[Jack Grimshaw]

http://www.apimobru.com/var-control-cage-mozzato/?lang=en

Has anyone used this to cage a Q to force a brood break?
I'm hoping our European members may have some experience.
Seen it for sale in the US?
I can import from Italy but shipping is $$$$
unless I place a large order.
The use is explained in this video at min.41.

https://youtu.be/tuJlgzcQWAg

 

[grozzie2]

Study by Jack, Santen and Ellis where that cage was used to do brood breaks.

https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toz358/5697464

You may want to read it carefully. After reading the results of that study, you will likely be less inclined to do intentional brood breaks.

FWIW, the difference between that cage and a typical queen cage, workers can go in and out of that one. You can accomplish the same result with a jzbz cage by breaking out the tab on the bottom, that's what it's meant for.

 

[Kevinf]

Study by Jack, Santen and Ellis where that cage was used to do brood breaks.

https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toz358/5697464

You may want to read it carefully. After reading the results of that study, you will likely be less inclined to do intentional brood breaks.

FWIW, the difference between that cage and a typical queen cage, workers can go in and out of that one. You can accomplish the same result with a jzbz cage by breaking out the tab on the bottom, that's what it's meant for.

It appears that study is only available by paid subscription. Is that correct?

Kevin

 

[grozzie2]

I thought it was available for reading at that link, my mistake. When I was searching for it, I started at this site:-

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31909423

Clicked thru from there on the full text link, and I got a page that allowed me to read the whole thing with a 'download pdf' link. Now following the same chain of links ends up at the subscription login page. Guess I just got lucky on the first run thru the links for some reason. Now wishing I had clicked on the 'download pdf' link while it was still on my screen.

 

[psm1212]

Study by Jack, Santen and Ellis where that cage was used to do brood breaks.

https://academic.oup.com/jee/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jee/toz358/5697464

You may want to read it carefully. After reading the results of that study, you will likely be less inclined to do intentional brood breaks.

I have not quite given up on the brood break with OAV application approach. I think what this research may very well stand for (but does not state clearly) is that the prescribed dose of 1 gram of OA per brood box in the United States may not be an effective dose. The title of the study is misleading.

 

[grozzie2]

I have not quite given up on the brood break with OAV application approach. I think what this research may very well stand for (but does not state clearly) is that the prescribed dose of 1 gram of OA per brood box in the United States may not be an effective dose. The title of the study is misleading.

I'm sure a lot of folks will want to read that into the study, and the dose is not correct. My understanding is, the registration in the USA was based on the data used for registration in Canada. The label in Canada is clear, when vaporizing, use 2 grams. When doing a dribble, 35 grams makes enough solution for 20 colonies, so that would be 1.75g per colony using dribble.

Link to the label: http://honeycouncil.ca/archive/documents/29575 Approved E label 04Nov2010.pdf

But all that aside, when you look at the survival numbers in that study, all of the instances of colonies with brood break did far worse than colonies getting equivalent treatment sans the brood break. Those that got just a brood break had the worst survival, far worse than those that got nothing. Same for the various applications of oxalic. Those with brood break and a single oxalic treatment fared worse than those with just a single oxalic treatment.

Bottom line is, all other things the same, colonies with brood breaks in that study fared far worse than those without. Well, I guess there is another way of looking at it. Those that got just a brood break did end up with the lowest absolute mite count, by a relatively large margin. They just had this minor side effect, no bees left either.... Even the colonies that got the 'just leave them' treatment did better than those that had a brood break.

 

[psm1212]

It is interesting that the CA regulation is 2g vaporization, regardless of how many brood boxes are present, and the US is 1 g per brood box. So a Canadian beekeeper running 1 Deep is placing twice the OA in his hives than I am in mine. Yet the US reg is supposed to be based on the CA research. Curious.

Another issue I had with the study is the 24 day brood break. If you stop your queen from laying for 24 days in the spring, summer or fall, you better **** well kill off all of the mites because you have just forced all of those mites on to your bees that have life spans ranging from 1 to 42 days. In 21 days, all of your workers will have emerged. For the next 23 days, no bees will be emerging in your hive, yet they will be dying at rapid non-winter death rates. Your mite-to-bee ratio will dramatically escalate and your viruses will thrive. You created a toxic environment.

Who cages their queen for 24 days? A 14 day sequestration would give you a brood break sufficient for a single shot of OA and be far less stressful. I understand that they were wanting to squeeze in 3 OAV applications, but the gross effect to the colony population had to be significant and not realistic of a typical brood break.

