View Full Version : Requeen or treat for mites?
Ardilla
06-09-2008, 12:36 PM
One of my hives is weak and appears to be getting weaker. Most of the bees are in one medium with a couple frames of brood. The queen is 1 1/2 years old or a little more. And, there is a fairly heavy varroa mite load. I was getting 200+ mites one hour after doing a powdered sugar shake on them (2 cups sugar). A month ago there were more bees and brood and less forage coming in than now. The flow is slowly increasing but the hive is slowly dwindling. No signs of deformed wings that I can see.
My thoughts are to requeen and/or treat with a "harder" treatment such as apiguard. Of course, there are other options like do nothing and add a frame of capped brood. What would you do?
arthur
06-09-2008, 12:59 PM
I would get a queen from a supplier with mite-resistant bees.
I am on my second season with a B. Weaver package, and they are thriving, never treated, never taken ANY measures.
Michael Bush
06-09-2008, 10:14 PM
It sounds like you would rather not use hard treatments. You could cut out the drone brood and put in an empty frame or a frame of drone foundation and when the drones are capped, freeze them, thaw them and put them back for cleanup. This will draw a lot of mites into the drones. You can also continue the powdered sugar, which seems to be getting some off. Oxalic acid vapor is a very potent Varroa killer.
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesvarroatreatments.htm
http://www.bushfarms.com/beespests.htm#varroa
tecumseh
06-10-2008, 06:00 AM
or perhaps both?
Ardilla
06-10-2008, 09:26 AM
or perhaps both?
That is kinda my thinking. What order would I do that? Treat then requeen or how about pinch the queen then treat when queen cells are capped to take advantage of the break in the brood cycle? My other hive recently superceded its purchased queen with very good results.
If most of the bees are in one medium, I would suggest reducing the hive volume by taking off all unused boxes until they recover as well.
MichaelW
06-11-2008, 08:14 AM
I would not kill the queen and let them raise a new one. The hive may be too weak to raise a decent queen.
I would put on Apigaurd immediately, depending on temperatures.
Re queening with 'resistant' stock is very unlikely to make a noticeable change in a highly infested hive in my opinion.
Drone comb trapping works great, but you may not have time to initiate that at the moment. They must be actively drawing comb to draw the drone comb foundation, or drone comb from a starter-strip/foundationless frame.