# Treatment Free Mite Treatments



## TWall (May 19, 2010)

Here is the scenario:  Over wintered hive with a hybrid Russian queen. Came through winter strong. Thursday I did a sugar roll and got 4 mites. I have also noticed some bees with distorted wings being removed from the hive.

Is this a high mite count for so early in the spring?

What treatment free treatments are option? 

Remove queen to break brood cycle?

Make multiple splits and remove and remove any queen cells made and re-queen 10-14 days later?

I'm probably just going to monitor at this point and see what happens.

Tom


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

TWall said:


> What treatment free treatments are option?


I'm sorry, what?


TWall said:


> Remove queen to break brood cycle?
> Make multiple splits and remove and remove any queen cells made and re-queen 10-14 days later?
> I'm probably just going to monitor at this point and see what happens.


 If they are strong, let them go and see what happens. Splitting couldn't hurt as well, gives you more hives to work with.


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

Treatment free mite treatments....is an oxymoron. Can not have it both ways.

Sometimes ya just have to do what you have to do to save your hive...if this is your intent. Otherwise let live or die.

If you are going treatment free, and you are seeing dwv, might as well shake them out and clean up the boxes and order a new package.

If this is not what you want to do, post in the disease and pest forum for advice


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Treatment free mite treatments,
I disagree, in my opinion removing the queen from the hive, & starting her in a nuc is a treatment free option.
I'm not treatment free so I would use powdered sugar a three times per week after removing the queen.
The only reason I suggest this is because you're hive is in very bad shape, & probably won't make it without some manipulation, & the mildest treatment option.


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

KQ6AR said:


> Treatment free mite treatments,
> I disagree, in my opinion removing the queen from the hive, & starting her in a nuc is a treatment free option.


Well since splitting is not considered a 'treatment' under this particular forum's definitions, then it's a treatment free option for reducing mites, but wouldn't be called a 'treatment free treatment'. 

It's something I plan to use myself. Taking the old queen out and making a small nuc with her, leaving most of the population in the original hive. Letting the now queenless hive begin to raise their own new queen from eggs will give them enough broodless time to disrupt the mite breeding cycle. If you don't want more hives, you can always re-combine them again later, keeping the queen of your choice, or sell the nuc. This is just one possible approach. It's possible your mite problem is already too severe for that particular hive to be saved no matter what you do- I wouldn't know.


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## AramF (Sep 23, 2010)

and to add to Omie's comment, add a drone comb into the nucleous so that the old queen fills it out with drone larvae. add it to the original hive and now you are in mite catching business.

I believe the orignal poster meant to say chemical free treatment


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

Not trying to contradict you Aram, but if you are making a 5 frame nuc with only two frames of brood and two of stores (and maybe a drawn comb or a frame feeder), I'd think the queen will want to (and need to) be laying worker brood as much as she can at first. I wonder if she'd even bother to lay drones under those severe conditions?


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## AramF (Sep 23, 2010)

your point is not without merit. maybe a drone frame from another hive can be utilized for that purpose then.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Drone brood harvesting can be surprisingly effective if done right. 

Takes a while though so as you already have DWV the time factor may be an issue. 
Is there dead brood? That marks the point when there are so many mites that more than one is going into a larval cell, and sucking the larvae to death. 

However rather than simply let the hive die you could at least give drone brood removal a shot.


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

TWall,
That number of mites would not concern me at this point with my bees. 
What are you running, foundation, natural comb or ?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Wow, really? Seems early in the season for that many mites to me. How many bees were in the sample?

Sure, you could let it be. Or you could do the drone brood killing method, like Roland does. Killing the drone brood every 15 days by scraping it and replacing it.

Or the powdered sugar dusting technique.

Whatever you do, imo, doing nothing will result in more mites earlier than you'd like.


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## TWall (May 19, 2010)

My sample had between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of bees. I was shooting for 300 bees. For discussion lets say I over-estimated and there were only 200 bees. That works out to 2 mites per 100. Doubled for brood gives 4 mites per 100.

That sounds like it is below any treatment threshold I have read.

The compounding factor was the evidence of bees with DWV being expelled from the hive.

Does sugar dusting really reduce mite loads? I seem to remember a study, from UF?, that showed it had no impact.

I don't have the resources to make splits to break the brood cycle. The idea of pulling the queen with a small split to break the brood cycle is interesting. If we are moving into a nectar flow might this give the added benefit of increasing honey production since there won't be brood to care for?

I will check drone brood the next time I get into the hive. At this point I'm more concerned about swarming than crashing from mites. That may be naive!

Tom


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Wether sugar dusting has any impact depends on how it's done.

Typically around 85% of mites that are in a hive are in the brood, which leaves only 15% available to be removed by sugar dusting. And even then you won't get the whole 15%.

There was a thread a few months ago by a guy who believed he had cleaned a badly infested hive by constant sugar dusting, every 3 days until he had almost no mites in the hive. But someone asked him if he would do it again, he said he found it an interesting experiment but would not do it again, way to much work.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Another thing to keep in mind is that heavy dusting can cause a break in the brood cycle and even force a supercedure... this is the reason that I personally do not recommend it. Although the mechanics of dusting heavily can indeed remove many mites from the colony, it also can lead to issues within the colony that may or may not be able to be overcome, depending on the type of operation and the hive itself. For a fairly hygienic and strong colony, the dust can be cleared quite quickly, but at the same time, simply confining the queen or moving her to a nuc for a short period can interrupt the brood cycle long enough to have the same effect... again, so long as the colony is fairly hygienic.

