On reflection I'm not sure that having them clear out the sponge is necessarily a bad thing. Part of the blurb about apiguard is that the bees carting it out of the hive aids the distribution of the thymol vapour.
If I'd been more prepared, it might have been useful to compare mite counts between colonies that removed the sponges and those that didn't but in truth the level of detail on the mite drop went as far as "1,2,many, lots!".
Nellie you have redefined hygienic bees
They are the ones who grab the chance to get hive sponged down
I wasn't going to say anything about hygienic beesnone of the colonies are otherwise like for like either so even comparing the nucs is probably relatively meaningless in terms of comparing mite counts however you wanted to interpret the results.
Individual hive counts go up and down but if you use a stacked bar graph of all the hives in the apiary you get a clearer pictureOriginally Posted by Nellie
I wasn't going to say anything about hygienic bees
Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 05-10-2011 at 11:45 AM.
Next year I promise! My worst varroa affected colony this year also happened to be the one colony that made no effort, whatsoever, to clear out the thymol sponges, they simply propolised them onto the Top Bars. Anecdotal for sure, but I found the differing treatment of the sponges within the colonies very interesting.
With the home made sponge recipe. Is it 40 ml regardless of single or double brood boxes. All my colonies are double brood bar one which is box and half.
I use strings with thymol mix with wax between bars in my TBHs as it's not possible to apply Apiguard over the bars.
In my first year with two hives, I had DWV and heavy mite drops.
Last year I had much smaller mite drops: under 50 per hive over 4 weeks.
This year - with the same treatment - a total of 11 mites in 1 week - from 4 hives and 3 nucs.
I have seen drones expelled mid summer - and on examination found to have 1 mite on each.
There have been brood breaks this year due to Q- and abysmal cold and wet weather.
I never use OA...
I am also seeing very low mite drops again this year.
Extrapolating from the drop I would say that several colonies have no more than 100 mites in total.
I only monitor a few of my colonies.
This is my 4th year using Apiguard in August/September and Oxalic in December.
I have not had a varroa problem in that time other than having to pay £95 for a tub of Apiguard.
The varroa counts for this year are in from our club apairy colonies. Last year they gave a low count that was a bit unusual. This year after treating with Apivar strips after 3 days exposure the counts are varying from 200 to over 2000 mites per day. Similar results are being reported in some of the members colonies. I will be starting my treatments in the next week with Apivar so will see if will also have high counts this year.
Hi Jimbo
Do most of your folk use Oxalic or just a September thymol treatment?
A colony dropping 2000 mites will be hard to save. The virus load will be shocking.
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