# brood break and mites



## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

One way to look at it is as a % of mite infested brood. A well times brood break arrests the increasing % of brood that are damaged at the time when it really starts to accelerate. Then if, as I do, you use Mel Disselkoens method of using a newly mated queen mid-summer she lays at a rate that reduces the % of mite infested brood. 
The effect of this is that the % of mite infested brood is less than the threshold that impacts overwintering. In the spring the queen accelerates again and you can make a crop of honey or bees. 
I am not aware of any mite # data, as far as I am aware there is no university studying the method. The mite can't reproduce without the open larva to crawl into. There is elegance in Mel's method. http://www.mdasplitter.com/
Combining Mel's timing principles, and Mike Palmer's nuc growing method has allowed me to grow my apiary in a self-sustaining manner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MatoOA9TapA


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

I look at it this way. You can lose bees to mites or you can loose bees to brood breaks. The difference is in the number of mites at the end of the losses. And the mites are going to come back. Once the break for the bees is over it is over for the mites as well. I do take some consideration that swarming is the bees way of causing a brood break. I am not so sure that most hitchhiking mites would not get groomed off the bees during a swarm as well. The bees remained clustered for quite a while even after locating to a new cavity. With the bees dog piled like that for an extended time I would suspect that many mites get discovered and eliminated. This would be a significant difference in behavior from just a brood break of an otherwise normal hive.

In all I do not consider brood breaks and swarming strictly apple to apple comparisons.

Then consider the only time I have seen mites on any of my bees has been from swarms I have captured or two colonies I made from a cut out after they spent their week or two all clustered up.

If you are going to loose bees anyway. May as well be beneficial to them as much as possible.


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## JohnSchwartz (Mar 24, 2014)

Adrian,
I concur with Mel's system. Very simple and a key is it is sustainable: the mites can't adapt to the disruption.

I'm curious about Palmer's methods. What is the key there from your perspective?


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## GLOCK (Dec 29, 2009)

I had brood breaks and drone frames and 4.9 cell brood frames in most my hives last year and still had high mite loads by mid JULY . I think brood breaks may help but alone won't do crap .
I still ended up treating in the FALL .
Hoping this year is different last year was the first time I ever treated my hives and I had a pile of VARROA this year maybe the bees can keep the mites in check. I will be doing alcohol wash's this year to keep a eye on mite loads and plan on treating only if things get bad. Still cold in these parts.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

red said:


> are we just moving the mite load problem later into the season


This is my sense of it.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

John, I am working with Michael's methods. first adopting the policy to keep nucs to support my production colonies. This is the first year that is happening in a significant way. last year nucs served to simply provide increase. btu tis year they are serving to boost straggling colonies and build up the strong ones even more. Of my 10 nucs I used 6 of them to make up my first cell building colony per Michael's method of sustainable queen rearing. The remaining 4 will help get two struggling first year colonies.

In both cases the significance I see is accomplishing the goal without weakening colonies. In the case of nucs I can increase while strengthening my other colonies not weakening them. In queen rearing I see it even more dramatically. I have one colony that I intend to rear as many as 135 grafted cells in and in the process that same colony will not be depleted it will be strengthened by the method. It will still produce a honey crop. It started off strong and is in the process of becoming much stronger. IT is getting that way through the management of nucs.

To me nucs are like having a second queen in every colony. except if you actually had a 2 queen colony you are stuck just letting those queens build that one colony stronger and stronger even if it is not needed. With nucs I can put that additional strength wherever it is needed when it is needed. I have some hives that are 5 boxes tall already. Some that are still only 4. and a couple that are still just a deep and a medium. I have 10 nucs and all of them need to have brood and bees removed from them.

Now neither of my straggling hives are sick. they are just at a disadvantage. One got robbed heavily the other was simply never more than a weak hive that went through winter weak. I could boost each with 3 to 4 frames of brood and bees and give them some help in catching up. Once I see them recovering that additional brood from the nucs can then go to all hives that are 3 boxes tall. and then add it to hives that are only 4 boxes tall. until all my hives are at the 5 boxes tall that my strongest hives are at. And nothing got weakened in the process. the nucs are intended to be kept nucs and they exist to provide additional resources for my production hives. they are not doing anything they where not intended to do.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Breeding bugs results in an exponential curve. It starts out slow and then goes faster and faster. The brood break crashes the faster and faster rate for the mite but only slightly affects the faster and faster rate of the bee.


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## JohnSchwartz (Mar 24, 2014)

Excellent, Daniel. Thanks for taking time to share.

How do you ensure you are not perpetuating bad stock or disease with this method?

