Im a firm believer “less interference” and doing anything possible to help create an increase of Propolis amongst the hives. I started experimenting with log hives a few years ago. The log hive bees produced more propolis and honestly just look way healthier and are more active. I will always believe that Propolis production is a cure all for what ales bees.

Always so happy to get another (rare!) video from you folks. Always so well presented! Also, took that lip sting like a boss 😎

The most important statement in this video is your use of the phrase “as part of an Integrated Pest Management system for the bees.” There is rarely ever one quick trick or cure for pest problems in agriculture of any kind so having techniques that combine even in a small way to reduce pest pressure does multiple things for the colony health and the beekeeper’s mental health. I have often called honey bees the “gateway drug to ecological thinking” since the observations through hive monitoring and management are such keys to understanding the small and large changes in the world around us. These supplemental IPM tasks in the video are great methods to keep a beekeeper engaged and really focused on their colonies throughout the entire year. Brood-less periods, monitoring techniques, selection for queen stock that has done well in your micro climate, management style and with the mites are all key to colony success. Always love your videos. They have educated me well over the years even if I still can’t pronounce Guelph….

Glad to see another video from you all. I have been doing a mite count twice a year and laying a paper towel soaked in 2 to 1 sugar syrup mixed with oxalic acid. I just lay it on top of the frames and put the hive cover back on. In a few weeks it's completely gone and dispersed throughout the hive. I will try the shallow frame in a deep hive though. I like that idea. Great to see you guys again.

Great tips! Thanks for sharing

Thanks for posting. I must admit I was disappointed to find out none of the methods replace miteacides.

Greetings from the Blue Mountains outside Sydney Australia. I am a Queen breeder. I have been watching your excellent videos for some years now. Varroa came quite close to my part of the world. I am constantly checking my hives. So far no mites............I know that is not going to be the case in the future. SO! I'm researching alternative treatment methods. I understand that I will be facing the use of a miticide. I do like the idea of what we call an Ideal frame ( half depth ) allowing the bees to build drone comb below worker comb. That is a simple solution. I have reduced my apiaries down to one and drastically reduced the number of hives. I know that it will be a steep learning curve. Can I stay the course...................I hope so. Thank you for this excellent video. It helps.

Well done. Thank you

Thank you sir for sharing.

LOL! You are a much better man than I. If I had gotten stung on the lip, I would have taken off running.

So nice Sir .. Good methods 👍

You brave a kiss in the lip better than I, Paul. Thanks as always for the great videos.

Counting varroa mites is interesting, but it does not rid you of them. That can be done if the hive design is both humid and well insulated. If you change the hive environment by changing its design features you can be varroa treatment free. You just need to make an environment that reduces the varroa replacement value over each generation. This is not so hard. Forget chemicals. Honey bees in Cuba and South America have apparently learned to deal with it. The reason is likely to be that the climate is hot and humid. The question is how far north will it go in Australia where it is now resident. The propensity for varroa to die away in a humid hive was found out by accident when a laboratory hive was accidentally left at a higher humidity than others and that one lost its varroa. The precise mechanism of varroa destruction by high humidity remains a mystery. A standard bee hive entrance at the floor level with ventilation at the top causes a cooling stack (or flue) effect internally. This cools the hive in winter and takes away its humidity all year. The temperature difference in winter between inside and out is greater as is the ventilation, when it is not needed, but less so in the summer when it is. Trickle top cross bee entry and ventilation in a beehive rather than bottom entry causes it to be more humid allowing a bucket of humidity to form and which also appears to be controllable by the bees, because when the outside ambient temperature falls at night the humidity rises by up to 20% points in a top entry hive. I invite you to try this. The only thing you have to lose is your varroa. The propensity for varroa to die away in a warm hive is due to the time that a bee pupa takes to hatch which varies between 10 days (35C.) and 15 days (31C.) which depends on when and where it is in the brood nest. A highly insulated external hive envelope serves to keep the brood temperature up throughout the hive and over time, allowing the bees to hatch quicker and therefore for the varroa to not have enough time to mature in the cells. Winter in the UK is varroa breeding heaven, but insulation confounds them and reduces the winter stores consumption to about half, as a bonus. The DIY ZEST hive is made from aerated concrete blocks which have 39 times more Resistance (R) to the passage of heat than a thin walled wood hive has and consequently is functionally free of varroa. If you want to know more about varroa free hive design go to the ZEST web page, and read the free E-Book going to pages 21 to 24 and 50 where the mechanism for varroa free will be revealed. There is a U-tube that you may also want to view titled “Build your own bee hive-heathy bees-zest hive”.

Great information!!

