Do you mean Apivar...or did you use Apistan?

 

Apistan

I wanted Apivar, but they were sold out.

 

In many populations of bees Apistan is no longer effective for varroa control. In all likelihood it was pretty much the same as not treating.
Also...I would not consume the remaining honey. On the other hand, it should be fine for your other hives...in my opinion.

 

:scratch:Are you Serious, you treated for mites and the hive still died Do not consume any of the honey. Maybe coincidence, maybe you had something good going and now you are on the Ferris wheel.

 

Maybe coincidence, maybe you had something good going and now you are on the Ferris wheel.

Yes you treated too late they say you need 2 rounds of new brood after treatment for healthy winter bees.

If you are using an ineffective treatment....it doesn't matter whether you treat or not..... or when you treated...it still isn't going to work. Which part of that is giving you trouble?

 

If you treated in October and bees are dead now it was likely too late to be effective regardless of the treatment. Not sure about the honey, I probably wouldn't eat it.

 

Yes you treated too late they say you need 2 rounds of new brood after treatment for healthy winter bees.

 

I had one hive die in mid July and one in early August. I was planning on treating after I pulled honey. Maybe next year I'll pull my honey earlier and treat earlier. This is my fourth year with bees and the first time I had them die this early. One of my bee buddies said he almost lost a few hive around the same time. He used OAV and caught them in time.

 

I think you treated too late. Apistain has had some problems with resistance. But, I used it last spring and had very good results. I did mite counts before and after and was happy with the results. It's nice to have something to rotate Apivar with. So I don't think the Apistan itself had anything to do with you loosing your hive. It is actually quite easy on the bees compared to Mite away quick strips which is claimed organic. Once the mite counts get over the threshold it is hard to bring them back even with treatments. It's better to stay on top of the mites before they get out of control.

As for the honey I would just save the frames and use them in new hives this upcoming spring.

 

Well here's my long story short. Tried to save a few dollars, and went with Apistan in my whole operation. Didn't seem to have any effect. Got so bad I could pull almost any frame, and actually see mites on the bees. Most all of them crashed, and ended up pulling the Apistan to put in Apivar. Probably to late though, I ended up with not much over 5 frames in anything.

 

And no, dont eat the honey.

 

Your treatment is highly unlikely to have caused the colony loss so that's the wrong conclusion to draw from this.

It's more likely that treating too-late in the season, and with a chemical that has documented varrroa-resistance issues, is what allowed the mites to continue to build up to a level that caused the hive to crash. (Dead colonies at this time of year with ample honey in the hive are generally mite-caused losses, IMO.)

I am assuming from what you wrote that these were colonies that were going into their second winter when mite pressure typically reaches its peak. Sometimes first-year colonies can get away with not being treated, but by the second year the mite numbers are too high for survival. This is the usual boom-and-bust cycle seen in unmanaged colonies in the wild.

I would suggest doing some form of broodless-period oxalic acid treatment (dribble or vaporization) in your surviving colony in the next few weeks. Although it's still going, it may be in trouble, as well. Nothing can bring that colony's winter bees back to the optimal-health they might have had if mites had been under control late last summer, but you can improve the remainder of their lives by removing most of the live mites that are wintering with them. And even more importantly, you are setting up your first rounds of brood to be much more healthy. And it is those bees which will be raising your production bees next spring. I think OA in the broodless period of late Nov. to early Jan. is the most important treatment of the whole year's cycle. In my yard it eliminates the need to treat again in the spring. (Though I should add I don't blindly count on that effect. I sticky board every week of the year and do sugar rolls once a month in the warm season to make sure the mite numbers are staying as low as I am expecting. If they spiked unexpectedly I would see that immediately and treat based on that important information.)

And as others have said, the honey in a hive treated with Apistan should not be harvested for human consumption, but it would be OK for your other bees and for new bees in the spring.

Enj.

 

I am assuming from what you wrote that these were colonies that were going into their second winter when mite pressure typically reaches its peak. Sometimes first-year colonies can get away with not being treated, but by the second year the mite numbers are too high for survival. This is the usual boom-and-bust cycle seen in unmanaged colonies in the wild.
I would suggest doing some form of broodless-period oxalic acid treatment (dribble or vaporization) in your surviving colony in the next few weeks. I think OA in the broodless period of late Nov. to early Jan. is the most important treatment of the whole year's cycle.
Enj.

As usual,enjambres is exactly right.