Assuming as fact that OAV is most effective when there is little or no brood present, wouldn't this have been the optimal environment for efficacy of OAV? A broodless hive?

This study clearly states that a single, double and triple application of the US regulated maximum dose in a broodless hive is not an effective varroa control measure.

This study proves that we cannot effectively control varroa mites in our hives using the 1g/brood box dose prescribed by US law.

But I am certain that we will continue to beat our heads against the wall for years as state-sponsored and publicly-funded money is funneled to government-paid researchers in government "Extension" roles continue to hide their research by trying to sell us back the research that we already paid for.

 

[RayMarler]

This is something I've posted in the past, with link to that thread below...

I've heard people say that brood breaks helps to control varroa. I've heard people doing brood breaks for varroa control, but they still lose the hives. I can't say what did or did not work for them, all I can do is tell you how brood breaks have worked for me, and the conclusions I have come to from the experiences.

When I do brood breaks as a varroa control method, here's what happens for me in my location with the local bees I can get here... The hives still die. If anything, the brood breaks makes the varroa problem even worse, at least in some instances. So I started studying varroa, their life cycles and brooding cycles. I've come to a few conclusions from my experiences and reading.

I make the brood break, I've done it many different ways, at least four different ways, and I've always had the same result. Hives die. So what happens inside the hive when they get a brood break. There are adult varroa on the adult bees. There are varroa breeding and feeding on capped bee pupa. There are varroa getting ready to enter bee larva as they are being capped. Now, make a brood break. Over time as the bee brood cycle progresses, for each bee pupa that is infested, you get 2 more mites come out, or close to it. They add to the adult mite population on the adult bees. More larva get close to capped pupa stage each day, this goes on for 12 days. More and more adult varroa each day from pupa emerging, more and more varroa entering the remaining upcoming pupa. After three weeks, all bee brood is emerged, no more bee brood. Now the hive has very high numbers of adult varroa. So, now what happens... The new queen bee starts laying. There are so many adult varroa that the first rounds of brood get hit really hard with varroa. They get hit so hard that the virus's associated with varroa get to critical stages, Now I've got more deformed wings than I had before the brood break. As time goes on, more bee brooding, more mites, more deformed wings, brood is real spotty, and over time I now start getting crawler bees, paralysis virus, black hairless bees with undersized abdomens, etc. You get the picture. In my opinion from my experiences here with my bees in my location, brood breaks do not help at all with varroa, it might even make the problem worse. If others have success with it fine, but it does NOT work for me, and I cringe every I hear someone say they use brood breaks for varroa control. Managing (killing) drone brood on a regular basis for varroa control does help much much better for varroa control than brood breaks do... once again, for me in my location with my bees.

https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?307047-Three-dead-hives&p=1213643#post1213643

 

[RayMarler]

OK, here is some pics of a cage I've made up in the past, for helping to control varroa.
This cage will confine a queen to one entire frame. I saw it at Sue Cobey's yard at UCD many years ago. It was originally used to cage the queen on a frame of Drone Comb, forcing her to lay in the drone comb. Once the drone cells were all capped. the frame was removed and the drone comb destroyed by putting in a freezer for a couple days, or by cutting out the comb and melting it down or or destroying it in some other way.

This cage can also be used to trap the queen for a brood break, but as I stated in my above post, I myself think that method of varroa control does not work, and may even make the problem worse if no treatments are being done at the same time.

This cage can also be used to get the queen to lay in a frame that will be used for grafting larva from so you get correct aged larva for the grafting. in other words, a way of timing larva for grafting.

 

[psm1212]

Ray:

Thanks for posting that. Are you applying OAV once you have no capped brood in your hives, or are you purely doing a brood break with no treatment?

 

[RayMarler]

I made that cage over 15 years ago and used it as a timing cage for grafting back then. I never did use it for broodless creation or treating varroa. Back then, I was doing Drone brood removal with powder sugar dusting with SBB's on hives for varroa control. Last year I used Apivar for varroa treatments.

The times I've used broodless periods for mite control is when I'd make up splits that raised their own queens.

RayMarler said...
OK, here is some pics of a cage I've made up in the past, for helping to control varroa.

Ok, now I see the confusion, it was the way in which I wrote that sentence, sorry.
I never used that cage for varroa control myself, I was just told it was used as varroa control by trapping the queen on drone comb, and then removing the drone comb once it was all sealed brood back when I first seen it. And, my memory may be wrong, i'm not sure I first seen it at Sue's place, I have have seen it in ABJ or some other publication somewhere. I really don't remember where I first saw one.

