Effectiveness of varroa treatment
- Thread starter Alastair
- Start date
I use OAV not staples, but....
The mite counts in both hives have been insane for ages with Rua spiking in early Spring, then getting back down to reasonable levels, though still alot higher than ever before....only for Tahi to overload early summer.
I have been doing the OAV every 3-4 days as often as I can, sometimes its been a week.
Last week both hives are stably down to 23/25 after 24 hrs, so I'm starting a 7 day regime and will see how they go with that.
Actually, Tahi's 25 count Was after 7 days.
I did want to try the Apilife in late Spring but couldnt find any. I did get good results with that in that season when I did use it in ate Spring.
Is there an update regarding Bayvarol? I recall ApiNZ asking beeks to report any issues regarding the use of Bayvarol, I think, something about whether mites had become resistance to Bayvarol, or if there some other issue(s)?
Thanks.
Thanks.
i've chucked in bayvarol as spring treatment. Will post any issues experienced here.
Why are so many people still pretending that there isn't a problem with resistance to synthetic pyrethroids. It's been obvious for several years that it is happening and just because they don't show the genetic marker that is found in Europe for resistance doesn't stop them killing your hives.
Resistance doesn't occur everywhere at once. It generally starts in one place and moves out from their. That's why some of us find it no longer works at all and other people still think it's great. Two years ago when I first encountered resistance I wasn't surprised as a neighbouring beekeeper had used nothing else for treatment for 10 years.
Resistance is here. Prompt action when it was first discovered might have slowed its spread but it's too late now.
What I can't understand is the head in the sand, this is not happening, must be reinvasion attitude when you would think that tens of thousands of dead hives would be proof enough.
Resistance doesn't occur everywhere at once. It generally starts in one place and moves out from their. That's why some of us find it no longer works at all and other people still think it's great. Two years ago when I first encountered resistance I wasn't surprised as a neighbouring beekeeper had used nothing else for treatment for 10 years.
Resistance is here. Prompt action when it was first discovered might have slowed its spread but it's too late now.
What I can't understand is the head in the sand, this is not happening, must be reinvasion attitude when you would think that tens of thousands of dead hives would be proof enough.
I posted this morning about a conversation I had last night with our local ApiMan ....disease inspector ..... and habits of other beekeepers ..... notibly cost cutting bayvarol treatements ...... One Bayvarol cut in half, with each half placed in each box of a double brood.
This sort of practice is gauranteed to bring on resistance..... and is incredibly irresponsible and selfish as it effects all the neighbouring hives as they succumb to varroa and die out, and get robbed out .....
Most of the guys doing the cost cutting should know way better .
If they are running a hobby operation of a couple of hundred hives and it's starting to cost them, bite the bullet and retire gracefully.
This sort of practice is gauranteed to bring on resistance..... and is incredibly irresponsible and selfish as it effects all the neighbouring hives as they succumb to varroa and die out, and get robbed out .....
Most of the guys doing the cost cutting should know way better .
If they are running a hobby operation of a couple of hundred hives and it's starting to cost them, bite the bullet and retire gracefully.
I treated my hives with Apitraz in early October and with some disappointment retreated with Bayvarol, after reading this post I will have a third round with Apistan. If this fails the worst hives might have to be destroyed, AFB style.
The comments pointing to the Bayer product having lost its effectiveness must prompt the company to show some science to prove this wrong or change their products. Otherwise their NZ sales will stop.
The comments pointing to the Bayer product having lost its effectiveness must prompt the company to show some science to prove this wrong or change their products. Otherwise their NZ sales will stop.
????
do you have a Tardis? as its not october yet.
A few days ago I opened one strong hive 3/4 format with varroa visible in bridging comb drone cells between boxes 2 and 3. Amitraz strips inserted into boxes 1 and 2 - one strip each - 5 weeks ago where the brood was. Now there is now a lot of brood in box 3 as well - could it be that the agent is too far away from the bridging comb and top box where she is laying ?
Either way bayvarol goes in tomorrow.
Either way bayvarol goes in tomorrow.
Yes. That just is not enough active ingredient placed in the hive to get the whole thing.
Also, many hives treated with amitraz strips will still show varroa at the 5 week mark.
All up, based on your description, I would not expect much different of a result.
length of treatment is 10 weeks.
it works slower than others so you need to watch your varroa levels are not to high to start with.
