If at first you don't succeed

[Bobbee]

After losing my first two bee colonies this past year I have decided to do up a plan and run it past the beekeepers here at the bee master forum.
Step one is to obtain new nucs. I plan on sticking with the same local supplier.His 5 frame nucs cost less that a package from the bee supply stores in the area.
A change will be both hives equipped with screened bottom boards in order to monitor mite drop after an OA treatment.
Rather than accept his word that the nucs are varroa free this time.I would like to treat at the 30 day mark with 3  treatments 3 days apart of 1.5 to 2 gm s per treatment.
I plan (at the moment ) to treat without doing a wash or roll as 300 bees from a new nuc seems a little much.With a sticky board I think I will get a good idea of the mite count from the drop.
After another 30 days three hundred bees will be less of a hit to the colony and I can do a wash.? (Opinions)
On the subject of mite treatment I will not use Apivar or any other synthetic pesticide/miticide.
Another change will be moving to a single deep brood with a QX. I watched a video by Devan Rawn and he made a lot of sense to me that it will make monitoring colony health  much more simple.
Feeding?? 1:1 SW I will keep giving it to them as long as they accept it. Pollen supplement however I am less sure of. Dry or patties? If patties I would like to make my own. If dry Would a 50/50 mix of Bee Pro and  re powdered fresh bee pollen be a good start?I have 2 lbs of fresh pollen vacuum sealed in the freezer.
That is about how far my thinking has got me. I want very much to succeed next year.Losing my bees twice in a row? Not really an option.

[little john]

3 treatments 3 days apart is not enough to cover the brood life-cycle of 20 (+/-1) days for workers, or 24 (+/-1) days for drones.  I now multi-treat during the season at 5 day intervals (although a 4 day interval would probably be even better), and one good dose on a mild day during mid-winter, when the colonies are hopefully broodless.

With regard to boxes, if you decide to install 5-frame nucs into 10-frame boxes, suggest you make and use a dummy (or follower) board at first to minimise the cavity size, and then gradually open-up the size as each nucleus colony develops.  Another possibility would be to employ two nuc boxes in a five-over-five stack. I find that small colonies grow very quickly within that format.

If your aim is solely to get colonies alive through the season and subsequent winter, rather than take a honey crop, then you might want to re-consider the use of a QX.

I'd also suggest you consider giving them smaller amounts of a thicker syrup - that will occupy less space in the combs for a given amount of energy. Although the nucs will certainly benefit from being fed, it's essential that the queen is not denied room to lay.
Best of luck.
LJ

[Bobbee]

Ty for your reply.
The 3 treatments 3 days apart are not meant to cover the whole life cycle of the bee.It is meant to cover the period of time the cell is capped and not susceptible to the effect of OA.Those cells that are capped during this period will be (hopefully) free of varroa While those bees that emerge during this period will be exposed to OA right off the bat before the mites  have had time to migrate to a new cell.
I like the idea of follower boards and 5 over 5..I'm going to look into that .It makes sense

[little john]

An interesting strategy - let us know how you get on.  I'm relying on memory now (which isn't all that good) - but I seem to remember that the 'whole life-cycle protocol' was adopted following measured VOA success rates of around 97%, in an attempt to catch that missing 3% which might possibly have been due to mites entering cells earlier than expected, which then protected them from the OA dust.  Of course, that small percentage could also have been due to re-infestation from outside the hive. Lots of unknowns ...

It'll be good to hear how you get on.
LJ

[TheHoneyPump]

Ty for your reply.
The 3 treatments 3 days apart are not meant to cover the whole life cycle of the bee.It is meant to cover the period of time the cell is capped and not susceptible to the effect of OA.Those cells that are capped during this period will be (hopefully) free of varroa While those bees that emerge during this period will be exposed to OA right off the bat before the mites  have had time to migrate to a new cell.
I like the idea of follower boards and 5 over 5..I'm going to look into that .It makes sense

1st.  Do not doubt your supplier. The nuc may truly bee mite free when you get it, or at least below detectable threshold.  However, soon as you place it in a communal area with neighbouring beekeepers the infestation from others begins.
2nd. On the OA treatment. If you want to catch them all, including drone dwelling mites, then your prescribed regiment is:  4 days between treatments X 6 treatments.  7 treatments will knock out that last 1 to 3 percent.    Imho, Your 3x3 proposed is not going to be effective at all.  Suggest to not bother with it unless you are prepared to step up the regimen.
With mites there is no half baked effort, no middle ground, no partial or tempered approach to be taken.  If you are going to keep bees; you have to go all in, have an effective full assault plan, or do not bother. 

