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  • From: John Rintoul <beecd AT icloud.com>
  • To: Orange County Beekeepers Association <ocba AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [ocba] VSH Bees and varroa
  • Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 22:56:24 -0400

I started beekeeping May 30 with 2 VSH nucs. One of the nucs had queen problems and I requeened with a marked VSH queen. I did a hive inspection last Friday. This was the first inspection since I requeened (21 days ago). Overall the colony seems to be making good progress as you can see from the two frames of brood in the pics below. 

However, during the inspection I removed a 6 inch piece of comb that was attached to the bottom of one frame. I removed the larvae from that piece of comb and discovered a lot of varroa. You can see from the pics below about how much brood I pulled from the comb and I counted at least 26 mites in that small sample. The larvae that I extracted were of varying ages from small grubs, to large grubs to pupae. Admittedly, the bees in the pupal stage were not mite infected so maybe the VSH cleaning process takes place right at or shortly before pupation.

Despite the fact that the queen was marked, I was unable to locate her during the inspection. It’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that I failed to see her even though she is marked, but the amount of varroa makes me think that either she is not a VSH queen or that the VSH queen was superseded by a home grown queen.

My other hive has done well from the start with the original (I think) VSH queen. I have not done a sugar shake test yet on either hive, but will most likely do so later this week. I hope I don’t scoop up the queens in the shaker samples. I have a poor track record when it comes to queen identification. It might be an interesting experiment to see whether the hive that was stable from the beginning is significantly more varroa free that the requeened hive.

For those of you who have not had the experience - it was eerily fascinating to watch the varroa scramble toward the larvae on the paper towel. Even after they’ve been pulled from the comb they are looking for their next meal.

Any comments or advice would be welcome.

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John Rintoul
(919) 967-0674 (H)
(919) 414-4071 (M)


  • [ocba] VSH Bees and varroa, John Rintoul, 07/14/2014

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