Battling Mites with Anne (219)

Episode 219 – Battling Mites with Anne

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Jim Tew: Hey, Honey Bee Obscura podcast listeners, guess what? I'm sitting here with Anne Frey from Betterbee, and she's agreed to answer my questions, and your questions, and other questions that I've been asked through the years on general aspects of living, and not living with varroa. Hello, Anne.

Anne Frey: Hi, Jim. Good to be here.

Jim: Everything okay at Betterbee, up there in the cold climate?

Anne: Yes, we're settling into winter pretty well here.

Jim: What other choice do you have?

Anne: Move to Ohio?

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Jim: Yes, when you can live in winter mud. [laughs] That's enough. Listeners, I want us to talk about varroa. I've been hearing birds every morning, and they're going crazy. They're laying out their territory, and some robins are here. Spring's not far away, and it's time to start keeping bees again. If you keep bees, you got to manage your mites. Can we talk about that for a while, Anne?

Anne: Yes, let's talk about mites.

Jim: All right. Stand by.

Introduction: Welcome to Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast. Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and the challenges of managing honeybees. Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honeybees. Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper, or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk that'll delve into all things honeybees.

Jim: Every chance I get, I tell people how old I am, and how long I've been tinkering with bees. As a result of that, I've got some mental issues because I haven't always had to live with mites. Years and years and years ago, varroa mites were something that were a threat in some foreign country. I'm always hostile toward, I've got to know a lot about mites to keep bees, and I just wanted to tinker with bees. I don't want to tinker with mites.

Anne: Jim, I know exactly what you mean, because when I first went to a bee meeting in the early '90s, I didn't hear a thing about bees. It was all about mites, and I was very annoyed. I was thinking, "Is this the mite club meeting?"

Jim: [laughs] You are so correct, and that was the animosity I'm trying to describe to you. I wanted to know the best way to do whatever in beekeeping, not the latest, greatest way to make in my backyard some kind of concoction that would control mites. That's the theme I'm at today, listeners. To start off, let's just work our way forward.

If I'm a brand new beekeeper, and I bought two packages of bees, give me a framework, a flexible, livable framework of what my varroa management program should be with two packages of bees on maybe 10 sheets of foundation?

Anne: Oh, well, that's a good start, because beginners often start with a package or two. I would say that they should not forget that mites are everybody's problem. Everybody should understand that the mites start off close to zero. Nobody's bees have zero, but you might not find any at first on any sample that you look at. Then, the mites are going to ramp up a little, ramp up a little, and then they're going to rocket upwards in numbers.

People that are new, they might be enthusiastic about counting mites early, which means maybe in May, they'd count them once or twice, and they'd say, "There were no mites, there were no mites again. I guess I'm special, and I have no mites." Then, they would never count them again, and not realizing that, that's the beginning of that exponential curve where it's almost flat, so you will have mites.

I would recommend that they understand that bees have been treated recently, before they were shaken into packages, and transported up here. In all likelihood, about seven to eight weeks after that, they're going to need a treatment.

Jim: If you keep saying to check, check, check, how would a beginner beekeeper check for mites? What's the easiest, simplest thing to do in a colony you just started eight weeks ago?

Anne: Well, I'd say the easiest and simplest, though maybe not the most accurate, is a sticky board underneath a screen bottom board. A screen bottom board is one of the choices for the very bottom of your hive. The base of the hive is not solid wood. It's got a screen across the middle of it. Under that, if mites are being dropped and groomed off by bees, under that screen, they'll hit a tray that you can pull out, and look at that tray later, and count, or just observe what has been filtering down through the bees' bodies over three days.

We usually do it for a three-day drop, 72 hours or so. The rule is that you don't want to see double digits on any one day. If you took the three-day drop, and divide it by three to get a one-day average drop, you'd want to see nine or less. Those sticky boards often are sold with a little sort of a handle made out of a sticker that shows life-size mites on a picture.

Any rate, you should learn what mites look like and get used to that. They don't just look like anything. They're not little flecks of wax. They always look like a little brownish oval, like the shape of a crab, or a football.

Jim: That's the way that you would think that beginners could really just get a jump on this without having to do other shakes, and things that are more complicated?

Anne: Yes. Doing a sample using a shaken frame with the bees dropping into a basin, and getting a scoop of those bees, it's a little bit fraught. [chuckles] People are afraid of doing that, and so they tend to want to start out with a sticky board. Then, after they see that demonstrated, they realize it's not quite as scary as it might seem reading the instructions. It's just another part of beekeeping, a technique, and learning to shake a frame is a valuable skill in all kinds of areas of beekeeping.