For those that do dust, I would suggest moving the queen to a nuc, waiting nine days, then destroy any e-cells and dust the hive well... repeat three days later, then once again three days after that... give them enough time to clean up... then return the queen to the colony. This will give you the most effective dusting, without risking looking the queen, keeping some fresh brood being reared in the nuc, and interrupting the brood cycle within the colony long enough to work the majority of the mites out of the cells...

I haven't had a chance to read back into the thread, but was dusting decided to be a treatment for the purpose of this forum? Don't mean to give info on a treatment method on a treatment free forum, just wasn't sure if it was considered a treatment... sorry if I goofed! 

Again, I do not recommend dusting, for several reasons.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Once per week dusting will not lower you're mite load, that's what the studies concluded. 3 times per week, for 3 weeks in a broodless hive will take it very low.
Last fall someone on here from Berkley CA, had the same problem, & wrote a very detailed thread of how he saved the hives with PS. Don't remember his screen name. I'll try to find it for you.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Just checked the rules, sugar dusting is considered a treatment in this forum.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Oops! Scratch that then.inch:

How about drone culling?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Drone culling is not considered a treatment in this forum.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Then strike the drone brood every 12-14 days. Get on it! No slacking!!

Crazy Roland


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Yep. You could do it on regular frames, or you could use drone comb. It takes longer to work the drone comb in, but that's the way that I recommend... hives get really nice and burr free pretty quick... I will post some methods that I have found that work well for creating booming hives that are clean and uniform by using drone comb. 

Whatever way you go about it, just try to keep the hives alive and reproducing naturally (can give some tips on how to do this without losing any swarms)... the longer you can keep this up, the stronger their resistances will become, and the less work you will have to do later on to keep them alive.


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

rrussell6870:

Do you use old drone comb frames, or do you use Pierco green drone comb?

I was thinking of getting a few frames to try out myself since I am using mediums and VSH bees.

I figured that I might kill two birds with one stone: mite mitigation and VSH % testing.

It could make for a neat demo.


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## Mosherd1 (Apr 17, 2011)

Russel, question for you. If we could theoretically cage each queen in our apiaries twice a year for instance would that "ruin" a queen. Doolittle felt that after caging a queen she would never be the same. Do you agree with that or do you think that for small scale beekeepers caging a queen twice a year would be good?


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

WLC, I would recommend just getting some drone comb foundation (I think Mann Lake has it, but calls it "Large Cell")... it comes in deeps (probably mediums too) its not wired and its really clean... you could easily cut it to fit your frames, or cut it into strips to use as a guide for the bees to draw natural cell in the rest of the frame... the green frames are great in the fact that they can be reused and are very easy to identify in a hive, but as with all plastic, it takes a little longer to convince the bees to used it... I did a ton of work on drone density studies, and started using the foundation comb in some of my personal hives because once the older comb was rotated out and the bees had a full drone comb, there was no more bur comb, anywhere at all... and aside from the outer edge frames and the supers, every other cell was worker size, thus very uniform, booming colonies... we did play around a good bit with drone culling and when using the drone foundation, you can simply cut it out and throw it into a pile and burn it off... the pattern is left around the edges of the comb, and the bees have a new found need for drone cells once you cut out the old one, so they draw natural drone comb very quickly in the old frame... just mark the top of the frames with a sharpie, or paint it so you can easily locate it... its a breeze once you get started...

Mosherd1, I wouldn't go quite THAT far, as to say "once they are caged", but I do agree with not doing it unless you have to... I don't bank mated queens for that very reason... but I can offer a suggestion that may prove to be a better option for those that are considering what you mentioned... instead of ageing the queens, take two frames of brood and the queen and place them in a nuc, cardboard will work if you don't have much woodenware available... this way you give the colony some time to hatch as much brood as possible before reintroduction, and the nuc is self sufficient... after you move the queen back to the hive, you can do any of a few things with the nuc... combine it back to the hive (somewhat defeating the purpose, but not as much as one may think), shake the bees from the frames and let them drift to other hives while you destroy the comb, or allow the little nuc to create an e-queen that you can keep to get yourself out of a jam in the future... this of course would cause an interruption in the brood cycle within the nuc as well...

Hope this helps.


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

Thanks, russell6870:

I just ordered some large cell medium foundation and frames from Mann Lake.

This should be fun.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

It's easy, just place the drone comb frames in position 2 or 3 (depending on the strength of the colony), don't forget to mark them well so you can id them from the top... while doing so, go through the hive and clean it up completely... remove any and all bur comb, and locate all frames that have any significant amounts of drone cells, and mark those with a thumb tack on the top.... that way you can start cycling out those with new frames of worker foundation...(I suggest putting them in nucs to use for other needs)... soon they will have the drone comb drawn and filled, and all of the other frames will be solid worker (with the exception of some honey cells along the top maybe). Good luck.


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## HONEYDEW (Mar 9, 2007)

The cleanest method would be to just get VSH queens and not worry about drone culling, reason being you miss the pull date by a slight miss calc. and you have just quadrupled your mite count...


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## Jeff G (May 12, 2010)

rrussell,

When re-introducing the queen from a nuc back to the same colony, what is the best way? Do you just direct release her or is there a process?


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## AramF (Sep 23, 2010)

Russel,

You mentioned sharing your methods. Are you still willing to do that? Will you share it in this thread? Also, what are e-cells?


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## TWall (May 19, 2010)

HONEYDEW said:


> The cleanest method would be to just get VSH queens and not worry about drone culling


Is a VSH queen more hygenic than a Russian queen?

Tom


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## HONEYDEW (Mar 9, 2007)

VSH (Varroa sensitive hygiene) is bread specifically for mite control a Russian might be somewhat hygienic but not necessarily bread to be...


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