# Varroa: What to Expect



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Here's a "starter" question;
1) When do hives die? (as early as July, maybe next year, When?)

From Varroa, I assume, is the question? Usually doesn't always mean that much, but in my expeience usually sometime between the middle of fall and the middle of winter, but as early as September is possible. November or December is more likely.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Topic: Varroa; What to Expect
1) Do some hives crash in summer?
2) Do some dwindle away in spring?

[This message has been edited by Dave W (edited December 18, 2004).]


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Topic: Varroa; What to Expect
>1) Do some hives crash in summer?

I have not had them crash in the summer, but some seem to have had that happen.

>2) Do some dwindle away in spring?

In my experience I have not had that happen either. The Varroa can't reproduce during the winter, so if there is a bad infestation going into the winter the bees don't seem to make it to spring. If they DO make it to spring then there usually wasn't a bad infestation.

From my experience the fall is when the mite population literally explodes in numbers and failure of the hive is usually imminent after that.


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2004)

>1) Do some hives crash in summer?

Sure. Late summer. The standard statement
is "It was a powerful hive, and made a
good crop. After I pulled off the last
honey, the hive died quickly, before I
could get back to it for fall prep."

The problems start when the varroa population
grows to the point where multiple varroa are
in the same cell, and that's how the viruses
spread, from one varroa, to the bee, and
hence to the other varroa in the same cell.

If you have any technique that "knocks
back" the varroa population by "a month"
in terms of mites per bee, you can keep
a hive going forever. If you can't make
a big enough dent in the varroa population,
you end up with deformed bees and a dead
hive just after harvest (in most cases).

>2) Do some dwindle away in spring?

This would be rare, as a weaken colony
would tend to drop below critical mass
required to maintain cluster temps, and
freeze to death before spring.

But, if untreated the prior fall, and
carrying a significant varroa load over
winter in a decent cluster, the hive
starts out in spring with a varroa
population more typical of "June" than
"March", and while spring temperatures are
not as warm as full summer, varroa breed
like, umm... VARROA!

Now, varroa rarely kills a colony outright
in the first season of exposure, so many
people think that they have effective
non-traditional approaches to varroa simply
because they have gotten a few colonies
through a season or two. The ability of
even an untreated colony to survive more
than a single season before crashing has
not been clearly explained to beekeepers
by the research community, which I feel is a
massive and inexcusable miscommunication.

So, we can now see why the median time that
a hobby beekeeper keeps bees before taking
up some other hobby has dropped to 5 years,
and why others are convinced that they have
an effective treatment, without a mechanism
that can kill varroa in a lab setting.

Unless careful records are kept of each
colony's history, one's splits, combined
colonies, new packages and so on can lead a
beekeeper to think that he/she has stumbled
onto something big, simply because their
losses are only a fraction of their total
colonies.

This is why I am such a hard-nosed SOB
about claims about somehow defeating varroa
without lots of carefully-collected data
that I can run through a statistics package.
Too many beekeepers are like Fox Mulder.
They WANT to believe. Too many believe, and
stop being beekeepers, discouraged that
they keep on starting over with splits and
nucs and packages every spring.

My personal feeling is that push-in queen
restriction cages will become the weapon
of choice among the enlightened, once
everyone settles down and admits that there simply is no verified "silver bullet" for
varroa. (Give it a rest FGMOers and Small
Cell-ers - yes, I know your claims, but you
don't know your own data from your own
hives, except for like maybe 3 clueful
people who have records on maybe a dozen
hives each.)

There are lots of things that do a decent
job of "knocking back" or reducing varroa
populations, but nothing works like a
nice break in the brood cycle. While
caging the queen after one's spring
harvest may seem drastic, one must
compare the value of the fall harvest
versus the value of a strong colony
that survived winter, ready for another
spring. It is a pain to think of caging
the queen, then feeding in late summer
and encouraging a fall bee population
build up on nothing but feed, but it beats
the heck out of getting a fall harvest,
and then being forced to replace the (dead)
colony with a split in spring that won't
produce any significant harvestable crop
in its first summer.

Note that either way one looses "a crop"
from "a hive", but one at least does not
loose critical spring momentum, does not
miss out on pollination fees, and, best
of all, one has a more predictable hive
count, and a more predictable number of
spring sorties, which equals harvest,
which in most locations, is where the
honey, and hence money, is.

Maybe Sue Cobey can breed me a queen that
stops laying when it gets really hot all by
herself. I dunno, I use the standard-issue
Navy Pilot's excuse when reporting equipment
malfunctions to an avionics chief - "I don't
build 'em, I just fly 'em."


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

IMO the best time for a break in brood rearing is from two weeks before the main flow to the end of the main flow. None of the bees raised in that time help with the main harvest anyway. So if you either remove the queen so they can requeen themselves or cage her up at that time you can have a break in the brood cycle that will actually INCREASE your harvest. It's really a win/win and that's a rare thing in life.


