation, I have been considering caging the queen during the two day treatments I do and then re-introducing her. It will be interesting to see if she could simply be released straight back in, or if she would need to be introduced by time release. Some time if I can answer that question I'll post on it.


----------



## Dragonfly130

I thought I'd give an update as most (87.5%) of my treated colonies have started or are well underway to supercede in the second yard I treated at 3 1/2 weeks after treatment.


----------



## Tom G. Laury

DF; when you say supercede does that mean the original queen survived and resumed laying? Or are they raising a cell for lack of queen.

That is scary, can't make honey that way.


----------



## Dragonfly130

The queens were still in there doing there thing immediately following treatment, but must have started slowing immediately after my initial check. Flow's slowed at the same time so maybe not be from treatment but from conservative queen's. 

As for honey they should recover fine and are currently bringing in nectar and capping off earlier super's.

If these strips induce supercedure that can be turned to an advantage and is not a negative in my book. As long as it's not killing queen's and it doesn't appear to be, just causing supercedure as Oldtimer said it would. *He nailed it!*

*Oldtimer* 


> The bad news, it can be hard on queens. Best I could tell, the acid itself does not kill the queen, but it's the bees getting aggravated and killing her, and they can also sometimes be seen fighting among themselves during treatment. If I added 1/2 drop wintergreen EO per hive to the mix, this seemed to calm the bees and reduced queen loss to, in my case, zero. However, I've noticed that treated queens sometimes just don't seem to perform as well, as they did before treatment, although this has been hard to quantify.


----------



## Omie

I don't have much experience, but I have a sincere question, based on things i have read...

If the treatment is causing substantial brood kill and failing of queens, then why not just forgo the formic altogether and _instead_ just remove the queen into a nuc and let the colony raise a new queen from an egg? This will make them broodless for almost a month, thus breaking the mite breeding cycle. They'd continue putting away honey during a flow while raising their new queen. Sure, the population would dip, but it seems it dips during formic treatment anyway, with the brood kill and/or supercedures being reported. Might even be quicker than having the queen become ill and fail before them building replacement QCs.
In the end you'd have a nice new vigorous queen, few mites going into Fall, no residues, no contaminated honey, no brood kill, and the old queen still healthy and in a new nuc as a bonus. 
I'm not trying to be argumentative- I'm asking this as a serious question.


----------



## Sweet to the Soul

Treated all my hives with MAQS already. Checked 30 of the hives this morning 10 days after treatment. All queens laying and had all stages of brood from eggs to capped. 

Thought all was fine, but now I'll have to check back in 10 to 15 days based on DF post. Thanks for the update DF.

On a side note anyone know if they will offer MAQS in a drum or pallet pack for more savings? If this treatment works I'm happy to pay it, but would like to see it about a dollar cheaper per treatment.


----------



## wildbranch2007

there was a study done about using formic acid in the spring vs other treatments. Don't ask me to go find it again, it showed that the formic set the hives back and they never did as good as the other treatements or controls. I have always used apiguard instead in the spring followed by formic in the fall. on a side note, I was at dadant N.Y yesterday and they are sold out of the large containers of Maqs and only had the small containers. I asked if they would have in the fall and they were not sure. I must say the required N.Y. red lettering on the word danger was worth waiting for.


----------



## HarryVanderpool

I really appreciate the folks a NOD Apiaries for their excellent work.
I have been using liquid formic on and off over the past 20 years. This product, while a bit pricy, is very convenient and easy to use.
I do have a couple of questions and comments for those of you that have experience with formic:

First, one of the attractions to this product is the idea that you can place the strips, walk away and the bees will clear out the residue.
That part is true; they will. But it turns out that one MUST queen check within 7 days while you still have brood, just in case of problems. You might as well remove the strips while you are there. So forget the walkaway part.

The instructions indicate that you place two strips between double deeps with honey supers on. The instructions also show 2 strips for a single deep. This cannot be right.
I was not involved in the R&D of this product, but I have been working with formic long enough to know that something is haywire there.

I guess the main advantage of this product is that it is labeled for use while honey supers are on.
This leaves us in a position to legally try some things new. Perhaps, if the treatment is as effective as we hope it is, we can treat once, right before the honey flow rather than in spring and fall. This would allow us to leave honey supers on longer in the fall that is the case with other treatments.

In any case make sure you have queens on hand and conduct queen checks in 7 days WITHOUT FAIL!
Maybe if the temperatures cooperate, one could combine MAQS and their annual requeening schedule.

All of my hives have full length mouse guards made of 1/2" hardware cloth. I found that these should be removed prior to treatment as they can clog with dead bees, limiting ventillation. You should expect up to one cup of dead bees initially after treatment.

If you are testing with drop boards be aware that you will see something that could fool you: MAQS produces a very impressive initial mite drop. But you will see a continued drop for the next couple of weeks at a rate that using conventional formulas would spell disaster.
Instead, you are seeing the dead mites that are emerging with new bees until the first wave of sealed brood passes.

I am really looking forward to following the mite populations in my midseason treated hives and see what they look like in fall.

Thanks in advance for any comments on the above.


----------



## sqkcrk

Sweet to the Soul said:


> On a side note anyone know if they will offer MAQS in a drum or pallet pack for more savings? If this treatment works I'm happy to pay it, but would like to see it about a dollar cheaper per treatment.


One can buy a pallet at a time, but I don't know if distributors are giving price breaks for volume sales or not. A cpl of friends in SC purchased partial pallets this last spring.


----------



## John V

I checked back into my hives today. The queens are still laying well. No SS cells. In fact, my largest colony has the best solid brood pattern I have seen in my hives yet. I was very proud of it. One more week before I do my follow up mite count. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

Later, John


----------



## Sweet to the Soul

Thanks Mark, just looking at Dadant's web site and they offer a small price break starting with 10 pails. I'm not quite ready for the 30 pail discount. I wonder what the shelf life is? I could use 30 pails over a 2 year period.


----------



## wildbranch2007

Sweet to the Soul said:


> I wonder what the shelf life is? I could use 30 pails over a 2 year period.


I read somewhere that they recommended putting them in the freezer to extend the shelf life beyond 1y, but I just checked there web site and didn't find it there, if i run across it again will post link.


