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Date: | Sun, 6 Aug 2017 22:43:52 +0000 |
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"Obviously this can be a problem with any treatment but just how many OA (sublimation) treatments are the bees likely to tolerate? "
I have seen claims that only one treatment is acceptable as more will damage the bees. And, other claims that many are fine. The best actual data I have seen was provided on Bee Source a year ago. An individual had a hive with sky high mite counts. He did an OAV and dropped a thousand or two. He counted every single mite dropped. He repeated after a few days and dropped about the same number. To make a long story short he hit that hive with OAV until the mite drops finally came down. It took something like 12 treatments! This was in the fall. Sept/Oct if I remember. I am doing this from memory so do not quote my numbers. If you want solid numbers go do a search and find his posts. I do not know if the colony survived the winter or not. But, he saw no obvious negative effects from all those treatments.
In my experience I would not expect the hive to survive the winter. When I have treated high mite counts it took a good two months after full treatment with apivar was finished for DWV symptoms to go away. So, even thou he got the mite counts down I would still expect residual viruses to kill the hive by spring.
I am also interested in Nancy's experience this year with EFB. Are mites weakening the bees enough to allow EFB to be a bigger problem than in the past? I have had EFB in from 5% to 20% of my nucs every year for the last four years now. At the time I make nucs the colonies I use to make the nucs are pretty near zero in terms of mites. I hear lots of people who say they have never seen EFB even once. With only one exception it has always been in nucs for me. But, this year I had one production hive that had it. Is it an issue of queen genetics? It has been shown that requeening a EFB hive with Minnesota Hygienic bees will not stop the problem and I run MH queens. Are they particularly prone to EFB? Nancy's experience sounds a lot like what I have been seeing. I have found terra highly effective and if I treat with terra per the label I do not see the problem come back that year in that nuc. So, it is easy to deal with at least until I run out of terra formulated for bees.
Dick
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