Api Life Var vs Apiguard vs (insert favourite non Pyrethoid Varroa Treatment)

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,
Most used various treatments last year in the Autumn. I personally used Thymol crystals but we all do Oxalic acid trickle in the Winter.(we provide this as a benefit to the membership) This year the majority are using Apivar. including myself for autumn treatment then Oxalic again this winter.
There is a lot of talk about varroa resistance and everybody is moving away from the usual Apistan/Bavarol but nobody has actually tested to see if there is actually resistance in our area. I intend to do a resistance test soon and send the results to the SBA who want to monitor Scotland for resistance.

[Jimbo]

Hi Jon,

Just found out the club colonies were treated with Apivar strips in autumn then Oxalic acid in winter so a drop of over 2000 is unusual unless there is failing feral colonies in the area. The odd feral colony can still turn up in our area although it is getting rarer.

[Jon]

A drop of 2000 is very unexpected in a properly managed colony unless as you suggest a failing colony feral or other wise has been robbed out.
Any of mine I have looked at this year have had drops of between 5-20 mites per day after treatment started which suggests the mite load is very low.
We distributed several litres of oxalic to club members in December last year and apparently demand is growing and it will be even more this year.
We can discuss it in Stirling over a pint!

[gavin]

That's a muckle pile of Varroa. One of my three in the home apiary (the one with a mesh floor) had a three-day drop of five mites when thymol treated. The rest have no obvious signs of Varroa, including the five up the hills. One belonging to a friend which spent the year in Dundee and was thymol treated last autumn and oxalic treated last December had a five-day drop of 500 on treatment with thymol. That one was getting high.

See you on Friday guys!

G.

[Jimbo]

I will be arriving on Sat morning with Ben and Rhi so the pint will have to wait until Sat night. Jon I will bring along that Mars Bar I owe you for the first person to get all his red dots in the Amm box (no it will not be deep fried!)

[Jon]

(no it will not be deep fried!)

Pity. I always like to try the regional specialties when I travel!
Perhaps a wafer thin slice.

[gavin]

If that's your party piece for the ceilidh I'm definitely giving it a body-swerve!

Perhaps this regional speciality - and a real contradiction in terms:



Oh dear, have I gone off-topic again?

[gavin]

On reflection I'm not sure that having them clear out the sponge is necessarily a bad thing.

A friend who used the sponge method had rather yucky, gooey and oddly coloured 'propolis' all summer. OK if you are extracting honey I suppose (as long as it doesn't dissolve in honey or wax, but I don't really fancy having viscose (if that is what it is)-propolis mix spread through the hive.

[Neils]

Not noticed similar in mine, a lot of them simply propolised them onto the top bars. This year I've switched to using that oasis stuff that I got from the local florist. Still sunning myself in turkey so not seen how they've got on with it do far.

[EmsE]

I've got the Apiguard on again this year, just to use up what I had left really. For the past few years, the mite drop has been negligible, although I've been putting that down to the possibility of them being blown off the varroa floor, but when doing the drone brood culling, I haven't seen any either.

This year is completely opposite. I noticed varroa in one of my colonies drone brood in early August, whipped the super off and put on the Apiguard and the drop was high. The other apiary where I hadn't seen a mite drop either is showing a heavy fall of mites now the treatment is on. It was a couple of weeks worth of floor scrapings and roughly estimate about 150 mites.
I've treated the past few years with Apiguard in August, oxalic trickle at Christmas and then drone culling through the year (just the part under a super frame and leave the rest of the drones as they are needed). I'm not the only one to notice this In our area, others have commented the same. So what's changed this year?