As a prerequisite to my post I highly recommend reading Dick's excellent post on this thread. Date:Mon, 29 Oct 2018 18:55:12 +0000
I have just completed my early winter broodless OAV and done 72 hr. post treatment sticky's on 4 selected colonys. Nun to soon either, it's 14F (-10c) this morning. I spent a lot of time messing with Randy's model, trying different schedules and efficacys but in the end I put in my actual treatments for this year. My colony model is his high latitude "B" and the inputs of frame and brood strength, pollen and nectar flow are guesses but after 4 decades I believe reasonably fair guesses. Next year I will closely monitor a few colonys and weather records so I'll have verifiable numbers. Thank you Randy, this is a great tool we all can use!
The basics for all colonys. An early spring Apivar, 4 late summer (Sept.) OAV, another brood reduction OAV mid Oct. and a final broodless OAV 11/28. That's 6 and in one case 7 OAV's with a Pro-Vap. I am not at all comfortable with that many treatments but so far I have not seen any ill effect with OAV. Not a single colony has collapsed and all have good weight and populations. I did washes after the early rounds and 72 hr. sticky's once it got too cold for frame pulling. If any test counted above threshold I gave another round to all, erring on the side of caution. My end result assuming 85% broodless efficacy is all colonies below 20 mites. I have never seen better winter colonies and had more confidence.
You can click past the rest if not interested but here are some notes on the 4 test colonys.
56 day Apivar in 3/10 assume 95% kill.
OAV ProVap 9/10, 9/14, 9/18, 9/22. As there were 2 treatments in each 2 week period I counted them as 50% kill for each 2 .
OAV 10/18 counted as 25% kill. Some colonies still had active brood some not.
OAV 11/28 counted as 85% kill assume broodless. Sunny and mid 40'sF with some modest activity at entrance indicating to me a cluster break.
Colony 1: 8/23 wash- 4, 9/24 wash- 0, 11/28-72 hr. post OAV sticky 12. Calc. end count 2. No doubt over treated but as I said treating all if any need it and erring on the side of caution. Over wintered no split late summer supercedure honey yield 120#.
Colony 2: 8/22 wash-4, 11/28 72 hr, sticky- 132, end count 20. Over wintered no split no swarm honey yield 150#
Colony 3: 8/20 wash-2, 11/28 72hr. sticky- 7, end count 1. Over wintered no split no swarm honey yield 150#. Again over treated but others in the yard were washing at much higher levels and this was a random pick.
Colony 4: 8/21 wash- 21, 9/10 wash- 30, 9/28 wash- 56, 10/30 sticky (Post OAV) ~3000, 11/18 sticky (Post OAV #6) 105, 11/28 72 hr. sticky (Post OAV#7) 85. Calc. end count 15. Over wintered no split no swarm honey yield 210#. I suspect heavy invasion on this and a some other tested colonys thus my caution. At least here it seems to have brought them back from sure demise.
Generally late summer washes were in the 2 to 18 range but I kept going as long as any were over 4. 53 colonies total and I tested around 40% at some point in season. I think it is important to have the mites under control during the "winter bee" brood period thus my reluctance to leave treatments off until low or no brood period. I count a full and capped western super at 30#.
Randy, put me down as a dunce as far as software and computers. (My wife does not make that distinction) I have no idea if it can be done but it would be very nice if we could input actual wash counts and have all the other fields make the change. Again thank you very very much for this tool!
Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA
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