Are you using Mel's OTS method for queen rearing?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Let's change the scale. If a raise horses and I only keep the mares (to simplify the math) and I breed every mare every year, I double the population of horses at my place every year. Assuming half of those are stud colts and I get rid of them I have increased the population of horses to 150% of what it was before I bred them. If I skip a year, the horse population stays the same. e.g. I have 100 mares and I breed them all and they all have foals and I sell off the males, I now have 150 mares. The next year I breed 150 mares and have 150 foals and sell off the males so I now have 375 mares. The next year I breed 375 mares have 375 foals and sell of the males so I now have 562 mares. What would happen if I skipped a breeding cycle back there at the beginning? If I skipped the first breeding cycle then instead of 562 horses, I'd now have 375 horses. Did that have an impact on the population? 

This is exaggerated with the mites as they don't have half male offspring. If you go from 1 mite to 2 in the first brood cycle and 2 to 4 in the second and 4 to 8 in the third, any skip in a brood cycle halves the number at the end and that is ignoring any attrition due to age or getting groomed off during that break. After all they are getting older in the meantime.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> any skip in a brood cycle halves the number at the end and that is ignoring any attrition due to age or getting groomed off during that break.


Maybe I'm just too dense Michael but I don't follow. It appears to me that during an extended brood break both the populations of bees and mites remain in about the same proportion. Both populations are ageing and some of each die during that period but I don't imagine the relative infestation rate drops. 
The only sensible explanation I've heard is that following the brood break the mites are so determined to reproduce that the first batch of new bee brood will be especially highly infested and much of it will die before emerging...and so that generation of mites will fail. Having said that, to my thinking, this would only impact the relative mite/bee ratio if the foundress mites died as well. 
Otherwise...the logic defies me.


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## bnm1000 (Oct 12, 2011)

Beemandan

I am definitely not an expert on Mel's method, but from what I understand, the mites breed at a much faster rate than the bees. So, they increase exponentially at a much faster rate than the bees increase. So, if nothing is done to stop the mite breeding, they will outbreed the bees. Mel's method is designed to impact the mite load to readdress the relative infestation.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

bnm1000 said:


> I am definitely not an expert on Mel's method


I am not either. I've read some of his stuff a long time ago....I don't recall the details of it but do recall that I wasn't impressed at the time. Doesn't mean he's not right....it simply didn't make sense to me. And, I don't plan on a reread at this point.....


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I've really got to get to the beeyards but...here's my thinking.
You've got a 3% mite infestation i.e. 3 mites per 100 bees. You interrupt brood production for a month. At the end of that month....what will the mite/bee infestation rate be?
If you can explain why it would be significantly lower than 3%....I'll listen.


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## honeydrunkapiaries (Oct 16, 2013)

The way I understand it is by knocking down the bees population curve at a critical time (before they reach critical mass) you can avoid that inevitable period where there is more mites then bees when they slow down brood rearing. Randy Oliver's work on varroa population dynamics can help you to understand this. There is however no hard and fast peer reviewed studies that I can find about varroa populations and brood breaks. All the studies of this effect are for treatments. He is also coupling this with his OTS queen rearing techniques as I understand it, you are creating a brood break of about 30 days, as they develop a queen. But assuming that there are eggs, and the mites will have somewhere to reproduce it turns out to be a brood break of 10 +/- days (I think, dont quote me on that). Furthermore, he goes on to point out that when you have your queen begin to lay all the varroa will rush into the first 20-30 cells about to get capped. In worker cells 1-2 mites can live comfortably and any more then that they will suffocate and die. 

I think this is a good method worth some serious investigation, but would be very dependent on your season, and when they reach critical mass in brood population. Hes in Michigan and im in Ontario so it "should" be similar. 

Another interesting point he made was that by going queenless before your flow, the bees do not have to feed brood and you will actually have MORE honey. However, if you have multiple flows then you would have a severely reduced population of bees and that would affect production.


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## tommysnare (Jan 30, 2013)

Daniel Y said:


> John, I am working with Michael's methods. first adopting the policy to keep nucs to support my production colonies. This is the first year that is happening in a significant way. last year nucs served to simply provide increase. btu tis year they are serving to boost straggling colonies and build up the strong ones even more. Of my 10 nucs I used 6 of them to make up my first cell building colony per Michael's method of sustainable queen rearing. The remaining 4 will help get two struggling first year colonies.
> 
> In both cases the significance I see is accomplishing the goal without weakening colonies. In the case of nucs I can increase while strengthening my other colonies not weakening them. In queen rearing I see it even more dramatically. I have one colony that I intend to rear as many as 135 grafted cells in and in the process that same colony will not be depleted it will be strengthened by the method. It will still produce a honey crop. It started off strong and is in the process of becoming much stronger. IT is getting that way through the management of nucs.
> 
> ...


i have made nucs in the past. this will be my first season of using them to strengthen hives. im really excited about it....and many other things for this season


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## Delta Bay (Dec 4, 2009)

> The only sensible explanation I've heard is that following the brood break the mites are so determined to reproduce that the first batch of new bee brood will be especially highly infested and much of it will die before emerging...and so that generation of mites will fail.


