# Mite drop after removing MAQS



## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

1) I think so. Yes the mites are falling out of cells when the pupa emerges.
2) Not sure but what you said makes perfect sense. I treated my apiary(s) last weekend with MAQ's and seeing lots of crawlers and they probably end up somewhere at night. A hive is a hive to a bee that can't fly. That's why they say to treat everything imo.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

Yes. Mite mortality in capped brood should be almost as high as the phoretic mites. As the brood is uncapped over a couple of weeks, the mites should rain. I just inspected an oil tray on a hive I treated with MAQS a couple of weeks back, and am still seeing the high drop.

Once all the brood that was capped when the strips were applied have emerged, things should settle down.

I can see a couple of reasons why the makers would say you should treat all hives at the same time.

1. Mites from one hive might take refuge in an adjacent hive. They can move pretty fast for a critter with almost no legs, and can jump from bee to bee remarkably quickly.

2. To sell more product.

But I think you've got it right ... test and see if treatment is needed. I treated 2 of three hives on a stand ... the third hive had dropped 2 mites in 24 hours, partly because the bees therein have a good record of treating varroa, partly because they'd had a brood break from raising a new queen, and partly because she'd laid a deep drone frame full of drones, which were pulled when they capped. I see no sense in treating a hive in such good condition. It made sense to treat the other two so the whole stand was about as clean.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

I think the idea is that treating can cause a lot of bees to drift. This isn't a MAQS problem per se, it may just be the screwing with a colony that much causes drift. I recall someone on here awhile back who treated only the colonies indicated on a given yard only to fond mite counts on marginal ones jumped. Can't remember the product used.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Agree with above posts.

Also, MAQS is a nice product but results can vary, it is affected by temperature, humidity, entrance size, numbers of bees in the hive, and probably more. On the plus side, if there are surviving mites a good portion of them can be infertile, because the male mite does not have a hard exoskeleton like the females and is more vulnerable to the acid. So females may emerge from the cell but did not mate because the male had been killed or too weakened, they have missed their window of opportunity to mate and will be infertile for life.

So if you not sure about how the treatment went test 2 or 3 weeks later, then again in a couple months. If the 2 week test is not looking great you may decide to do a second treatment. Based on the numbers you have given I don't think you got them all, the one mite only in the sugar test is certainly an improvement but may represent quite a few mites still there. Did the queen stop laying during treatment?


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

The mathematics involved with using drugs or treatments is the same math as with radiation.
The half-life concept is involved and natural logarithms.
This means you'll never have a colony with truly zero mites or zero residue from treatments or drugs.
Levels where whatever you're talking about becomes un-measurable is when we consider that "zero enough".

Of course bees end up in the wrong hive. Drones probably fly around begging "let me in I'm cold and hungry and that silly beekeeper put this stinky stuff where I used to live"... and some get let in freely. There's still some drones in most of my hives.


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## dsegrest (May 15, 2014)

Drones are the mites "favorite food" and they can go into any hive. Also a new study finds that flowers are platforms for distributing parasites. The bees leave their bugs on the flower and the bug catches a ride on the next bee. 

Unfortunately we don't treat solitary bees or bumble bees so there is still that source for mites.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

Thank you all, 

>...lots of crawlers and they probably end up somewhere at night.
>... only to find mite counts on marginal ones jumped. 
>... Drones probably fly around begging "let me in I'm cold and hungry and that silly beekeeper put this stinky stuff where I used to live"… 
>Drones are the mites "favorite food" and they can go into any hive. Also a new study finds that flowers are platforms for distributing parasites. 

Hmm, so getting mites from the neighboring hives or even from distant hives is somewhat inevitable. Both of my hives still have drones. Next time, at least I’ll try to treat both hives simultaneously.

>Mite mortality in capped brood should be almost as high as the phoretic mites. As the brood is uncapped over a couple of weeks, the mites should rain.
>if there are surviving mites a good portion of them can be infertile, because the male mite does not have a hard exoskeleton like the females and is more vulnerable to the acid. 

