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
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.
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
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.
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/ire...toring-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.
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