 

[Jack Grimshaw]

The abstract of the study by Ellis et al. cited by grozzie gives very little information.What did stick out was that a brood break IN THE FALL resulted in colony deaths.
Well no kidding!!
In FL ,by the fall,with no other Varroa control,I'm bet those hives are ready to crash with very high V. loads.
I'm sure we all have seen Randy O's graph of how the mite/ bee ratio climbs exponentially from mid-summer on as bee population declines and mite population keeps increasing.Any late treatment can be exactly that. Too late!!

This Sat,CT Beeks have their winter meeting and the speaker is Dr Jamie Ellis.
Now I have some questions to ask and maybe his presentations will include a review of this study..

 

[grozzie2]

The abstract of the study by Ellis et al. cited by grozzie gives very little information.What did stick out was that a brood break IN THE FALL resulted in colony deaths.
Well no kidding!!
In FL ,by the fall,with no other Varroa control,I'm bet those hives are ready to crash with very high V. loads.

I've got a friend that does have access to the full study at that link, so got them to send me a pdf. I'm not permitted to share it publicly or I would. But I can summarize the points that caught my interest.

Study was done September 2016 in Gainesville Fl, so I dont think any wintering considerations would matter, it is my understanding bees brood year round in that area. Prior to the start of the study the colonies were equalized over a period of some number of weeks to reach a starting strength of 10 frames bees with 7 frames of brood. Once the experiment was started, there was no more transfer of frames between colonies. 10 colonies were assigned to each group.

The 'treatments' were as follows. One application of OAV. Three applications of OAV at 1 week intervals. OAV applications were as per the label. Brood interruption by placing the queen into the Var-Control cage for 24 days. All combinations and permutations were tested. One set of colonies got no treatment at all for negative control, another set got apivar, a positive control. Final results were tallied up 62 days after the start of the study. Lots of graphs showing population size and mite drops thru the study, but the one thing I've homed in on is the table showing colony survival rates,

Neg. Control 0.7
OA-1 0.5
OA-3 0.7
BI 0.1
BI-OA-1 0.4
BI-OA-3 0.6
Amitraz 0.999

To calculate odds ratios, survival cannot equal 1. Thus, 100% survival is presented as 0.999. OA = oxalic acid applied via vaporization, BI = brood interruption
achieved by caging the queen, Amitraz = amitraz applied via Apivar strips, 1 = one application, 3 = three application, neg. control = negative control.

The discussion mentions a few things. All queens in the cages were still alive at the end of the brood interruption if the colony was still alive. Discussion also mentions that they felt the 1g application rate on the label was insufficient.

But my own takeaway is this. Even if insufficient, the colonies with OA got the same treatment. The colones with Brood interruption fared more poorly than those without, particularly noticeable comparing the 'do nothing' colonies with the 'only a brood break' colonies. 70 percent survival vs 10 percent is NOT insignificant in my books. Those that got the two variations of OA show the same trend, without brood break did better than those with a brood break. I agree with those suggesting the 1g label rate may be low, I always use 2g because that's what it says on my labels. BUT, application rates aside because they are equal in this study, the colonies that got brood breaks did poorly, those that didn't get brood breaks did better. It doesn't mean they did good, it means they didn't do as bad as those with brood breaks.

Here is another quote from the discussion which shows that the differing performance wasn't because they just ignored the colonies for 62 days.

===========
We observed high colony mortality in many treatments, despite diligent colony management to alleviate the side effects of the treatments. As colony populations began to decline, they were fed sugar syrup and had entrance reducers placed on their hive entrances to reduce robbing. Furthermore, small hive beetle (Aethina tumida) traps were added to all colonies to reduce the effects of beetle damage.
===========

And farther down in the results discussion
========
Other researchers have observed increased efficacy in Varroa control when brood interruption was combined in conjunction with OA treatments (Wagnitz and Ellis 2010, Pietropaoli et al. 2012, Lodesani et al. 2014, Gregorc et al. 2017); however, we did not observe any benefit of brood interruption during our experiment. In fact, in all cases in this experiment, more colonies died when brood rearing was interrupted. To our knowledge, all other published experiments combining OA treatment and brood interruption appliedthe OA via the trickling method rather than vaporization.
========

So if you look at this part of the discussion, they are clear here too. Another interesting tidbit, all the other researchers that did this used dribble method, not vaporizing. If they followed the label for dribble method, they would put almost double the amount of OA in per each colony assuming 10 seams of bees and 50ml per seam.

