Treating varroa mite recommendations

[Manuel Garcia]

I have two hives that have high varroa count. Using the sugar roll test one had 10 and the other had 14 mites. There are so many treatment methods and options that it's hard to decide on which way to go. I'm leaning toward the "natural" stuff like Apiguard or Oxalic Acid Dribble (4 times over 5-7 days break). 

Looking for insight on what people in the Bay have found works well for summer treatment for mites. Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated! 

Thanks,

[Ralph Szur]

Some treatments you can use with honey on the hive such as formic pro. It doesn't work well though when it's hot like 90°.OA is good when the hive is broodless. keep in mind acids burn the antenna of the bees. Hopguard 2 can also be used with honey on. I ike Apilife var, it should not be used with honey on , needs 3 weeks of revolving treatment but is thymol from thyme and menthol and I think eucaliptus so really “natural”. I also use drone comb removal as part of an integrated pest management approach. You have to be vigilant with drone comb and remove it before 24 days otherwise you are breeding mites..

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[Gerald Przybylski]

Interesting.
I'm a non-treatment beekeeper; we don't treat for Varroa in our backyard operation.
We keep swarms that we catch or the daughters of those colonies. no out-of-area queens or colonies.

Since we started keeping bees in east Oakland in 2011, most of the colonies have handled Varroa on their own.
They keep them below 2% or so. Zero mite counts are not unusual with sugar-rolls.  We keep 6 to 12 colonies most of the time.  Our success may partly be related to living in an area that's not overcrowded with beekeepers like some
parts of north Oakland and Berkeley are.  (drifting bees transporting pathogens is the presumption)

In our dozen years of beekeeping we noticed that Varroa would spike in an unusual way.
Over a week or two it would go up drastically. i.e. faster than natural Varroa population growth can account for.
We concluded it was because the bee colony had been robbing Varroa infested colonies, bringing back hitchhiker Varroa.
The Varroa influx exceeded the colony's capacity to keep them under control.  Parasitic Mite Syndrome (PMS) is  the
common term describing the collapse of colonies due to Varroa overload.

So the fact that you are counting 3% or more Varroa is interesting to me.
I wonder why the circumstances are different than they are in our neighborhood.
Are the bees from local swarms?  Package?  Out-of-area Nuc colony?
Is the neighborhood one of the high beekeeper density neighborhoods?
Are you measuring the # of Varroa on more than 300 bees?  (half a cup)
If you're in an area where there are a LOT of unmanaged colonies (gear owned by "bee havers")
they could be infested, and nobody knows or cares.

A lot of the literature recommending treatment, and methods, assume honey bees are generally
susceptible to Varroa, and have no defense against them. i.e. Varroa populations naturally grow unchecked
until they reach a level that's fatal to the hive.
Since 2012 we've observed that colonies maintain their Varroa population at a roughly constant level
(which varies from hive to hive) of a few percent.
A hitchhiking/robbing event can destabilize that equilibrium.  Sometimes hives cope, sometimes they don't.

So I suggest measuring the Varroa percentage for a couple of weeks in a row before climbing aboard the treatment train.
If the Varroa percentage is growing, maybe it's because you got susceptible bees (blame the queen and the drone she mated with).
If the percentage is stable or drops back down to a percent or lower, then you had a transient event.

Another thing to be noted is that there are many bee trees in the bay area, with successful colonies  that
persist for years. Nobody treats them. The same is true for colonies in attics,  crawl-spaces, walls, etc.
Those bees are dealing with Varroa on their own.
Our operation leverages off of the resistant population, and feeds good drones back into that population.

The pathogens chapters of bee books tend to be either a little bit out of date, or way out of date.
Before Varroa, the big worry was tracheal mites. The next worry (besides novel viruses) is
the new mite from Asia (Tropilaelaps).

As a new beekeeper, you will decide where you stand on the issue of treatment/non-treatment. It's sometimes a hot topic.
It depends on your outlook on beekeeping (why you too it up) and whether you expect to
derive income from the hobby.
(fwiw our investment in equipment was retired within about 3 years by honey sales; it doesn't work that way for everyone)

Questions?

jerry

[Catherine Edwards]

You might try oxalic acid sponges rather than a dribble because it is effective over time and does not impact honey. If mite loads get much higher, formic acid - formic pro or mite away strips - works best as it kills mites in capped brood that other treatments cannot. If you have a small # of hives, you can buy the oa sponges at Biofuels Oasis rather than making them yourself.

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[Robert L Mathews]

Hi Ralph,

Where do you get your ApiLife Var from? I tried to buy some online recently to try it out, but everywhere said they wouldn't ship it to California addresses.

On Jun 30, 2024, at 8:47 PM, Ralph Szur <ralp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Some treatments you can use with honey on the hive such as formic pro. It doesn't work well though when it's hot like 90°.OA is good when the hive is broodless. keep in mind acids burn the antenna of the bees. Hopguard 2 can also be used with honey on. I ike Apilife var, it should not be used with honey on , needs 3 weeks of revolving treatment but is thymol from thyme and menthol and I think eucaliptus so really “natural”.

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Robert L Mathews

[gmau...@earthlink.net]

Many/most beekeepers that I associate with are doing a round of Formic (to quickly take the numbers down from more than nine) and following up with Oxalic sponges (to keep the numbers low).  Because workers and sometimes queen death is associated with Fromic treatment, my recommendation would be to treat early enough in the season to allow the colony to requeen if necessary.  Many very experienced beekeepers cite but can not explain a bounce forward in bee health following Formic treatment.

I've treated with mineral oil fogging to reduce high mite counts for five or six years.  Last year was the first that I followed up with OA sponges going into fall and all my  colonies came out of winter stronger that any of the prior years.  My suspicion is that lowering the pH in the hive may contribute to a reduced viral load on the colony, but I have no data to support that.

You can also consider caging your queen... to introduce a broodless period to effect a mite die off.

You'll likely find that a beekeeper's choice of treatment method (BTW treatment-free is a "method") is dependent on the number of hives they manage as well as their experience level.

[Ralph Szur]

My only experience has been in beekeeping in New York so maybe you can't buy it here even though it's organic. Try Betterbee.

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[Manuel Garcia]

Thank you all for the feedback! 

Jerry-  I did the test with precisely half cup of bees on all of them and went for nurse bees close to the brood so the test should be accurate. I am hoping to avoid treatment as much as possible but I also do not want to loose any colonies.  Ideally I want to only treat them now or when they are naturally bloodless so they can survive winter and hopefully bounce back next year. One of the colonies is a swarm catch and the other was gifted to me by someone in Pleasanton who did treat them with OA (which turns out to be the colony with the most mites). I got them both in May and neither of them have really grown much since and I've had to feed them sugar and pollen patties regularly so that they build comb.  I have a third colony which I got as a nut from BioFuel Oasis and that colony surprisingly only had one mite in the test. 

Catherine- Thanks for that tip, I will stop by their shop sometime this week and see what they have. 

Ralph- Thanks for that drone tip, I will make sure to remove the drones I see and look into the treatments you suggested! 

Again, I appreciate the quick replies!