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  • From: Blair Christian <blair.christian AT gmail.com>
  • To: "ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org" <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>, "durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com" <durham-county-beekeepers AT googlegroups.com>
  • Subject: [ocba] Dealing with a different kind of varroa problem...
  • Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:31:18 -0400

Hi All,

I went out to check on my bees yesterday, and I have one "boomer" with 12-14 frames of bees.  They're just boiling over, about 8 frames of brood is the bottom deep, and I saw the queen laying in the top deep.

Sounds great?  Actually it's something that Kim Flottum describes as a "varroa bomb" (page 139 of "Better Beekeeping").

Here's the setup:  last fall on 9/19, I got a swarm call and caught what I thought was a 2240g swarm (~5 lbs).   (Fall swarms are uncommon)  I try to monitor all my hives for varroa, so I was in varroa treatment phase with the other hives.   With a new "swarm", my goal is to try to create an excellent bee experience for the first week or until the queen lays- kind of like the Ritz Carlton for bees.  So I put on a feeder, left them alone, and definitely did not open them, do a sugar shake or treat them for varroa.

Before I knew it, the window for formic had passed due to temperature, so I decided to wait until December when the capped brood is at a minimum and treat with an oxalic acid drip.  Come December, I popped the top and there's only a queen and about 50 bees.  Most of the workers had absconded.  But to where?  What had happened?

So, looking back on this late fall swarm and early winter abscondion, here's the story I put together:
First, the swarm probably wasn't a swarm.  It was probably a colony absconding due to varroa, SHB and other pressures.  Sometime in November probably, this colony decided that the varroa pressure was too high, and they all moved in with another colony.  So now, all of these varroa laden bees have moved in with my nice, freshly treated, strong hive.  Do I have a varroa count?  No, because I could see them on my bees and on the bottom board- no count needed.


And here's what I see as my options.
If the bees were healthy, I'd take them and checkerboard them in with my other hives so they would all be even, but the other hives have all been treated.  So I don't want to take frames of varroa infested brood and put them into colonies that were treated last fall.

So I have a couple ways to go.  Here's what I'm thinking:  make 2 nucs (early spring walkaway splits), and treat with OA and/or powdered sugar (OA once, or powdered sugar dump a couple times) or thymol (one treatment the whole time) for the first 3 weeks (one brood cycle).  Does anybody know if thymol is a good candidate for this? (won't upset the bees from making a queen cell like formic would?).  

I could probably make 2 really strong nucs out of this, basically taking all the brood out of the varroa bomb (a break in the brood cycle there will also help with getting varroa numbers down without a treatment; as well as hitting them with OA and powdered sugar or thymol while they're temporarily broodless).

How will this change my future beekeeping?  Well, in the future, I'm going to do a much better job at thinking about varroa in "swarms".  You can never tell if it's a swarm or a colony absconding.  A couple options include: doing a powdered sugar shake varroa test on a swarm.  My current swarm box is a 5 frame nuc with wire on both sides.  If it's frameless, I could lay it on its side and pour on some powdered sugar to check for mite fall, but I'm not sure how that would affect the bees and their desire to leave again.  I could also treat all varroa positive/suspect swarms with an oxalic acid dribble.  Does anybody know what varroa counts would be like on an absconding hive?  

Finally, if somebody has a "swarm" and there are only a few bees left in the hive (2 frames or less) be wary.  The hive could have absconded, and any bees in the hive might be robbers or otherwise left behind (some viruses transmitted by varroa and nosema for example can impair bee flight)

If your hive absconds, think about why- could you take advantage of the break in the brood cycle to try to fix your problem?

How would you deal with this problem?  Differently?  Last year I used formic about this time and my hive went into supersedure and suffered a fair bit, so I'm a bit loathe to go that route, plus it's always fun to try new things (early spring walkaway splits for me for example).

Best,
Blair



  • [ocba] Dealing with a different kind of varroa problem..., Blair Christian, 03/10/2013

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