Harry Goudie wrote:

> One suggestion I heard recently was to immerse the
> infested frames in hot water for a length of time hopefully killing all the
> mites as well as the brood. (If you have plenty of time you could put the
> frames in the freezer overnight)  The method would be:
> Shake all the bees from brood chamber onto new brood chamber (no brood and
> no varroa mites)  I think this would be best done in the early spring when
> there is very little brood and few bees.  Insert apistan/bavarol strips into
> the chamber to kill mites on the bees.  It might be possible to increase the
> number of strips per hive.   These strips need only be left in the chamber
> for a short length of time since they only require to kill the mites on the
> bees (possibly only a day!)   The frames from the old brood chamber are then
> immersed in hot water to kill the mites in the cells and the procedure
> repeated using the now sterile frames in the next hive.  I would think that
> the apistan strips could be re-used for numerous hives using this method.
> If you think smoke or acid would get rid of the mites on the bees then you
> could use this  rather then apistan.  The advantage of this method is that
> the hive is only exposed to chemicals for a short space of time which would
> minimise the fears associated with using these chemicals.

In my opinion, there are a number of serious objections to this approach, but
probably the first on the list is that (in the USA at least) this runs entirely
contrary to the label directions for Apistan, thereby making it illegal and
running the risk of actually provoking mite resistance to fluvalinate.

Secondly, it is very stressful for the colony to be deprived of brood (except
in midwinter where it would be very stressful to work the colonies at all).  In
spring, the colonies should be striving to build up populations for the coming
season and in fall the brood will be necessary for winter populations of young
bees.

Thirdly, the method seems extremely labor intensive in contrast to the standard
procedure of installing the strips and then merely removing them 45 days
later.  This method seems similar to the drone trapping procedure but with the
added expense of using chemical strips as well and destroying all the brood,
not only drones.  The purported advantage of having the strips in the hives for
only a short time is hard to see, because there shouldn't be any supers on the
hives anyway when the strips are in use.

Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA