# Removing queen vs caging to create broodless situation for an oxalic treatment



## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

References to the Italian method of caging the queen for two weeks so an effective oxalic acid treatment can performed in the summer seem to be coming up a lot lately.

My fingers are not so nimble so I generally dislike trying to catch queens. So I thought maybe I could just make a small temporary split. I'd move the frame with the queen and younger uncapped brood. seems like the other advantages would be:


Can maintain some level of brood production during this period.
most mites should be in the original hive and emerged from brood in two weeks.


The disadvantages:


would need to remove any emergency queen cells before they emerge.
Need the equipment to house the temporary split.


I imagine these disadvantages would be a big deal for large scale operations but I only have two hives where I am considering this approach. Any thoughts?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Plus, unless you sacrificed the brood that was with the queen, you'd just be re-seeding the hive with mites from that cohort of brood that was with the queen, immediately undoing some of the effect of all that labor. 

Why not just do an OAV series, even with the lower effectiveness it will still knock back the mites even if it doesn't knock them out completely. I wouldn't use this approach on a previously untreated colony with severe problem or on the cusp of crashing from mites, as the situation may be too dire for that tactic. But if the point is to keep the mites under fairly good control by up-ending the late-summer spike in mite infestation rates (mites hitting their highest breeding rate at the time the bee population is starting to draw back down means more mites at the time you have fewer bees and brood), then even a series of OAV that doesn't kill them at the same rate it might if they were phoretic, still has its uses.

Plus there's always MAQS, which kills them under the caopings, but you have to have the right temps fo rit.

Enj.


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

enjambres said:


> Plus, unless you sacrificed the brood that was with the queen, you'd just be re-seeding the hive with mites from that cohort of brood that was with the queen,


Isn't the majority of the mites under capped cells? If I only moved a few frames+ and only uncapped brood + stores wouldn't you expect very few mites to be moved with the queen?


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I agree that there wouldn't be mites on the uncapped brood that you moved, but that would depend on all the brood on that frame being open -and having it be the one the queen was on at the time you moved it. But you'd need to move nurse bees with her and they have mites, and in the two weeks she was away the brood with her would be capped with any mites moved with her getting under the cappings, and she'd be laying other brood in that two-week period which would also wind up capped, and more mites would get protected, etc. 

So it still comes down to whether you'd be willing to sacrifice two weeks (plus a bit considering you'd be taking some larvae with her) of brood production just to achieve the broodless status in the parent hive in the summer. To do a good job of it, you'd need to abandon the capped brood in the temporary nuc, I think.

Seems like a lot of additional effort, when a series of OAV would do substantially the same thing (minus the extra effort needed to protect your honey supers on the three or four treatment days).

Don't get me wrong, I consider any unplanned broodless period that occurs through the year (re-queenings, post-swarming, etc.) as an excellent one-shot OAV opportunity. But deliberately creating broodlessness, out of season just seems to me to be the long (but not the _wrong_) way around. 

Still if you do this, I'd be glad to read about the results. Maybe it will turn out to work like gangbusters!

Enj.


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

The idea of creating the broodless situation is not my idea. There's lots of talk about caging queens for 2 weeks. It's an alternative to caging the queen I'm contemplating. 

I recall reading 70% of the mites are in capped brood. Let's say 30% are on nurse bees. If say I only moved half the nurse bees maybe that's 15% of the mites in the box with the queen? If this logic is reasonable then 85% will be subjected to the oxalic treatment. As these colonies don't appear to have a very serious problem at the moment I figure that should be more than enough to carry them into the winter broodless period when a second treatment can be performed.


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## jwcarlson (Feb 14, 2014)

enjambres said:


> Plus there's always MAQS, which kills them under the caopings, but you have to have the right temps fo rit.


I can't imagine the temps not being good for MAQS in Ontario more often than not during bee-season?


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

Toronto is often above 30c / 88f. Given the stories out there I'm not sure I'd want to risk subjecting my bees to MAQS at temps above 25c/77f. If the long term forecast holds I might get a 3 day window at those temps in 12 days.

I went ahead and started the process today on one hive. It occurred to me I could have treated the half with the queen and no capped brood today. I didn't bother, but if I did, then 100% of the mites in the hive would have been subjected to oxalic with 2 treatments.


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## robassett (Feb 26, 2018)

How did this turn out? I am thinking of doing something similar:
1. Put queen plus some frames of drawn comb and honey / nectar / pollen in a split, position the split to collect the returning foragers, treat with oxalic dribble. Maintain enough space for brood plus any nectar / pollen storage they are doing.
2. The other portion of the hive has all the existing brood, plus enough bees and resources to maintain the brood. Maintain this hive to be queenless (remove any type of queen cells produced). Once all brood has emerged, treat with oxalic dribble.
3. Then recombine the splits.