I don’t believe so. I heard that the formulation was changed (not recently) to speed up the release of the actives. . . but this doesn’t seem to have ever been communicated. I remember my mentor saying it took a month for apivar to kick off. . .
Whatever they may say, if you want an excellent result with apivar you leave it in 10 weeks
OK I just took a look at the instructions on a pack, to get them you have to peel the top layer off. It says "the strips must remain in the hive for the full 6-10 week treatment period".
I don't know why they are still recommending as little as 6 weeks, just about guaranteed to get you a poor result. But in anycase, it is now legal to treat for 10 weeks.
They also still say to hang the strips between frames 3 and 4, and 7 and 8. Instead of explaining the strips need to be mid brood, wherever that may be. I have seen people lose hives over this, because they slavishly follow those instructions, even in weak hives that have the brood somewhere else entirely.
I don't know why they are still recommending as little as 6 weeks, just about guaranteed to get you a poor result. But in anycase, it is now legal to treat for 10 weeks.
They also still say to hang the strips between frames 3 and 4, and 7 and 8. Instead of explaining the strips need to be mid brood, wherever that may be. I have seen people lose hives over this, because they slavishly follow those instructions, even in weak hives that have the brood somewhere else entirely.
I find Apivar to have a very quick initial knock down and have confirmed this with monitoring. It does however seem to miss a few and you still see the odd varoa in the hives for weeks after they go in . It's very important with varoa to get as close to 100% knockdown as possible and only leaving them in 10 weeks gives you close to this. I move the strips round if the brood has moved or expanded and I don't think it doesn't the harm to give them a quick change of position anyway.
A couple of weeks ago I treated a hive at home that had been deliberately left untreated for an experiment I was running. Unfortunately my idea didn't work or at least not as well as I hoped. Natural mite drop was around 100 mites per day before treatment, I put in a fresh sticky board at the same time as I treated them and it had hundreds of mites within two hours and after 48 hours the sticky board was almost black. I haven't counted it but it would have to be in the thousands.
When synthetic pyrethroids worked for me and they did for many years, six weeks was long enough to remove every mite and realistically once you put the strips in you never saw another mite . The last time I tried using them there was a small initial drop in mite numbers followed by a steady increase over the next month. And no it wasn't reinvasion as hives in the same apiary treated with apivar had zero detectable mites at the end of the treatment.
When you have treatments in you may get reinvasion but those invading mites die pretty much straight away. If you have treatments in and you still have lots of mites a month later then you either have resistance or as Alistair has said you have insufficient strips or have placed them in the wrong place.
A couple of weeks ago I treated a hive at home that had been deliberately left untreated for an experiment I was running. Unfortunately my idea didn't work or at least not as well as I hoped. Natural mite drop was around 100 mites per day before treatment, I put in a fresh sticky board at the same time as I treated them and it had hundreds of mites within two hours and after 48 hours the sticky board was almost black. I haven't counted it but it would have to be in the thousands.
When synthetic pyrethroids worked for me and they did for many years, six weeks was long enough to remove every mite and realistically once you put the strips in you never saw another mite . The last time I tried using them there was a small initial drop in mite numbers followed by a steady increase over the next month. And no it wasn't reinvasion as hives in the same apiary treated with apivar had zero detectable mites at the end of the treatment.
When you have treatments in you may get reinvasion but those invading mites die pretty much straight away. If you have treatments in and you still have lots of mites a month later then you either have resistance or as Alistair has said you have insufficient strips or have placed them in the wrong place.
Thanks all for comments, the strips will stay in for another 5 weeks and will check in a day or so and see progress and decide on bayvarol.
Thanks for the cheery welcome Tristan, I’ll jump in my time machine and see you next Tuesday.
Should it not be 2 strips per brood box? Even with 3/4 boxes the minimum would be 3 stripes for 2 boxes.
its a little tricky with 3/4 due to the strips sized for FD.
really its more about the amount of brood. you could have a few frames of brood in each box so one in each is fine.
you might have 8 frames of brood (3/4 frames) in both boxes, so you really want 3 strips.
a lot of the time tend to put two strips in the 2nd (or top) box because most brood is typically (tho not always) up higher and that the strips actually stick down into the box below as the strips are FD size.
if you don't run excluders you need to go back regularly and reposition the strips back into the brood.