There is plenty written in varroa biology that they don't mate well in crowded conditions. I would assume this would be at least one of the factors that changes the population dynamics of the varroa when using a brood break.


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## rwlaw (May 4, 2009)

Actually there are two brood breaks in the ots method. The only hive that doesn't is the queen that's pulled in the spring. The resulting splits are 30 days w/o a laying queen, then at summer solstice all queens are dispatched or in the case of production left to dwindle.
The one thing that hasn't been mentioned is the queens that start laying in the fall, will be as Mel puts it " a fresh mare compared to a old nag, she has the ability to outbreed the mites". Basically your going into winter with a queen laying longer and less bees damaged by mites.
As far as the hive population, yes it does drop, but the new queen quickly catches up because you have all the reserves built up from the queenless period.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

I'm late back to the party. I was going to put an answer similar to post #7. I am using nucs as the basis of my apiary. There was one point not made. I saw a study in ABJ a while back that said that it is raising brood that ages the nurse bees, that broodless bees live longer. If you can accept this, it isn't much of a stretch to see that if you had a mite infestation of 3% in a hive and you split during the time that there was no brood there would be some attrition, how much noone knows. If you have made 4 splits the mite infestation would still be 3% for the total number of bees, but you now have the bees in 4 colonies, and so think of the percentage of mite infestation differently. Instead of one individual queen trying to outbreed the mites in the fall there are now 4 queens in 4 different colonies dealing with a much lower mite infestation.


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## red (Jan 15, 2013)

How much of these ideas still hold up when you add in a large bee yard with palletized hives and bee or drone drift?


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## MattDavey (Dec 16, 2011)

I remember something else that Mel says and it hasn't been mentioned yet.

The first round of brood get heavily infested with mites, with several female mites entering a brood cell. This overload of parasites causes the larvae/pupae to die and the mites die with it (as they are sealed in the cell).


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

JohnSchwartz said:


> Excellent, Daniel. Thanks for taking time to share.
> 
> How do you ensure you are not perpetuating bad stock or disease with this method?
> 
> Are you using Mel's OTS method for queen rearing?


I first only increase from exceptional. Healthy is something of a prerequisite to being exceptional. My focus and always has been to work toward thriving health rather than spend the money chasing after diseases. So far it seems to work. You can give up some honey income or spend the money you made on that honey later treating bees for example. I guess for me it is a matter of spend the money making your bees strong or spend it trying to get them well.

I graft into JZBZ Cell cups. I follow Micheal's method of isolating a queen on empty comb for 24 hours so I know the age of the larva. We got some practice last summer with grafting and have worked out most of the kinks with that. Now we are working on making strong cell builders to improve our take. I contacted Micheal privately to get specific comments on what we are doing before we started. He was very kind in offering specific advice for where we are and what we hope to accomplish.

So far weather is not helping. Tomorrow is only supposed to get to 51 degrees so we may have to skip isolating the queens. On monday we will then simply search their brood for appropriate aged brood. This will effect or take to some degree but some queens are better than no queens.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> If you have made 4 splits the mite infestation would still be 3% for the total number of bees, but you now have the bees in 4 colonies, and so think of the percentage of mite infestation differently. Instead of one individual queen trying to outbreed the mites in the fall there are now 4 queens in 4 different colonies dealing with a much lower mite infestation.


I swear, it still doesn't make sense. If you split a 3% infested hive 4 ways, you'd have 4 hives with 3% infestation. If a new queen will outbreed the mites....why split? Just put a new queen in your 3% hive.


MattDavey said:


> I remember something else that Mel says and it hasn't been mentioned yet.


I did mention something about this earlier....but didn't credit Mel. I couldn't remember if it was from his work or someone else's. This would have some impact if the foundress mites died too. I'm not sure that happens....especially if your bees have any sort of hygienic behavior. Add to that, what I'd be afraid might increase the possibility of brood disease. A bunch of dead bee pupae under caps...sounds like a perfect breeding ground for such plagues.
I know that Randy Oliver did a writeup where he theorized a split/brood break, under a very narrow window that he believed would result in some reduction in infestation. Such a thing might work for someone with a few hives and time to spare. Getting all of the conditions perfect and applying to a few hundred or more hives at the perfect moment....won't fly.
I am not saying this stuff doesn't work. I am simply saying that it doesn't make intuitive sense to me. It must just be me as it appears to make sense to many others.
Best of luck to all practitioners.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Red asked how much still applies with a large bee yard, palletized hives, and drift. I don't know. I think if it worked for large commercial beekeepers they'd all be doing it by now. Everything has a cost/benefit. For the a small sideliner like me the cost is that I spend time managing colonies that don't produce a crop of honey, pollinate crops, or are sold until the year after they are produced. The benefit is that I am not spending time monitoring mites, treating mites, and having to buy replacement packages each year. I don't think large commercial operators can afford to have their bees sitting, not producing. When your operation has to realize enough revenue to cover the costs of a skidsteer, automated honey processing equipment, etc your bees have to bringing in cash all the time.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Dan, I think some of it is regional. I think the broodless period caused by our extended winter period is a factor.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> I think the broodless period caused by our extended winter period is a factor.