----------



## HarryVanderpool

So, I treated 80 hives on June 1st, fixed queenless on June 7 & 8, and queenchecked today.
Really impressive looking hives.
This is a new tool. There is a learning curve with every new tool.
My goal is to attempt to pinpoint an approx date that hives can be treated and requeened ONCE a year.
Mite pressure peaks in July typically here in Oregon. I'm thinking that my treatment dates this year are very close.
If, and its a big if; IF MAQS is as effective as we hope, and applied at the right point in the year, It could really change things.
For one thing, I will be in no hurry to yank my supers in order to treat in time as in all years past.
Why cut off honey production period? You will not be treating in the fall?
Of course all of this is hope and testing and evaluation.
But at this point I am excited!


----------



## acbz

Harry, how many of those 80 appeared to go queenless after the MAQS application, or did you not check beforehand?
What were the weather conditions and ventilation arrangements on your treated hives?
I've got a couple pails waiting to be used but still waiting to see what is working best for people.
Thanks


----------



## Sweet to the Soul

Went out and inspected an additional hives today. All looked good, queen laying. Tore into some drone comb and did not see any mites. Next week will be busy for me, then I want to schedule some powdered sugar roll tests on a couple hives in each yard.


----------



## HarryVanderpool

I had a number of queenless, but cannot attest to the number that had a queen issue prior. Don't want to throw bogus numbers up just to shock folks.
In my last batch the number of queenless was 10%. Is this unusual for this time of year? During swarm season?
I think not.
As for ventilation, open entrances. The notion of shifting upper boxes is bogus, and I am disappointed in NOD for suggesting that "some beekeepers think this helps". That is not the kind of precice enginering that I am used to.
Sure, add all of the ventilation that you want to save a few queens, but OOOOPS! Now you have a lower mite kill.
Go to www.miteaway.com and watch the MAQS video.
Install as instructed. Then, and this is important; queencheck in seven days. Make sure you have queens in your queen bank.
Mite loads are unusually high around here this year, so I have been treating and queenchecking in groups of 80 - 40.
My goal is to find the ideal point in the year to WIPE OUT the mite loads, once per year.
Can't give a precice answer yet but am guessing about 2 weeks prior to the main flow.
This of course hhinges on the idea that MAQS provides a fairly complete WIPE OUT of mites.
The important thing is that all of us continue to talk and conduct our tests as accurately as we can.
I am currently working with Dr. Ramesh Sagili, Honeybee Entomologist , Oregon State University on precision test hive application of MAQS.
You can look forward to his findings.


----------



## Dragonfly130

I was back out to the first yard i treated and have 0 queenless and don't know if I had any supercedure but all had laying queens. No issues with treatment in this yard! Most of these were overwintered queens.

All superceded queen's in second yard were early bred shipped in queens. The queen's not superceded in this yard were either overwintered or shipped in from a different breeder.

Basically my rundown is that any queens I wintered took the formic fine. That one batch of early shipped in queen's were superceded wholesale. 

Think they forgot the fumagillin? :scratch:
I know I did!


----------



## LBEE

For those of you using the MAQS, I am trying to see if there is anything else which may be a variable which could contribute to queen loss. Does the time of day make a difference in the application? I wonder if an application in the morning with the maximum temperature later in the day may be worse than an application in the late afternoon when the temperature is decreasing. I think I understand that the bees are expected to maintain a constant temperature, but I wonder. Then again, I do not understand how it would contribute to queen mortality.

It would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between bearding after application and queen loss. (I applied MAQS to 37 hives yesterday and 13 today. Some had very large beards, some small and some had none.)

In one portion of the web page at:

http://www.pacificcrestapiaries.com/id56.html

it was recommended that an empty super be placed above the double deep. Also, it was stated that the box above the queen excluder must be moved back to allow for ventilation. Any experience?

Thank you.

Larry


----------



## Sweet to the Soul

So far pleased with MAQS results. Pulled 3 sticky boards checking for natural mite drop over a 10 day period. No mites! Thought my eyes may be getting bad, so I took the boards to my building and used a magnifiying glass to double check. 

Since treating I have seen one mite in a hive. I pull drone brood apart constantly looking also.

Sure hope this keeps up. I believe mites are what caused my massive loss last fall and winter. (or I should say, my not dealing properly with the mited caused my massive loss)


----------



## Intheswamp

Anybody got updates?


----------



## rkr

I treated 13 strong queenright hives and 1 strong hive that had a virgin queen on Aug 8th.

The temps for the first 6 days: 88, 91, 83, 88, 83, 88

On day two the car thermometer went from 94 to 95 for an hour or so.

I placed 4 cotton make-up pads soaked with HBH around each strip in an attempt to simulate in the U-WV formic acid fumigator experiment LINK. This is supposed to help queenlessness
I placed the strips in the middle of the brood pattern. I run three mediums, so that means one strip above and below the #2 hive body on most hives. I have some screened and some solid BB. 

Results:
I noticed some dead bees, some crawlers (looked like young/ freshly emerged bees), and some dead brood being dragged out. I also saw lots of very dead mites.
3 of the 13 queen right hives went queenless or 23%
All 3 queenless hives were on screened BB
the one hive with the virgin queen now has a big fat laying queen with a fine worker brood pattern.
2 of 13 hives had only two mediums on them, both queens survived just fine.
All 3 queenless hives now have queen cells.
All queenright hives look back to normal.

All in all not bad considering the temps went above the max suggested temp for one afternoon. Darn lying weathermen!!!

I would suggest a respirator. Fumes are nasty, even just opening the package.


----------



## WI-beek

Guys, I need advice. I got a pail of this stuff. Im scared half to death to use it and lose half my queens, or even worse, have half go queenless over winter, or whatever. We have not even had any fall use then spring results yet. If you were me would you pass on this stuff and wait till next season to use it? I got two months of good brood rearing and a month of mating weather left. Very scary. Im almost wondering if this stuff is better to be used in a one pad dose during summer to keep mites in check and not as a spring or fall control.


----------



## c10250

WI-beek said:


> Guys, I need advice. I got a pail of this stuff. Im scared half to death to use it and lose half my queens, or even worse, have half go queenless over winter, or whatever. We have not even had any fall use then spring results yet. If you were me would you pass on this stuff and wait till next season to use it? I got two months of good brood rearing and a month of mating weather left. Very scary. Im almost wondering if this stuff is better to be used in a one pad dose during summer to keep mites in check and not as a spring or fall control.