Hope that helps!

[Beeboy01]

I had a bad year with nucs this year. All were split offs from my current hives with larger brood populations and done for swarm control as well as trying to build up the yard some. Now in retrospect looking back at the problems my yard suffered I can only think the nuc losses were due to not treating for mites in a timely manner. I also was deficient on jumping on small hive beetle control in the nucs. 

If anything I made the mite problem worse by transferring extra brood frames over to the nucs to help maintain their population as they requeened. My bee yard is pretty tight so there had to be some drift between hives also.

 I'm totally with HP about going all out for mite control, any half way measures just isn't going to work. Lost three nucs out of four and one hive due to my miss management this year.

  I'm re-evaluating my goals and management philosophy over the winter with effective pest control moving into the first position. Planning on building some screened bottom boards with trays for the nucs as a start.

[van from Arkansas]

Regarding treatment with Oxalic acid, OAV, one needs to know how long the residual effects of the acid last in the bee hive to determine the time frame between treatments: 3 day? 4 days? 5 days?

I do not know how long OAV remains effective at killing mites in a hive.  I know both LJ and HP are successful with bees so I am listening.  However, I have never seen a study to determine effective time of OAV.  After treatment with OAV,  I see a significant mite drop on bottom board after 24 hrs with sustained but lessor mite drop for up to a week.

I realize the acid is affected by buffering agents within a hive causing a degree of variation between hives... I am just asking for a general idea of WHAT IS THE TIME FRAME OXALIC ACID KILL MITES IN A HIVE?

Nice to have you back Lil John.

[little john]

Regarding treatment with Oxalic acid, OAV, one needs to know how long the residual effects of the acid last in the bee hive to determine the time frame between treatments: 3 day? 4 days? 5 days?
[...]
Nice to have you back Lil John.

Hi Van - thanks.

The time-frame between treatments is determined not by residual potency, but by the period during which the mite is 'phoretic' (*) - and thus vulnerable to death from contact with Oxalic Acid. This phoretic period is generally considered to be between 5 and 11 days, so a 5-day interval appears to be the recommended maximum between treatments, with 4 days being safer. I have seen some research which demonstrated that the majority of mites had a phoretic period of 7 days - but when treating we're really after those '5 day' characters.
Hope this helps.
LJ

(*) It ain't true phoresy - but the term has stuck, so we might as well use it, even though it's not absolutely correct.

BTW - how is your Cordovan queen-breeding project doing ?

[van from Arkansas]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26412538/

BTW:  I just read the above article that treating honeybees with Oxalic acid lowered Nosema spores in bee gut.  Nice to have a double whammy effect of Oxalic acid; mites and Nosema.  Not sure if I should have created a separate, new topic.  BobBee, I will move this post to a new thread and realist if you wish.  Just let me know.

Van

[van from Arkansas]

Regarding treatment with Oxalic acid, OAV, one needs to know how long the residual effects of the acid last in the bee hive to determine the time frame between treatments: 3 day? 4 days? 5 days?
[...]
Nice to have you back Lil John.

Hi Van - thanks.

The time-frame between treatments is determined not by residual potency, but by the period during which the mite is 'phoretic' (*) - and thus vulnerable to death from contact with Oxalic Acid. This phoretic period is generally considered to be between 5 and 11 days, so a 5-day interval appears to be the recommended maximum between treatments, with 4 days being safer. I have seen some research which demonstrated that the majority of mites had a phoretic period of 7 days - but when treating we're really after those '5 day' characters.
Hope this helps.
LJ

(*) It ain't true phoresy - but the term has stuck, so we might as well use it, even though it's not absolutely correct.

