# Varroa counts not making sense



## Aladdin (May 28, 2015)

Trying to be TF but willing to be reasonable this second year after losing 2out of three hives. I checked drone capped brood mid summer and there were 2/20 mites. Queen shut down briefly in summer. Two weeks ago did the same the number was quite higher 9/20 with more than one with 2 mites and one with 3 on a single pupa. I removed most drone brood then. I got MAQS but decided to count again today. A. Sugar roll only 2 mites. B. Drone brood 2/20. Am I missing something and should I treat anyway? Thanks!


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## orthoman (Feb 23, 2013)

I'll take a stab at this one. There will almost always be far more mites within the capped brood than there are ridding around on the backs of the bees (aka phoretic mites) so I would expect to see more when uncapping brood - especially drone brood. When you do a sugar roll or alcohol wash, you are counting phoretic mites (those that are not in the capped brood) and typically there are fewer mites that are phoretic unless you are in a broodless period.

I personally don't bother with the sugar roll and prefer the alcohol wash. Since I usually sample about 300 bees (1/2 cupful) A count of 2 in 300 would be less than 1% so I probably would not treat. A 2% count (which would be 6 mites) in the sample would be my threshold and I would treat.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

If this was the first time you had ever done a sugar roll, and you suspected that the count might be off, then do another one(s) to rule out operator errors.

This is a link to a better method of sugar rolling:

https://pollinators.msu.edu/resources/beekeepers/varroa-mite-monitoring/


I agree with the commenter above, however, looking at phoretic mite numbers and drone brood sampled numbers is comparing apples to oranges. 

At this time of year when the number of worker brood pupae is naturally dropping off, and drone brood - the mite's preferred host - is tapering off even more, and the breeding rate of varroa is increasing you will see more varroa mites per pupa. That's why treating in mid/late-summer is so critical to winter survival. 

I am not aware of any published drone brood sampling thresholds that can be used to monitor and make treatment decisions. But there are well-researched thresholds for sugar/alcohol rolling.

I would repeat the sugar roll using the Michigan State technique linked above. ( I recently saw it demonstrated and it had the same mite-retrieval success as an alcohol roll.) 

The brief queen shut-down you noted may have worked by disrupting the varroa mite's exponential breeding curve, at least enough to allow the numbers to shift downwards briefly. Perhaps that's what you are seeing. 

The "cure" for conflicting data is regular, more-frequent, testing. I do sugar rolls about very five or six weeks on every hive colony (on a rolling basis with some hives in a yard being sampled each week), and sticky boards every single week , on every colony. There is a definitely a variability of mite numbers for a given time period, yet, overall the mite numbers keeping climbing higher over the season until they reach a treatment threshold, in which case I smack 'em down with a treatment. I think sampling just once or twice a year isn't enough data to make a treat/ no treat decisions on, so I think it results in both over- and under-treating.

My goal is to treat the least number of times, with the most effective (looking at a wide range of factors) product and dosing for the time of year, to achieve the longest-lasting control. But I look on it not as just a summer thing, but a year-round program. I don't treat all year, however, but I do monitor all year (yes, even in winter with sticky boards). My hives are just now coming up to treatment thresholds, nine months after the last treatment. 

If you plan to use MAQS, I would treat sooner rather than later since there is a small risk of queen loss using that product (more so if you use the two-strip dosing vs the one strip dosing, but then that has to be repeated even later). That's fine when we still have good queen-making weather, but gets more problematic unless you have a ready source of mated replacement queens. For late summer and fall treatment I prefer OAV (even though it doesn't kill varroa under the cappings like MAQS does, so needs a _series _of treatments to do the job.) But if I needed treatment in late July/ early August - and most critically, if I had temps in the lower range (not over about 81 or 82 F) - I would use MAQS. 

BTW, I have been told by my supplier that MAQS can be stored frozen to "pause" its expiration clock, so if you don't wind up using it this season you can keep for use next year. To determine how much longer you can keep it, simply note the date it entered frozen storage compared to the expiration date noted on the package. The time in the freezer doesn't "count", so if the package says it will expire in six months from now, and if you freeze it now, when you take it back out in four months it will still have six months to go, IYKWIM?

Kudos to you, however, for doing the sampling you have been doing. I wish there were published thresholds for drone brood sampling as I examine all drone brood that I disturb when inspecting and do counts on the cells. But I'm never sure what conclusions to draw from the numbers. 

Enj.


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## Woodside (Aug 10, 2010)

IMHO you need to do a real mite test. Use an alcohol wash.. you will have to make a little tester cup or jar but you need to do it. If you are TF id suggest using OAV anyway. It is very hard to go 100% TF if you dont have alot of bees to select from / breed from and 3 dead hives is very hard to breed from.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

A correctly performed sugar roll is a "real test."

Enj.


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## Agis Apiaries (Jul 22, 2014)

We have a more simple approach. Mites = Treat. No mites = Don't treat. Didn't lose a single hive last winter. We don't worry about specific numbers. Either you have them or you don't.


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## Woodside (Aug 10, 2010)

enjambres said:


> A correctly performed sugar roll is a "real test."
> 
> Enj.


yep it is


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Either you have them or you don't.

No need to count. You have them.


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## Aladdin (May 28, 2015)

Thank you very helpful, appreciate the link to the sugar roll test.