I am thinking that this will both knock back mites (both parts of the split get treated with oxalic while broodless), plus if timed right can get the hive past the reproductive swarming stage. Also, the overall colony strength should not suffer much since the queen can continue laying during the induced brood break.

Am I being greedy to "want to have my cake and eat it too?" Will this work the way I am thinking or are there ways it can go drastically wrong I haven't thought of?

Thanks,
Robin


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

I did this on a colony approaching an advanced mite problem. I think it did significantly impact mite levels even though I only treated the side without the queen and I moved some uncapped brood.

Laying did slow down significantly, mainly because the strength of the split was fairly weak. Keeping bees in a split is always a bit of a challenge, but I figure lower brood production is better than stopping it entirely.

The main issue I had was I let it go a little too long. The queenless side developed a laying worker situation, but I was able to correct it and have the colony accept the original queen again...it just slowed down the re-integration process. I think I will do it again, however I would likely add some more younger brood to the queenless half just before the last of the brood originally in the colony emerges to prevent laying workers.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Did you do a newspaper recombine, or just stick the queen and her frames back in? That I think is the other risk, at the end of the treatment, that the old bees have become estranged from the old queen. I suppose it depends on how hopelessly queenless they have become.

I still think a series of OAV treatments would be far easier, all around, for bees, queen, and keeper. And still, happily, very bad news for the mites.

And if you had an opportunity to get the crucial, one-shot, broodless-period treatment on them during December you may find that you mite population build-up is considerably different this year. I think it is the linchpin of a successful OAV-based strategy.

Nancy


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

> Did you do a newspaper recombine, or just stick the queen and her frames back in?


I placed the movable metal screen from my SBB between the two halves of the hive. A week later there was still a laying worker so I shook out that half of the colony. They flew back and accepted their old queen.



> I still think a series of OAV treatments would be far easier, all around, for bees, queen, and keeper. And still, happily, very bad news for the mites.


Having to store and lug around a power supply and respirator would be an extra burden for me (I don't have a car and a small living space). It would also require a longer period of time to keep honey supers separate from the treatment colony. I don't think it would be easier. This split method also allows the possibility of preventing the queen from being exposed to the treatment. 




> if you had an opportunity to get the crucial, one-shot, broodless-period treatment on them during December you may find that you mite population build-up is considerably different this year. I think it is the linchpin of a successful OAV-based strategy.


This isn't meant replace a winter oxalic treatment. The Italian method I'm taking inspiration from used both winter and summer treatments. It's also a bit of a crap shoot as to when a colony will be queenless. Some research has indicated November is the most likely time, but the findings suggest there isn't a month in the year where a broodless colony is a 100% thing.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

BeekeepingisGood: I think you may be on the right track with a forced brood break. From my own experience two seasons ago and from a recent lecture I heard by Jennifer Berry from UGA (where she referenced working with the Italian team), I have some doubts about the effectiveness of a OAV series. Now this might be because Jennifer, who is in Georgia, and me (Alabama) never get a natural brood break, whereas you and Nancy (enjambres) do. Jennifer encourages the caging of the queen for a timed 1 shot OAV. 

One option to consider is a Snelgrove split. It is basically doing the exact same thing you suggest in the OP, except you are doing it (1) vertically, and (2) with some degree of pheremone communication between the two hives, which should make recombining easier. First, you would remove all of your capped brood to your top box above your Snelgrove board and leave the queen, open brood and empty frames below. Your bottom section is now broodless, so you hit it with OAV. 20 days later, your top box will be broodless as well, so you then hit that with OAV. A few of drawbacks:

1. Snelgrove boards are designed to divert bees back to the parent hive. While you do not have to do these manipulations, if you chose to, you will be contaminating your bottom box with new foragers from the top that are likely carrying phoretic mites.

2. The boxes will be joined by a screen that mites can pass through. How many are actually transferred this way? Probably not a lot, but I doubt we will ever know.

3. You will need to go into the top box around Day 10 and make sure you destroy all of the queen cells in the box (assuming you do not want them for increase). Either that, or let them raise a new queen and pinch one of your two queens before you recombine. 

Like the OAV series, I would not be expecting a 95% kill rate on this one either. Would this method be better than the OAV series? I don't know. I am doing it right now (Day 15). I will do mite washes when it is complete and compare it to my OAV series results. Scientific? Nope. Just trying to spitball it. 

BTW, I consider enjambres and crofter the resident experts on Snelgrove procedures. If you are interested, do a search for enjambres + Snelgrove. She publishes a lot of stuff that I print off and keep in my Snelgrove file for future reference.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@PSM,

Snelgroving (am I allowed to make that into a verb?) is a tricky thing when you are trying to create a brood break. I have been noodling on how to do this after reading on Bee-L about a treatment timetable Randy Oliver had worked out to force a period of broodlessness to create ideal conditions for a one-shot OAV in the context of making splits. Randy's ideas always seem interesting and I usually want to try them out.