BTW - how is your Cordovan queen-breeding project doing ?

Agreed the mites are not phoretic, but like you said the term is here to stay.  My Alpha Cordovan queen lived 4 years two months.  I am in process of selecting a new breeder queen but as you know this takes over a year to find such a gem

What if the Oxalic acid is neutralized prior to mite leaving capped cell entering phoretic stage?   Like say a mite is safely under a capped cell for 7 days and I treat on day one, I.e. would the acid have effect 6 days later?  Thanks for your time Lil John.

Health to your bees, everyone.
Van

[Beeboy01]

Back a few years ago when I treated a heavily infested hive and counted the mite drop on a daily basis I ended up finding the most effective control was treating when the kill count had dropped to 50% of the initial count done at 24 hours. In other words if the drop at 24 hours was 250 mites I would treat again when the count was 125 mites which was a rough lethal dose of 50% . That always seemed to occur after 72 hours or three days. I ended up treating then performing the next treatment on the third day after the initial treatment. Using this spacing between treatments I would recommend six or seven treatments to cover two mite life cycles. There wasn't any way to actually monitor the level of oxalic acid in the hive which could of dissipated after the first day but I was more interested in the daily mite kill.  Just my take on it.
 
  My losses this year were because I didn't follow my own advice.

I'll post my graph if anyone is interested.

[van from Arkansas]

3 days, thank you BEEBOY, that seem to coincide +- with LJ and HP above text.

[Bobbee]

A couple of pics or ...https://www.flickr.com/photos/184569342@N05/with/50574767047/
Larva capped brood and pollen from one of my dead hives. From the two hives combined I pulled 8liters if honey. Approximately 2 us gallons.

[Bobbee]

I want to thank everyone for their input.It is the response I was hoping for.
I have been reading and rereading all the posts I can see that I need to continue  studying.I need to mesh what I am learning here with what I know And re examine what I "know" to be sure that it is so.
It Ain't What You Don't Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It's What You Know for Sure That Just Ain't So (Mark Twain)

[little john]

What if the Oxalic acid is neutralized prior to mite leaving capped cell entering phoretic stage?   Like say a mite is safely under a capped cell for 7 days and I treat on day one, I.e. would the acid have effect 6 days later?  Thanks for your time Lil John.

Hi Van

first of all it's useful to know why a varroa mite needs a phoretic period at all - why not just keep emerging from cells and re-enter new ones immediately ? It's because there's not enough energy-rich nutrition to be obtained from the larvae.  Indeed, there's not enough energy-rich nutrition to be obtained from the bee's haemolymph either - that was the observation which kicked-off Samuel Ramsey's brilliant discovery that mites actually feed on the bees' fat-body - which is energy-rich.

So - no matter what circumstances might affect each individual mite, it must spend a number of days (currently thought to be a minimum of 5) feeding from the energy-rich fat-body of a bee before undergoing reproduction - either in the host hive, or if it can catch a ride (which then of course would be true phoresy) out of the hive to infest another. It's during that 5-day period (whenever that should happen) when it becomes vulnerable to OA - hence the need to cover an extended period, more than that which simple theory alone suggests.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Bobbee - I just wanted to answer Van's question.
I like your Mark Twain quote - I'll be using it myself in a few days. So thanks for that.
LJ

[Bobbee]

Sorry to hijack your thread, Bobbee - I just wanted to answer Van's question.

All good.Knowledge gained is always welcome.
BTW science has found that varroa does not feed on hemolymph but rather the bees fatbody. Ill look for the vid and post the link.

[Bobbee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2plL5NIRcw

[little john]

it's useful to know why a varroa mite needs a phoretic period at all - why not just keep emerging from cells and re-enter new ones immediately ? It's because there's not enough energy-rich nutrition to be obtained from the larvae.  Indeed, there's not enough energy-rich nutrition to be obtained from the bee's haemolymph either - that was the observation which kicked-off Samuel Ramsey's brilliant discovery that mites actually feed on the bees' fat-body - which is energy-rich.

