queenless hive and MAQS

[BlackRabbit]

I have a queenless hive I'm putting frames of brood into -should be capping a queen cell soon. They have a high mite count tho. Should I treat w MAQS or let them go till new Q is raised? Will the interrupted brood cycle be enough to diminish mite numbers? I counted 14 mites over 2 1/2 days on a sticky board.

Thanks for any advice

[WWW]

Rabbit, High or low mite count is relative to the size of the population in the hive so you will have to use your own judgement here, however if I were in your shoes and felt that they needed treatment and already had the MAQS then I would place just one strip in the hive instead of two, this should be enough to knock back the mites without too much interruption to the colony, two strips is very hard on the bees but very effective at reaching into capped cells, but since your hive is queenless you should have no capped cells so I would think that one strip would be enough for now. To go a little further with this I think that I would wait till the queen cell was capped so as not to interrupt the feeding and care of the new queen larvae this way you will end up with a good well developed queen, the time of care and feeding of the queen is very important to her development.

[BlackRabbit]

Thanks www. The development of the queen is what I am most concerned about. I have never used MAQS before but I have heard it is hard on the bees. FYI the hive is a double deep with a good number of bees. At this point I think I will hold off treatment

[Oldtimer]

Agree with WWW.

Formic Acid is hard on bees and brood. A friend of mine recently got some point of hatching queen cells from me which he put in some splits, and (without my knowledge), also did a formic acid treatment at the same time. He lost every cell, next time he looked every hive was queenless.

[c10250]

Thanks www. The development of the queen is what I am most concerned about. I have never used MAQS before but I have heard it is hard on the bees. FYI the hive is a double deep with a good number of bees. At this point I think I will hold off treatment

fwiw, my brother used maqs on a queenless hive with queen cells. two pads. no issues. hive made it through the winter and is booming.

[NeilV]

I would not use MAQS on a hive that is making a queen. You run a risk of having the nurse bees get distracted and quit feeding the queen. I'm not real crazy about MAQS. Pretty harsh stuff.

I also would not use any treatment on a hive that only has a mite fall of 3-4 bees per day. That's below any treatment threshhold I've ever heard of, assuming that your sticky board is actually sticky and ants are not running off with the falling mites (which can happen).

Just let them get a queen started and monitor the mite fall. If you think you have a problem later in the year, I would suggest Apiguard/Thymol and/or try out Hopguard, which should be approved in Oklahoma in the near future.

[Oldtimer]

Actually, there is another way, that accomodates all suggestions. Treat with MAQS, full dose. Give them a couple of days afterwards to start feeling better, then give them some eggs from another hive. It will slow your queen producing schedule, but you'll feel better knowing it's been treated.

[Michael Bush]

>I counted 14 mites over 2 1/2 days on a sticky board.

Anything under 50 in 24 hours I would not consider an issue. Your 24 hour count is one tenth of that at 5.6.

[BayHighlandBees]

would the pause in the egg cycle caused by raising a new queen from scratch cause the mite population to naturally plummet anyway?

[Michael Bush]

>would the pause in the egg cycle caused by raising a new queen from scratch cause the mite population to naturally plummet anyway?

If you had a significant population, which he doesn't, it will make a difference in the end result. I wouldn't call it "plummeting" as that would indicate a drastic drop in the actual current number as opposed to a significant different in the resulting number. SOME Varroa will die in that time but the main effect is that all the Varroa that would have been created by reproducing during that time, were not. Since the population of Varroa during that time, unchecked in a large cell hive, would probably have doubled, it does not double...

[Oldtimer]

Varroa live quite a long time. We know that, by the fact they survive in good numbers even where hives go for a broodless period of several months during winter. By the numbers that survive a long winter broodless period, we can deduce that it's not only the younger mites that survive, but a good proportion of the population some of which would already be older, at the start of winter. I think the effect of a broodless period of a couple of weeks during a requeening event is overated.

Although it takes a month for a hive made queenless to get a new laying queen, the hive has brood in it for most of that time, 3 weeks to be precise. Effectively some of the mites have to wait 2 or 3 weeks before they can breed again, and some of them less, feel little effect.

In my mating nucs, varroa numbers increase more slowly than the hives, if at all. That is probably just a function, as Michael said, of constant delays to their breeding routine, rather than actual reduction.

[BlackRabbit]

Thanks for pointing that out Michael- I was confused about threshold numbers. I guess it's actually closer to 32/24hrs.

NielV- Ive spoken with ? at ODAFF a few times about hopguard. I was told a few weeks ago that everything is ready to go, just need a couple things from state beekeepers assn's.

[NeilV]

What they needed was a letter from the association, and I showed up at the state meeting and spoke on varroa treatment options and got assigned the chore of writing the letter. I sent that off week before last, and I got a email yesterday that the guy at the State Dept. of Ag. had sent the request to the EPA (or whoever it is that gives approval). So it should be approved within the next few weeks. It's apparently a rubber stamp process at this point on this particular product, since its been given a Section 18 in so many states already.

(If Hopguard turns out to be bad, then I had nothing to do with it.) ;)