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## Aladdin (May 28, 2015)

Thanks everyone! No two beekeepers will ever agree but i for one learn from all the feedback. I certainly learned from your responses to this post a lot. Will decide what do next over the weekend!


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

Go with whatever your gut says. 

I take care of the mites and feed my bees when they need it. Zero winter losses in my short stint and I don't see the trend changing much although 100% won't last forever. 

Keep bees that don't rob, don't run wide open entrances constantly... And you'll go a long way towards keeping your bees alive with as little treatment as possible.

As a side note... Double any count you get doing a sugar roll and then consider doubling it again. Pulling drone brood can be tricky as mites tend to be kind of patchy in capped brood. And 20 is hardly a sample.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Statements such as "you need to double and re-double your sugar roll numbers" are what leads people to conclude it's not a "real test", worth making the effort to do. 

The Michigan method, (see link above) which I saw demonstrated by Megan Milbrath at the recent NYBeeWellness Conference performed as well as an alcohol wash (i.e. no additional mites were collected from the same sugar-rolled sample with a subsequent alcohol test _on the same sample of bees_.)

Done carefully and correctly and consistently there is no reason to do any math-jiggering to get an infestation percentage that you can use to make a well-founded treatment decision. 

And I think sugar rolls are more likely to actually get done regularly over the season than alcohol washes.

Enj.


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## m0dem (May 14, 2016)

enjambres said:


> _on the same sample of bees_


How? :scratch:


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Easy! Do a sugar roll, shake the sugar out to collect the revealed mites, but not the bees, and then use the same bees in an alcohol wash test. 

This had been the traditional "proof" that sugar rolls don't work as well as alcohol in sampling when even more mites can be recovered in the subsequent alcohol wash. This has lead to sugar rolls being dismissed as being lower-quality sampling tools and the folk wisdom statements about having to double, or triple, to get an idea of the mite percentage.

However the new sugar rolling technique that I saw demonstrated at the conference didn't result in any additional mites appearing in the subsequent alcohol wash.

Since I only do sugar rolls, I was very pleased to switch to the new method, and have been teaching it to every beekeeper I can.

Part of the problem with alcohol washes is that many beekeepers - particularly newer, hobbyist beekeepers -are reluctant to regularly sacrifice 300 bees in every colony needed for the most-useful, frequent, colony-level data collection. So they only do alcohol washes once or twice a season, on a sub-set of colonies, if that. So the mites can increase without the beekeeper realizing it until it's too late for effective, lower-key program based on year-round suppression. And then mites get into a boom and bust cycle that just makes the problem worse, in a yard and in nearby hives (both feral and managed). And because there is naturally a good bit of variability from colony to colony in the same yard they risk making treatment decisions based on a sample of an outlier-colony. 

Sugar rolls, once you learn them, are easy to do and if we step up and start paying attention to mites on a colony by colony level it will enable us to more forward, faster. (See thread about the interesting discussion on the Bee-L about Randy Oliver's take on this.) Ironically, at least for me, Randy was there demonstrating his improved (simplified and quicker) method of alcohol sampling - which is better, if alcohol washes are your thing, as they are for Randy Oliver. But they aren't what I want to do so I was delighted to see the improved sugar roll method demonstrated by Meghan Milbrath and have adopted it instead. I was already doing the fine-grained sampling of every colony all season long that Oliver is advocating, but just by a different, and now better, method. 

So alcohol, or sugar, whichever floats your boat. _Just do them!_ The only "sampling method" which is a complete failure is the head in the sand, never-sample program, for that one just alternates between calendar-based treating with the strongest materials and high levels of dead colonies. 

Enj.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> Part of the problem with alcohol washes is that many beekeepers - particularly newer, hobbyist beekeepers -are reluctant to regularly sacrifice 300 bees in every colony needed for the most-useful, frequent, colony-level data collection. So they only do alcohol washes once or twice a season, on a sub-set of colonies, if that. So the mites can increase without the beekeeper realizing it until it's too late for effective, lower-key program based on year-round suppression. And then mites get into a boom and bust cycle that just makes the problem worse, in a yard and in nearby hives (both feral and managed). And because there is naturally a good bit of variability from colony to colony in the same yard they risk making treatment decisions based on a sample of an outlier-colony.


I find alcohol washes to be accurate and fast. I don't have a bunch of angry bees flying around after being subjected to a sugar roll. I only monitor in the spring and fall. If I have the mites under control in the spring I don't monitor until I harvest honey. I only do that once a year. Supers go on during dandelion flow and stay there. I am not very tolerant of higher counts and I treat the whole yard if I find a hive with high counts. I have noted that this keeps mites in check and makes winter survival better. This works for me pretty well and I seldom have very high mite counts, but generally treat in the fall anyway with OA vapor - 4X, once a week. Now that I have the JB700 running I will probably do a treatment in December also. Latest counts show max of 5 mites/300 bees. Still treating all yards.


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

It's a long time until spring. When contemplating treatments or not imagine yourself pacing the floor all winter worrying about something that you can do nothing about then. If you're a worrier save yourself the anxiety and just assume your bees need mite treatments and do them in August or September. 

I counted mites on 25+ colonies last year and lets just say that every hive that got tested for mites had them. (even the ones that did not get tested had them)


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