 

[psm1212]

Great recap grozzie! Thank you.

So that clears some things up in my mind, but it raises more questions.

I guess I am going to have to go buy this article. A little irritating since I gave (albeit a very small amount) to the fundraising efforts to build the Florida Bee Lab. I did not realize that I would have to pay for the data that they collect. Especially since this is a Land Grant Public University that preaches Extension services every chance they get. There is a conflict in saying you are providing Extension services while hiding your data. I will stop now.

 

[grozzie2]

I'm sure the article will show up in public places soon

 

[Jack Grimshaw]

See my recent post in TF forum under
"Forced brood break"

 

[Hunajavelho]

This is something I've posted in the past, with link to that thread below...

I've heard people say that brood breaks helps to control varroa. I've heard people doing brood breaks for varroa control, but they still lose the hives. I can't say what did or did not work for them, all I can do is tell you how brood breaks have worked for me, and the conclusions I have come to from the experiences.

When I do brood breaks as a varroa control method, here's what happens for me in my location with the local bees I can get here... The hives still die. If anything, the brood breaks makes the varroa problem even worse, at least in some instances. So I started studying varroa, their life cycles and brooding cycles. I've come to a few conclusions from my experiences and reading.

I make the brood break, I've done it many different ways, at least four different ways, and I've always had the same result. Hives die. So what happens inside the hive when they get a brood break. There are adult varroa on the adult bees. There are varroa breeding and feeding on capped bee pupa. There are varroa getting ready to enter bee larva as they are being capped. Now, make a brood break. Over time as the bee brood cycle progresses, for each bee pupa that is infested, you get 2 more mites come out, or close to it. They add to the adult mite population on the adult bees. More larva get close to capped pupa stage each day, this goes on for 12 days. More and more adult varroa each day from pupa emerging, more and more varroa entering the remaining upcoming pupa. After three weeks, all bee brood is emerged, no more bee brood. Now the hive has very high numbers of adult varroa. So, now what happens... The new queen bee starts laying. There are so many adult varroa that the first rounds of brood get hit really hard with varroa. They get hit so hard that the virus's associated with varroa get to critical stages, Now I've got more deformed wings than I had before the brood break. As time goes on, more bee brooding, more mites, more deformed wings, brood is real spotty, and over time I now start getting crawler bees, paralysis virus, black hairless bees with undersized abdomens, etc. You get the picture. In my opinion from my experiences here with my bees in my location, brood breaks do not help at all with varroa, it might even make the problem worse. If others have success with it fine, but it does NOT work for me, and I cringe every I hear someone say they use brood breaks for varroa control. Managing (killing) drone brood on a regular basis for varroa control does help much much better for varroa control than brood breaks do... once again, for me in my location with my bees.

https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?307047-Three-dead-hives&p=1213643#post1213643

I think you have too high varroa infestation from the start, that is why your hives die and that is why brood breaks do not work for you.

Watch the lecture by Rallph Bühler posted in the starting post and learn to do it right.

 

[coopermaple]

Hoping I have attached the pdf file of the research article. View attachment OA_Apivar_Brood-Break_article_2020_178_ (1).pdf

 

[Jack Grimshaw]

We should be careful about sharing recently published copywrited material without permission.The authors are usually very generous about sharing their material with individuals and I would hate to destroy that relationship.

 

[Jaljala]

The cage system that is used in Italy (which is the subject of this thread initially, and is also mentioned in Ralph Büchler presentation...) is not used as a sole brood break method, because if you download the instructions from the website selling those cages, it is clearly mentioned that a treatment is applied a few days after the queen is released to knock down most of the Varroa population which is now mostly phoretic. As previously mentioned, the brood break itself is not what makes the Varroa population decline (they can survive longer than 2 months as phoretic mites), it is the treatment following it.
A different method is called "brood trapping" that DOES greatly reduce mite population (method also explained by R. Büchler), where you isolate the queen on a comb where she can still lay (but she cannot move to another comb), when the comb is full of eggs you take it away (replacing it with another empty comb for the queen to keep laying) and you place it in the brood nest for nurse bees to take care of it. 9 days later (fully capped) you take it away and freeze it. You repeat that comb trapping for 3 cycles (27-28 days) and up to 95% of mites can be destroyed. It can also be combined with a treatment at the end for the remaining phoretic mites. This method has to be used about a month before the usual honey collecting time, so that you don't affect the winter bee population.