Mite counts, treatment thresholds - Central NY or similar climates

I agree with funwithbees. This is from Randy Oliver, Scientific Beekeeping. I found reading his work helpful.

“Unchecked, the mite population will double roughly every month during broodrearing. Understand the concept of doubling. If the mite population doubles from 200 to 400 in May, the colony will barely notice; doubling from 400 to 800 in June will start to stress the bees. The July mite population doubles again from 800 to 1600, and now the bees are definitely stressed, honey production is hurt, and viruses start to spread. What you’re most concerned with, is any further doubling once the total mite population passes the 1000 mark (a daily sticky count of around 25, or 4-5 mites in a 300-bee jar sample). Once they pass this level, they appear to explode. If you reach this level in mid August, just before the mite population peaks, no problem. But if you reach it in early July, you’d better pull your honey supers and knock ‘em back!
Come mid August, get mite levels down so that the colony can rear healthy “winter” bees. Then sample again in fall to see if mite reinfestation has taken place. Once the colonies have gone broodless, you can greatly reduce the population of overwintering phoretic mites with powdered sugar dusting or oxalic acid dribble (where it’s legal).”

Keep in mind that whatever you are seeing now will be multiplied as the season goes by w/ each round of brood.

Do you have any combs that are all drone brood? Or have big patches of drone brood? Capped? Take one of those w/ the most drone brood on it out of your hive and, using a bread knife, decapitate the drone caps just like you would were you extracting honey. Then, holding the end bars in each hand w/ the top bar away from you tap the top bar on a hive cover so whatever is in the drone cells falls on the cover. It'll be the decapitated drone pupae. This is best done when the drones are at the blue eye stage, but any time after caps are present works alright.

You will see mites crawling around amonsgt and upon the drone pupae. I bet you will see lots of them.

There is a treatment recommendation threshold when one uses the ether roll test or the alcohol wash test or the powdered sugar test, but drop data isn't necessarily all that indicative. For instance, you will see an increase in the drop after you work through all of the frames in a hive. That's just natural, but it doesn't mean that all of a sudden there are more mites in your hive, just that they got knocked off of bees.

Check Randy Oliver's Scientific beekeeping. He probably has treatment thresholds listed there. I treat by the season more than the mite count. I won't be treating again until when the last honey supers come off.

To get an even remotely accurate mite count using an alcohol wash, you need to get nurse bees out of your brood nest. The results help you determine your next course - in combination with what your eyes are seeing. How you respond is based upon your philosophy, your bees and your bee's lineage. If you want to go treatment free and are starting with a package of bees that have always been treated, then attempts to go treatment free are likely to fail resulting in dead bees. If you don't have concerns over what you put in your hive as long as someone somewhere has approved it, then GLOCK's suggestion has some merit.

Learn the mode of action for any Varroa control you decide to use. OA vapor, for example, does not penetrate cell cappings and so requires a series of applications. Learn if you can collect honey for human consumption (in other words have supers on) with your mite treatment of choice.

Some people swear by natural mite drop - others swear at it. I don't run screened bottom boards so I don't have a dog in that debate.

wildbranch2007 said:

pick one hive, treat it with sticky board in and see what you have for mites. Then you can decide what to do with the rest of the hives. Note: if they start crashing let me know so I can treat my hives across the street. If you have honey supers on, I have some MAQS in the freezer if you need them.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the offer wilbranch. I might take you up on the maqs.

Right now all hives are healthy, but I will let you know if they crash, hoping not to let it get that far.

Thanks for the follow up info everyone.

I actually researched treatments quite a bit last year. truth is I became so busy with nucs and grafting this year, things were going so well I didn't plan for mites yet, yes I know I should have been.

1. Maqs can be hard on queens (can use with supers on). They might work for three hives this year as I have back up queens in the making that should be laying in the next week or two.
2. apiguard - good for spring and or fall treatments but can't have supers on
3. oa , not technically approved unless I want to bleach my frame tops. Need to be broodless to have the highest efficacy. But you can fume whenever you pretty much want to. 1 g per deep is the suggested amount I have read. If treating with brood, you need to treat once a week for three weeks.
4. Apistan - most beeks tell me resistance is up here in my area, and I won't use it for other reasons.


If OA was approved, I would used it in a second. Though I question if its lack of approval is enough to stop me from using it since it seems to be as good a silver bullet as any treatment. It seems the fuming would work well for me, since I have all the necessary safety equipment from other hobbies/ projects (ventilator, gloves, etc). I don't really sell honey, but I eat it. I give it to those I love, so I am concerned a bit about OA. I also have no way to test my own honey (reasonably) to ensure there isn't anything out of whack.

Ether rolls and sugar rolls from the nurse bees is what I did last year. To Marks point, sometimes I came up with nothing and took another sample and found mites. I am not convinced it is as accurate as people would like to think. I am not saying sticky boards are, but they do tell you something. What that is, is you have some mites. Maybe not exactly how many, but they do tell you something.

For the long rung, I would like to be tx free. However, I am not there yet. I need to continue to regress my bees, input more tx free type stock, continue to breed. All of those things I ma doing, but need bees to do them.

You can pull your honey supers when you treat with OAV.
Looks like this

I hook the vaporizer to the battery and wait till the OA starts to vaporize and then slide it in the entrance put the towel over the entrance and count to 60 unhook from the battery and walk away . Come back in 3 mins and do the next it's that easy and cheap . On day 3 the drop on my hives looked like this {last year} I treated 4 time by the time there was no brood in the hives last fall so far this year I see no PMS I have healthy bees.