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## Axtmann (Dec 29, 2002)

You can build a cage (made from queen excluder material) with two empty combs in it and put the queen in the cage for 6 weeks. These two combs are the only place for Varroa to breed during this time. Before the first bee will hatch put both frames in the freezer and than back in the hive and your bees will do the rest. It also will stop your colony from swarming. 
Better loosing two frames of bees including a big bunch of mites than loosing a swarm and the mites left in the hive.


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## loggermike (Jul 23, 2000)

We saw plenty of hives crashing in May and June in Cal.this year.Hives that hardly dropped a mite the previous fall and were strong all the way through almond pollination came out loaded with mites.This co-incided with widespread reports of Apistan and Checkmite failure.The obvious explanation is there was a whole lot of robbing of crashing hives going on and re-infestation was out of hand for those who werent isolated from other beeyards.This was a unique situation directly related to almond pollination.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

"How many" are too many mites? When?


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## dickm (May 19, 2002)

Thanks Jim and Axtmann,
Those are two looks at it that I havent seen before.

Dave,
Some research says that approx 50 mites in 24 hrs on a sticky board (Average over 3 days)is the point at which the hive will die if not treated. If you have this many early ... you know they are going to increase. If you're putting them to bed, perhaps they'll make it.

dickm


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2004)

> "How many" are too many mites? When?

There are no hard numbers, as every
colony has a different bee population,
and the critical factor is the number
of mites as compared to the number of bees.

That said, when you do mite counts, and
start to see the number of mites that
drop increase rapidly, this is when you
have to treat. 

So the numbers do not really mean much.
What matters is the slope of the curve
defined by the points that represent
each prior mite count.

"Gag! 'Slope of the curve'? What's this
darned fool spouting? Does he expect me
to remember high-school algebra?"
Hey, I never said it was easy. In fact,
all I've ever said is that the actual
price of honey is eternal vigilance.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

jfischer,
>Problems start when the varroa population grows to the point where multiple varroa are in the same cell . . .
3) When is this? How do I know when it starts? Prevention/Corrective action? "Slope of the cruve"?

>If you have any technique that "knocks back" the varroa population by "a month" in terms of mites per bee, you can keep a hive going forever. 
4) Does this technique have to be applied more than once . . . per season, per month, per infestation?

>Unless careful records are kept of each colony's history, one's splits, combined colonies, new packages and so on . . .
5) Please elaborate.

>nothing works like a nice break in the brood cycle . . . 
6) Got any numbers?







How much impact will be reflected in a natural drop count?

>caging queen after one's spring harvest . . .
7) My fruit-bloom begins about end of March. Main flow ends about July 1st (I think). Last year, my scale reading increased from 80.5 on 7/29 to 87 on 9/13, topping out at 106.5 on 10/19, which I guess was my fall crop.
When would be best time to break brood cycle and for how long?
How much would winter stores be affected?

8) >Sue Cobey . . . ?

Michael Bush, 
>Best time for a break in brood rearing is from two weeks before the main flow to the end of the main flow . . .
9) Please refer to #7. When?

>If you remove the queen . . . or cage her up . . . you can INCREASE your harvest.
10) Please explain "INCREASE".

Axtmann,
>build a cage . . . with two empty combs in it . . .
11) Would drone foundation be best? Do you have a picture?

loggermike,
>Hives that hardly dropped . . . came out loaded with mites. This coincided with widespread reports of Apistan and Checkmite failure.
12) Is there a correlation?

dickm,
I have seen numbers as low as a few to over 100, how do you know what to believe?

jfischer,
>critical factor is the number of mites as compared to the number of bees.
13) If I remember my "high-school algebra", I think that number is called, a "ratio". Sometimes expressed as a percent or a decimal.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>7) My fruit-bloom begins about end of March. Main flow ends about July 1st (I think). Last year, my scale reading increased from 80.5 on 7/29 to 87 on 9/13, topping out at 106.5 on 10/19, which I guess was my fall crop.
When would be best time to break brood cycle and for how long?
How much would winter stores be affected?

>Michael Bush, 
>>Best time for a break in brood rearing is from two weeks before the main flow to the end of the main flow . . .
>9) Please refer to #7. When?

I would not consider the early fruit bloom the main flow. It depends on where you live and what the weather is like that year, but here I figure the second week of June is the main flow, so I'd do a cutdown split the next to the last or last week in May.

>>If you remove the queen . . . or cage her up . . . you can INCREASE your harvest.
>10) Please explain "INCREASE".

Increase. As in much more honey than if you let the bees spend their "girlpower" and resources raising brood that will never help with the harvest of the main flow and will not make it to late fall to help with the fall flow, instead of spending that same energy gathering a harvest. You could get as much as half again as much honey or even twice as much honey and less mouths to feed when the flow drops off.


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## loggermike (Jul 23, 2000)

>Hives that hardly dropped . . . came out loaded with mites. This coincided with widespread reports of Apistan and Checkmite failure.
12) Is there a correlation?
Dave,I believe there is.My theory is the bees robbed out hives that had been treated with in-effective treatments,probably while in the holding yards before the bloom started.I have observed crashing hives in the fall in previous years being robbed out.While it is impossible to know how many mites are brought into 'clean' hives this way,I think it must be substantial.In California,winter holding yards often hold hundreds of hives and may be fairly close to each other.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

Sooooo many questions?????? . . . Sorry









14) How do I know when my "main Flow" occurs?