Bobbee - many thanks for the link to that video.  The story has changed somewhat since I first saw Ramsey's presentation (which was before he was awarded a PhD). That presentation was less entertaining (LOL) than the one you linked to, and focused more on calculations of energy requirements etc. Most significantly there was no mention at that time that larvae contain large amounts of fat-body - which throws my understanding of the fundamental need for a 'phoretic stage' completely out of the window.

So - if larvae can indeed provide sufficient nutrient, there would appear to be no obvious advantage in having a phoretic stage at all - the mite could simply reproduce in the cell, emerge, and then re-enter another open cell immediately, and so reproduce at a much faster rate - causing havoc in the process (until winter, of course, which would seal it's fate). I'll drop Ramsey a line and see what his thoughts are.
Again, thanks.
LJ 

[van from Arkansas]

LJ, as always you provoke thought with your question;  why a phoretic stage?

Ramsey demonstrated a mite cannot survive longer than 48 hours without access to FatBody.  Now hold that thought.  Also note a mite is deaf and blind.  Now consider a single larva
FatBody  is depleted by mites as the feed.  The mites run out of food and have to find more FatBody before 48 hrs or the mite is starved to death.  With no eyes, no ears and only a sense of smell the mite leaves a cell hungry and hops on the first available food source, a nurse bee.

So why not jump into an adjacent cell?  The adjacent cell may be capped, empty or just have an egg that takes 3 days to develop into a larva, but in 3 days, the mite is starved so again, hitching a ride in an immediately available nurse bee would be a bird in hand compared to two in the bush.

The above sound logical, yes I am stretching a bit, hypotheses, which is scientifically sound way of saying I am flat out guessing.

Best of all things, across the pond.

[TheHoneyPump]

Just fyi, I base my treatment interval of 4 days not on the mite lifecycle but on the honeybee life cycle. 
Bee Egg = 0 - 3.5 days
Bee Larvae = 3.5 - 9 days

Varroa enter the cell some time during the larvae stage. The mite either walks over from another cell or hitches a ride on a nurse bee to get to a new larvae. The time of opportunity for a mite to do so is the exposed bee larvae stage of 9-3.5 = 5.5 days.  To set a treatment interval, consider the scenario that the day of the OAV is the same day (or just before) that batches of eggs are hatching into minuscule larvae and is the same day (or just before) that new bees are emerging from under capped cells with mites on their backs.  Those mites were under caps, having just missed the OAV and now have their pickings of fresh new larvae.  They have 5.5 days to pick their next meal before the cells are capped, blocking them out. If the next OAV is in less than 5 days most of those mites should be exposed and killed.  If the next OAV is in more than 5 days those mites are again snuck under cappings and protected, being missed by the treatment. Thus the 4 day interval target.

How many treatments?  Same thing, use the lifecycle of the honeybee not the mite.  The cell is capped on day 9.  The bee emerges on day 21, day 24 for drones.  To catch all the mites emerging over the full period of the honeybee brood cycle, including those that snuck under a capped cell the day before the first treatment, then looking at 24 divide by 4 + 1 = 6 +1 treatments = 7 for total mop-up.

As for how long is the residual lethal effect of OAV on the mites, no idea. By observation, can only say that the bees hygiene and grooming activities are very prominent the following day and not as much after that.  By the end of 2nd day after the OAV treatment there are piles of dead mites being swept out the entrances, yet no where near as much grooming-like activity. Day 3, not much is going on that would indicate residual effects.

The 4 days works, longer interval does not imho.  Like others, this season I lapsed a bit here and there as I did not get back to some hives for 6 to 7 days.  Those 6/7d ones are by far the weakest colonies at end of October going into winter. I actually expect to lose 30%-50% of those over winter.  The ones that got the 4d shots x 6times, are strong healthy and happy - if you can tell when bees are happy. ;)

Hence, imho the full regimen is 4 day interval x 6 intervals to be most effective for my bees.
Do what fits best for you and your bees.


