Preffered Varroa treatments ?

[KKO]

Dear all,

I am a researcher conducting a year long trial on Varroa treatments using different treatment regimes to control mite populations. I'm in the middle of the experiment but woud like advice from large scale beekeepers/beefarmers to help me finalise a decision for a summer treatment - What is your preferred method for Varroa treatment during summer and why? I assume that MAQS is too expensive for large scale operations, biomechanical methods too labour intensive so am left considering oxalic acid fumigation..

I would also be interested to hear in general from both small & large scale beekeepers - what are people's preferred treatments throughout the year?

Any advice and input will be gratefully received... Thank you.

Regards.

[KKO]

please excuse my spelling :S

[Patrick]

Hi KKO

I assume you are familiar with the Bee Farmers Association? They are a group of beekeepers managing forty hives or up. They will inform you of more commercial practices.

At a more modest level, my treatments are thymol or formic based treatments in summer and oxalic in midwinter.

[Steve 1972]

I'm just a small scale hobby beekeeper and my hive count never goes over twelve in spring to summer and down to my preferred amount of around ten to eight colonies going into winter..
The main tools in my box and most used is a heated pan type vaporizer and a gas - vap which i use to sublimate a oxalic acid mix with four treatments (sometimes more) five days apart in Autumn and once or twice around Christmas time..

I tried Apitraz/ Amitraz for the first time last Autumn on five hives and i was really impressed with the results..some folk say it is a expensive treatment but at £5/£6 per colony i find it rather cheap and the amount of honey a healthy colony can produce more than pays for the treatment..i will definitely be using Apitraz again this year as i often find it hard to get to the hives every five days to use Oxalc acid as apposed to Apitraz where you put two strips in a full brood box or one strip in a Nucleus and leave them for six weeks.

[AndrewLD]

Don't know if KKO is still looking at the forum or got the answers they sought but just in case:
I am guessing that you are not a beekeeper because "summer" covers two quite distinct periods which radically affect the answer.
During the nectar flow (up to beginning of August) only one treatment is permissible whilst the honey supers are on the hive - MAQ's. Some will argue that Oxalic acid vaporising can be used but not everyone agrees and efficacy is compromised to a level that requires repeat treatments and the risk of treatment resistance. A beekeeper will avoid treating at all unless it becomes absolutely necessary and then speed will likely dictate MAQ's.
After the nectar flow there are a range of treatments and any of those listed by the NBU in their varroa booklet (that you will have downloaded?) are suitable but with some more efficient than others. The number of treatment visits then comes into the equation but I know a bee farmer that uses Apiguard (three visits) and ApiVar (two visits).
If you take small hobby beekeepers into the loop then more factors appear - such as colony disruption, objection to chemical treatment etc.
The fact you are doing this over one year and bearing in mind the huge variance in varroa levels from one hive to another would make me question the validity of such an experiment unless done on a large scale and with control colonies. Plus, why the summer? Varroa control should be part of an integrated pest management plan so what the beekeeper is doing at other times of the year will directly impact on their choice for summer.
Might be useful to know the objective of your research, scale of the experiment and the level of beekeeper supervision or you could end up with something that looks good on paper but is fundamentally flawed because it has missed something or is based on an incorrect assumption.....