Jim: It is. I understand exactly what you're talking about. It seems like it must be painful to be shaken off your home, and dumped into a pan with all your comrades, and piled up and confused, and then scooped up. Then, it does seem like it would be traumatic for the bees when we're trying to help them. This is an interesting procedure. Now, stop Jim, you're rambling.

Just to keep things simple, if you're brand new, why don't you just use a sticky board until you're not brand new? Then, along the way, learn to do some of the more advanced screening techniques that are a bit more accurate.

Anne: I agree to that. I think they definitely should proceed into the more complicated ones. When you're basically like a kindergartner, we're not going to teach you stuff for middle school kids. You're going to grow into it. The beginner is more like a kindergartner for at least a year.

Jim: They're not the same, but they're similar. Beyond the package, what would you do with a split, and what would you do with a swarm? They're considerably different. What would be your diagnostic procedure for a five-frame split, just to give a number to it, and a three-pound swarm?

Anne: I'm thinking that's equivalent to a nuc, and people might be buying a nuc. The swarm is more equivalent to a package. It's just bee bodies, no brood. It's so much like a package, I would give the same advice for the package. The only thing that is different from them, is that they have a lot of honey in their crops, and they're going to build comb maybe faster than a package.

The mites might be going a little bit faster in a swarm. Who knows? You might hive that swarm on comb. The mites will get going faster, as soon as they can get into brood cells, and start breeding. When the mites are breeding in the bee brood, things will accelerate faster than a package that has to create comb on foundation. For the nuc, I would say, since they already have brood, they're going to develop mites the fastest.

The sticky board is a fine way to check them, but you're already a little ways into the progress of that colony. Once you've got five combs and brood, you've jumped ahead in time, basically. You would be farther along on that exponential curve of the mite growth. I definitely wouldn't delay counting. Counting mites every two to four weeks is a good baseline, and it's not too hard. I would stick to that with the nucs, the swarms, or the packages.

Jim: Anne, we got to hear from our sponsor, but before I go, see if I can summarize this. You're a new beekeeper. You got a package, a split, or a swarm. No matter which of those procedures you've got, every two to four weeks, you probably should do a sticky board test to see if you've got less than nine mites. If you have more than nine mites, you need to do something. We haven't talked about that, but would you agree with that synopsis before our break?

Anne: Yes. I agree with that, with the understanding that the nine is a one-day amount of mites.

Jim: Stand by. A word from our sponsor.

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Jim: Okay, Anne, that's an idea of what we should be doing with we're brand new and starting, but now, let's just say that our bees have grown some, and we're getting along, long in the tooth. We've had some experience with other techniques of taking samples. What should be some of the treatment methods that you would recommend? What were some of the primary common treatment methods? We don't need to go into everything. Let's just do the ones that are the most popular flavors. What are some of the more common treatments?

Anne: I would say that, for people that have temperatures under 85, rather predictably, and I'm not sure how far South that goes. It might be as far South as New Jersey, Virginia. The Formic Pro is the one that I would recommend. It's formic acid in two gel pads. You just can't be above 85 during the first three days of that treatment, but it's a massive knockdown of mites very quickly, like what they call a flash treatment.

Then, the treatment just stays on the hive for another-- For a total of two weeks. That's no good for people in the South, because they have such high temperatures. I would say for them, I would recommend VarroxSan, which is a oxalic acid extended treatment strip. It's like these cardboard strips that hang over the frames vertically. It has no high temperature restriction, so it's good for people where it's really hot.

Jim: Formic Acid Pro, is that your primary suggestion, or is there anything else you want to tack on to that, and VarroxSan?

Anne: Formic Pro is good if the colony is 8 to 10 frames of bees or more, but if you've got something smaller, for instance, you're still growing your hive from a package, or you've got a recently hived swarm, I wouldn't do Formic Pro, because it's too strong of a dose. In those cases, you're actually lucky, because you don't have to worry about using a synthetic chemical, and worrying about future supers going on this year.

I would recommend Apivar. That has a ingredient of amitraz in it. You just can't use it when the supers are on, or maybe you could do ApiLife Var, which you also cannot use when supers are on, but it's a thymol-based treatment, very easy to use, kills the mites over the course of a month. Those would be my two go-tos for smaller colonies.

Jim: Yes, okay, well, those both sound manageable enough. Those are common treatments. They're available from multiple sources, I would assume, so they're not tricky to find.