For a rather excellent read of how real world experience lines up with the hypothesis, take some time to go through and digest the full content and context here:
https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=51618.0

[van from Arkansas]

HP, thanks.  Well explained.

 I am confused about the number of treatments, 7.  You used a full brood cycle, should not 9 days be used instead?  I am figuring capped brood only.  Thanks for your time.

Van

[TheHoneyPump]

Remember, the brood is in continuous development over time. The laying queen does not start-stop on # day intervals. Could probably figure this out down to the minute if wanted to cut it that fine. What we are doing is attempting to find the most effective but practical regimen which may be said as:  the largest interval and minimum number of periods that effectively covers the phases progression of brood development over one brood cycle.
When starting the first OAV blast there are bee eggs that have been freshly laid and there are many mites already under brood caps. The last of those having been capped just moments before the OAV was applied.  Those last ones will not be exposed until that phase of the brood cycle completes and the mites emerge with the new bees. After emergence there are 5d or less to catch those before the next cell they have infested is capped

To catch them all, or as many as is practically possible, the total time is that brief period (5d) of larvae stage before capping, plus the time capped for those missed in the first shot (24-9=15d), plus the brief period before those last mites find refuge with new larvae under new caps (5d).  That totals 25 days from the first OAV treatment to the last OAV treatment.  At 4 day intervals, 25/4 is 6.25 treatments.  6 gets the job mostly done, 7 finishes it off.

Not sure if that makes sense enough or not.  But there it is.  ;)

[van from Arkansas]

continuous brood cycle.

Of course, thank you HP.

[Bobbee]

OK I have a big smile on my face. All of this thread has been pure gold for me.
The questions I have now are the amount of OA per treatment and how that is calculated.
I will be starting next year with two packages with a further one or two five frame nucs when they are available in June. (local source)
The package bees will go into five frame nuc boxes containing five frames of drawn comb with a second 5 frame nuc box over the top for feeding purposes.
When the nuc needs more room I will add five frames of drawn comb to the upper box and reverse the boxes leaving the empty drawn comb below the now full frames.
The five frame nucs that I buy will go directly into a ten frame deep each with a further five frames of drawn comb.
My YouTube searches have found results of one to three grams to treat a colony.Very few if any actually even mentioned the volume of the hive at all nor how many grams of OA has been found to be optimal.

[van from Arkansas]

Research demonstrates: 1 gram of oxalic acid vaporized per 10 frame deep.  Two grams for a double deep.  I use 0.5 gram per 5 frame nuc.  Note I said Oxalic acid and I did not say Oxalic acid hydrate.
Hope this helps.

I can direct you to research papers, OAV per hive,  if you wish.  Let me know.

[beesnweeds]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26412538/

BTW:  I just read the above article that treating honeybees with Oxalic acid lowered Nosema spores in bee gut.  Nice to have a double whammy effect of Oxalic acid; mites and Nosema.  Not sure if I should have created a separate, new topic.  BobBee, I will move this post to a new thread and realist if you wish.  Just let me know.

Van

Great post.  I attended a seminar that Randy Oliver presented at and he did mention lower nosema counts after OAD treatments.  He guessed that it may purge the bee gut, nothing definite.  I did notice lower nosema counts and less instances of dysentery in my hives which could be coincidental but Im going to stick with December OAD treatments.

[Bobbee]

Research demonstrates: 1 gram of oxalic acid vaporized per 10 frame deep.  Two grams for a double deep.  I use 0.5 gram per 5 frame nuc.  Note I said Oxalic acid and I did not say Oxalic acid hydrate.
Hope this helps.

I can direct you to research papers, OAV per hive,  if you wish.  Let me know.

I am very interested in reading those research papers.
Also you raised an interesting point in making a distinction between Oxalic acid dihydrate and Oxalic acid.Do you dry your Oxalic acid before using ?And do you use a spoon to measure the dose or a scale.
I was quite surprised when I checked and found an approximately 30% difference in density between  the two forms.

[van from Arkansas]

Requested article:  a very detailed article with data generated over 18 months to verify effects, of OAV on future hive health. 

