SHOCKING mite drop

I completed my third round of oxalic acid vaporization 3 weeks ago. You’d assume all was well right? Well, I assumed wrong.
I placed slide-out inspection boards coated with cooking spray under 2 of my hives and checked them after 24 hours.
1 hive had a mite drop of 200 mites and the other had 100.
I was shocked.
My emergency plan is a powdered sugar treatment on all the colonies to knock off more mites followed with Apivar strips hung in the hives for six weeks.
I dislike the idea of the Apivar, but I dislike the idea of the bees dying even more.

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That is scary Bobby. We are coming into Autumn now and I had 10 mites on my inspection board after about 24 hours.

I thought that was a lot and have now treated with MAQS. I will leave it for 7 days now before going back in. Will pop my inspection board in and check the drop every 24 hours.

Keep us posted on how you get on. Perhaps your oxalic 3 weeks ago weakened them all and they are now dropping or perhaps a lot died in the cells and the bees are cleaning them all out.

Good luck anyway hopefully your bees are strong.

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Well, let’s get some perspective here. These are probably dead mites from your treatment. If you have 2 deeps and they are pretty full, you probably have around 30,000 bees. So even if you had 300 mites, that is only 1% phoretic. Just goes to show your treatment was worthwhile though. You are setting your bees up for winter survival.

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How about a sugar roll? Dawn, his last treatment was 3 weeks ago. Would they still be dropping?

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Good point - I would like to see how many of the varroa on the board are alive. Sugar roll would also be on my list of things to do, but as I wrote on another thread, unless you have multiple hives and can recover from an over-winter loss, it may be safer to treat if there is any doubt, and @Bobby_Thanepohn has chosen a good treatment option in my humble opinion. :blush:

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Dawn is right. They are dead mites from your previous treatment. You should expect mites to drop for five weeks after the last vape

The other thing to consider if you have a sky high count on your sugar roll is reinfestation from a collapsing colony somewhere which is more common than folk realise

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@Dee you may be correct! Thank you. I was set up to a sugar roll of the hive ( and film it @Cowgirl) but it started pouring just as I took off the top cover!!

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Please still do it, would love to see the video au Bobby! (Sorry in France right now! :wink:)

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France!? Totes jelly.

Redcurrant or Grape? (Jelly…) :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Good luck
Let us know how it goes

3 hours later and still raining…

Bobby,

Here are several SBBoards with mites n debris … I was getting pretty good mite drop for nearly two weeks after adding Mite Away Strips.

this first pix was my flow hive board this morning … Treated all five hives including my 5 frame double deep Nuc. I treated on 8/30 …, this is nearing 3 weeks after … 24 hour mite drop is pretty LOW now. Maybe mites the bees are cleaning out of cells !? Not sure. . This rest of these mite pix are last pix is oldest/nearest treatment date. First 24 hour drop some where still crawling but day by day that crawling quickly disappeared. This mornings check … Nothing (mite wise) was alive n crawling either.

Not sure if all these sample pix’s help Bobby ! I’m going to recheck mine at end of the month again with a sugar-roll test. I can either going with powdered sugar dusting or oxide-vapor. Either option is open to me at that point !!

Any thots anybody. Powdered sugar would be less trauma !

Gerald

I am treating 4 hives with miteaway strips. The 2 double deep hives I used 2 strips each in between the boxes per the instructions. The other 2 hives are single deeps and I only used 1 strip in each thinking it might be too strong to give a full dose in a single box with a solid bottom board.

Good thinking or should I have given the two single boxes the full 2 strip dose?

@Cowgirl - Video is uploading now!

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Pluto,

Question bro :+1:… Are you following the instructions or your own thots. I don’t have the directions in front of me ( I used this product on mine )… I helped a fellow beekeeper treat all 70 or 80 hives. We determined treating each colony first by whether there were 6 full frames of bees per direction. My five frame Nuc qualified for treatment as it was a double deep (10 frames) with between 7 to 8 frames of active bees.

With his … Single boxes n colonies with only 6 active frames (double deep included) got a single strip. All others got the two strip full dose. There needs to be that minimum bee population so bees (enough of them) to circulated the flumes/gases plus be able to help evacuate the flumes from a fully open n unobstructed hive entrance as I remember.

. Here is the names of my hives, number of strips used with upper frames n total frames covered by active bees. Last column was general note about quality of honey at that time for wintering over. Note: all hives had one shallow or medium extra super to allow the bees to move away from the strong gas strips sandwiched between two bottom boxes (the brood n the first honey super.

Hope that help or gives you an idea…

Gerald

Thanks @Gerald_Nickel

Yes that helps. The two big hives are 2 deep completely filled (the one has a third deep that was just started)

The small hives are 80% and 60% filled out single deeps. (I use only 8 frame deeps)

Sounds like my strategy was about right. I check bottom boards of the screened bottoms and there were a lot of dead mites so the treatment is working. The big hives have screened bottoms and the 2 single box hives have solid bottoms which is why I was concerned about putting 2 strips in each.

Joe

Pluto,

By one week treatment is mostly done n over. I still had mite drop for at least one more full week the tapered off. Bees are frisky n out working out last nectar flow of the season which is English Ivy. My mentor, Danny is coming over tomorrow… He’s head instructor of insects n beekeeping at one of our local. Danny has taught at several colleges around the U.S. to get a wider understand of honeybees n care in other regions before coming here. I am very lucky to get a mentor that’s a great teacher n beekeeper.

Shocked seeing 175-200 mite drop in 48 hrs after adding wintergreen grease patties. FlowHive weighs 133 lbs with 1 deep and 3 mediums. Top medium only has 4 frames drawn.

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Do some proper varroa killing, then.
I had a colony drop 600 after one treatment

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