Varroa

[Bsummitkeeper]

I'm well into my third year and the first two I treated for mites without checking levels. Reason for that is because I was as overwhelmed as everyone who starts keeping bees and checking mite levels was just too much to comprehend when trying to master basic techniques.

I am now at a point where I understand that I don't want to use chemicals if I can stand it and I've done a ton of reading and YouTube watching about sugar dusting, brood frames, fogging with mineral oil, acid treatment ect... At this point I haven't done anything other than treat with api var the last two Augusts.

I built a sugar shake jar and tested 7 hives yesterday and I found between 1-4 varroa per test or 1 per 100 bees. Most of what I read says that I'm below thresholds for this time of year and some say they wouldn't do anything and others say they treat in august no matter what.

I'm just wondering what other local keepers in this area would do. Thanks for any feedback.

[Wally]

I would not treat with a sugar shake of less than 10.

[ski]

"I'm just wondering what other local keepers in this area would do."

As Wally wrote I would not treat with a sugar shake count of 10 for this time of the year.

I use the sticky board method to get a mite count. My first few years of beekeeping I would take mite counts every several weeks and found that the mite count stayed low in the summer and slowly climbed towards Fall. Now I take mite counts in the fall and treat with MAQS.

http://www.brushymountainbeefarm.com/Re ... aMites.asp

[Bsummitkeeper]

Thanks for the feedback.

I've made it so far by treating each year, started with two packages year one which I split into 4 hives year two and split up to 10 this year, so I'm a little afraid to break what's been working since I haven't lost a hive yet.

I fully realize I'm not special and my day is coming and I know I'll loose some going forward. I just don't want to loose half of them at once because I decided to be that guy that brags about being chemical free when I haven't been doing this long enough and don't have the experience to be that guy. I do want to be responsible and not treat hives that don't need it so I guess I'll check once a month going forward and try to make an educated guess on treatments.

Again thanks for the feedback. I really like hearing from locals and not having to decipher how what someone in Minnesota is doing in June equates to what I need to do in the middle of July.