Low varroa counts

[Beeman]

Location is N Ireland and just completed 1 week apivar life treatments across 3 apiaries...not a single mite drop and I m wondering if other beeks are finding similar results?

[Jon]

Does not sound feasible that not a single mite dropped.
When was your last treatment?
I wonder if there is anything wrong with the tablets.
I would do a mite count using a sugar shake as described here (http://nihbs.org/varroa-monitoring/).
I am going to do some sampling in my own colonies this week.
My gut feeling is that there are a lot of mites around.
One colony I looked at today had quite a few drones and workers with shrivelled wings which is a sure sign of a high mite load.

[madasafish]

I counted all my 7 full size hives - twice over 2 three day periods. The highest daily drop was 2 - in 2 hives. Most had 1.

I've just started thymol treatment - and the daily drop after treatment of one of the 2 daily drop hives (as above) was around 30 - I did not bother to count properly as I will count properly over the first week..

These figures are in line with my drops for 2011- 2013. Because of our local weather, brood breaks - or a reduction in brood rearing appear to happen at least once every season. Despite this year being warm and dryish, forage dried up in July and there appeared to be a brood break in some (but not all) of the hives.

[nemphlar]

I checked the 4 colonies at home today, the 2 that messed around with VQ mating for weeks had 1 and 2 bugs over 7 days, 1 didn't swarm and had 18 with another that had a bumpless new queen up at 46. Brood breaks do appear to have a significant effect at almost any time of the year

[madasafish]

Brood breaks appear to be the philosophy behind this website..http://www.mdasplitter.com/

(lots of interesting stuff there )

[nemphlar]

Brood breaks appear to be the philosophy behind this website..http://www.mdasplitter.com/

(lots of interesting stuff there )
Yes it is thanks, their graph showing that even short brood breaks when making splits and the varroa clustering in the few available cells, where they destroy themselves. That would be good if it were effective.
Although I've just put a Formic acid treatment on 2 of the larger counts this morning

[Jon]

I just sampled 6 colonies using the sugar shake method to dislodge mites from a sample of 300 bees.
My mite levels are really high.
3 mites dropping is more or less the threshold for treating and most of the colonies sampled dropped between 20 and 30 mites.
One colony I made up a month ago with 3 frames of sealed brood and adhering bees dropped 78 mites from 300 bees.
I ordered Apiguard and MAQS last week and all will be getting treatment as soon as it arrives.
Funny thing is all the colonies look healthy.
Just goes to show that you need to test properly to get an accurate level of infestation.
These colonies all got Oxalic trickle last December and there was a minimal drop.
The mild spring and the non stop brood rearing have obviously benefited the build up of mites.

[busybeephilip]

dont forget that you have been rearing lots of drones for mating so you might expect high levels in an apairy with drone rearing colonies

[busybeephilip]

I have supers off almost of one apairy, every super full except for one hive where the Gqueen must have died/lost/whatever that was full of laying workers and a load of drones and drone brood in the supers. Not worth trying to rescue this one but I took a weak apidea with queen caged with fondant release and placed it over the crownboard, dont expect any success but you never know it just might work - i have plenty of 5 frame nucs to use as a replacement for ths hive.

[busybeephilip]

I just sampled 6 colonies using the sugar shake method to dislodge mites from a sample of 300 bees.
My mite levels are really high..

This is a really good method for counting mite levels in your hives esp if you dont have varroa mesh screens on your hives. You can find the method here :

http://nihbs.org/eventsworkshops/ireland-varroa-monitoring-project

If you dont have one of the purpose designed sugar shakers you can easily make one from a kilner type jar with a screw on lid and the lid insert replaced with a piece of varroa mesh screen or other suitable mesh cut to size.

[Jon]

Mary Hyland sells them (http://nihbs.org/eventsworkshops/ireland-varroa-monitoring-project/varroa-monitoring-shakers/)

[nemphlar]

Treated 2 hives with a homemade formic acid evaporator, 7 day course of 80ml dropped about 800bugs each over the 2week since. I went through both of them today and both queens have started laying again ok. Seemed quite a high count but I didn't see a single dwv
As an aside I was going through each frame and and before I got to the end I was enveloped in what I think are a carnica type robbers, though I'm not sure of the type as the locals are dark.