Dropping of mites (503, 173, 203, 151, 194, 206, 85, 101, 164, 168, 132, 167, 95, 16, 6, 5, 6, 5) is finally settling down (MAQS strips removed on day 7). if the phoretic mites died and dropped mostly during the first 3 days (879), the rest must have died in capped cells of various ages or in cells to be capped shortly after. And those include males… Interesting. 

>Did the queen stop laying during treatment?
I saw lots of dead bees being dragged out of the hive during the first 3 days. It was really unnerving. I do not know whether the queen took a break during the treatment, but I believe she survived and is laying because I saw young larvae on day 10. I’ll check again this weekend. 

>So if you not sure about how the treatment went test 2 or 3 weeks later, then again in a couple months. If the 2 week test is not looking great you may decide to do a second treatment

I’ll keep monitoring both hives to see if further treatment is needed. I’m sure I’ll ask for advice again. This is a great forum. Thank you.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Very interesting results, I'd like to see again in another week or two, mainly because I'm too lazy to ever do it myself and interesting to see how the curve goes after a FA treatment.

I would say though, that if at stays at 5 or so a day, there would still be a worrying level of mites and something further should be done.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

That is a lot of mites... nearly 2400.

We we call it a 40,000 bee colony that's 6% infestation roughly. These kind of things make me wish I had a proper sticky board set up.


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## Phoebee (Jan 29, 2014)

jwcarlson said:


> That is a lot of mites... nearly 2400.
> 
> We we call it a 40,000 bee colony that's 6% infestation roughly. These kind of things make me wish I had a proper sticky board set up.


But looking at it from the positive side, money well spent on MAQS. Yes, follow up counts are in order. And considering the time of year, it might be interesting to look into OAV for a winter treatment while broodless.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

Hello, here is some update;

Mite count of Hive#1 is lower but they are still there. I am thinking about doing oxalic acid dribble later this year. It seems that mites killed by MAQS (probably the majority died within 3 days) kept falling for about 2 weeks. The total drop during the first 2 weeks was 2358. From pre-treatment sugar-roll (3.7% infestation) and total # of bees (~20,000), I was expecting only about 700, but of course sugar-roll did not detect those in brood cells… 

I was hoping that I would not have to treat Hive#2, which had a long brood break (The old queen disappeared in late July and the new queen began laying around 9/10). Unfortunately, on 10/3, I saw a bee with deformed wings. Because Hive#2 probably had only about 10,000 bees (10 deep frames 50% covered by bees), I used a half dose of MAQS. Toxicity seemed much less both for bees and mites (pre and post treatment sugar roll detected 8 and 4 mites, respectively). The instruction says a half dose treatment can be repeated every other week, so I will start again on 10/18. It will be warm enough around here. 

**Daily mite drop during and after MAQS treatment**

#Hive1; Treatment with a full dose of MAQS from 9/14 to 9/21 (47F/72F). Daily mite drops were 503, 173, 203, 151, 194, 206, 85, 101, 164, 168, 132, 167, 95, 16, 6, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2, 3, 5, 2, 2, 1, 3, and 7 (this morning). Number of mites in 0.5 cup bees were 11 (pre-treatment), 1(day 8), 0 (day 17), and 0 (day 23). Lots of dead bees and reduced bee traffic until day 3. On day 17, the queen was found and the brood pattern seemed as good as that of pre-treatment.

#Hive2: Treatment with a half dose of MAQS from 10/4 to 10/11 (48F/68F). Daily mite drops were 274, 380, 244, 122, 105, 101, and 68 (this morning). Number of mites in 0.5 cup bees were 8 (pre-treatment) and 4 (day 8). Some dead bees were found in the morning of day 2. No reduction in bee traffic was observed. The queen was found on day 8.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Thanks for coming back with an update it's always good to see how these things pan out over time.