 

The active ingredient in apistan is soluble in oils and waxes, less so than water. This is so it penetrates the oils on the insects skin and nervous sytem thereby killing it. Also means it gets absorbed into wax comb, but less so the honey which is water based.

Re the bees dying after being treated, don't worry you are in good company.

Couple things about treating bees for mites. If using something unreliable like apistan, check afterwards to see if it worked. Don't wait till the hive has big mite damage before treating it will not survive anyway, and don't think that treating for mites will solve everything non mite related that may be wrong with the hive cos it won't.

 

Michael Bush treated his bees one year and they all died, every last one he says, an experience so bad it caused him to go treatment free.
He doesn't know why his bees all died, when he talks about it he implies the treatment killed them but it wouldn't have been that. His bees died because he either treated them too late, or improperly, and neglected to test afterwards to see if the treatment worked, and did no follow up. Or, the treatment worked but his bees died of something else, starvation or whatever, who knows.

"People are usually more convinced by reasons they discovered themselves than by those found by others."--Blaise Pascal

Come on, oldtimer, that´s beneath your dignity.

 

It's been years since I used Apistan. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

 

With only one hive, you should be able to get a day in the next few weeks when the temps is 37F or higher and then go for it, at once. (I am looking at a two-day period just before Xmas when the temps here north of Albany, NY will be warm enough to treat.) The heck w/Christmas Eve plans - I'll be out slaying mites like crazy. Ho-ho-ho!

Enj.

 

Thank you for all of your advice. I will keep an eye on the weather, and hopefully get a nice day to treat with OAV. I have been at this bee thing for 4 years and still feel like a newbie. I learn new things each year, some are easier lessens to learn than others! I am sure you already know that though!

 

SiWolKe you made me look at that post again and I believe you are right, I have chopped that bit out of the post.

Haven't seen MB talking about that for a year or two so maybe should leave it in the past.

 

ot, since sibylle is relatively new to the forum she may not be aware of your attempt at treatment free.

if i recall correctly, you established an isolated yard and implemented the lusby/bush protocol including using small cell.

you haven't mentioned those colonies in a while, did they all succumb?

 

ot, since sibylle is relatively new to the forum she may not be aware of your attempt at treatment free.

No I´m aware of that. OT is listed in my profile as "friend". I read his posts all the time and appreciate his knowledge very much.
I don´t want you to have hard feelings, OT. Your situation is the same as my friends on VivaBiene have and mine, too.
Why blame someone for losses? We decide for ourselves and so are responsible.

Sorry Rehric00. I apologize for chiming in like that.

 

Oh yes in the end my attempt at sc was a total failure. However others in my country are trying, would like to see it work for them but for me I won't be doing it again. If someone here succeeded I may try again if I copied them exactly and with their stock perhaps, but I would have to see it working before I invested in it again. Meantime I'm focusing on selecting from the most resistant bees on standard large cell and they are going longer between treatments than they used to. Which I think must be happening across the board because my bees are open mated so I suspect the surrounding stock is getting better also. (in small increments)

 

Meantime I'm focusing on selecting from the most resistant bees on standard large cell and they are going longer between treatments than they used to. Which I think must be happening across the board because my bees are open mated so I suspect the surrounding stock is getting better also. (in small increments)

good to hear that ot. last time i asked i believe you told me that there were no known ferals surviving there as well, has there been any sign of ferals making a comeback?

(my apologies rehric00 for straying off of your topic)

 

There's talk of feral survivors but it's very difficult to establish they really have survived long term, any properly done monitoring has found death and re establishment. The problem here is we have getting close to a million hives in a country around the size of one American State. Have been told we have the densest bee population of any country on earth. Because of this and the migratory nature of our beekeeping there are few if any places where an isolated feral population can develop without outside influence.

 

understood ot. wow, that's very interesting. thanks for the reply.

 

I often hear that honey from hives treated with apistan or apivar can be consumed by bees but not by us. My question: have bees more detoxification mechanisms or genes than we do?

I do not know what it's like in the US, in the EU the safety window for these two products is zero days.

Many times apivar or apistan it is not effective because they are placed in hives already too infested and too late. Apivar and apistan
are slow-acting products.

 

Good point Eduardo. In fact the process of eliminating from a hive first mites, then the pathogens the mites allowed to flourish, and finally a generation or two of weakened bees, is necessarily a process that takes a while, and needs to be started early enough to give an infested hive a chance at survival. That is, if the bees are a strain that is susceptable to varroa and their associated viruses.