>Can you point me to a resource that covers the issues to consider when

> timing the interruption of the brood cycle for the purpose of reducing the
> Varroa population?
>

Hi Dan,

As Jim says, just before the honey flow.

There are additional tricks.  If you can confine the queen onto an entire
drawn comb by the use of the type of queen excluder cage used by queen
breeders, then you could let her lay on that comb for a week.

At the end of the week, the brood in the excluder cage will be too young to
harbor mites.  Remove the comb and give it to another colony.  Replace it
with another drawn comb for the queen to lay in.

At the end of the second week, do the same as above (a drawn drone comb
would be best at this time).

At the end of the third week, release the queen free to roam and remove the
excluder cage, but leave the laid out comb in the colony, marked.  The next
day this comb will start to "trap" mites, and will do so for a week.  There
will be no other brood of the right age in the colony for the mites to
enter.

Any time from ten days til two weeks later, you can remove the marked comb,
which will contain most of the varroa mites in the colony.  Freeze, scrape,
or heat to kill the mites and brood.

This method only sacrifices one week's worth of queen laying.  Labor
intensive, yes, but uses the mite's biology against it.

Randy Oliver

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