OK, take my opinion for what it's worth, I am by no means an expert, but here's what you might be able to get away with:

1. Two pads are probably needed to penetrate brood cappings and kill mites; HOWEVER
2. This time of year your queen has probably shut down, or at least slowed down considerably; so
3. You probably have very little, or no capped brood; so
4. You may be able to substantially kill your mite population with just one pad.

IDK, just my opinion.

PLEASE KEEP US INFORMED ON WHAT YOU DO AND YOUR RESULTS.

Ken

PS, We treated three hives 3 weeks ago. As of this week, only one hive has a small patch of brood. There is no brood in two of the hives. This doesn't mean the queens have been killed, it just means that they have yet to lay after treatment. At this time of year, I don't think that's uncommon.


----------



## PappyMAINEiac

I used MAQS last month on 1 hive overrun with mites.... My temps were in the 70's day, 60's at night. I only had @100 dead on the landing board but 1000's of mite kill. Before the treatment the hive was not active...maybe 10 bees flying in and out a minute. Today I could not begin to count the bees coming and going. 
IMO the cooler temps are much better for the treatment. I think the warmer temps intensify the effect which also kills a lot of bees. 2 weeks after the treatment, I went in and found the Queen laying with a much better brood pattern then before.


----------



## c10250

Here's a follow up. Some of this information was posted in other threads, so sorry for the cross posting.

My brother and I treated four hives about a month ago. The temperatures ranged from the upper 70s during the day to the upper 60s at night. We were in the middle of a dearth, and the queens probably were slowing down anyway because of the time or year and the dearth. What we experienced was that every hive had its queen shut down for at least two weeks. One hive seemed to have its queen shut down for three weeks. All hives are up and running now. No queens seemed to have been killed.

All in all I would use this again, but not during times of buildup. I would probably monitor and use only when absolutely needed in the spring. A queen shutting down for a while in late summer/early fall isn't that big of a deal, and probably helps reduce any mites the treatment didn't kill.

my 2 cents . . .


----------



## Raindrop

Tom I treated 2 colonies about 3 weeks ago, one of the 2 hives did okay, but when I checked the other hive almost all of the bee's were dead. I did not slid the top hive back. Which I learned later that this should be done. I also sent the manufacdture of MAQS an e-mail about the loss of my hive. I think before I use MAQS., again I will find out more about this product.


----------



## Dragonfly130

I can't help but wonder if the strips are weeding out the weak.

Something viral or otherwise in the queens/bee's that are being superceded/lost.


----------



## c10250

Dragonfly130 said:


> I can't help but wonder if the strips are weeding out the weak.
> 
> Something viral or otherwise in the queens/bee's that are being superceded/lost.


I think that some of these queens shut down so long that people think they're queenless.


----------



## bison

I just checked my two hives that I treated with MAQS two weeks ago - both are fine, saw plenty of larvae in both so queens appear to be find. Lots of mites killed off initially and no signs of any today (though I didn't check that carefully). So far looks like a big success!

I did remove the remnants of the MAQS, it was sort of a solid gellatin.


----------



## HarryVanderpool

c10250 said:


> I think that some of these queens shut down so long that people think they're queenless.


If only it were true.
Almost all of the queenless hives had frames of emergency cells.
I have never found emergency cells in a queen right hive.
The only hives that were deemed queenless had lost their queen somewhere between treatment and first inspection at day 7 at the latest. 
What I would like to understand is exactly WHAT happens to the queens.
Do they perish directly from the vapor? or are the balled (killed) due to the intense disruption?
At any rate, queen losses range from 20% - 40% in the Oregon operations reporting.
On a more positive note, the hives that I treated with MAQS are absolutly outstanding right now.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Today, I took the plunge and am scared half to death just reading all these posts -- That stuff is wicked. I would suggest an individual first watch an instruction video on youtube. For my first hive, when I opened the package with the scissors, the pads were wrapped in some sort of paper. I thought that I had to peel it, so I peeled and then I thought that they would never design a pad like that and then for the next 40 hives, I put it above the brood wrapped in paper. I found that when I pulled the two apart that sometimes the paper would come off the pads. You would think that they would design it better by single wrapping each pad where I wouldn't have to handle it so much with my gloves. 

All hives are queenright with SBB with reducers. The bees are trying to get away from the chemical smell. I stopped back at the very first yard just before twilight and two of my hives emptied their bees out and they have fully covered the front of the hive as shown in previous posts. I just kept wondering as a previous poster on another thread wrote -- just exactly how will the mites be killed off those bees if they are on the outside. 

I was rather concerned as it seemed that on the majority of the hives that there wasn't much if any bee activity at the front.

I did go into one of the hives and the bees are up above the inner hive cover and when I looked at the pads, I saw no bee activity under it at all. I am wondering if there will be a massive brood kill especially if no nurse bees are working or fanning the brood.

I am not sure that I want to use MAQS next year. Hopefully they or somebody will build a better mousetrap that isn't so toxic. But doing nothing, I would lose my bees for sure. I will not be able to check my bees for the next 7 days, so I can't report until then.


----------



## c10250

You are supposed to take the reducers off.

Also, you are supposed to leave the paper on.

With regard to the bearding, I found that the bees went in the hive on day 2. If you're still running with reducers, I'm not sure if they can clear the vapors from the hive fast enough.


----------



## tct1w

Well Im thoroughly worried about treating the hive from reading the six pages of post but looked at maqs instruction page and going to offset the hives bodies. Temps should be fine. The only big problemis I really dont think many drones still around to mate a new queen if needed. Wish me luck. I will report back if any problems. If not,it means all went well. Peace Dave


Update Treated 5 hives and left about and inch offset between double deeps. It in the 60's here today. Girls didnt flip out. They actually looked quite normal. One thing I did notice after the last treatment was there was actually a varroa walking on my hand. Shumshed it. At least I got one!!


----------



## CentralPAguy

Well, I was able to get to some of my yards today.