>half again as much honey or even twice as much ....
15) WOW!!!!


I would like to wish MrBEE, and everyone here, a Merry Xmas. 

THANK YOU.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

I don't know for sure, but when all the bees are foraging and the stores are rapidly increasing, probably sometime between the middle of May and the middle of June most places. But some places may just have one long flow, depending on the climate.


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## db_land (Aug 29, 2003)

It is our saviors birthday that is being celebrated! Attempts to take CHRIST out of Christmas by using terms such as "Happy Holidays" and "Merry Xmas" are offensive to me









MERRY CHRISTMAS to you Dave W.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Actually, using "X" as an abbreviation for "Xpistos" (Greek for messiah and usually transliterated to English as Christ) dates back to the early Church. It was certainly not their intention to leave Christ out, but simply to save the scribes so much work. It is NOT a recent phenomenon invented to remove Christ from Christmas.
http://www.christmaspast.info/forums/Main01/messages/647932485.html 

Not that there has not been a movement to do so. Certainly the whole Santa Clause phenomonon and the "Happy Holidays" were an attempt, if not to leave Christ out of it altogether, to not offend those who have other faiths while still selling a lot of goods.









It would be easy enough to say the Jews decided to start celebrating Hanuka because they were jelous of Christmas, and maybe Kwanza is the same sort of thing, but then the Christians, who have no idea what day Jesus was born on, put Christmas on Zeus's brithday and near the Winter Solstice celebrations for the exact same reason.


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## GaSteve (Apr 28, 2004)

I think caging the queen would work great where I'm at. We seem to have a very strong early flow that ends the first part of June then about a two month dearth before a normally decent fall flow. My Italians grew like gangbusters all summer and consumed most all of the surplus they had put away. I have considered switching to Carniolans because I have read where they significantly slow down brood rearing during a dearth.

Anyway, if you use the "push in" cage, the workers can get in to feed the queen but she can't escape. After a few weeks when all brood has emerged, every mite will be either on an adult bee or in the few cells under queen cage which can be scraped out to kill those mites. Then use your varroa treatment of choice. Then turn the queen loose to build up for the fall flow and overwintering.

How long can the queen be kept caged this way?
How long before she resumes laying?
Will she lay at the same rate as before?
Actually that might be a great time to requeen.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>How long can the queen be kept caged this way?

I don't see a problem (from the queen's health) with doing it as long as you like. But the bees may have other ideas like chewing out the push in cage or raising a new queen. My guess is that by the time they decide they want a different queen the eggs outside the cage will be too old and it wouldn't be difficult to watch for a queen cell in the cage. (except for lifting all those supers)

>How long before she resumes laying?

It takes a few days to get back up to speed laying once you give her the oppportunity, but not long really.

>Will she lay at the same rate as before?

Once she gets going again, yes.

>Actually that might be a great time to requeen.

That's my way of thinking. Remove the queen altogether and let them raise a new one. It will take 28 days to get to a laying queen again and by then all the brood has emerged. So if you do your mite treatment 24 days after you remove the old queen you shouldn't have any capped brood in the hive.

Meanwhile you've maximized the workforce, becaue the nurse bees get recruited to forage, and you've minimized the strain on the resources because there are less mouths to feed when the harvest is over, and you've skipped at least one full brood cycle so the mites don't get as much opportunity to reproduce.


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## Robert Brenchley (Apr 23, 2000)

What on earth has what we call Christmas got to do with bees? Lets remember that the midwinter festival was called the Saturnalia long before it was baptised and called Christmas, and doubtless existed under other names long before Saturn was ever heard of, and maintain a little humility! Christians will celebrate it in a Christian way, others in a secular way, and what's the name going to change in that?

My bees were out foraging today; I'm hoping to see them out on Christmas Day, for the first time ever. That would be better than any white Christmas.

------------------
Regards,

Robert Brenchley

[email protected]
Birmingham UK

[This message has been edited by Robert Brenchley (edited December 22, 2004).]


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## GaSteve (Apr 28, 2004)

"It would be easy enough to say the Jews decided to start celebrating Hanuka because they were jelous of Christmas, and maybe Kwanza is the same sort of thing, but then the Christians, who have no idea what day Jesus was born on, put Christmas on Zeus's brithday and near the Winter Solstice celebrations for the exact same reason."

I think Easter falls in the same category. Only this year did I learn than Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. I always wondered why the date moved around every year.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Only this year did I learn than Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. I always wondered why the date moved around every year. 

That's the way a lunar calendar works. Contrary to popular belief there are 13 full moons (months?) in a year, not twelve.









But then there is that pesky 32 hours and 10 minutes left over after the 13 full moons.


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## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

I want to wish MrBEE a "HAPPY NEW YEAR"!!!









To anyone "offended", 
Rather than blasting me w/ an untrue statement, I suggest a "silent" prayer (from you) might be more helpful.


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