Varroa is finally in my area

[Lesgold]

Hi folks,

Well it?s finally happened. Varroa has finally hit my area. I received a notification that it has been detected to the north and south of me so I must assume that there is a chance that my bees may have the pest in some of the hives. I?ve been away for a couple of weeks but decided it was time to get home and continue to prepare. Had a nice 1000km drive yesterday and it was good to make a visual inspection of bees flying in the late afternoon. Will test a few hives today and then place sticky mats in place to see what?s going on. This is where I need guidance. What?s my next step? I plan to build some more queen isolation cages to force brood breaks and start making some Oxalic acid strips to hold varroa numbers down (which will be used later) I?m not sure if I can do anything else until I reach threshold levels in the hives (assuming varroa is present) I will also put queen excluders in place to keep brood confined to one deep. Please jump in and comment as I?m sure that there are many others in my local area who will be asking the same questions.

[Terri Yaki]

What treatments are approved there?

[The15thMember]

I second Terri's question and would add a similar one: what are you required to do by law?  Are you forced to treat and if so, what's the threshold?     

[Lesgold]

Pretty much the same treatments that you have. Treatment is recommended at 3% during peak population. From memory, API bioxal has also been approved. It?s windy today so I can?t get into the hives to perform a few washes.

[The15thMember]

I mean, it kind of depends on your goals and how many bees you are willing to lose.  A novel pest like this will take out colonies no matter what, so I'd prepare myself for the fact that some losses will be inevitable. 

There is an extreme end of the spectrum that says to just live and let die in a situation like this.  Let colonies get infected and cull/requeen or simply let varroa take out the weak ones.  It's natural selection, the strong survive, and the colonies that are left will be more resilient.  The downside, of course, is you could lose everything.  The other extreme end of the spectrum is to always treat, on a schedule or whenever colonies hit a predetermined threshold.  The downside here is you are breeding bees that will always need to rely on the treatment. 

Neither of these options are wrong, but I personally prefer a more middle of the road approach.  Basically I'm at the point where I'm willing to have to treat with oxalic acid.  It's cheap and easy to apply, so for the moment at least, I'm treating all the colonies with at least 1 round of OAV in the winter, as a little bit of an assist.  If I have a colony the needs more help than that, they get requeened.  I will treat a crashing colony with something powerful, like FormicPro, to keep a mite bomb from spreading, but that's all. 

I'm also kind of off of the idea of treating based on a % infestation alone, because some strains of bees are resilient to mites, as opposed to resistant, meaning they can handle a high mite load without crashing.  So I'm more inclined to eliminate a colony from reproduction based on symptoms of PMS or really high mites counts, like double digits.  I'm less focused on keeping numbers down, and more on finding out which colonies are able to handle themselves on their own, because my goal is to use as little treatments as possible and someday, hopefully none.         

[Ben Framed]

Les we knew this Inevitable day would be in time a reality. That is why several of us posted of different methods of dealing with this terrible parasite on the topic: Varroa detected in Australia Hopefully our postings,  with you all in mind, might have done some good by sharing our experiences. As always wishing you all the very best!

Phillip

[Lesgold]

Thanks Reagan and Phillip. I will be relying on you guys for advice over the next year or so. Reagan, I like your thinking. I have always worked on the principle of survival of the fittest. I never feed my bees (even when times are tough). After the major fires that we had about 5 years ago, the bush was decimated and there was very little food for the bees to gather. I noticed that some hives maintained reasonable bee numbers and still had honey store levels that enabled them to survive. The weaker hives struggled and eventually perished. I lost about 8 hives that year. I believe the stronger hives were prepared to travel further to areas that had not burnt and therefore their traits allowed them to keep going. The drought we had over the past 6 months has finally broken. I lost about 3 hives as I was not prepared to prop up weaker colonies with food. The remaining hives managed bee numbers and food stores well. I am hoping that I do not have to rely on too heavily on chemical treatments for controlling mites. From what I?m hearing, there may not be much choice in the first couple of years where feral colonies will collapse and many hives kept by local beekeepers will just become mite bombs. Not having a complete winter brood break will cause other issues in the coming years. I will be trialling artificial brood breaks, and will attempt to use Oxalic acid as a method to keep mite numbers down. Two days ago I spoke to a guy who has bees in an area that is heavily infested. He knocked mite numbers down with Formicpro and then put Oxalic acid cardboard strips into his hives. He said that the Oxalic strips did not wipe out the mite but they have kept numbers down at a reasonable level. That sounds promising.