Yard 1 -- Two out of Six Hives are missing their queens
Yard 2 -- Yard contains 7 hives, was only able to check 4 hives -- Two are missing their queens
Yard 3 -- Yard contains 4 hives, was only able to check 1 hive -- It contained the queen, but the other three came at me with full force independent of each other when I went in to remove the MAQS. I need to go in and check them to see if they are indeed queenless -- they sure act like they are.

Of all the hives that I checked, none of the queens that made it thru are laying yet. There is definitely something to the queen mortality rate treating with MAQS

I have 15 hives remaining to treat and I am really gunshy about treating them at least with MAQS. This is almost too late to recover as we need young bees to go thru winter.


----------



## rkr

CentralPAguy said:


> This is almost too late to recover as we need young bees to go thru winter.


I hear you on that. I was thinking about treating in early to mid June. IF it knocks the mites down that hard they should still be low 6 week later. Then hit them in mid August with a Hopguard treatment or other really soft method. The old info from U-WV on the fume board tx stated they only had to do it everyother yearwww.wvu.edu Formic Acid


----------



## CentralPAguy

rkr,

I was thinking that I should be treating in August.

I got into 7 of the 15 remaining hives -- Based on my experience with the first set where I suffered some queen mortality, I decided to change my method and pulled the queens. I could only find the queen in 6 of them -- For each pulled queen, I gave her a very small contingent of bees and put them into their own nucs and brought them back from my outyards to my house. It looks like the 7th hive likely swarmed -- I never did find the queen, but it really got late.

I then treated all 7 hives and will recombine these queens back in 7 days.


----------



## WWW

From what I am seeing I think you are suppose to place two strip pads on top of the frames of the first brood box, would it bee better to place one above the top box and one on top of the bottom box, or maybe use only one strip pad on the bottom box. This might be easier on the bees but would it be just as effective on the mites. Any thoughts on this?


----------



## beemandan

What we are talking about is applying a fumigant pesticide into a box of insects. The concept is pretty simple. Get the concentration strong enough to kill the mites but not so strong as to cause a problem for the bees. A lot of variables effect the concentration. It sounds to me like those variables are….well…quite variable among the beekeepers reporting on MAQS.
Whenever I hear about a new compound and reports of huge mite kills I immediately suspect that the overall hive disruption will be great too. After all, the harder it is on the mites, the harder it will be on the bees.
I think this is why some believe that a targeted treatment (RNAi for example) will be the holy grail of mite treatments.
All of the above statements are only my opinion.
Good luck to all of you using the cutting edge treatments. For those of us who are slow adopters, we appreciate your reporting.


----------



## Hokie Bee Daddy

I'm a relatively new beekeeper and small compared to most. Because I'm new I decided to try the "latest technology" and it worked well for its intended purpose of killing mites. My experience is that MAQ's does have the side effect of inducing supersedure. Going forward I'll use MAQ's in the spring to make sure any queen issues have plenty of time to sort themselves out before winter.

By the way, of the six hives that I treated, three of them superseded within two weeks after treatment.


----------



## CentralPAguy

www,

I am guessing that the vapors are heavier and that they sink rather than rise in order to get thru the brood cappings. I tried to put it above my brood but if my brood spanned two boxes, I stuck it in the middle between the brood boxes as the directions state.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Hokie,

I am thinking that if you treat in the fall, there will be very little reason to treat in the spring as the mite load will be extremely light. My colonies typically start collapsing in August or September if I don't treat. 

It is truly hard on the queens and I removed the queens from my last 10 hives so that the queen would not be affected. However today, I went into another yard of 4 hives that were treated. All 4 hives still had their queen and three hives had young larvae in them. This means that my queens started relaying about 3 or 4 days ago for the larvae to be there.


----------



## ShaneVBS

We are tring to push for brood interuption by caging queen for a week or two, that will reduce your mites enough to make a differance with a SBB. No brood, no food for mites, full mites drop off through screen. Its free and clean


----------



## WWW

ShaneVBS, could you elaborate as to what type of cage you use to hold the queen for that period of time, and also does your method have any affect on the mites that are clinging to the adult bees.


----------



## WWW

CentralPAguy said:


> www,
> 
> I am guessing that the vapors are heavier and that they sink rather than rise in order to get thru the brood cappings. I tried to put it above my brood but if my brood spanned two boxes, I stuck it in the middle between the brood boxes as the directions state.


Thanks CentralPA guy for your thoughts, I will be placing the pads in the middle as directed.


----------



## ShaneVBS

just get a queen catcher and trap her in it, but leave her in hive whole time. it just keeps her from laying eggs. depending on your mite count a week should be good but no longer than two weeks. And no it doesnt affect mites on bees but as they fill up and fall off use screen BB so they fall to ground or sticky board to trap falling mites. best time to do this is spring


----------



## WWW

Got it Shane thanks a bunch, I will be MAQSing my hive tomorrow I have only the one hive so say a prayer for me and the bees.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Reporting back on another three yards of mine.

Yard 1 -- 3 Hives -- All three kept their queens and each queen is now laying.
Yard 2 -- 4 Hives -- All four kept their queens and each queen is now laying. One of these queens had some tattering to her wings, but she is laying.
Yard 3 -- 4 Hives -- All four kept their queens and each queen is now laying. 


I have another 4 yards to visit to find the status of their queens.


----------



## Hokie Bee Daddy

Central PA guy,

Thanks for the comment. I didn't treat last fall and nearly lost two colonies this past July. I guess I'm gun-shy now and likely to over-treat. I'll not treat half my hives next spring and see what happens. I hate to treat in the fall though because you have such a limited time to re-cover if you lose a queen.

It sounds like your results today were much better than your earlier posts. What do you think made the difference? Was it the temperature or were these hives that you pulled the queens from? How long has it been since you treated the hives you reported on today?


----------



## WWW

After reading more posts on this subject I have decided to forgo the MAQS treatment till spring at which time there will be replacement queens available in the event mine is killed, with having just the one hive it is too risky to use this new product at this time. Today or tomorrow I will give the hive an oxalic vapor treatment and then wait a few weeks till the fall honey flow is over and capped brood has hatched and then give them another shot of oxalic, this should get them through the winter ok. Meanwhile I will continue to listen to all of you here as you figure out this new product and the safest way to use it. I still feel that MAQS is a great tool in the fight against varroa and thank you all for your valuable insight on this subject.....Bill


----------



## jim lyon

At the risk of de-railing a good thread, when I see folks that feel they have mite issues but are a bit gun shy about using MAQS then why not consider thymol? Outside of a few pupae being drug out of the hive I know of no downside to thymol.


