I have 2 new hives (NW New Jersey) that I will begin to ready for the fall soon. What is the most recent standard of care for treating mites, nosema etc in the fall for new hives ( Apistan, Mite- away quick strips, Fumagilin etc)?
Thanks.
Jester
What are your mite counts? How strong are your hives? Do you have any signs of nosema or foulbroods? How much honey do your hives have for winter?
This is my program and it works for me.
I dont count mites. I know my bee's have them so I treat for them 2 times a year, spring and late summer. I use formic, oxalic or thymol. If you are are still trying to collect honey use the quick strips. You can do it now with supers on. If your done you might want to try a thymol product like apiguard. As for nosema I dont wait for sights. I dont have a microscope so I just treat for it with 8 grams in 2 gals of heavy syrup per colony. In years that I have not done this my deadouts have been up to 50% plus. In years that I have used fumigillin they have stayed below the tolerable 20% or lower. One year I even had 100% overwinter
Here is my tretment plan 0 treatments Notta
I am new at this as this is 1st yr.
My hope is that I can do this without treatments. I may not have the knowledge to know what this may mean though!
I also don't know how mites and other problems and diseases get started. Hopefully I am remote enough not to have anything to treat.
>Hopefully I am remote enough not to have anything to treat.
I wouldn't count on remoteness as protection. Varroa are endemic as are all of the current bee problems.
Not that I would treat, but you may have to be a bit more proactive than assuming things will be fine. Something will have to be done for Varroa even if that something is just natural comb and feral survivor stock. In my experience bees on large cell foundation will all die from Varroa if you do nothing.
I did not do a mite count. The 2 hives are the best I ever had, 2 deep supers in each are full of honey. I even got some honey from a medium a few weeks ago. There is no evidence of any infection - hives look clean and well kept and no abnormal smells. Bees are active and do the standard normal activities.
Jester
Thats the problem with mites, your hives will look, smell, act just fine but come winter time when your queen stops/slows laying and all those mites hold up in the brood cells that have all hatched and are empty come out looking for a meal. They will weaken your winter bees and one by one they will die off eventually taking your hive with it. I know because that's what happened to my first hive last year. I learned my lesson.
So, whar are the "natural" options to fighting or preventing mites? (if any)
Quote from: jester7891 on August 20, 2011, 02:13:15 PM
I did not do a mite count. The 2 hives are the best I ever had, 2 deep supers in each are full of honey. I even got some honey from a medium a few weeks ago. There is no evidence of any infection - hives look clean and well kept and no abnormal smells. Bees are active and do the standard normal activities.
Jester
If you have no obvious signs of infection, then you need not treat for foulbroods or nosema at this point. No antibiotics or antifungals. "Preventative" treatment with these just breeds for treatment-resistant foulbrood and nosema.
No matter how healthy your bees look, you may assume that they have varroa. You should do a mite drop asap and find out what load you have. Then you will know whether your bees are coping fine, in which case you need not treat at all this fall, or whether you actually have quite a lot of mites which would have overwhelmed your bees early next spring.
If you find high mite levels, then you have a choice as to what to do. DO NOT use Apistan or Checkmite. Almost all varroa populations are now resistant to them and they will not work/will do harm to your bees. You might use MiteAway Quick Strips if you can get them and your local temps are right. Others might have more suggestions.
"Wait until fall, then treat whether you know you have a pest or not" is not a recognized best practice...
Quote from: Algonam on August 22, 2011, 06:30:11 PM
So, whar are the "natural" options to fighting or preventing mites? (if any)
Different people have different definitions of "natural". The scale starts with products like MAQS which use naturally occurring organic acids (oxalic, formic, etc) at unnatural concentrations which do less harm to bees. Then there are mechanical methods like screened bottom boards with or without sugar dusting, which are designed to increase the natural rate of mites falling out of the hive and ensure they cannot crawl back up. Then "cultural" methods like splitting to induce broodlessness and help the bees keep ahead of the mite population by mimicking swarming. Some also put natural- or small-cell comb into this category. Then genetic methods, either choosing to buy breeds that resist mites (Russians, VSH-trait) or selecting from your own stock by not treating and making up your (probably substantial) losses from the survivors. Most people who want to pursue natural beekeeping use some combination of the above.
Quote from: Michael Bush on August 20, 2011, 05:26:18 AM
>Hopefully I am remote enough not to have anything to treat.
