# Full suite of "IPM"methods has no effect on mite build-up



## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Recent paper 1/11/2017) by Frank Rinkevich, and R. Danka, et. al.
*Influence of Varroa Mite (Varroa destructor) Management Practices on Insecticide Sensitivity in the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)*
Frank D. Rinkevich, Robert G. Danka and Kristen B. Healy
Open access full text at: http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/8/1/9/htm
(The paper finds that Amitraz treatment to control mites does not affect susceptibility to field insecticide exposure)

The paper established control, IPM-treated, and Amitraz treated hives.

IPM method were: Screen bottoms, Drone removal, and sugar dusting.
Paper found that the IPM had no effect on mite build-up by October.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

So they are saying Doing Nothing is better than IPM ?


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Nope. Control == dead from mite hives IPM == dead from mite hives. Amitraz == live hives.


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## BadBeeKeeper (Jan 24, 2015)

If there is one thing that that graph illustrates -really- well, it's the importance of treating and keeping the mite numbers low, and just how -quickly- those numbers suddenly zoom up in the Fall (due to the exponential progression of mite breeding).

That picture is worth far more than a thousand words...for those with their eyes (and minds) open enough to see it.


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Most of the organizations teaching new beekeepers still push this IPM B/S. Still also that brood breaks also prevent mite build up, I am waiting for the paper to come out that blows that one out of the water.
Johno


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Bad study
Removing less then 200 drone cells as they did will have little impact on the mites.
neither will a single sugar dusting every 2 months, that's less treatments than many people OAV in a single course. Not a believer of sugar, but the experiment didn't give it a fair shake (sorry had to, lol) witch makes a lot of the data suspect

also the text doesn't jive with the graph


> Amitraz treated colonies had lower Varroa mite infestation levels than the control group, but not the IPM group in August and September


 wait, as soon as the strips were pulled in july the varroa numbers exploded and grew past the IPM levels in a month?
The experiment design gave the results they wanted it to. But the results would seem to say there IS an effect


> The control and IPM colonies reached Varroa mite infestation levels by September of 21.2 and 9.5 Varroa mites/100 bees


 its just not enuf to be a stand alone
treatment


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

IPM is a term that can embrace just about any pest control strategy. So drone removal, screened bottom boards, and sugar dusting would be considered IPM. However I would agree with Msl's comments in that the study has chosen an especially weak IPM strategy to compare against Apivar. 

All the same, there are many small beekeepers following such strategies in the belief they are doing the right thing, and unfortunately for them they are likely destined to remain small beekeepers because of it. The study has it's place in terms of education, for those who wish to advance themselves.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

"Drone brood trapping was likely not very effective in our treatment scheme *because very little drone brood (<200 capped drone cells/comb) was present at any time that it was removed from the colony*. Other studies of drone brood trapping in reducing Varroa mite infestation levels were effective when large numbers of drone brood were removed (>7000 capped drone cells [19], >3000 cells [31]). The lack of consistently efficacious and easily administered IPM techniques contributes to the reliance on chemical control of Varroa mites." source: http://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/8/1/9/htm

My experience not being much is however some with drone brood traping. 
In some of my hives the bees built less drone brood and others built more. So in my opinion the data mirrors some of the reality, it is not the whole reality, it is a part of it and it's plausible. 

Sometimes these strategies work better, sometimes worse. With the synthetic and organic treatments, although more reliable, the result is not always the same either.
And the authors by their words say the same, if I understood correctly.


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## tmwilson (Apr 5, 2015)

From what I could tell the source of the bees does not advertise them to be treatment free bees. At least not on the website. Wouldn't the source of the test colonies be one of the most important aspects of this study? They basically chose bees that are known to need treatment to survive, then proved they would indeed die without Amitraz. Why wouldn't they utilize some bees that were at least advertised to be treatment free? Then maybe we could have learned something new.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Because it was a comparison between IPM and Amitraz.


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## tmwilson (Apr 5, 2015)

Gotcha. So if you do IPM you're not considered "treatment free"? I guess I had never thought about that before. Thanks.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

No prob.


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## DerTiefster (Oct 27, 2016)

Another way to look at the drone component of this test: What drone comb provision is recommended by federal guidelines and the official US [or pick any] Government Label to constitute an IPM component? Oh. No such thing? Well, we'll just take what drone comb we find while using foundation incidentally designed to suppress drone laying. That'll still be a worthwhile comparison, no? But what if the study had used half-doses of miticides? Well, that's not a fair comparison!

The point is that it is not clear that the IPM measures taken in this study amount to as much as a half-hearted attempt at IPM. IPM isn't precisely defined, so one can do pretty much anything one chooses and still call it a comparison. In truth it is a comparison, but perhaps not the comparison that the abstract and/or title states. I appreciate the posters above pointing out what is and what isn't "there."

I found Mel Disselkoen's IPM practices to be interesting. They're a bit more aggressive than described here insofar as IPM goes. Mel reports them to be a bit more successful. But not 100%, as the last numbers I remember reading mentioned something like 3 out of 4 winter survival. His operation focuses on bees rather than honey, and it is therefore unlikely to be a good fit for honey producers.

Michael


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

DerTiefster said:


> IPM isn't precisely defined


Therein the trap for new players. Talking about their IPM, then starting a new thread later to ask why their bees are dead. "Can't be mites cos I treated them," they say.

One lesson from this study could be, do the mite treatment right, check it worked if in doubt.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

>One lesson from this study could be, do the mite treatment right, check it worked if in doubt.

