After three OAV applications a week apart in early October, I noted that one hive was still showing regular drops of mites on the bottom board, so I decided to give them one more (now broodless) treatment going into winter. Over 60 hours, they dropped 517 mites. Yikes! I was surprised to see so many after the October round of treatments - I wouldn't have thought that there would be much capped brood left in October for the mites to be hiding among.
Could it be a bad batch of OA? ...if there is such a thing.
Phoretic mites that came out with the last of the brood emergence.? And/or mites brought back from your bees' robbing raids on other colonies.
Same container of OA used for all treatments.
More mites dropping:
- next 24 hr period = 317,
- last 24 hrs = 228!
These mites are all black - someone asked me earlier in the year whether the mites that I was seeing were old or young mites , and I hadn't realized there was a color difference - most at that time were brown, so I'm guessing that these are older adult mites.
One other thought - when the weather was warmer I always found ants wandering on the bottom board. I watched them to see if they picked up mites (which I've heard it said they do) but never saw them take one. But maybe they were in October - the mite drops were much smaller for those treatments (ca 150 over 4 days).
Still dropping mites! over the last three days, about 50 per day.
Could your bees be robbing a mite infested hive?
Interesting thought. It has been pretty warm so the bees have still been out, even coming back with Pollen, so I suppose it could be possible. On the other hand, the hive weight has been dropping which you would expect during a warm early winter, which might indicate that they aren't bringing in much in the way of nectar - or robbed honey.
Does it matter if you do the OAV treatment in the morning when the bees are clustered or in the afternoon when it warms and the bees are flying?
Ideally you try to treat all of the bees when they are inside the hive, as OAV can only kill mites that are on adult bees - it does not kill mites that are inside cells with capped brood.
>These mites are all black
Mites are cordovan. Or, if you will, purplish brown. They are not black. The immature ones are white.
Hi Michael,
Well, the summer mites were dark brown to tan in color, but these are all very, very dark verging on black - but I guess they could be that purplish brown in strong light.
are you looking at mites or hive beetles?
Yeah, mites for sure. I only rarely see a hive beetle, but I know what they look like, too!