Uh oh, Verroa Mites!

[dgoodman]

Hello All,

I inspected the bottom board yesterday (screened bottom with a board that is removable). There wre quite a few mites present.

As this is my first year, I'm not sure how to proceed, especially given the cooler temperatures outside, and my reluctance to want to open the hive.

I should add that I do not want to go the chemical route. I would much prefer something natural.

Thanks for helping.

[Aspera]

I recommend requeening in early spring with mated, known resistant stock. Its not a cure all, but the brood cycle break will help.

[George Fergusson]

If you started out with relatively mite-free bees last spring, then you're probably OK for this winter- there's not much you can do this time of year anyways. OA drip is probably still an option if you're so inclined. Next spring will be a crucial time however. Be prepared!

Mites don't usually kill off a hive the first year unless they were heavily infested to start with. It usually takes 2, sometimes 3 years for hive collapse if nothing is done to mitigate their explosive growth.

Lots of different methods of dealing with varroa have been and will continue to be discussed on this site and elsewhere. Might be time to start reading up on them smile.gif

One thing you SHOULD be doing is monitoring your mite population. Regularly. If you don't, you'll never know what's going on in there and by the time something begins to "not look right", it will be too late to do anything.

George-

[dgoodman]

Thanks George, et. al.

I have been examining the bottom board regulary. This change was quite sudden. I'll check out other discussions as you recommended.

Cheers.

DG

[Curry]

George answered it pretty well. The only thing I would add is that during winter the queen will stop laying for a month or two, and this break in the brood cycle also breaks the varroa laying cycle. Varroa offspring depend on bee brood, and no bee brood means no new varroa. So, hopefully, you will see a dramatic decrease in varroa counts by spring. But like George said... the varroa will start spring with larger numbers than last year, which will mean that by next fall you could get a collapsed colony.

[Robert Hawkins]

If this is your first year, you should have had this winter to do your reading. Hives really shouldn't be in trouble until the second year. However, there is no guarantee. You may have to do your reading this month.

If you queen only shuts down Dec-Jan, then your treatment needs to be before then end of Jan for maximum effectiveness. (Most treatments don't get the mites that are inside a capped brood cell.) BTW, while you're reading 'phoretic' mites (I think) refers to those outside the brood cells.

Good Luck,

Hawk

[George Fergusson]

I wish more mites died off during the winter, but they don't seem to. Their population levels off in the fall when brood rearing shuts down and remains relatively constant over winter. When limited brood rearing resumes in early winter, the mites are able to breed enough to maintain their numbers, biding their time. When spring rolls around and the bees really start to ramp up, so do the mites.

Depending on what your approach to mite control is, taking the first year off may not be a good idea. Even if you hit the ground running in the spring of your second year, you just might be too late to do much good. At best you'll find yourself playing catch-up all season, trying to regain the ground you lost to mites the previous year.

With no silver bullet at our disposal, a regimen of integrated pest control measures INCLUDING MONITORING really needs to be in place and practiced from day one if you expect to maintain healthy colonies with varroa around.

This was MY first year too and I've learned a lot, some of it too late to do much good this year. I was caught napping, and I'm going into winter with way too many mites in some of my hives. Some will be alright, but I wouldn't be surprised if I lose a good half of them by spring, or more.

George-

[Axtmann]

Dgoodman this time of the year (winter) is absolute the best time to kill Varroa mites.

.. I inspected the bottom board yesterday (screened bottom with a board that is removable). There wre quite a few mites present…

George gave you the right answer to use OA. As soon as the bees have no brood the mites sitting on the bees waiting for they’re next breeding season.
You can trickle between 35 and 50 ml OA per hive with a syringe (35grams in 1000grams/1Liter water with 1000grams sugar) hand warm and this will kill up to 80% of the mites on the bees. But do it only one time per bee generation because the acid goes thru the bee’s stomach and they age faster than usually.

Don’t save leftovers from your solution, OA and sugar start a chemical reaction and is poison to your bees if it’s a few weeks old.

Evaporate the OA, there is less or no harm to your bees and the result with no brood is much better. With some brood you can treat a second time without a problem to your bees.

For any of this the temperature should be at least 2 – 3 above freezing.

Monitor a sticky paper under the cluster and you know what’s happen in your hive.

I would say, start almost mite free the next season otherwise the hive might die next April or May.

[Michael Bush]

How many is quite a few? A dozen from the whole year? Thousands? Clean the board off and put it back for a few days and see how many you get.

Oxalic acid vapor is probably the most effective thing you can do at this time.

I wouldn't count on "the first year" to protect you. Get some numbers. Count the mites. At least count ten and estimate how many groupd of ten and how long a period of time they've been accumulating. Then clear it off and do again in about a week.

[Fat Nancy]

I guess I'm a little confused. This year in order to help control mites, I was using drone foundation. After 21-22 days I would remove the frame and put it in the freezer. Then I would put it back in the hive. Does the freezer kill the varroa or not? or is it just the larva that is killed and the mites themselves survive? Otherwise why wouldn't they be killed by winter temperatures?

[Michael Bush]

Yes the varroa die if you leave the drone comb in the freezer overnight. The Varroa can only live on bees or in brood cells for very long. The brood cells seldom if ever fall below 94 F and the center of the cluster seldem falls very low even if there is no brood and not below 94 F if there is. So the mites are on the bees and the bees are not freezing therefore the mites are not freezing.

[wayacoyote]

Nancy,
Freezing the Drone Comb before the drone emerge, you are killing the varroa eggs, larvae, and young varroa. I'm sure you understand the life cycle of varroa, which explains the stages which are killed by the freezing method. However, once the drone emerge, so do the mated females which are then off to reinfest a new cell where they produce offspring. There are terms for these "states", someone remind me... phoretic or something... And you are killing the one state, but not the other. Barney Fife would say, "nippin' it in the bud."

Controlling mites in the alternate state is like controlling weedseeds, the mobile state of plants' life cycle.

Waya

[ December 05, 2005, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: wayacoyote ]