Anne: I did want to add, Jim, that sometimes people who are either overly frugal, or just real do-it-yourselfers, or very crafty, they want to make their own miticides. They hear that, say, "That ingredient, oxalic acid, or that ingredient, thymol, that's in those miticides. I think I'll make something up that has those in it," but it's really not great to do that on your own.

You don't know exactly what the doses are. It might not be a consistent amount of the active ingredient getting to the mites. Other things are, if you just get thyme, for instance, and you work it into some kind of concoction, there's two parts in thyme, and one of them is bad for bees. People who make these products have tested them over time, and they're using consistent methods to get a consistent, safe result for the bees.

Jim: Basically, you're saying no backyard chemistry.

Anne: That's exactly what I'm saying in a much more wordy way.

Jim: Again, can I be the old guy? In the earliest days, we didn't have anything, and so we unintentionally encouraged backyard chemistry with all these old techniques that I won't go into. They were absolutely desperate, so we cut our teeth on desperate do-it-yourself concoctions until science caught up with it, and made products here. Maybe the remnants of that independent streak still remains.

Anne: Yes, I remember back then that a lot of those independent ones had a lot to do with acids, and that's where we've ended up with these organic acids, in the Formic Pro, or in the oxalic acid products. I remember people used to use sumac berries in their smoker, because that's a very acidic product, or a substance. They used to spray vinegar straight into the entrance, like hot vinegar fumes, and that's acetic acid. It's like they started out very DIY, and then that, basically, has trickled down to the organic acids that are so good for us today in their steady, dependable products.

Jim: Yes, that was exactly what I was trying to say, the do-it-yourselfers, and I was one. Anyway, say what happens now? Give me an idea. If I've got a boomer colony, maybe two deeps and three supers, and it's packed full of bees, and for whatever reasons I missed a mite treatment, what would you do with a big colony that's out of sequence, just quickly?

Anne: I would, up here in New York State, I would give it a Formic Pro treatment, assuming that you are all the way into late July or after. If it's never been treated, it needs to be treated. I am very frustrated, maybe because people are students of older folks whose style was to just treat in September or October. I still am getting calls from people who say, "Yes, I treated," and I asked them when, and they said, "Well, I treated in October," and that was the only time they treated, and by that time, the viruses from the mites are already doing their terrible thing, because the mites got so high. We want the mites to be under control all through the late spring, through the winter, not just one treatment in the middle of fall.

Jim: One thing that's coming through to me, and it's-- Of course, I'm hard-headed, but I have accepted it. If you don't control your mites, then you can't keep bees. You can't keep the same bees long-term. You got to go be starting over again every year.

Anne: Lots of people do that, and they have told me that they've accepted the fact that they have to get new bees every spring, and they totally are owning it, just because they really don't want to do any treatment. I think that, partly, they may not realize that a lot of these treatments are actually organic treatments. In another way, they might just be stubborn people.

Jim: Everybody keeps bees their own way. I mean, as beekeeping isn't a standard thing. There's certainly standard suggestions, but it's not a rigid thing.

Anne: I'd like to say something quickly about drone brood removal, which is about the only significant way you can get rid of mites without chemicals. That, I'm sure you've read about it. Mites want to go into drone brood more than worker brood. If you remove one or two full combs of cap drone brood, every month or so, you could do that three or four times during one season.

You're really removing a significant amount of mites from a hive, but you still may have to do a treatment late in the season. The point is, you're removing it when the drone brood is capped. It's not just a schedule, for instance. I'm going to do it every 24 days. That's not the point. The point is, when they're capped, and the mites are trapped. Hey, that should be the, "When they're capped, the mites are trapped."

Jim: I saw you have that thought. [laughs] Okay. Say, listen, we've rambled all over and discussed a lot, and oh, so much is left out, and people are driving, and can't take notes. Where can someone go universally to get a synopsis of what you and I have talked all around today?

Anne: I'm a real fan of the Honey Bee Health Coalition. They have a lot of good things on their website, and resources to learn about just step-by-step and plain English, and I think that's the best resource.

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Jim: I like it very much. When I log off here, I'll think of about 15 or 20 questions or topics I wish we had discussed, but for now, that's all we can do. Isn't it-- This is that thing where you got to go talk about mites, to go talk about bees. Even if you don't want to learn about mites, you got to do it if you want to learn about bees.

Anne: Yes, they're a fact of life.

Jim: I always enjoy talking to you, Anne. Thanks for your time today so much. Until we do it again.

Anne: Okay, Jim.

Jim: I'll say, "Bye".

Anne: See you later.

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