Just wondering how many people have used a mosquito fogger from walmart and installed food grade oil and fogged their hives for mites. I talked to a woman not long ago and she said they have lots of success with this type of treatment any thoughts out there ?? She sights that it glogs the air ways of the mites but not the bees and sufocates the mites this way you have no chemical treatments in the hives Chris
I am no longer using it as I no longer have Varroa issues since regressing to small cell. When I tried it, my experience was that if you do it regularly it will keep the numbers down. It is not effective enough to use it to knock down a population that is already high. If you let the fog back up to the flame the hive explodes very impressively... kind of scary. An odd side effect is the bees seem to immediately start fighting each other on the landing board as if they are being robbed. They stop in a minute or two.
MB
How many colonies did you lose this winter? Looks like 40 to 50 percent was pretty normal in my neck of the woods this winter. What has been your average loss over the last few winters? Do you monitor mites any more? How many yards and how many colonies do you keep?
I lost 9 of 20 now. I was able to take a good look yesterday. I see I had mice in most of the ones that died this winter. I knew some were at risk due to my not getting around to proper mouse prevention but I see the mice even got into a few I did not think they would have been able to. I like your top entrance idea for this reason and come fall I may just eliminate the bottom entrances completely. I have a felling I may have only lost three or four if it were not for the dang mice. Oh well, learn on year at a time I guess.
I have heard some express that if everyone just did not treat and only breed from survivors that we would not have enough genetics left to work with? do you think honeybees and beekeepers would be better off as a whole if all stopped treating for mites? I personally wish there was an island of say like 500 square miles or so where this could be tried, and tested to that degree. It would be really interesting to see the results would be after say ten or fifteen years if you started with something like 1000 colonies and a broad gene pool.
Thanks
Mike thanks for the info i just have a really hard time believing that you dont have any mite problems with small cell. If this worked so well wouldnt everyone be using small cell??? Maybe you just have bees that have great hygenic features from the selection process that you have been doing over the years such as only spliting from hives that have few mites and brood diseases. Chris
bees were around for thousands of years with no problems til we started screwing with them...........
I think its millions of years and we have no idea what they may have faced in the past. A strain of honeybee was found in amber in the Americas from way before man probably ever walked on the continent. What wiped them out?
>How many colonies did you lose this winter?
I'm currently out of the country, so I can't say, but many seem to be alive. I'll check on them in June. I was out of the country last year as well and checked on them in September. I lost a few nucs and a few hives, but I'd say less than 10% losses.
> Looks like 40 to 50 percent was pretty normal in my neck of the woods this winter. What has been your average loss over the last few winters?
It has varied depending on the timing of the weather. But all in all I don't think I've lost more then 20% in a bad winter.
> Do you monitor mites any more?
I always check dead outs to see if they had any significant number of mites. Usually I can't find any mites. Sometimes I can find four or five...
> How many yards and how many colonies do you keep?
I have around 200 colonies in seven yards.
> I have a felling I may have only lost three or four if it were not for the dang mice.
One of the big advantages of only top entrances...
>Oh well, learn on year at a time I guess.
That's how beekeeping works...
>I have heard some express that if everyone just did not treat and only breed from survivors that we would not have enough genetics left to work with?
That was my experience on large cell. They all died. Several times I lost all of them.
> do you think honeybees and beekeepers would be better off as a whole if all stopped treating for mites?
Yes. but if you give them natural comb to live on, some will survive...
>Mike thanks for the info i just have a really hard time believing that you dont have any mite problems with small cell.
I don't treat at all. I get them inspected every year. Here are the results:
http://bushfarms.com/beescerts.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beescerts.htm)
I check every dead out for Varroa mites and find little or none. I look for Varroa feces in the cells. I look for deformed wings and see one now and then but not that much.
> If this worked so well wouldnt everyone be using small cell???
"Everyone" is apparently waiting for some scientist to have the patience to try it long enough and just measure survival of untreated hives instead of treating them all the time so they can count the mites...
> Maybe you just have bees that have great hygenic features from the selection process that you have been doing over the years such as only spliting from hives that have few mites and brood diseases.
I resolved the Varroa issues before I started raising any queens. I had commercial stock. Now I am collecting feral stock, not for Varroa issues, but for bees that are adapted to my climate and are hardy.
http://bushfarms.com/beessctheories.htm (http://bushfarms.com/beessctheories.htm)