Tracheal Mites - are they even an issue now?

I live in Greece and I think I recently had Tracheal mites in three related, side by side hives. Lots of crawlers, K wings, but no bee droppings (so not nosema). Could have also been CPBV.

This occurred after I used Hopguard late winter instead of Thymol. Why do I mention this? Many of the chemicals we use for varroa, both natural and synthetic, also have an effect on Tracheal. Thymol is one of them... so is Amitraz... I haven't seen anything mentioned about Hopguard's effect on Tracheal, so I'm thinking that may be the reason my bees may have had Tracheal mites.

I lightly sprayed the hives with a strong home-made HBH/Thymol solution, and after a few days, the problem seemed to go away, or at least diminish, depending on the hive in question. I'm still monitoring the hives though.

I didn't have the bees checked for Tracheal mites, so yes, there's a lot of conjecture on my part. But I don't think it's coincidental that when many people started treating for Varroa, Tracheal seemed to go away. Maybe the increased use of Varroa treatments killed two birds with one stone, so to speak?

I also think that many treatment free newbees may be losing hives to not only Varroa, but also Tracheal. They may just not know about it.

I only have just over two years experience in beekeeping, so I may be way off.

But I do believe that you can't really know you have those Tracheal mite resistant genetics if you treat Varroa with a miticide that also affects Tracheal.

Michael Bush said:

Amazing how quickly the problem went away when everyone got distracted by Varroa mites and quit treating for tracheal mites. Now if we could only get distracted by something else so the Varroa problem can go away...

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Want to know what else is funny Michael, how tracheal mites became a non-issue as soon as miticides were developed to control varroa. I'm not saying selective breeding didn't help, as still queen breeders today are screening for tracheal mite resistance within their operations, but miticides most certainly played a role; essentially we killed 2 birds with one stone. Formic acid for example, has been proven to kill tracheal mites so when you treat varroa using formic, you also take care of tracheal mites. Also, could it be that tracheal mites were less of a problem for bees than varroa mites? We were able to find stocks of bees which had slightly different smells, which confused the hell out of the T Mites. In other words we had colonies which could resist tracheal mites, we have no colonies that are being produced commercially that are fully resistant to varroa, and that my dear friend, is the problem. If we had, then all we would have to do is cross them and the problem would have gone away, so long as we maintained good selective breeding. Nothing ever just "goes away," Michael, that is an over-simplistic childish and magical worldview that has no place in the science of beekeeping.

GregB said:

@P.Dosen, no need to respond to Michael Bush back into 2014...

Otherwise, here on Beesource we don't really bash each other lately.
Rather we are trying to civilly discuss what works and what does not work and why is that.

Indeed, some "lucky" people actually do get away without treating (or nearly without treating).

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Hi GregB, I am not bashing Michael Bush, I'm simply bashing the propagation of false information that is frequently and willfully being spread by treatment free beekeepers. Yes, there are those who are treating less, or infrequently based on the stock of bees they have coupled with their management system, their location as well as multiple factors which allow them to be treatment free or virtually treatment free. However in my experience, the ideas put forth by the treatment free beekeeping community are largely based on misinformation and a deep-rooted magical worldview that I will say again, has no place when discussing the keeping of healthy, productive colonies which is what everyone wants to have. Beekeeping, as I'm sure you know is 90% science and 10% art, 90% GregB is being thrown out the window by treatment free enthusiasts and as a result they're making it that much more difficult for new beekeepers to be successful. Solomon Parker for some strange reason makes an odd distinction between commercial beekeepers and recreational beekeepers as to imply recreational beekeepers do not have to treat their colonies for parasites and pathogens, which in my view is complete and total non-sense. There is no distinction in my mind between recreational honeybee biology and commercial honeybee biology; there is just honeybee biology, recreational beekeepers will lose their colonies to mites just the same as commercial beekeepers do if left unmanaged. The time for non-sense is over.

P.Dosen said:

Hi GregB, I am not bashing Michael Bush,.........The time for non-sense is over.

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OK, fine @P.Dosen.
I am not advocating for him either, just the subject of tracheal mites is really irrelevant now days.
Nor Michael Bush will care enough to respond to you.

If you want to contribute to the latest discussions, feel free to add something below, maybe.
There is a good sampler for you.

Just be good to have it a little bit more readable (use of paragraphs, for example, is easier on some old eyes).