Brood Removing

[limyw]

Since mites lay eggs inside cells and attach to larva, can we remove all capped/uncapped brood and cage the queen to restrict egg laying, hence to terminate mite reproduction? Here we have no winter time so queen lay egg 365D/yr. If I cage the queen without "bee attendant" for contineuos 10 days, would she die?

[Kirk-o]

NO
kirko

[Scadsobees]

I haven't done it, but have read about others creating a brood break for exactly that reason.  I don't know how they cage the queen, but they do.  A push-in cage (I would think this best)?  The queen is forced to stop laying for about 10 days, and before the new eggs that she lays after can be capped all of the previous brood has hatched out so that there will be little or no capped brood to harbor mites.

It will help only a little by itself, but since the phoretic mites are still around it mostly gives a time for treatment when there isn't much capped brood to harbor mites.  I don't think that the uncapped brood has a significant amount of mites in it, and if you can take out a majority or the phoretic mites at that point you will be ahead of the game on them.

As long as the queen is caged inside the hives the workers will take care of her.  Some will do this for weeks keeping the queens in queen banks till they need them.  I don't know what the limit is, though.

-rick

[Finsky]

Here is a Dutch method hiw to catch mites from hive during brooding.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~jtemp/dronemethod.html

It means in Malaysia that you choose a period when act does not affect on yield.

[Finsky]

I haven't done it, but have read about others creating a brood break for exactly that reason.  -rick

Brood brake takes 4 weeks time when you wait that even drones have emerged.

In dutch method  you divide a hive and the part without brood are ready to work.
After another week you again get bees which you clean.

[Michael Bush]

>Since mites lay eggs inside cells and attach to larva, can we remove all capped/uncapped brood and cage the queen to restrict egg laying, hence to terminate mite reproduction?

Yes.

> Here we have no winter time so queen lay egg 365D/yr. If I cage the queen without "bee attendant" for contineuos 10 days, would she die?

If she's not in the hive, yes.  If you leave her in the hive the attendants will feed her through the cage.  But, as Finsky says, you need about four weeks, not 10 days.  If you time this to be right before a main flow you'll get MORE honey because they will have no brood to care for.  If you go four weeks you won't need to remove the brood, but I guess you're thinking of using the brood as a magnet to rid yourself of the mites.  Drone is much more attractive to the mites so it's usually sufficient to remove the drone brood.  If you put some drone foundation in and wait until it's capped you can do that.  You could remove all the drone brood by cutting it out, then you'd only need to confine the queen for three weeks to let the rest emerge.  A powdered sugar treatment or oxalic acid treatment would be much more effective with no brood in the hive:

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesvarroatreatments.htm

[Finsky]

Limyw lives in Malaysia there is summer and brood all the time.

To put queen in the cage means that you loose one month bees after caging and hive is not able to forage. Problem is bigger what mite may do.

In Dutch system queen continues to lay all the time. System is same what we use in swarming stopping.

1) First you should think that varroa moves from hive to hive with drone drifting. You catch  drones with exluder and cut off drone cells.

2) Move the hive to another place 10 feet.

3) Put in  old site  new hive bodies with frames, one frame with bees and the queen.

4) You have raised  somewhere drone frame where is young larvae. During first 10 days these will catch mites from bees.

5) Bees flye from new site to  old site and they may be about 50%.  You need not shake them.

6) In new site workers emerge. After 10 days hive does not have larvae and mites has no open brood where to go.   

7) After  2 weeks almost all worker bees have emerged and you may clean them when you do tricks # 2-4.

Finally you have small hive, some workers, drone pupae and last mites.  Hive is weak and it may be robbed.

8)  But if you make at same time several hive cleaning, you may join together  those small hives which have mites. So you need not extra hiveparts.

9) And when you have several remote yards, you may concentrate  cleaning so that drifting is not problem into cleaned hives.

IT SEEMS COMPLICATED BUT IT IS SAME AS YOU DO IN STOPPING SWARMING.

TO GET PRODUCTIVE HIVES, PUT CLEANED HIVES TOGETHER AND CLEAN HIVE IS FORAGING.

In New Zealand they write that they must handle mites 3 times per year. One reason is that bees rob week feral hives and they get a huge miteload. But continuous brood rearing catch a lot mites. You neeed to have small patch drone larvae all the time in the hive. 

Making nucs, using them in queen mating and putting together operations will not disturb yield foraging.
It is worth to  think over  operations to minimize work.

To use oxalic acic in "false swarm" operations is unknow to me. Bees return to old site during many days and so drone larvae may be easier method.

.




.



 

[mick]

Finsky, I am not only amazed at your knowledge, but astounded by the effort you put into educating people on here. You should write a book one day.

[limyw]

Thanks for all ideas.
Of coz the caged queen will be kept in the hive during that 10 days. I have "spring" type cage (Dia 20mm x lenght 40mm), made by stainless steel wire with a hand made styrefoam holder. So, queen will leave inside the cage alone.
During that 10 days, I would apply fluvalinate at day 1, oxalic acid at day 4 and sulphate (CuSO4) at day 7, by hopefully these can fully killed all mites that have no room to hide. So at day 10th the queen will be released to lay egg and rebuild the colony again.
I had never try this mathod before, hopefully it works.
No intention to collect honey for this period as contamination is expected to be serious.

[Cindi]

Finsky, I am not only amazed at your knowledge, but astounded by the effort you put into educating people on here. You should write a book one day.

Mick, now this is a very interesting thing.  I was reading the prior posts and thinking to myself about the length of time that Finsky takes to type out his responses, that involve an  incredible amount of work and knowledge/experience, and his links that he always attaches to websites.  I was thinking of entering a post that commends him for this time spent.  Lo and behold, I came across nextly, your post to him.  Wow, now if that is not some kind of connection I don't know what is.  I am of the belief of some strange ideas about connections with people in different ways.  So I carry on.

Finsky, you do have extremely good information that you take the time to give to people.

There is another person on this site that needs to be commended too.  That is Michael Bush.  He is always giving links to his website in his responses.  He has a remarkable website that is absolutely chuck full of fabulous learning tools and information. 

There are others that give great information as well.  If I have not mentioned your name -- you know who you are, and again, thank you so much.

But these are two people that come to the foremost in my mind and needed to be praised for their time and involvement.

Many thanks to Finsky and Michael Bush -- and the rest of the fantastic people that make this site a great home as a home away from home.  All have the greatest of days and 2007 to boot!!!  Cindi

[Finsky]

Many thanks to Finsky and Michael Bush --

Thanks pals! We have in some cases different goals in our hobby beekeepeing but Michael is very clear mainded when he  delivers information.

My score is now on new forum "Total time logged in: 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes."

[pdmattox]

My score is now on new forum "Total time logged in: 2 days, 20 hours and 49 minutes."

Congratulations you are also a top poster :-D

[Cindi]

What does that score on new forum mean?  I don't get it.  Great day.  Cindi