----------



## WWW

That is a good question Jim, and it would be interesting to hear what reason others have for not using Thymol. As for myself, well I guess I just never considered it. I had my blinders on when I was looking for a fast cure and went for the newest thing out on the market, when I should have been doing more research. Now I am researching after buying the MAQS, I suppose that I got the cart ahead of the horse. But in my defense, Dadant Supply's advertising only gave the wonderful things that MAQS could do without informing me of the side affects....Bill


----------



## tct1w

Ok update on my treatment. It went better than expected( I think). I put two pad in between double deeps. I offset the hive bodies by about an inch or so. Really had the tops propped up and have screen bottom boards. Treated last Saturday and took them off a day early. 
The wx this week was cool and late week rainy. The girls acted fairly well after I put the MAQS. A little scrambling but nothing crazy. I noticed on a couple of hive a few dead bees on the second day. Half a dozen or so. Nothing alarming. Then everything went back to normal. Bee activity normal,saw one bringing in pollen,and I think they might have actually added a little weight this week. Took the pads off just now and pretty impressive drop of varroa directly on the pads. Surprised me. Only one hive had a few dead bees on the pads. I could have actually done that myself sliding the hive bodies back together yesterday. Had about three inches of rain in the last 48 hrs.
Everything looked normal but I did not check to see if the hives are queen rite. I dont like to disrupt them this late for the simple fact if I squish the mama by accident no drones around to make a new queen. Will I use this again. Ill tell you when I know it didnt kill a queen. I really dont think it did,but thats just a guess from their layout on the frames. What I mean,the way a gang hangs out near the queen,I saw that on all hives. Why didnt I use thymol. Great question. Jumped on the band wagon and it was quicker. Next year,well even if all the queens made it,I dont know what I will use. The mite drop was impressive though Peace Dave


----------



## Oldtimer

Yes interesting posts. The thing with it is, MAQS used correctly WILL kill mites, and WILL NOT leave any permanent residue in the wax. The downside being it is hard on queens, no question. 

So i have been trialling a different formic acid based system, that has got around the queen problem, according to their literature, it does not cause any disruption to the queen.

It's called mitegone. It has a bad reputation as in the past it did not do a thorough job of killing all the mites, but they have made some modifications and now they claim good results. The few hives my friend and I have used it on have shown good results with no detectable mites following treatment, and no effect on the queen, the hive continues normally through treatment. To do a good job does require that a special bottom board is built, with a "gas tray" for killing mites and shb that fall in. Treatment is slow and takes 40 days.

Their web site in places, is a little hard to read as there are some minor language translation issues, however thought I'd mention it for anyone interested in a better FA treatment. Following this years trial I'm going to go ahead and build some of the bottom boards for more evaluation next year.


----------



## cg3

4th week update. 3 hives treated in hot weather, no extra ventilation, sticky board under SBB:

1 queen shut down for 1 week. Laying-slowly
2 hives immediately superceded. No sign of queens or eggs at 4 weeks.
Not a mite.
I'm not that enthusiastic about the results I've had but if I were to do it again I would:
Do it earlier in the year so give them some insurance time to make a new queen (or do it as part of fall re-queening).
Try for a cool spell. Ventilate well.
Look for source of treatment-free queens


----------



## WWW

I just finished gassing my bees with oxalic acid and they seem to have tolerated it just fine, although I did use a slightly smaller amount than recommended to see what the results would be, I will hit them again in a couple of weeks with the full amount recommended. MAQS will have to wait till spring.


----------



## camero7

WWW said:


> I just finished gassing my bees with oxalic acid and they seem to have tolerated it just fine, although I did use a slightly smaller amount than recommended to see what the results would be, I will hit them again in a couple of weeks with the full amount recommended. MAQS will have to wait till spring.


I tend to use more than the recommended amount and have never noticed any brood loss or queen loss. I put my MAQS in the freezer after i hear about all the problems some are experiencing... i will use them next spring/summer when monitoring for mites indicates a need.


----------



## Oldtimer

Just remember with oxalic, it does not kill varroa in the brood, or in other words, 85% of varroa in a typical hive is not reached. So it should be used once there is no brood in the hive, and at that stage it can achieve very good results.

While it does not normally cause brood or queen loss in the same way as formic acid, it has been documented to inhibit the speed of brood nest growth the following spring, especially if used more than once in a season.

The best way to apply oxalic is as a vapor produced by heating it, in which case only a tiny quantity is used and it is very effective. It is less effective applied in a liquid formulation, although results up to a 90% kill have been shown.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Hokie Bee Daddy said:


> Central PA guy,
> 
> It sounds like your results today were much better than your earlier posts. What do you think made the difference? Was it the temperature or were these hives that you pulled the queens from? How long has it been since you treated the hives you reported on today?


I thought that I had an answer, but I came across an exception today. One of my hives that I treated was on a solid board and contained 3 shallows as its hive with an entrance reducer on. I thought that I put all my hives on SBB this year, but my memory seems to be leaving me.

Altogether there are probably no more than 8 shallow frames of bees and the queen was back to laying. You would have thought that my queen would have been dead, but there she was. Now, I had looked at this hive earlier in the week where I went thru the frames at least 4 times and I missed my queen. She is not a tiny queen, but I am wondering if the bees skinnied the queen down during a MAQS treatment. I had reported that this queen was missing. I went back to look at another hive that I reported the queen as missing, but I saw larvae and soon found her. 

I finally checked the three hives that were really agressive to me last week and each contained her queen.

I then checked two more yards.

Yard 1 - 7 Hives -- Each contained their queen and she was laying.
Yard 2 - 9 Hives -- Only 8 contained their queen. I am pretty sure that the queen is missing in the ninth, but I will check it again shortly. My thoughts are that if she was skinnied down, she should be laying by now. 

I did notice that Supercedure cells were started, but not completed. The queens are laying like gangbusters. We are having a fall nectar flow with the goldenrod.

I have one more yard of 7 hives to visit. When I first started checking after the MAQS treatment, I was really concerned about so much queen loss. But my data is showing that my queens survived the treatment reasonably well. 

