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Author Topic: Treating yet?  (Read 2710 times)

Offline theriverhawk

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Treating yet?
« on: February 10, 2010, 05:13:45 am »
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Anyone in the Ga/SC/AL/MS areas doing your spring varroa treating yet? If not, when do you usually shoot for starting?
Yes, I know the anti-treatment folks aren't...

Offline doak

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Re: Treating yet?
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2010, 04:08:23 pm »
The only thing I plan to do this year is oil traps. :)doak

Offline sarafina

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Re: Treating yet?
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2010, 08:07:03 pm »
I'm not in the states you mentioned, but I won't be doing anything in the Spring for varroa, except SBB and oil trays under them.  I did an oxyalic acid dribble on both my hives a few weeks ago and was pleased with the results.  You can only do it once a year, so I won't treat again until the Fall when I will probably do some powdered sugar dusting.

Offline Ollie

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Re: Treating yet?
« Reply #3 on: February 17, 2010, 10:15:11 pm »
Powdered sugar is all I use, I think it has worked well.
I usually do one treatment after they swarm or treat all the splits at the same time (march/june), nothing until end of jully then I do two treatments ten days apart and the last one I do after all the blooms are gone and usually a good few days after the first frost.(Indian summer, late Oct. to mid December)
I used to try and shake the sugar on the frames, but the girls didn't like that too much so now I use an old screen from an old storm window.
I open the hive, plop the screen in place of the inner cover, dump the sugar right in the middle and with a bee brush, I spread it around sort of evenly.
Then I'll take that screen off, put the inner cover back on, remove the hive body that was treated and do the next(bottom) hive body the same way.
That, and screened bottoms, I keep the mites in check pretty well. The most important treatment is the one going into winter, the mites are not in the brood, there is no brood then, they are all on the bees...
This year 7 out of 7 surviving so far...
 
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Offline Finski

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Re: Treating yet?
« Reply #4 on: February 20, 2010, 11:54:50 am »

It seems to be so warm in Alabama that bees have yet brood. So oxalic acid trickling will not work.
Thymol or formic acid handling are the best when day temp is over 15C.
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