Deformed Wing Virus

[Hokie Bee Daddy]

Mike,

I agree that whether to treat or not is a personal decision and up to each of us to make. I can say that my own personal experience with DWV led me to become a "treater" (with MAQ's). I wanted to comment on three concerns you mentioned if you do decide to treat.

(1) Maq's will keep indefinitely in a freezer. Ten is a lot for a hobbiest beekeeper to buy and I put my excess in the freezer for next year.
(2) You will need to make a decision very soon as temperatures are approaching the upper limit which is 92 degrees F.
(3) I would treat both hives at once. I guess it is due to drifting but mites appear to move quickly from one hive to the other.

Oldtimer has written a lot of good information on DWV and "crawlers" on various threads on this site. I learned a lot from him and you may want to read some of his postings.

Best of luck to you.

[ky_mike]

Well I ended up ordering Hop guard. It seems from all of the reading I've done to be less harsh than the Maq's.

I put another sticky board under my hive again today (with vaseline on it this time) and after just a few hours I peeked under the hive and saw several mites on it already and several more bees with DWV crawling around in the grass around the hive.

It would be great if I didn't have to treat but from my limited experience with bees and taking all of the posts in this thread and others into consideration it's just my gut feeling that it's the right thing to do. It would be very discouraging to lose my hives to this.

My goal right now is just to have healthy bees. I'm close to getting my first super of honey from them and if that's all I get I'll be happy. Long term I would like to have bees that are mite resistant and I'll work towards that, but I'm sure that's everyone's long term goal.

The main reasons I decided to treat with something stronger than powdered sugar is obviously the amount of bees I'm now seeing with DWV, the amount of mites I'm now seeing and the amount of mites I'm seeing in my split already, even though they did have a break in the brood cycle by me letting them raise their own queen.

Thanks again for all your input.

[ky_mike]

2nd day 24 hour mite drop count was 71, so I'm glad I have Hopguard on order.

[jmgi]

rainsridgefarm, I respect your opinion on this matter, however, you are speaking in definite terms when you say that his hive will fail at these mite levels. There is no certainty about anything here. I have encountered many beeks here on this forum who speak this way when they say "your hive WILL fail" if you don't treat, and nothing is further from the truth. Yes, there is a possibility that they MAY fall to mites, but it is not an absolute certainty that they WILL. I personally think that beeks who treat should not tell people such as ky mike that their hives will WILL fail, this has happened a multitude of times here on this forum, and its not reality. And no, I don't think I should be monetarily responsible for anyone's mite losses if they decide to not treat based on my opinion, are you serious?

[Mike Gillmore]

2nd day 24 hour mite drop count was 71,

I have a feeling when you see whats on the sticky board after treating, you will be shocked.
Keep us posted.

[ky_mike]

I have a feeling when you see whats on the sticky board after treating, you will be shocked.
Keep us posted.

I was shocked when I counted 71. Where do these mites hide

[rainesridgefarm]

to many people give advice on these forums at other peoples expense. I am a full time beekeeper I have seen a lot of different situations and you are correct not all of them fit but from what he describes the lesser of two evils is to treat.

[Rick 1456]

With all due respect to all on this thread and their respective opinions, this type of discussion is healthy IMHO. Those insisting treatments, chem or no, is no more correct than those advocating the opposite or something different to an individual.. Allowing nature to take its' course when you are new or only have a few hives is a tough line to draw in the sand and stick to it. When I did it, I just decided how I wanted to keep bees. More importantly, to me, how I did not want to keep bees, and committed to it. Then, I got lucky and caught a swarm. It has worked, so far, for me. Didn't happen over night either. Against the advice of many experienced opinions on this forum, I let a mite infested hive take it's course. My choice. It made it.
It all boils down to what an individual decides is "beekeeping" to them MO. Just because you don't deal with your hives they way I do, doesn't make you wrong, me right, or you right me wrong. I will agree to disagree with you though Everyone can still learn something new

[ky_mike]

Being new to beekeeping and the fact that I right now only have 2 hives played a major role in my decision to treat. I have spent a huge amount of time reading and taking care of the hives I have (just ask my wife) I have built most of my own equipment and I would hate to not treat, lose the hives and have to start from scratch. Down the road when I have 10 or 15 hives I will feel safer letting nature take it's course and see what happens.

In my opinion there is no right or wrong answer whether to treat or not. I think that it's obvious by the conflicting opinions you not only read here but most beekeeping sites. By starting this thread I knew there would be conflicting opinions, but I wanted to here them from people who have a lot more experience than I do to help me make my decision. Personally I would like to not treat, but in my current situation I think it's the right thing to do.

On a side note doing mite counts was something I didn't realize was so important until now. I check the inside of my hives every 7-10 days and probably only saw less than 5 mites up until I pulled the drone brood out. I have very good eyesight but still couldn't see any. The sticky board really shocked me. Obviously there are many mites falling out of my SBB's everyday and I wasn't aware of it.

I also built and installed an SBB for my other hive yesterday. There was a bunch of activity in front of the hive yesterday, almost like they were re-orienting and today them seem to like their new screen floor and seem more active coming in and out.

[megank]

Since you're going to treat the discussion of whether or not too is moot...That said, if six of seven drone pupae had mites AND you're seeing DWV bees walking around, that hive IMO is in big trouble.