I don't envy you your winters....but I would like a nice winter brood break. Maybe I should become a reverse migratory beekeeper....move my hives north for winter....


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Barry said:


> Just from a mathematical viewpoint, I don't follow this. If you split the 3% 4 ways, you've just made each hive have .75% of the original mite load.


Of course.... a quarter of the mites along with a quarter of the original bee population. In relative proportion....the mite/bee infestation rate remains unchanged. That or my math skills have totally abandoned me.....which isn't out of the question either.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Dan, that is funny. Does the math make sense now after Barry's worked example?


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Think of it as 4 young queens outbreeding a divided colony of mites compared to a time when a more mature queen is slowing down.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Barry, it just depends on how you apply your maths, 400 bees with 12 mites equals 3%, split 4 ways then 100 bees have 3 mites so each split still has 3% infestation
Johno


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Barry, No you have not. It is still the same number of bees with the same amount of brood with the same number of mites. it is still 3% infestation. You have increased the equation by 3 queens. As these queens begin to produce brood you have increased the opportunity for all mites to find a place to reproduce. In effect increasing their advantage as well as that of the bees. Increase the prey and the predator population will increase. Probably it will lag behind but in the case of bees and mites what would that be a matter of 21 days? 

I could go into more detail such as 4 queens with the same number of bees cannot in fact produce more than one queen with all the bees. the bees can only tend and cover so much brood. Unless of course there where more bees originally than the queen could lay brood for. So I agree their would likely be an increase in brood production but not a 4 fold increase. Split 4 ways then boost the population of each split so the queens can lay at maximum ability.


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## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I deleted it before any of you could reply! 

Yes, a quarter of the original bee population but not a quarter of the frames/combs as more get added. Threw me for a minute.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Yet there is more to it than the math. There is something about a fresh nuc that exudes vigor. There are things about the cavity/population/pest dynamics we don't understand. We seem to know that large hive dynamics favor large scale mite production. There is something to be discovered about smaller cavity dynamics. Listen to MP ooze enthusiasm when he talks about the productivity of nucs, he is not making this up. It is real.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Ok...a real world example. Your hive has 30000 bees and 1000 mites (3.3%). You divide it equally four ways. You now have four hives with 7500 bees and 250 mites. Right? Run the numbers.
Daniel Y is on the money with this. Four new queens can outlay one old queen....but since you've divided her support system by 4 she won't be able to lay anywhere close to her potential. And, as Daniel Y pointed out....there will be plenty of opportunity for those 250 mites to find suitable hosts. 
I really believe that many of these theoretical ideas are built on incomplete information.....and under the scrutiny of scientific evaluation they would fall far short of their expected efficacy. That, or my old brain just isn't capable of assimilating new information any longer. 
And again, as these concepts seem to have gained such a following....I'm sure the problem is mine.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Dan, I think the way forward for backyard/sideline beekeepers in the north is to move to overwintering smaller colonies in single deeps. The mites can be dealt with in a double-pronged way. One prong being timely splits, and the other prong being the use of locally developed resistant queens.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Correction. I meant single deep volumes, preferably nuc configured single deep volumes.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> Dan, I think the way forward for backyard/sideline beekeepers in the north is to move to overwintering smaller colonies in single deeps.


I wouldn't even try to advise a northern beekeeper on strategies. While I wouldn't offer to speak for MP, I will say that it was never my understanding that his overwintering nuc strategies were directed at varroa control. Maybe he will pick up on this thread and straighten me out.
Best of luck.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Thanks Dan, I appreciate the discussion. I agree with you about MP, he has said that he doesn't need to treat his overwintering nucs for varroa, not that his nuc strategy was aimed at defeating varroa .


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Adrian Quiney WI said:


> Dan, I think the way forward for backyard/sideline beekeepers in the north is to move to overwintering smaller colonies in single deeps. The mites can be dealt with in a double-pronged way. One prong being timely splits, and the other prong being the use of locally developed resistant queens.


I believe Tim Ives just got a SARE grant to study the benefits of wintering in 3 deeps.


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

I tend to agree with those not supportive of simple brood breaks. However, and excuse me if this has been discussed, a cut-down split, for example, will induce a brood break, which if successful will result in a new queen beginning to lay at the same point the colony is completely broodless. This would be the only time I would consider powered sugar dusting as a viable tool against mites. Perhaps other "soft" treatments as well would be far more effective during this broodless period.


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