If I had to do it over again, I would treat earlier to allow for any supercedure replacement queens.


----------



## tct1w

CentralPAGuy,im sure feeling better about my chances of a good outcome now. Im going to wait until next weekend to check to see if I have eggs,but now Im thinking my chances are good. Peace Dave


----------



## WI-beek

"Guys, I need advice. I got a pail of this stuff. Im scared half to death to use it and lose half my queens, or even worse, have half go queenless over winter, or whatever. We have not even had any fall use then spring results yet. If you were me would you pass on this stuff and wait till next season to use it? I got two months of good brood rearing and a month of mating weather left. Very scary. Im almost wondering if this stuff is better to be used in a one pad dose during summer to keep mites in check and not as a spring or fall control."

Sorry, I chickened out. I just could not bring myself to use this stuff. I thought it was just stupid to risk killing my queens this time of year. I gave into one more round of apistan and I keep telling my self ill do an OA drip right before dear hunting (gun) when I will wrap up my hives. My queens are almost shut down now so I hope they will be broodless for the most part in late November. If I ever use this stuff I will tinker with it during the summer when I have some spare queens around. I just cant bare the thought of losing some of my best queens, can you?


----------



## tct1w

WI Beeks with CentralPAGuy results Its a tough call. If you read my post I think the queens made it through just by the hives activities. Could be wrong but pa guy has cheered me up. I treated 5 of my 10 so the worst I could come into spring with would be I hope 5-6. With the mite drop I had at least one of my hives would have crashed from varroa. Ok dont wont to get into a big debate about treatment or not but a state bee inspector recently told us at a bee club meeting a hive would succumb if not treated for two years. Now to back up that theory the hive I didnt treat last year had a ton of varroa actually on the pad itself. The hives I treated last year didnt have as many. I didnt do a sugar shake test. Ok so my thought is to see if your hive meet threshold criteria for treatment. 300 bees with sugar shake I was told was 12 mites. I think he said about an inch in a medium size peanut butter container. If your hives are over this then you could lose them anyhow. This is just my thought. Actually it was my wife that rationlized it like that. I was also fretting. Which ever way to go,best of luck. Peace Dave


----------



## WI-beek

Yes a colony with out VSH will be toast end of second season. I know because I tried it. A buddy of mine got through his third season. Even if you make splits with a colony loaded with mites, you just make two colonies loaded with mites. I found that a colony loaded to the gills with mites is not helped by a queenless period. I seen mites so bad they could not raise brood period. All grubs seen one weak were empty comb the next. Once I treated, boom, capped brood, by then it was too late. The colony dwindled to a couple cups of bees before it started recovering, then hung on for dear life until February and kicked the bucket. The colony was going bonkers the beginning of its second season, I made several nucs taking brood from its second season so if that should have helped it just postponed it. 

Since then I always examine drone brood for mites. I always pay attention to the bees and brood for PMS. Hives with bad mite loads will start to smell as brood dies.

I personally believe within the next few years we will have four or five organic options (im not saying approved) that will not be murder on bees like formic. Right now we have OA, and the new hopps. Hopps may not be good enough for a control but it may be good enough to help your bees raise healthy brood till you can fry them with oa drip. Just need a couple more honey friendly options that dont scare me pants off. I prefer cheap like oa at 2cents per application. If maqs used with one pad instead of two is queen friendly to keep mites from getting out of hand in summer I will use it, but I wont use something that has the potential to seriously harm or shorten the life of my queens.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Wi-Beek,

As you experienced first hand, if we do nothing, we will lose our bees. I had so many hives fail last year, because of mites because I didn't treat. After I purchased 35 packages this year, I made a decision that I wasn't going to lose my bees this year and that meant treating them. I did purchase 5 VSH queens earlier this year and only have two of them remaining with me. But I treated all my hives equally as I couldn't remember which hives they were in.

If you do something, you may lose your queen, but you will save your bees. There is no doubt that your queen will stop laying during this treatment. Plan for a 8 to 10 day stoppage in egg production. And when she starts, it will be 21 days until her first brood hatches. But it will be without the quantity of mites that was already killing our hives. 

I do have one outyard that hasn't been treated. These were relatively young hives with new queens where I added bees to them. They are going like gang busters. My plans are to treat them in the spring as they will need it.

When I first started reading these threads of severe queen loss, I did pull 8 queens along with a very small quantity of bees for each and placed them into their own nucs as I wanted to have undamaged queens. I can't tell you how many dead bees are now on my parking pad. I suspect Varroa is likely the cause. 

By next Tuesday or Wednesday, I will be putting them back onto the hives without any brood that she may have created. My plans are to sugar dust the bees to drop any varroa that may be attached to them. This means that I lost 7 or 8 days of major egg production anyway, but I kept my queens. That may be an option to consider if one feels the risk is too high in treating the bees this late.

P.S. I am thinking that MAQS might also reduce SHB population as well. When I was going thru my hives, I only saw one or two beetles per hive and actually saw a dead SHB in one of the cells on the comb. Maybe they flew out. For the ten hives that were treated during phase 2, I am estimating that each hive contained 25 to 50 beetles which I killed prior to treatment.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Last Yard Reporting -- It contains 8 Hives.

All 8 Hives had their queens. One is pitiful and I need to combine it with a stronger hive. I really went in to check the two hives where the bees ran to the outside. The one queen has yet to start laying and the other has started. I will be checking in a few days to see if these queens become stronger layers.

It is just interesting that only two out of all my hives caused the bees to run out of the hive.


----------



## WI-beek

No offense intended CentralPAguy or others. Anything that has this much of an effect on queens whether its killing them, or disturbing them so much that they quit laying for a month. 

I have to wonder why queens shut down for so long. Are they on the virge of death? Are they so sick they cant lay eggs or the bees are so irritated they dont feed the queen well, etc. I hope someone with the resources will do a long term study with an ample amount of colonies in a few different locations with different variables and see what the long term and short term effects are. If you lost 25% of queens will you lose another 25% over winter? Could there be an average reduction in surviving queens egg laying performance. How do we know that surviving queens will not have a 20% reduction in brood production or something else?

I think more research and development is needed on this product from what I keep reading.

