Varroa...to treat or not to treat

Every time I see a post about varroa drops....everyone says. Treat treat! But is this actually the right thing to do? Will our bees learn to live with varroa and control the infestation themselves....if we don't treat or will we have big losses? There are lots of beekeepers who don't treat for varroa....what level of infestation do their bees tolerate? At what point do beekeepers decide that the colony needs help?
In the long run...is blanket treatment a good thing or a bad thing?

How about not treating your bees and let us know how you get on? Perhaps they will be the clever ones that learn how to conquer varroa, and you won't have big losses!

I am not treating this Aug/Sept as there is v little drop and I see v minimal wing problem..
I would rather they continued to strengthen in volume for winter.

Will treat in Dec/Jan with sublimation just to be sure. Then all new foundation after the first frame of brood capped in the Spring to ensure any varroa in new brood is eliminated as this brood will be dumped..

Heather said:

I am not treating this Aug/Sept as there is v little drop and I see v minimal wing problem..
I would rather they continued to strengthen in volume for winter.

Will treat in Dec/Jan with sublimation just to be sure. Then all new foundation after the first frame of brood capped in the Spring to ensure any varroa in new brood is eliminated as this brood will be dumped..

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So how will you know when the first brood is capped? My bees were probably into the 4th round of brood by the time I could go into the colonies this year. Surely the sublimation would clear any varroa? If done during a brood break? How do we know there is even a brood break? Especially in poly hives?

Monsieur Abeille said:

How about not treating your bees and let us know how you get on? Perhaps they will be the clever ones that learn how to conquer varroa, and you won't have big losses!

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Now them Monsieur A....stop giggling....I assume by your answer that you treat for varroa....do you do this by first establishing that they need treating or do you treat automatically at the established times of the year?

I will know when first brood capped as I will be aware of my hives activities...

Sublimation doesn't guarantee all varroa eliminated or we would have sorted the problem much quicker. Any left will breed again as soon as brood available.. hence I want to trap them in first brood of the year.

I think some folks just treat as a matter of course. If my counts are not high, I'll leave the treatment until the Christmas-New Year oxalic.

(I suppose that I'll be doing that as a matter of course)

Monsieur Abeille said:

How about not treating your bees and let us know how you get on?

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I've done that since the 90's. They get on very well, thank you

Tremyfro said:

Now them Monsieur A....stop giggling....I assume by your answer that you treat for varroa....do you do this by first establishing that they need treating or do you treat automatically at the established times of the year?

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Sorry Trem, couldnt resist.

I always do an autumn treatment after harvest, thymol (Apilife var) mainly though I've dabbled with MAQs in the past. Decision on winter oxalic will largely depend on amount of infestation shown up by the autumn treatment. Think I may have done a spring treatment once but there must have been an obvious problem.

My understanding of varroa is that a small infestation can grow exponentially if untreated, and as this will kill off the colony there is no point taking the risk. Queen may go temporarily off lay, and the bees obviously are not keen on the pong, but thats a small price.

While it is nice to think that not treating could lead to super-varroa-resistant bees, IMHO it is more likely to lead to big losses.

Heather said:

I will know when first brood capped as I will be aware of my hives activities...

Sublimation doesn't guarantee all varroa eliminated or we would have sorted the problem much quicker. Any left will breed again as soon as brood available.. hence I want to trap them in first brood of the year.

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My bees had brood most of the winter...it was mild but very windy here. There wasn't much activity from the hive though. So if that happens again...it would be impossible to catch the first sealed brood. When you do the sublimation in January....do you do it three times at 5 day intervals? Or just the once?

B+. said:

I've done that since the 90's. They get on very well, thank you

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Thats great - you obviously have a lot of colonies, so do you think your bees resistant or do you have another method of keeping infestation down?

Tremyfro said:

My bees had brood most of the winter...it was mild but very windy here. There wasn't much activity from the hive though. So if that happens again...it would be impossible to catch the first sealed brood. When you do the sublimation in January....do you do it three times at 5 day intervals? Or just the once?

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I do one treatment in Jan. I had very few hives with brood late Jan. It is a juggling act sometimes. Seems to be working though as some hives dropping no varroa. I still don't think they are free of it, but no ant activity seen so have to believe my eyes.

Monsieur Abeille said:

Sorry Trem, couldnt resist.

I always do an autumn treatment after harvest, thymol (Apilife var) mainly though I've dabbled with MAQs in the past. Decision on winter oxalic will largely depend on amount of infestation shown up by the autumn treatment. Think I may have done a spring treatment once but there must have been an obvious problem.

My understanding of varroa is that a small infestation can grow exponentially if untreated, and as this will kill off the colony there is no point taking the risk. Queen may go temporarily off lay, and the bees obviously are not keen on the pong, but thats a small price.

While it is nice to think that not treating could lead to super-varroa-resistant bees, IMHO it is more likely to lead to big losses.

Click to expand...