[Beeman]

was a bit concerned at the low drop rate with apivar life and treating with MAQS at present-getting a drop of approx 90 mites per box after 3 days of treatment-the bees definitely do not like the treatment but i hoped to avoid absconding/queen rejecting/supersedures problems by leaving the treatment to later in season-will see the outcome after 7 days

[nemphlar]

I think the concentration of the formic acid and its effect on evaporation rate must play a large part I don't know what the Maqs are but users in the US find 60% conc effective without the queen loss. The 7 I've tried so far are averaging 400 over the first 7 days. Judging by the heat on the top boards the queens do seem to have gone back on to lay.

[Samsalar]

I treated 5 good healthy hive with MAQS, big varroa drop, but on checking hives on Sunday (2 weeks after treatment) I had lost 2 out of 5 queens. This was disappointing, at end of season, so have used a nuc with laying queen to save one hive and I think I will need to combine another.
They did not swarm as there were supercedure cells (opened), so looked for virgins, but they were elusive.
I shook all bees out into garden as I could not find virgins before I merged. Hoping the virgin would not fly back. I am a little bit worried she may fly back, but Greengumbo thinks the laying queen would kill off the virgin, so take his word for it.
Have other members lost queens? I do not think I did anything wrong--- or did I?
Another lesson learned.

[Bridget]

Talking to be local small commercial beekeeper about MAQS. She says she doesnt believe it is proven that it works. Although the drop is high she has seen several hives that were treated last year and have very high rate of varroa again this year. My swarm hive which I have just treated also was treated for varroa with MAQS last year (I know where it came from) and i have never seen such a high count here before - other years just drops in single figures but this hive riddled though no DWV. Anyone else heard of this? Of course this is only its second year for general purchase.

[Jon]

I am a little bit worried she may fly back,

It all depends on when she emerged. A virgin starts to take orientation flights from day 4 or 5 after emergence from the cell. If she was older than that she will likely have orientated and will fly back.

[nemphlar]

B I believe I started this year with the lowest count I've seen in years, this from floor and drone uncappings. It's been a very good year and I now find high counts in the most successful colonies, 3weeks after the first formic Acid day I'm looking at counts of 1000v, but I only seen dwv in 1 nuc.
Where brood rearing is continuous I think you can expect varroa to expand accordingly. The autumn treatment was about healthy winter bees. They will be getting an OA treatment come December

[nemphlar]

Happy new year
Like FS seeing low counts after OA treatment, I'm surprised to find that the clearer boards are awfully warm for this time of year and suspect a lot of them still have brood. A complete change from last year where they seemed to be closed down for months.

[madasafish]

I have had low counts since my second year 2011. I only treat with home made thymol mix in Autumn and have never used any formic or oxalic acid..

I measured drops over a week in my langs last week: 0,1 and 4..Which is roughly what I expect this time of year.

I don't cull drones or conduct any form of IPM..

Maybe I am lucky - as I am fairly hands off, I can hardly claim great skill!

[nemphlar]

M I did find the thymol treatment was effective, but to stop the laying in August for 3/4 weeks was just too long for me in this area, if the count is shown to be low in spring as opposed to what I suspect, which is that there is brood in the hive and the V are in cells, I would consider just using a single FA treatment and drop the winter OA

[nemphlar]

finding low counts of varroa after the OA treatments, possible not worth all the bother of a winter treatment, but go with the August treaments only
Certainly give the poor old queens a break from multiple chemical doses

[Jon]

I have had queen live to the 4th season which were treated with Oxalic every winter.
It does not seem to do them any harm in my experience.
One of my colonies dropped over 300 mites with Oxalic treatment.

[nemphlar]

I swapped an old queen I'd breed from into a 5 frame nuc last august. she arrived in 2012 and been doing quite well so I thought I'd give her a chance but she was looking very arthritic this august she was still there at las check the record show 5 OA and 2 FA treatments.although she is my oldest Q post varroa she doesn't look well worse than I would expect pre treatmments