If you buy all your queens and are not trying to improve your stock each generation like me maybe this stuff makes more sense. Even if you do order all your queens, this stuff sounds way to expensive once you figure our queen replacement costs, labor cost looking colonies over after treatment, lost brood production when queens quit laying, and so on. If you figure it all out I dont think this stuff makes any sense at all.


----------



## HarryVanderpool

WI-beek said:


> I have to wonder why queens shut down for so long. Are they on the virge of death? Are they so sick they cant lay eggs or the bees are so irritated they dont feed the queen well, etc.


I have a hunch that they shut down because thay are not fed or cared for from the moment the vapor is introduced.
Queens don't lay eggs, many times their body weight daily out of thin air. They need LOTS of feed daily.
Who is going to feed her? If you go back into a hive on day 3 (which is a couple of days too early) and look, you will find that there are rings of emerging bees dead, half way out of their cells.
Well, what would these new emerging bees have done if they had not been disturbed?
Well, first they would have chowed down. The newly emerged bees need a shot of feed to fuel their hypo.....glands so thet they can first feed older larva and then younger larva and the queen.
But they were wiped out! Fortunatly, the ones that emerge after day 3 will come along. But how good are they fed?
Do older bees have to regress to restore nutrition in the hive?
Anyway, thats my hunch. The queen ( if she made it) begins egg laying when her nutrition requirements resume.


----------



## CentralPAguy

WI-beek said:


> No offense intended CentralPAguy or others. Anything that has this much of an effect on queens whether its killing them, or disturbing them so much that they quit laying for a month.
> 
> I have to wonder why queens shut down for so long. Are they on the virge of death? Are they so sick they cant lay eggs or the bees are so irritated they dont feed the queen well, etc.....
> 
> If you buy all your queens and are not trying to improve your stock each generation like me maybe this stuff makes more sense. Even if you do order all your queens, this stuff sounds way to expensive once you figure our queen replacement costs, labor cost looking colonies over after treatment, lost brood production when queens quit laying, and so on.


I am not sure where you had read that the queens shut down for a month as that simply didn't happen for me. For the time and labor that I spent, I did spend substantial amount of time looking for my queens as I really needed to see her just to be sure that she had survived. However, for next year, my thoughts are to only look for the larvae for an average of 10 to 15 minutes per hive. If I see that my queens have survived next year as they did this year, then I will forego checking them in subsequent years. 

I can't explain why my data on queen survivability is much better than some of the others had reported. I am thinking that I treated around 40 to 45 hives

You are going to need to do something. There is a reason why you felt that you needed a pail of MAQS. One also needs to figure out the cost of lost honey if one loses their bees and need to start again with packages. I experienced it first hand this year as I had very few hives make it thru this past winter and the queens in the packages were of such poor quality that I ended up replacing most of them with queens of my own raising.

No offense taken with your goal to raise better queens as my intentions are to find gentle VSH queens.


----------



## CentralPAguy

HarryVanderpool said:


> I have a hunch that they shut down because thay are not fed or cared for from the moment the vapor is introduced.
> Queens don't lay eggs, many times their body weight daily out of thin air. They need LOTS of feed daily.
> Who is going to feed her? If you go back into a hive on day 3 (which is a couple of days too early) and look, you will find that there are rings of emerging bees dead, half way out of their cells.
> Well, what would these new emerging bees have done if they had not been disturbed?
> Well, first they would have chowed down. The newly emerged bees need a shot of feed to fuel their hypo.....glands so thet they can first feed older larva and then younger larva and the queen.
> But they were wiped out! Fortunatly, the ones that emerge after day 3 will come along. But how good are they fed?
> Do older bees have to regress to restore nutrition in the hive?
> Anyway, thats my hunch. The queen ( if she made it) begins egg laying when her nutrition requirements resume.


Your theories do make sense as it would explain why I couldn't find large queens in just a few frames. Did you actually go in on Day 3 and seen rings of dead emerging bees or is this your hypothesis.


----------



## WI-beek

CentralPAguy 

I was just talking in general about the queens shutting down, not to anyone's specific time frames. I wont use this stuff until there is more data available that would convince me its not going to cost me valuable time and money and ruin my queens.

Yes I did need to do something and that is why I bought the pail. I however leaned on the crutch I have used already, apistan which I know know what to expect from its use. It works well for me, I just want to move away from it if I can. This time of year is a very bad time to gamble with queens where I live.

I hope maqs turns out to be a very valuable, effective, and safe tool to use with the proper application and knowledge of how to do so.

Good luck


----------



## $Simpleman76

I have treated my only hive with MAQS. I am on day 5 of the treatment and so far the jury is still out on it effect on the bees. The effect on the mites is tremendous. I had a 39 mite count and one SHB before treating. I checked my oil tray freeman beetle trap today and had 17 SHB's and to many to count mites. 
I do have a lot of dead bees in front of my hive now and the activity is rather low around the entrance of the hive. So the treatment has really set back my bee population but I am going to say that the bees that were killed were weakend already by the mites. The bees are toting out very young bees that either just emerged or were still capped.
I am using two deeps and one shallow at this time. I am ready to see how my queen recovers and plan on opening my hive for a thorough inspection in two days. I am not planning on seeing eggs this soon but I do have my fingers crossed that she is ok. 
The activity at the entrance in the morning is rather slow getting started but the girls are still bringing in pollen. Later in the day the bees seem to be more active and acting normal. 
If I had to compare MAQS to something that we may experience ourselves  as humans. I would probably compare it to the tsunami in Japan for the bees. I think that only the strong survive when using this treatment but the bees seem to start rebuilding and cleaning about day 4 after the initial onslaught sets in and they realize what has happened.
I do believe the treatment works well on the SHB and their larvae as every one that I have seen has been dead so far. I probably will install an entrance reducer after the treatment to help with SHB and wax moths especially with less activity protecting the entrance. 
Anyway that is my observation so far. If my queen rebounds from this I will be using it again even with the great loss of bees. I do believe I have time for her to raise plenty of house bees for the winter. 
Also if she has quit laying I believe that will help with the mite cycle also.


----------



## CentralPAguy

Reporting back on my second experiment where I had removed the queens from 10 hives and put them into their own nucs with a small contingent of bees. All hives went into emergency supercedure and the queen cells just didn't look healthy, which I removed. There has to be something that the bees stop caring for their young as they try to get as far away from the MAQS pads.