Treat then feed pollen subs or the real stuff and get as many mite "free" brood cycles you can before winter.

[ky_mike]

Just a little update on my mite and DWV situation. I'm going into week 3 of treating with Hopguard and the mite drops have really dwindled. I am seeing very few bees with deformed wings and this afternoon when I checked the outside of the hives I did not see any DWV bees. The hives are very active and the amount of dead bees in front of the hives has reduced to near none.

So far I am glad I chose to treat but would still like to have more mite resistant bees. I have already started integrating foundationless frames and I plan on requeening if the mites get back as bad as they were. I also plan to keep better track of the number of mites. I didn't realize how bad they were until I did a mite count with the sticky boards.

[honeyshack]

Ky mike,
did you do any counts during the treatmets? What were they like?
Two years ago, I had some hives much like yours. I had used MA2 but the spring temps were not high enough to fumigate the hive, hence a really poor knock down. About two weeks post treatment, I was noticing the same thing as you in bee health and in mites on a drop test. I chose the flash formic since the flow was only days away and the treatment is overnight. The amount of mites on the boards 24 hours post treatment was so shocking I could not count them. They were one on top of the other.
Not sure where they all hid but, all I can say was what an eye opener. I formic'd July 1. The honey production from these hives was 1/3 of what is normal for our area and compared to the rest of my bee yards. That fall they looked ok, not the greatest but lots of bees. Fed starting Sept 10th and wrapped by October 29th. April 15th... all dead....But please do not read to much into the all dead thing. My guess is I would have lost about 30% to the mites, about 10-15% due to nosema due to the stress they were under and the rest probably would have had some high mite numbers and some high nosema counts and would have needed to be requeend and had the book tossed at them in the way of getting healthy. I know this cause the rest of the hives that survived in the other yards needed that to get better. The rest, my best guess is the flooding and the suffocation from the freezing rain on top of the snow covered hives. Hubby almost had to dig them out with a CAT instead of the 3020 JD loader the snow was so hard.

My point, been there. The moral, like you say, understand your counts. Now the big hurdle you have is not how much honey production you get, but rather getting them healthy and fat enough for winter. Any honey gained will be a bonus.
Next spring, watch out for Nosema Apis and Ceranea. Plan on it being Ceranea. That is what we and other beekeepers in the area saw in the following spring. We had treated with a gallon of syrup, but they would not take it in. So we all drenched the hives. Those that did not get drenched, perished before the flow

[ky_mike]

@honeyshack

All my mite counts I listed on this thread http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...ard-experience

My first count was similar to yours and I just guessed the amount of mites on it.

[matt1954]

I have 150 hives. I had a bad mite count in 12 of them. So I put combination of Check Mite strips in the hive and Thymol on the bottom board. Within 30 days, these hives exploded and I had to put another deep on top. I did see the bees were propolizing the thymol bags. Whe I checked or mites, the count was very low at the end of 60 days. This was the first time I had used this combination, and Check Mite alone made signfiicant improvements previously. I dont know if the Thymol had any synergestic effect on the hives or not.

[ky_mike]

All is still looking good. I was able to split my main hive into a nuc, I have not seen any bees with deformed wings in about a week now. Prior to treating their were always DWV bees walking around on the ground outside the hives and many dead bees.

[Aottilo]

I opened one of my hives this weekend and found one bee right on top, that was half dead with what looks like deformed wings. I inspected the hives and didnt see any others. I also did a mite count with a canning jar and powdered sugar. I only counted 3 mites.
Is this deformed wing virus? If I only see one, should I be worried? Next mite test I think I will use a different method. Any reccomendations?
I attached the pictures. These pics are the best I could get with my phone, I have to buy a better camera. 2012-07-01_15-43-57_995.jpg2012-07-01_15-44-43_794.jpg2012-07-01_15-46-25_64.jpg2012-07-01_15-46-30_485.jpg2012-07-01_15-46-37_944.jpg

[ky_mike]

I would have to say it just looks like a dead shriveled bee. Pay close attention to the outside of your hive on the ground, thats where I saw most of mine.

Edit: I was looking on my phone before. Now that I'm looking on a computer it looks like DWV.

[Axtmann]

matt1954
IMO Thymol saved you hives. Next time place the Thymol strips on top of the frames not on the bottom, it gives you a much better result. Even if bees propolizing the Thymol, there is no way for them to stop the evaporation of Thymol. Since I use Thymol, I haven't seen DVW for a few years.

[HONEYDEW]

So I put combination of Check Mite strips in the hive and Thymol on the bottom board. .

Check Mite !! I don't think that stuff is even legal for mite control, it is Coumaphos and one of the worst things a person can put in a hive. I see it is being sold as a beetle treatment, probably because there is so much of it sitting around that never got purchased after its toxicity got published everywhere. and Thymol needs to be on top not bottom since the vapors are heavier than air it wont be as effective from the bottom MTCW...

[jbeshearse]

Checkmite+ is certainly legal for use in bee hives. Yes, it is Coumaphos, and yes, it is a severe chemical, one that I would only use as a last resort. It cannot be used during honey production and is best used when brood rearing is lowest (wintertime). It is tough on brood and bees and humans.

I have used it, it is good against beetles and mites. I have also used MAQS (formic acid) and will probably never use either again. The Thymol works well against mites, or has in the past for me. But once again, not while there is a flow on or supers on.