I use a scale to verify my spoon holds one gram of Oxalic acid.  My spoon I believe is 1/4 teaspoon.

[little john]

LJ, as always you provoke thought with your question;  why a phoretic stage?

Hi Van - I owe you an apology ...

No sooner had Bobbee posted: "It Ain't What You Don't Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It's What You Know for Sure That Just Ain't So - Mark Twain", than I posted something as a statement of fact, only for it to turn out not to be true !  Talk about coincidence ...  Ok - so I now need to get some of that egg off my face. 

Back in 2017 I came across this:

Proceedings of the 2017 American Bee Research Conference

39. Varroa destructor feed primarily on honey bee fat body not hemolymph

Samuel D. Ramsey and Dennis vanEngelsdorp. Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park.

Efforts to mitigate the elevated losses of honey bee colonies have reached a global context as one of the primary drivers of these losses, Varroa destructor, has achieved a nearly ubiquitous distribution. Better understanding of the association of this parasite and its host is integral to developing sustainable management practices but very little study, if any, exists as support for the heretofore uncontested conclusion that Varroa feed exclusively on the hemolymph of adult and immature honey bees. This study was conducted to determine the primary host tissue composing Varroa?s diet. Findings in a preliminary study suggest that the mites may feed on fat body. To test this hypothesis, honey bees were reared to specific ages corresponding to the development of the fat body and fed one of two fluorescent biostains ad libitum. The Uranine O biostain persisted in the hemolymph and Nile Red biostain persisted in the fat body. Mites were allowed to feed on these bees for 24 hours and were then crushed and placed in a spectrophotometer. The biostain associated with the fat tissue was present in Varroa in significantly greater proportions than the hemolymph biostain in all 4 honey bee age treatment groups. Varroa consumed 3 times as much fat body as hemolymph when allowed to feed on the age group associated with nurse bees, at which time fat body is at peak development. To determine the importance of each host tissue in Varroa?s diet, adult female mites were collected from uncapped brood in several untreated colonies. These mites were then placed in queen rearing cups lined with beeswax and fed fat body, hemolymph, or a combination of the two through an artificial membrane. Fecundity was measured and analyzed.  Varroa fed hemolymph produced no eggs while Varroa produced eggs in all treatments containing fat body. We are currently conducting studies of survivorship of mites fed on these two host tissues. Preliminary data shows Varroa fed only fat body have greater survivorship as well, which suggests that the ingestion of hemolymph may not be integral to growth and development of this mite.

At around this same time Brushy Mountain posted a 'webinar' (who makes up these awful names ?) in which the speaker focused upon the calorific content of fat-body viz-a-viz haemolymph, which appeared to suggest that the rationale for the feeding upon the fat-body of mature bees was in order to acquire enough stored energy to produce eggs - and at that point the whole thing began to make sense (to me).
That is - that there are 3 stages in the life-cycle of the mite: 2 feeding phases and one phoretic phase in which the mite hitches a ride in order to spread it's genetics further afield.

Two feeding phases are required: the first of these being contained within a sealed environment which is ideal for producing young without the risk of predation or dessication - the second being to acquire enough calories in order to be able to lay eggs within that first phase. Hence the confidence shown in what I wrote ...

But now Ramsey tells us that the larva is largely comprised of fat-body, and thus there will be sufficient calories within each larva in the form of fat-body to lay eggs !  Now the need for the second feeding stage (on the adult bee) doesn't make too much sense.  It's necessary for winter survival, sure, but would only cause an unnecessary reduction in the mite's reproduction rate during the season.

Unless ... the fat-body in the adult bee contains some component necessary for the juvenile mite to reach maturity - a component which doesn't exist within the larval fat-body ?  Well - it's a theory ...

One of the questions I'll be asking Samuel is whether the two types of fat-body have been subjected to comparative analysis.  My guess is that this will have already been done. 
 
'best
LJ

[van from Arkansas]

Hello LJ: no apologies needed, Buddy.

