BBKA Forum

An really interesting article from Randy Oliver on mite drift.

Figure 2. From mid-September through the end of November, over 500 mites hitchhiked their way into this continually-treated, mite-free hive (red line); the semi-weekly counts are the black columns. A few weeks prior, I hadn’t detected any mites coming in, so I’d waited until my experiment actually began in mid-September to start inserting stickyboards again. It looks as though I did so a bit late, as mites were already flooding in by then. When I reinserted stickyboards during a rainy period in December (not shown), mite drop in all monitored hives was zero ― indicating that no mite reproduction had been taking place in any of the treated monitor hives.

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/mite-drift-quantification/

Its really makes you think about untreated colonies and how they could move so many varroa in to one of your hives after you have treated them any time of year!

I only have 2 colonies at the moment both treated with Apiguard in August and OA vaped at Christmas. One has dropped no mites since January. The other dropped the odd mite every few days until the end of March when drops suddenly went up into double figures. I am guessing this is a mite invasion from a robbed out colony somewhere nearby.

Saw a scary video at the Spring convention of a verroa mite lurking on a flower. When a forager landed it took seconds for the mite to latch on. It's not only drones, drift and robbing bringing them in. That said, my two hives in a more 'colony populated' area always have more verroa than my three remote hives.

Just another thought. As the Queen begins to increase her laying rate, especially in a mild Spring, the surviving phobic mites infest the new cells and mite drop falls. The little swine are still there though and breeding fast.

Was this the video per chance?

https://youtu.be/Oij1HOxD3iU

Think so, but if you plug ‘varroa on flower’ into U-Tube it comes up. Nature has put this behavioural pattern into varroa so that the vermin can infest more colonies even though it is a risky operation for the individual mite.
Into action with the oxalix acid vaporiser!