Honey Bee World

So I did an OAV treatment on all 4 hives. Two are packages from a week ago, one is a split from last week, and one is the overwintered hive, now a 2-deep.
Only the split had brood.
The bees seem very 'subdued' post treatment. Is that normal? No bearding, and reduced flying.
The 3 singles got a gram each, the double got 2 grams.
I had pulled the IPM boards prior to treating. Mites on all 4 boards, but so much debris that an accurate count wasn't possible. Cleaned all 4 boards and will do a drop count in 3 days.
Question is, do bees 'go quiet' after an OAV treatment?
Brian

OK, they got over it! No replies, so maybe I was anthropomorphizing a bit.
The one hive with capped brood (Split) had 38 mites dropped after 3 days, the source hive had 18, the 2 packages had 2 each. Any comments on those numbers?
There was no capped brood in any hive except the split at time of OAV.
I think I'm golden on the packages and original hive. Am I wrong?
Split needs a couple more shots to catch the brood emergence cycle.
Would appreciate feedback.
All hives queen-right, eggs, larvae in all, capped brood in the 2 older units.
Best to all,
Brian

Did second OAV on the split hive on May 8.
May 9 there were 128 mites on its drop board. That's way up from the count after the first treatment. Is this a result of more mites emerging with brood? And this was a one day drop count.
Today, there were another 32 mites on the board. I'll do 2 more OAV treatments on this hive, so 4 treatments over 16 days. Should catch emerging brood and mites over the full cycle, I hope.
Brian

Sorry BDT123 I don't know to much about OAV treatments but I was wondering in your capped brood was there a lot of drones eggs? If so some say mites prefer drones cells. That could be why your mite count was higher all the sudden maybe a batch of drones hatched. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable replies to give some more clear thoughts. Best of luck during busy bee season

Hi Pepper21, short answer is no drone comb. It was the 2 frames of brood from my surviving over-wintered hive at the time I wanted to split. Queen was obviously being productive.
Subsequently, original hive has gone wild with brood, not many drones, and split is a happening event. Lots of new brood. I'm pretty sure the excess mites are from the capped brood. Will know more during following OAV treatments. I'm in love with OAV as a mite treatment. Clean, simple, no comb residue, and highly effective.
Brian

Hello Brian,

I will start with OA tonight, we made our own vaporizer. What is your suggested rate on 2 Brood and 2 Brood & 1 Super? I was going to use 2 gram and 3 gram and repeat twice after 7 days.

Joerg

Joerg, I have a Varrox unit and the instructions say don't exceed 2 grams, basically use enough to treat brood nest. It doesn't make reference to more than 2 brood boxes. So, that's one gram for one brood box, two grams for 2 brood boxes. It also says for subsequent treatments only one gram is required.
I have read in Allen's diary that the 'amount' of OA used is not too critical on the high side. I don't know.
I am repeating on 5 day intervals to make sure I get the full brood cycle with some overlap. I read that on Randy Oliver's website, scientificbeekeeping.com.
Randy also quotes a Chilean beek who cautioned about queen wing damage using high dosages in damp weather.
For now I'm just following the directions that came with my unit.
Good luck with your bees! I'm doing my third round today also.
Brian

Biermann wrote: ↑May 13th, 2017, 9:51 am What is your suggested rate on 2 Brood and 2 Brood & 1 Super? I was going to use 2 gram and 3 gram and repeat twice after 7 days.

I don't think you are supposed to treat with supers on.

7 days is too long of an interval when they are raising brood. Mites may remain phoretic for as little as only 3 or 4 days, if you are going seven days between treatments you may miss a lot of mites and not get a good result. Biermann's schedule is better. If it were me, I would even increase the frequency to not more than four days apart for an entire brood cycle.

Did 3rd OAV on my split on the 13th. Yesterday, 14th, I did a 24 hour count on the drop board and had a significantly lower count than after the second treatment. 30 Mites compared to 128 on May 9th.
It looks like OAV is doing a decent job. One more round coming on the 18th.
Brian

BBK, are you using OAV? Do you do 4 days? I'm happy with 5 so far. Will keep posting as season proceeds.
Joerg, did you go with more than 2 gms? Any mite drop counts yet?
Brian

BBK, are you using OAV?

No, I said "If it were me..."

But, I don't have the time for that...I leave for work at 6am and don't get home 'til 5pm, and by then I'm bushed from being on my feet all day and running hard. I'm sticking with MAQS for the foreseeable future.

Did 4th OAV treatment of split last evening. Mite drop count today was 51. Still capped brood, but with only 6 strong seams of bees, maybe 8 total, count seems high at this point. Will count again at 3 days from treatment. Probably one more round for this hive.
Brian

Thought I'd follow up on this thread. This did not end well. By May 22nd I realized this hive had gone 'laying worker'. All drone brood, spotty pattern, multiple eggs in different cells. Did a big shake out.
Froze all brood frames for 3 days, did an overnight split on my over-wintered 'boomer'. Had a queen ordered from Beemaid, so moved the split 3 days before queen introduction. I thought they would do better if they knew they were queenless before I introduced new queen.
I put her in on June 2nd. On June 5th she still hadn't been released so I cut her loose.
Inspection on June 12th showed eggs and young larvae, and I spotted her highness so all seems ok for now.
In recent inclement weather I noticed yesterday that this hive is getting robbed by the boomer next door. Built robber screens and will install tonight after bee bed-time.
On June 12th I also checked all drop boards and still seeing very low natural mite drop. 2 hives with zero!
Best to all,
Brian

Robber screen worked well and hive is building nicely. Will add next deep in a week. No honey off this one this year, but queen is good and hive is building up as expected.
One package from late April went queen less but about 18 queen cells so will let the bees sort that one out.
The other package is doing great but will not move up to build out super. ??
Big over-wintered boomer made a huge number of queen cells. All frames moved to a nuc and will see what transpires. Probably wrong, but I'm winging it here.
Best to all,
Brian

The package that went queen less will bee bloodless this week - time for OAV!

Not bloodless, broodless! I hate auto-correct!!

So, going into Winter prep with 4 hives and a strong nuc.
Have been doing a course of OAV and have 2 hives and the nuc below treatment threshold.
My biggest 2 hives, by bee population, still require treatments. Biggest still dropping 300 mites in 48 hours.
Should I continue to treat the low mite hives since all are in proximity, or just the two that are above threshold?
No evidence of robbing, all being fed 2:1 syrup.
Brian

OAV does not appear to have harmful effects and I have found that it takes several applications to have sufficient effect and the easiest approach is to simply dose all in a yard.

Not knowing the numbers on the " low mite hives", I can't say. but 150/day is definitely in the danger zone. Also, drops do not always reveal the actual mite populations unless the drops are repeated over time.

Allen, 'low mite' hives had drops of 0, 1, and 2 mites 48 hours after OAV treatment. One hive had a drop of 11 mites, and one had a drop of 331.
All drops have come down since first treatment Sept.6 and second treatment Sept.13. The very high mite drop is from the hive that still has the most capped brood. Not sure how it got this high, all hives went through a course of OAV treatments in May and had very low drops at the end of that.
Brian

I see. Your counts were right after the treatment. In that case. the 300 does not seem so bad as it is an accelerated kill and not natural drop. I posted charts of the daily drops through treatment periods on my diary somewhere. Here it is: http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/files/drop.htm

The OAV kill only lasts a few days and recommendations now are to treat at five day intervals until counts become acceptable..