I wouldn't count on remoteness as protection. Varroa are endemic as are all of the current bee problems.
Not that I would treat, but you may have to be a bit more proactive than assuming things will be fine. Something will have to be done for Varroa even if that something is just natural comb and feral survivor stock. In my experience bees on large cell foundation will all die from Varroa if you do nothing.
I guess I have just been lucky. I only keep 10-12 on large cell but my losses have been minimual for the last seven years. I really have not kept a count. When I replace a queen I have been using Russian hybrids for the last 4 or so years.
I am sure I just jinxed it ;)
Quote from: Algonam on August 22, 2011, 06:30:11 PM
So, whar are the "natural" options to fighting or preventing mites? (if any)
There is no natural options to trust on. Mite just stepped in into beekeeping and it makes its harms.
Why the mite should stop harm making?
varroa is quick to adapt to the new situations and its evolution is quicker than bees.
Many say that they do not treat mite at all, but they are few. Numerous are beekeepers whose bees the mite kills.
There are many bee breeders who have made "break out" in fighting against varroa, but then story ends....
Now that I've learned this (everything is new this year!), I have to take a sample right away. Apparently I could be kinda late in the season for this.
I'd like to do it the most effective way......get 200 bees or so into a jar, from the brood chamber is the first step.
How the heck does one get bees into a jar!
.
I have never counted my mites. They are there and I try kill them to last mite.
Even if I kill, they use to be too many.
it seems evident, that in a long brooding period ( like Canada) bees need 2 treament: late summer to protect wintering bees and oxalic trickling in winter that it kills the last mites.
These treatments have very different purposes.
In my country brood are from April to Semptember = 6 months
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoursimplesteps.htm (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoursimplesteps.htm)
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm (http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm)
Very good info Michael.
Thank you.
We will read and re-read to see how we could apply this.
Would our climate be any reason why your methods/suggestions wouldn't work?
Quote from: Algonam on August 23, 2011, 07:42:09 AM
Now that I've learned this (everything is new this year!), I have to take a sample right away. Apparently I could be kinda late in the season for this.
I'd like to do it the most effective way......get 200 bees or so into a jar, from the brood chamber is the first step.
How the heck does one get bees into a jar!
With difficulty. :-D
Have you got screened bottom boards? It's a lot easier, if you do, to do a 72-hour count of the mite fall from the whole hive.
No screened bottom boards. If necessary I can run out and buy some (I guess).
I'll do a search and see how to install them and what it takes to check on them afterwards.
I feel like I've fallen behind in information gathering again!!!!!!!
If you don't have screened bottom boards and don't intend to use them for ventilation or as part of your mite control, then don't run out and buy them just for mite counts. Too much trouble unless you will leave them on all year. I like them but they are not necessarily for everyone.
As for the jar method, get a pint canning jar and put a mark on it around 1/2 or 2/3 of the way up. It matters less how many bees you get than that you get about the same number each time so that your measurements are comparable. Put either powdered sugar (non-lethal) or ether (lethal) in the jar, then start scooping bees off of the brood frames. Do this gently so as not to damage the comb. You can put the lid over the jar between scoops to stop bees leaving It may take you a while to get enough bees until you have practice. Make sure you get bees from the brood combs as they are the adults most likely to carry mites. Once you have bees up to your line, put the lid on tightly and shake to coat the bees. After 2-3 minutes (for the mites to lose hold/die, depending on what you use for sampling), dump the bees out over a white surface. For sugar rolls it is extra helpful to do this over a shallow white dish of water, as the sugar will sink while mites float. Count the number of mites. After you've done this a while, you will be able to follow the population trend of the mites, and see what number predicts the hive dying.
I think the "standard" threshold is that you should treat if there are more than 3 or 4 mites in such a small sample.
Sorry, it's a bit complicated to do this way. But if you want to understand as much as possible about why hives survive or die, you need to develop an understanding of the mite population that is always there alongside your bees.
Although I have not done mite counts in a long time the way I did them was to pull a brood frame covered with bees. Look for the queen. When your sure she isn't on the frame look again. When your sure you dont have her shake the frame into a plastic dishwashing pan. You can then scoop right out of the corner of the pan. I used a pint wide mouth jar with a pc of #8 wire glued inside the jar ring. You scoop the bee's, put on the screened lid, dump powdered sugar through the screen, hold the screened end covered in the palm of your hand and give it a couple of shakes. You can then shake the sugar and mites back out through the screened lid onto a pc of white paper