Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: challenger on March 31, 2009, 09:20:18 pm

Title: Too any Varroa I think?
Post by: challenger on March 31, 2009, 09:20:18 pm

I inspect my hives often and a few weeks ago saw some Varroa in a lot of drone brood that I broke apart while removing frames. I looked at a lot of other drone brood intentionally and there were Varroa on the vast majority. I sifted powdered sugar over the top bars and placed a sticky board under the screened bottom on 2 hives. After 24 hours I looked at the sticky boards and there were Varroa on them but not nearly enough to be alarmed about so I decided to let it ride. Now I am soon approaching our nectar flow and I am seeing Varroa crawling one a lot of the bees in the hives and it has me very concerned. I have a Apiguard type of treatment available but this would mean 18 days of treatment and I will need to put honey supers on in a week or two at the most so this 18 day treatment is out. Would I be well advised to take the frames out and treat each one-w-bees on them-w-powdered sugar. This would cover the bees a lot better than the way I initially did it and then I could do it a few more times to help stem the tide until the supers are off. I also just got some drone brood frames in and will put them in the hives but it will take a while before they have drone larvae in them.
Any advice is much appreciated.

Title: Re: Too any Varroa I think?
Post by: Michael Bush on March 31, 2009, 09:36:53 pm

You could remove all the drone brood, use more powdered sugar....