In the future, I will never remove the queens as my survival rate was rather good -- It was painful and I am not talking about the bee stings going thru every frame looking for queen cells and destroying them. Furthermore, I lost a queen that I pulled -- My poor little nuc was robbed and that was that.

I had left the treatment pads on for about 9 days only because of the heavy continuous rain that Central Pa has experienced this week. and by the way, SHB were back in my honey frames. Not alot, but enough to bother me.


----------



## tct1w

Well I broke down and went into one of my treated hives yesterday. Looked for the queen,didnt see her or eggs.but my guess is she is there,not laying again yet. Everything in the hive looked normal, capped brood,girls bringing in goldenrod,good bee bread,decent stores. I will check in a week or so,but I really think its all good. Its was five days after I took the MAQS out when I checked. Ill check next weekend. Peace Dave


----------



## Holly

I treated 3 of my hives the last week in august. I didn't have any problems during the treatment. I didn't remove the patties because they say the bees will remove them. well I am removing suppers and getting ready for winter and I noticed more hive beetles then normal. well the hive beetles are in the maqs patties. so if you have any hive beetles I would remove the patties after treatmeat.


----------



## stoffel64

I did a test run with MAQS and this was successful test run. It cut down the mites quite a bit. 
It did not kill all of them of course but I a count much less. The 24 hour mite drop is under ten mites.

The first 3 days looked really bad the bees pulled out a lot of dead bees. It looked like that these bees were still in their development stage, 
kind off shortly before they hatch. The queen survived, when I checked after 7 days I found eggs and larva in the hive.
So she never stopped or just stopped a very short time.

On last Saturday, I treated two other hives that had an elevated mite count (around 35 - 40 mites in 24 hours). I see there the same,
dead bees (not fully developed) get thrown out.

I will see how this ends on Saturday when I remove the strips after 7 days.

Cheers
Stefan


----------



## CentralPAguy

For those that treated with MAQS two or three weeks ago, are you noticing a drop in your bee population. Across my yards, I am seeing it. When I did my weekly check after my MAQS treatment, I had substantial number of bees, but not so anymore. I did go into a few of the hives and I am seeing larva. 

I would think that the brood that was in treatment would have hatched by now. So if she stopped laying for a period of time and dead brood was removed and emerging bees might have been harmed, would this explain such a drop in bee numbers. Any thoughts. Thanks.


----------



## wildbranch2007

CentralPAguy said:


> Across my yards, I am seeing it. When I did my weekly check after my MAQS treatment, I had substantial number of bees, but not so anymore. I did go into a few of the hives and I am seeing larva.
> 
> I would think that the brood that was in treatment would have hatched by now.


winter coming up here, the populations in the hives is dropping naturally, nothing blooming.

** i would think that the brood that was in treatment would have hatched by now. 

the brood(if any) that survived would have hatched.

do have an unrelated comment, bears that bite into the maqs after being on the hives don't affect the bear at all and they continue to return and destroy other hives.


----------



## CentralPAguy

wildbranch2007 said:


> the populations in the hives is dropping naturally, nothing blooming.


the brood has hatched and we still have goldenrod blooming here -- I am grateful that bears are a rarity around Central PA -- How many hives did you lose to bears?


----------



## wildbranch2007

CentralPAguy said:


> I am grateful that bears are a rarity around Central PA -- How many hives did you lose to bears?


not my hives I was helping a guy from Penn. that has hives up here. One yard the bear had just gotten one hive the night before we got there. another yard was a disaster, stopped pulling honey and loaded up the hives that were left, sure was fun as we didn't have anything to lock them in with, the bear was actually pretty smart, he nocked over 6 or so hives over time and hauled off and ate the honey supers but left the brood chambers laying there. so he thinks in total only lost 2 or 3 hives.


----------



## tct1w

Well I went back into one of my treated hives that I reported on earlier. On that inspection didnt see any eggs or larve and didnt see the queen but the hive seemed normal. It is,found two frames of solid brood. Im curious about how they will winter,but I bet just fine. Population might be a little down,but not much. One last thing,on the screened bottom board only saw a couple of dead bees. Nothing out of the normal. Im happy with the outcome. Peace Dave


----------



## wildbranch2007

I posted this in the commercial section and am posting it here as well

I just found this by mistake on the government site, I only copied the first and last paragraph as I'm having trouble with copying it. they don't reference the product as maqs but since the study was done in 2011 I assume it is or a new product. Interesting that they are looking at it as a treatment for nosema. I'm also trying to find the study they reference.

http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/projects/projects.htm?ACCN_NO=419853&showpars=true&fy=2011





1a.Objectives (from AD-416) 
The objectives of this cooperative research project is: a) to determine the efficacy of an innovative formulation of formic acid preparation for controlling Varroa destructor under field conditions, b) to determine its impact, if any, on colony strength, and c) to measure residues in honey. 


3.Progress Report 
This report documents research conducted under a Trust Agreement between ARS and the NOD APIARY PRODUCTS LTD. Additional details for the research can be found in the report for the parent project 6204-21000-010-00D, PESTS, PARASITES, DISEASES AND STRESS OF MANAGED HONEY BEES USED IN HONEY PRODUCTION AND POLLINATION
The goal of this project was to test the performance of the NOD product, containing formic acid, in a hot weather environment. Formic acid is volatile and its vapor pressure is dependant on temperature. High levels of formic acid are adverse to honey bee health. A study was conducted in August 2010 in south Texas. All open brood was killed, but queen bees were not. Unfortunately, mite efficacy was low and the product was not considered efficacious. We do not anticipate further work on this product for the control of V. destructor, but we will focus on control of Nosema. A fortuitous observation during this time found that colonies with Nosema ceranae infections had significant lower levels when treated with formic acid.


----------



## Sweet to the Soul

Had good weather to go through about 300 of my hives last week. Only brought in 4 dead hives. Compared to the winter before when I brought in over 300 dead hives by Jan 1 this is great. 

I am certain my winter losses last year were due to poor mite control. I changed my approach this year. I treated MAQS in early June after I had supers on. I did lose some queens, but most hives raised a new queen on their own. My fall treatment was hop guard.

Instead of buying 350 packages this year, I am selling Nucs (Lord willing).

I will use MAQS again this year.


----------

