Varroa damaged colony

A word of warning and an admission of guilt.

I inspected a hive at the weekend which is suffering from varroa damage. It is now on week 3 of Apilife Var, so treatment is underway although it started late as there was uncapped honey in the supers previously. There is dead brood in the comb although not much sign of deformed wings or varroa on the bees themselves. The comb and some of ther removed bees look just like the fera leaflet; Figures 6 and 7 on page 7. The mite drop isn't massive with 50 - 60 in 24 hours since the last treatment. The bees are flying well so that from the outside the colony looks good.

https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/bee...ment.cfm?id=16

Just as described in the Fera book, the problem has highlighted itself very rapidly and the colony looks like it could collapse. Hopefully I've caught it just in time. An admission of guilt here, that being in an out apiary I haven't paid close attention to it for a while; maybe with more care I would have noticed things going wrong sooner.

The queen is one I want to rescue if possible. There is a frame of open brood and 2 or 3 frames of sealed brood but some of that could contain a selection of dead bees - I need to check further.

I plan to put in a frame of sealed brood from another colony in the next few days which will give it a boost. It has been fed Fumidil B over the past few weeks so Nosema should not be too much of a concern.

Is there anything else I should consider? Has anyone else rescued a colony in this way?

An update - Despite treatment with Apilife Var, the mite drop has been quite low. The frame of sealed brood is now emerging. Trouble is - my mention of plenty of flying bees in the last post - well some are visitors. :(

The weak colony is being 'silently' robbed from the other colony in the out apiary so I will move it tonight. An inspection on Sunday revealed that the super and brood in the other colony is jammed full. The super on the damaged colony is now empty. Icing sugar shaken on the departing bees has confirmed it.

As a precaution I put another piece of Apilife Var in each hive yesterday as I am concerned that varroa will have hitched a ride the 15 metres or so to the other colony.

And there I was a while ago saying how low the mite count has been in my hives this year! :o

A further update. I did move the damaged and robbed colony in September. I also stuck some Apivar strips in the hive at that time and an additional measure to control mites. On 28 December I treated this colony with Oxalic Acid. The colony had 7 frames of brood and is therefore larger than the average so it's recovered and done very well. Cue smilie face :). In 3 days of monitoring mite drop only one has fallen so the Apilife Var and Apivar seems to have done the trick.