Yes OT 100% agreed. This reasoning "I treated my hives so I have the problem of varroa controlled" is one of the biggest pitfalls which has passed through my head and that of two years ago is no longer part of my internal beliefs..

In the last two years after the treatments of late summer with synthetic (Apivar in 2015, Bayvarol in 2016) the control that I did during and after the treatment I found between 10% and 20% of the hives with worrisome signs of varroa. I went back to do a new treatment. 

My winter mortality in 2016 was slightly below 5% and in the current winter it is just above 1% so far (7/600). I am convinced that if I had not done this post-treatment control I would now be talking about losses between 20% and 30% in each of these two years.

If with these treatments (Apivar and Bayvarol) the results are relatively inconsistent it does not surprise me at all that the IPM strategy of this study shows that it may be less effective than other studies already performed. If the bees in this study made less drone brood this is a very interesting fact because it mirrors a part of reality as I have already stated. We can not take for granted that bees in natural conditions and in all hives construct drone brood with 5000 or more larvae. Sometimes they build less and I've already checked it in my hives.

The conclusion I reach is that it is not desirable to me lie back and believe that all there was to do was done after the treatment is done. The verification of the effectiveness of the treatment is a must for me, in my context, with the bees I have, with the treatments I use and with the hardness of the varroas that unfortunately torments my hives.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

In reality IPM is a bit of an artificial construct. You can't compare chemical vs IPM, but you can compare a given chemical with another set of methods. A real IPM makes use of all methods including chemical if necessary, and especially selection/choice of stock. 

If one thought deeply about IPM, then one could think of a hierarchy of methods that would make a system more sustainable in the long term. Structurally you would have selection for hardy stock and some understanding of ecology as it affects disease/mite dynamics within a hive, within a apiary, and within a region as its foundation, on which other methods can layered on. So a meaningful study would have some philosophical understanding of what IPM is and what time scales it is interested in. On this metric alone, this study fails.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

Then according to this article, my 11 colonies should all be dead. And they are not. I use IPM methods to control mites. I had one colony this year as my "test hive", where I installed a Miter Biter queen. Her colony did not get the monthly powder sugar shakes as the others did, but I did monitor capped drone comb for mite levels. They did not register any higher than the other colonies going into fall. However, during the recent cold spell, there were apparently not enough workers in that hive to keep everyone warm and most froze. The queen and a handful of workers still exist and were bolstered with more bees and reduced to a nuc. I did a sugar roll and then an ether roll on the dead bees. Found 6 mites in a 175 bee test and there was less than 2 cups of dead bees in the hive (1,200 bees). So it was obviously mites. I still believe in the monthly sugar shakes, as well as a brood break in June (which that hive did not get), in order to lower the mite level.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i believe there are problems with trying to extrapolate the results of these studies using small numbers of colonies, irrespective of how statistically significant the results may be, to what may or may not be taking place in our apiaries.

there are just too many variables - genetics, habitat, weather, local population dynamics, local agricultural, individual beekeeper management practices, ect; thus the age old axiom that 'all beekeeping is local'.

in my view it is more useful to look at less scientific metrics such as surveys to establish what is 'normal' or 'average' for a given area in terms of survival rates, honey production, ect., to which one could have some comparison for judging their outcomes against.

in addition to surveys, the sharing of information on this forum is also a good way to contrast and compare our results to those of others as a means to gauge whether or not our experiences fall within what is normal and expected.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

squarepeg said:


> in my view it is more useful to look at less scientific metrics such as surveys to establish what is 'normal' or 'average' for a given area in terms of survival rates,


Surveys are clear --- do nothing, and the hive die of mites at 2x the rate of professionally managed hives.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The marketing is clear, by our product or you hives die


I fixed it for you 
That graph says you will have 38% losses if you treat with anything but their product. lol
It also says they got 3269 TF beekeepers to participate in the study :scratch:


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

again, the problem with all data is that one can cherry pick and present out of context to support just about any position.

if memory serves me most of those 3269 tf keepers were beginners who had purchased commercially bred stock and are being compared to 'professionally managed hives'. no surprise there.

my 'nothing used' cohort doesn't look anything like the one in the histogram, and in fact has looked even better than the 'amitraz' group for several years running now.

apples vs. oranges vs. pomegranates...


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## Dmlehman (May 30, 2015)

I agree. When performed properly, IPM can also involve chemical treatments. When it does, the chemical applications are rotated to reduce the likelihood of promoting resistance to a particular treatment while effectivlely reducing mites. The idea that IPM is BS is ridiculous. It can be effective, but requires a little bit of thought, application of knowledge and some effort (as opposed to the treating just because I can crowd).


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## Dmlehman (May 30, 2015)

They should have added anither group - their version of "IPM" + amitraz. If they had done that we might have learned something interesting. But, then again, the error bars are kinda big. So, who knows mite not have been enough. The variability in these types of studies is always difficult to deal with. They also need more than 12 hives per group to get a handle on the variability.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>if memory serves me most of those 3269 tf keepers were beginners who had purchased commercially bred stock and are being compared to 'professionally managed hives'. no surprise there.

"...unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction."--Jacques Derrida (1991) Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion, published in the English translation of Limited Inc., pp.123-4, 126


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## cervus (May 8, 2016)

Dmlehman said:


> I agree. When performed properly, IPM can also involve chemical treatments.


This. Integrated being the operative term.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

cervus said:


> This. Integrated being the operative term.


IIPM (Integrated Integrated Pest Management) it is. IMP should not mean treatment free.


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