# Best Treatment to Pair With OA?



## DirtyLittleSecret (Sep 10, 2014)

Seeing as there are a few limitations to OA treatment, what might be the best "accompanying/collateral" treatment suggestions to pair with either OAD or OAV for maintaining a death grip on these varroa? Was thinking MAQs, but am seeing a lot of conflicting opinions. Am digesting the Randy O. materials but want a "backup" treatment that I can fall back to if necessary.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

I use amitraz in the spring if my mite counts are building up. Usually OAV takes care of it but a couple of times I've need to treat in the spring. I do have low thresholds for mites. If they start to build in the summer I use OAV to knock them back until I harvest my honey.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

About a thirty minute video of Randy Oliver on mites. Toward the end he has some recommendations on treatment rotations...including OA...from an earlier post by JWChesnut. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pezlSTESXKc

PS...RO doesn't seem to be a fan of OAV.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

@Camero:

I am confused by your comment that you use "OAV to knock them back until you can harvest your honey." I thought OAV was prohibited when there were honey supers on the stacks. 

Yes, I know you can separate the separate the supers with political signs, etc., but doing this is a lot of work, and unless you also use bee escapes to temporarily move the bees out of the supers, leaves a fair number of bees unexposed to the OA vapors.

I use MAQS for a interim knock down/summer treatment precisely because it can be used with supers and and because it does penetrate the cappings and kill mites parasitizing the pupae. Most summers, it isn't too difficult where I am in northern NY to find a short period where the temps allow safe(r) use of MAQS. I have not had queen loss when using it (at both the two-strip and one strip dosages). My biggest issue with it is that it is intended for more compact brood nests than I typically have in mid-summer when my Big Girls can have brood in three or four boxes.

I am not primarily focused on honey harvesting, using my surpluses to grow more bees at present. And I haven't really got a plan for an early harvest that would leave my hives super-less for the three weeks needed to do brood-period round of OAV treatment.

But I have found that a well-timed OAV treatment right about now zeros out the mites pretty effectively right through early summer. But that is also a function of my long, cold flightless period in winter.

Enj.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> I am confused by your comment that you use "OAV to knock them back until you can harvest your honey." I thought OAV was prohibited when there were honey supers on the stacks.


They are. I just leave the supers off while I treat. I already have them off doing my alcohol wash and if it warrants treatment it's only about 5 more minutes to hit them with the vapor. Not looking for a complete kill, just to knock them back until I pull the honey in August and treat all my hives. I only do this to hives that appear to be in trouble in some way. Observing the landing board will tell you a lot. I have a similar climate to you and don't notice a large mite kill in the winter, They seem to do nicely in the cluster unfortunately.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Cam,

Oh, I see you are using a one-shot, on-the-spot smack down, not the full treatment series. That's a novel idea. Do you have any concerns about that promoting some tolerance on the mite's part for OA?

On my normally well-treated colonies, I don't see a huge mite kill in December, either. But I experimented last year with a second round ten days later on a test hive. And that produced nearly no additional mites so the first one did the trick.

I run 72-hour sticky boards every week all winter and some hives go from Dec. to mid-February before I see even a single mite. My hives are very well insulated and their clustering is less pronounced than in un-insulated stacks, so I don't think the lack of visible mites is simply that they can't fall through and out of the cluster to make it down to the sticky. But not all my colonies are as mite-free as that - usually I collect 6 to 10 per month.

This year I have held off doing my last OAV treatment and I am glad I did as the temps we're expecting this week will have bees from nearby feral hives paying a round of Christmas calls in my apiary. I still have my anti-robbing devices on so they won't get in. But my girls, of course, may go out visiting, too. And if they bring home some little travelers, I can clean them up along with the resident mites in one zap late next week. After that it looks like we're going to be settling done into a normal winter, so everybody can stay home and watch bee-videos and pig out on honey.

I'm expecting that next spring many people who tried OA this year may find they didn't get the expected nearly total clearance of mites. But I think that's because they did it early on, and then had weeks of exposure to drifting, robbing by untreated hives nearby to build the mite pop. back up.

Perhaps the best time for the broodless period OA treatment is when the medium range forecast shows continued cold and not earlier (i.e., mid-November). But that's hard to hold out for that unless you have previously treated so that colonies are well below the treatment threshold in the late Sept to early November period.

But that brings us full circle back to what to use even earlier in the season.

Enj.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

> Do you have any concerns about that promoting some tolerance on the mite's part for OA?


There has been no resistance despite many years of use in Europe.



> I'm expecting that next spring many people who tried OA this year may find they didn't get the expected nearly total clearance of mites. But I think that's because they did it early on, and then had weeks of exposure to drifting, robbing by untreated hives nearby to build the mite pop. back up.


I expect that might be true no matter what method people use. I just retreated my hives this week with a one time treatment. It's pretty quick to do and I'm hoping the newcomer mites will get handled. Not much brood in my hives now but more than normal.



> But that brings us full circle back to what to use even earlier in the season.


as soon as it's warm enough to do washes I'll check my hives and put amirtaz on them if they're too mite ridden for my liking.


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Nope, just the oav using my homemade oav gadget.
Even in the snow you can still use it all year long. Too bad
we don't have the snows here just the rains. Still I oav them.


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## laketrout (Mar 5, 2013)

I know a commercial apiary using a formic acid fume board exclusively , I would think that could be a good back up along with oav when there is alot of brood and also when you might be taking honey off .I've been hesitant to try as the formic is very nasty stuff in the strength they work with .


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## beepro (Dec 31, 2012)

Exactly, formic harsh on the bees and queen.
I'm hesitant to use it too. Apivar is amitraz.


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## ABruce (Dec 27, 2013)

I used Formic this year using the "Mitegone' system. Bill the owner of Mitegone is a local beekeeper and he and most of the people in our local club have used it for many years. In our climate they recommend treating in Mid August, to clear out the mites before the winter bees are born. Then a second treatment if needed in mid April to take the mites to minimum before spring build up. I used OAV last year, four treatments a week apart. Seemed to work,treated every Sunday in September and 8 hives out of 8 overwintered and had low mite counts 1-2 in a alcohol wash in early May. Apparently Formic treats tracheal mites and OAC does not. And formic is a single application in August , not the repeated one for OAV Both are reasonably easy to use, and I had no problems using as directed, and with the correct vapor mask. The reading I have done has suggested that its unlikely that the mites can build a resistance to acids, so I am thinking it makes sense for me to become proficient with them. I guess spring mite counts will tell me more.


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