Samuels proved that the adult mite positions itself, with one leg extended like a tick, to latch on to a bee.  Most likely a nurse bee.  Assumption is a mite needs more food determine by mimic of a tick trying to acquire a host by latching on with the extended leg.  I know this all to well in Arkansas, tick area.

Some facts about mites:

1.  Must eat every 48 hours or starve.
2.  Reproduction of a mite is 28 days+-.
3.  Mite eggs are huge compared to body size of a mite, thus lots energy required.
4.  Mites lay multiple eggs in a cell, first egg develope into small male mite.
5.  Mites utilize a sense of smell as they are blind, deaf.
6.  Mites only feed on the FatBody, liver, power plant of a bee.
7.  The FatBody of a bee is greatly reduced in size after mite feed.
     a.  Reducing energy of a bee.
     b.  Energy reduced so much a bee can fly to flower but not enough energy to return to the hive.
     c.  Question: is the FatBody so reduced in size a mite seeks new host; extended leg.

Bee larva are mostly composed of FatBody which provide the energy for metamorphosis: worm to flying bee.  I still opinion that a mite is seeking new/more food entering what we call the phoretic stage.  Evolution may have instilled this hitching a ride to spread genetics is another possibility, which LJ stated.

I have deliberately not mentioned virus to avoid widening the subject base.

Health to your bees.

Van

[TheHoneyPump]

This one is a fairly decent article that pops up on a google search.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/bees/varroa_mite.htm

Enjoy ...

[van from Arkansas]

Just a note.  Samuels did not discover the stretching of parafilm to feed an insect.  That was discovered by the Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIH/NIAID upon feeding ticks in vitro, test tube.  I was surprised that Samuels took credit for this technique which was discover in the 1990?s by Schwan and Karstens.

[little john]

This one is a fairly decent article that pops up on a google search.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/bees/varroa_mite.htm

Enjoy ...

Yes - a good article - but it needs to be supplemented with two more recent discoveries: the first is that we now know that the mites feed on fat-body, and not haemolymph as stated in that article. The second is perhaps even more devastating (if that's possible): the writers of that article apparently didn't know what was discovered in 2016, - that re-infestation can also occur via flowers !! - where the mite dismounts from one forager bee, and waits for another to come along.  How can anyone eradicate a mite which has all the bases covered like this ... ?

Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311629056_Varroa_destructor_Mites_Can_Nimbly_Climb_from_Flowers_onto_Foraging_Honey_Bees/fulltext/5851982608ae7d33e0150ffa/Varroa-destructor-Mites-Can-Nimbly-Climb-from-Flowers-onto-Foraging-Honey-Bees.pdf

'best
LJ

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oij1HOxD3iU

(The mite is sitting on a petal on the left-hand side of the flower - keep your eye on that as the video runs)

[Bobbee]

Requested article:  a very detailed article with data generated over 18 months to verify effects, of OAV on future hive health. 

I use a scale to verify my spoon holds one gram of Oxalic acid.  My spoon I believe is 1/4 teaspoon.

I see the picture but When I try to search for the article online no luck...so far.

[van from Arkansas]

That is an impressive video LJ.  That mite wasted no time to latch onto the bee.  Thanks for taking your time, well spent I might add.  Ding dang mites, is the best I can say for Varroa.

[van from Arkansas]

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2015.1106777

This is link to article I posted above about Varroa and Oxalic acid.

This link works,I just tested.  This article is very detailed, many, very many detailed pages, no stones left unturned.
Van

[The15thMember]

Wow, that video is insane, Little John!  Somebody mentioned to me offhand one time that they thought they had seen a couple varroa mites on their flowers and I totally blew them off.  I figured there was no way that was possible.  Shows how much I know. . . . 

[beesonhay465]

my advice is to use an attractant and an old brood comb in a full sized hive. this should attract a good sized swarm of native bees. they have made it through a winter and are adapted to local conditions . feed, and when the brood box is 80% put on a super and stop feeding. dont harvest til next spring.got 26 lb of comb honey. worked for me. they swarmed 3 times this spring .caught 2. decided to get out of bees[age] and sold all three hives.$800