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?
Low varroa counts
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.Originally Posted by madasafish
Although I've just put a Formic acid treatment on 2 of the larger counts this morning
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