Ha ha ...You are forgiven.....
I tried MAQS last year...but the pile of dead bees rather put me off using it again. I used Apilife Var but wasn't impressed with the varroa drop. I knew I had some DWV, in one colony....and there should have been a bigger drop. Now I have a sublimator....that works well. All clear now. I am not advocating no treatment but really I want to know at what point treatment is actually required. I know that some colonies will tolerate more varroa than others. Can we stop treating automatically? Is there a reliable bench mark to indicate treatment. Natural varroa drop is rather arbitrary. A sugar roll? Is zero varroa the aim?

Monsieur Abeille said:

Thats great - you obviously have a lot of colonies, so do you think your bees resistant or do you have another method of keeping infestation down?

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I did lose a lot of colonies initially. However, varroa tolerance is one of the things I breed for (see post 12 http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=33791&page=2). I think open mesh floors help, but only to an extent.
Its interesting that the VSH program targets reporducing females in the cell (http://aristabeeresearch.org/program/project-brsd/) but the majority of treatments target the mites on adult bees.

B+. said:

I did lose a lot of colonies initially. However, varroa tolerance is one of the things I breed for (see post 12 http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=33791&page=2). I think open mesh floors help, but only to an extent.
Its interesting that the VSH program targets reporducing females in the cell (http://aristabeeresearch.org/program/project-brsd/) but the majority of treatments target the mites on adult bees.

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It is my intention ...to not treat the colonies with the B+ queens...nor the extra colonies I ended up with which are descendants from those queens. Since they are from non treated stock. I thought of not treating one other colony...not related to see if they can deal with the varroa...a bit concerned about losing them of course...but I will be monitoring...it's just what type of monitoring is best.

Tremyfro said:

Ha ha ...You are forgiven.....
I tried MAQS last year...but the pile of dead bees rather put me off using it again. I used Apilife Var but wasn't impressed with the varroa drop. I knew I had some DWV, in one colony....and there should have been a bigger drop. Now I have a sublimator....that works well. All clear now. I am not advocating no treatment but really I want to know at what point treatment is actually required. I know that some colonies will tolerate more varroa than others. Can we stop treating automatically? Is there a reliable bench mark to indicate treatment. Natural varroa drop is rather arbitrary. A sugar roll? Is zero varroa the aim?

Click to expand...

I'm also quite nervous of MAQs - purely down to the various negative reports than any first hand catastrophes. As far as Apilife Var is concerned, I've always found it does a good job, not lost any colonies so far anyway. Icing sugar may possibly do some small amount of good but I believe those who say it is not good enough to use by itself, so my ants go hungry.

I'd have thought zero varroa would be the idealistic aim, if not achievable under normal circumstances, but managing it to a level that it doesn't overwhelm the colony should be the minimum target.

Tremyfro said:

Ha ha ...You are forgiven.....
I tried MAQS last year...but the pile of dead bees rather put me off using it again. I used Apilife Var but wasn't impressed with the varroa drop. I knew I had some DWV, in one colony....and there should have been a bigger drop. Now I have a sublimator....that works well. All clear now. I am not advocating no treatment but really I want to know at what point treatment is actually required. I know that some colonies will tolerate more varroa than others. Can we stop treating automatically? Is there a reliable bench mark to indicate treatment. Natural varroa drop is rather arbitrary. A sugar roll? Is zero varroa the aim?

Click to expand...

I think the nearest thing we've got to a "reliable bench mark to indicate treatment" is given in Table 5 (page 34) of Managing Varroa published by DEFRA (now changed its name to APHA, I think). That table suggests an average Natural Daily Mite-Drop of 10 is the bench mark but you could try feeding your mite-drop figure into Beebase's software on line, which will suggest whether you should treat or not - see http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/public/BeeDiseases/varroaCalculator.cfm

My monitoring showed a hive with a drop of 3-4 a day until last week when it suddenly shot up about 15 a day. About 20% of these mites are physically damaged by the bees so I was hoping the bees in that colony were learning to deal with Varroa but if the mite drop stays high, I think I'll treat with Hm's Thymol treatment.

At the end of the day, it's your decision whether to monitor and treat as necessary or go along the "it's September so I treat" route.

Hope that helps.

CVB

B+. said:

I did lose a lot of colonies initially. However, varroa tolerance is one of the things I breed for (see post 12 http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=33791&page=2). I think open mesh floors help, but only to an extent.
Its interesting that the VSH program targets reporducing females in the cell (http://aristabeeresearch.org/program/project-brsd/) but the majority of treatments target the mites on adult bees.

Click to expand...

Not sure I've found the right post, but very good luck to you and well done if you are succeeding.

I on;y treat in autumn if there is a big varroa. drop. No winter treatment. So far it works...

Out of 5 colonies going into winter, one treated.

Monsieur Abeille said:

How about not treating your bees and let us know how you get on? Perhaps they will be the clever ones that learn how to conquer varroa, and you won't have big losses!

Click to expand...