That's a fairly hefty mite drop for hive 2 if the frames are only 50% bees, good thing you've done it.

I'm thinking for both hives an OA treatment later may be a good thing.


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## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Appreciate your observations and how you documented your counts, results, etc. Good information for anyone thinking about using MAQS as well as those of us who do use them. Thank you.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

Hello, it’s been a while but here is another update;

Mite count of Hive#1 is still low, 53 days after treatment with a full-dose of MACS. There was a small increase around day 29 that did not coincide with the treatments of Hive#2.

Hive#2 was treated again with a half dose from Oct 20, 16 days after the first half-dose treatment. The first treatment killed ~1800 mites (estimated by # of fallen mites in 2 weeks, probably an over-estimate due to natural fall from the surviving population), and the 2 nd treatment killed ~950. I did not really see killed bees during the 2 nd treatment. Mite count became lower after two treatments but I will do OAD later for final clean-up. 

Although I have no experience in other treatment methods to compare with, I like MAQS well enough to consider using again next year; maybe in early September at a full dose.

***Mite count data***
#Hive1; Treatment with a full dose of MAQS from 9/14 to 9/21 (47F/72F). Before treatment, 24-hr mite drops were 0,1,6,0,3,2,3,4,?,11,4,14,23 (measured once a week from 6/20 to 9/12). After treatment, daily mite drops were 503, 173, 203, 151, 194, 206, 85, 101, 164, 168, 132, 167, 95, 16, 6, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2, 3*, 5, 2, 2, 1, 3, 7, 11, 20, 7, 8, 1, 7, 3, 4, 2, 1*, 5, 4, 2, 2, 1, 4, 4, 5, 0, 1, 6, 8, 5, 1, 3, 0 (* indicates when Hive#2 was treated). Before treatment, number of mites in 0.5 cup bees were 0, 0, 1, 3, 2, 11 (measured by sugar roll every 2-3 weeks from 6/20 to 9/12). After treatment, they were 1(day 8), 0(day 17), 0(day 23), 1(day 36), 0(day 41).

#Hive2: Treatment with a half dose of MAQS from 10/4 to 10/11 (48F/68F) and again from 10/20 to 10/27 (45F/66F). Despite higher mite load, this hive was not treated until later because the new queen emerged in late August. Before treatment, 24-hr mite drops were 0,1,1,0,4,0,3,8,?,3,48,23,17,27,9,38 (measured once a week from 6/20 to 10/3). After treatment, daily mite drops were 274, 380, 244, 122, 105, 101, 68, 71, 42, 40, 62, 133, 114, 39, 32, 26, [2nd treatment begins], 213, 101, 72, 70, 35, 56, 69, 82, 63, 69, 54, 46, 27, 10, 7, 12, 4. Before treatment, number of mites in 0.5 cup bees were 0,0,0,8,5,8 (measured by sugar roll every 2-5 weeks from 6/20 to10/3). After treatment, they were 4(day 8), 0(day 16), 0(day 23), 3(day 33).


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Watched the hives I treated closely after the treatment was done. From my observations it appeared that all (ALL) queens in MAQ treated hives stopped laying eggs for 4-5 days. I could tell by the age of the larva I found on day 7 or 8 when I inspected them all post-treatment.


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## Kuro (Jun 18, 2015)

I did not think about looking larva’s age (I could only tell huge vs tiny). But next time I will try. Did your queens' laying go back to normal after this 4-5 day period?


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## aunt betty (May 4, 2015)

Yes. 13/13 queens survived September treatment and all is well. Next spring is going to teach me some things. Have 9 I did not treat because they were swarms, nucs, top bars, or cutouts too weak to treat. I've had bees before in the 70's (TF lol) 
This is the first season back and got a crash-course on pests. Rolled the dice and we'll see next spring how it goes. 
I got help from this site (lots).


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