Here's a link to the thread on Bee-L: http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1802&L=BEE-L&D=0&P=64326

(To navigate through the posts in the linked thread from first to last: look at the top left, and click Next following the word By Topic.)

The thread starts out with a post from an 1848 source posted by Peter Borst re artificial swarms, then Randy comments about an update to the method (and treatment schedule) that he's worked out about how to integrate it with OAV to clean out both parts of a split. Apparently he has, or will have, an article on this in ABJ, including the very precise timing of the applications to each part. 

But Randy is describing a larger-scale splitting event than I typically do and one that geographically divides the colonies (which I don't do), so I wanted to work out a way to accomplish artificial swarm/forced brood break using a Snelgrove board. I could foresee a problem having untreated bees from emerging brood above the section that had already been treated. The screens on a Snelgrove board are typically #8, which would allow mites to drop down to the clean hive from the dirty one above. (That's how a screened bottom board works, after all.)

The idea I came up with was to add metal window screen as an overlay to the #8 screening to capture the mites in the upper section so they can't fall down into the lower one. I can't see how an additional layer of screening would interfere with the essential operation of the Snelgrove board. You would need to plan any transfer of adult bees (through the paired doors) from the upper, untreated, section so was it just before treating the lower section, but other than that I can see no reason why this would not work. With the mites being captured and held upstairs, you could OAV the downstairs on schedule, and then OAV the upstairs once the brood had hatched, since at that point, the upstairs would only have phoretic mites, too. Then put the two sections back together again, and carry on. No interruption of brood at the outset and no interruption of the brood _cycle_ rippling through your colony's forager numbers later on, and most of the mites simply, um, _vaporized_. 

And because recombinations are extremely easy with a Snelgrove board, you could do this even if you didn't want an additional colony. All it would take is careful management of any emergency cells the bees in the upper section made to ensure you didn't mature a new queen in the queenless section, unless, of course, you wanted to also make a split.

It's too early for me to be trying this (I am in northern, NY) but I did collect all the mites on my sticky boards today so I can see if they will pass through common metal window screening, or if a tighter mesh is needed.

Being able to effectively OAV a colony full of brood, without any interruption of the brood cycle, would be a big deal, so I am hoping it works.

But I have not tried this, so this is purely speculation, and therefore no guarantees it works if you are in place where you could try it now.


Nancy


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

enjambres said:


> You would need to plan any transfer of adult bees (through the paired doors) from the upper, untreated, section so was it just before treating the lower section, but other than that I can see no reason why this would not work. With the mites being captured and held upstairs, you could OAV the downstairs on schedule, and then OAV the upstairs once the brood had hatched, since at that point, the upstairs would only have phoretic mites, too.


I can't see why window screen would communicate pheromone any less than #8 hardware cloth. I suppose what you describe will limit you to a single door manipulation to divert workers from top to bottom, which I do not see as a bid deal. Most probably don't make subsequent manipulations anyway. 

I think the typical SB swarm prevention split calls for some uncapped brood to be left in the bottom box with the queen. This could get capped during the time period after the split, but prior to the OAV of the bottom box. To avoid that, you could do 2 OAV treatments of the bottom box. One immediately after the split and the other after your manipulation of the doors (Day 5 - 7)?? Or you could not leave any uncapped or capped brood in the bottom box. If you are going to recombine, you will not be losing foragers from the parent hive. 

Even if you made none of these additional tweaks, I still think you have to be getting a fairly good mite kill with an OAV on Day 1 of the bottom box and an OAV of the top box on Day 20, in spite of the diverted workers and the open #8 screens.

I think your tweaks would definitely increase that OAV efficiency though.


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## BeekeepingIsGood (Aug 12, 2012)

psm1212 said:


> One option to consider is a Snelgrove split.


I love snelgrove's book. Even if his solution is a bit complicated with all the manipulations, I think he characterizes swarming behaviour in a much more realistic way than nearly all the modern literature on bees.

I wouldn't trust the mites would stick to the two different halves of the snelgrove board though. I believe they must be highly adapted to seek out nurse bees and brood. I think enjambres suggestion to restrict mite movements with tighter screening could work.

Would something solid be placed between the two sides when vaping? Or in my case dribbling? Two other things I'm hoping to accomplish is prevent queen+honey exposure to oxalic acid. I know there is a sentiment that oxalic acid probably doesn't leave a large residue in honey, but it's still not legal here to use oxalic with honey supers on and I'd rather be safe than sorry. I'm also concerned about repeatedly exposing queens to oxalic.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

BeekeepingIsGood said:


> I love snelgrove's book. Even if his solution is a bit complicated with all the manipulations, I think he characterizes swarming behaviour in a much more realistic way than nearly all the modern literature on bees.
> 
> I wouldn't trust the mites would stick to the two different halves of the snelgrove board though. I believe they must be highly adapted to seek out nurse bees and brood. I think enjambres suggestion to restrict mite movements with tighter screening could work.
> 
> ...


nm


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