I'm really confused about the screened bottom board's supposed effect, we have two hives with screened bottom boards and we coated some paper in vaseline and left that in there a good while, never saw a single mite on either one all summer, just a whole lot of wax moths... and our biggest producer (which we figured would have been the mitiest given that they're PACKED with bees) had one mite when we did a mite wash but I'm glad we treated everyone with Apivar anyways because the hive next to it that also had a bottom board was a mite bomb according to what we found on the screens a week after putting in the strips. The hive we tested had maybe a dozen dead mites, the other one had too many to casually count. I'm gonna have to go watch that video again on screened bottom boards again, even though I was sure I'd looked at it before.

We, my bee club, are trying to use rhubarb leaves (they contain oxalic acid) to separate layers in the hive to control mites. The bees chew the leaves and release the oxalic acid and kill the mites. We have no final determination on the effectiveness of the treatment but it is a natural treatment.

Thank you

I use the method recommended by Randy Oliver of Scientific Beekeeping, oxalic acid extended release strips.

When can you harvest the honey after the spring treatment?

I put double medium boxes with only 1 layer of 10 medium frames on upper 2nd box. They seem to be able to cluster tighter and stay warmer. They build comb along the bottom.

What about using Stratiolaelaps scimitus (Hypoaspis miles) which eat, bite off the legs and punch holes in the varroa mites. It works well when combined with small cell, drone, and screen bottom boards.

For the drone removal method can you also just remove drone brood that builds in the hive normally? And is there a minimal amount of drone brood that should be left in the hive or can most of it be removed?

What are your thoughts, regarding queen rearing and using these techniques. Isn't there a possibility that you are decreasing the gene pool, whereby there may not be enough drones in the area, especially if other beekeepers used the same technique.

When i first started beekeeping several years ago there was “promising talk” of varroa baiting for control. Has there been any advance in research along that front?

I’ve found your videos extremely helpful, but I run into some points of conflict. Many sources say going into colonies too often upsets the bees, but you seem to be in them really often; e.g. checking often enough to know when eggs are laid. Are we overly worried about going in too often? Thanks for the info you provide!

Hello, I would like you to tell me what treatment is used for varroa, if you have used amitraz? and how is the treatment with amitraz done?

Hello I also use the screen bottom board an love them . Also I use the screen top inter cover . A question have you ever done any study on the placement of the drone frame to see if the placement of the frame has anything to do with how many mites it collects at different locations. Also I run a deep an a medium brood boxes so what would your thought about using one in each box . Never tried that just a thought. Thanks for your information. THANKS

If you take pepcid ac max (famotidine 20mg) before you play with bees, then the sting won't swell or hurt. Just a lil poke. I was stung by 43 bees in Sept 2022 when I dropped a hive. I never reacted in any way. Before I started taking famotidine, I would swell up all over for over a week and feel like I had the flu. But now, I have no reaction.

dawn dishsoap as a better alternate to alcohol wash,im trying the drone frame in a queen isolation frame holder, then after they emerge 2-3 day old drones get washed for mite count,and either formic pro and or OXALIC ACID,...later in fall drone population fades...mites hop onto workers, more predominately,

Dr. Zachary Lamas Interview by Frederick Dunn has some good information on drone and mites and how to use a queen cage to get a brood break and to confine the drones to the one frame.

That would be most effective approach using different methodes at once to fight varroa. But its hard to trace which methode was most effective and which absolutely not.

What do these mtes look like, Do they kill the bees? Sorry if silly questions I am not a bee keeper but am fascinated . Thanks for posting and sharing.

Hi how do mites know it will be a drone brood and not female worker ? Thanks

I've used pseudoscorpions for the last four years and I don't have mites. Also I personally as a hobby beekeeper neglect my bees, by neglect I mean that I don't go into the brood box and instead of weekly checks I do monthly. Also no other beekeeper gets anywhere near my bees and if I'm going to a communal apiary then I'm not going to wear anything that is likely to come into contact with my bees. I live in the Tyne Valley in North East England. It's cold, it's permanently raining, it's always windy and my apiary sits on a North facing slope.

What about book scorpions? Has anyone tried introducing these into beehives?

saya peternak lebah melyfera dari indonesia.. bagaimana atau obat apa untuk membunuh varoa? terima kasih

More updates on oil of oregano. It works!

I wouldn’t call these “alternative“ methods…. As they aren’t options that can be chosen instead. These are “complementary” methods as they should be incorporated in your usage of chemical means - Which are most clearly the necessary means by controlling mites in the hive. It needs to be expressed that these chemical methods can be used on their own.… Whereas these complementary methods need to be used in conjunction with the chemical ones.

I believe that any program should include the help to bumblebee so the transmission of mites in decreased.

Anyone hear of the bees using a natural oil like olive oil) to protect themselves from the mites. A keeper in the UK says they will naturally use it.

I had a swarm I caught this summer with a very high mite load, when I checked drone brood in August I was finding some cells with 7 varroa - would only 2-3 of these be offspring? Would you have more than one varroa lay in the same drone brood cell? See link kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hc12frWmzd2zXWQ.htmlsi=JnHV9O-WZ3n0KHn5

Mites can’t walk up the wooden side of the screen board? I thought you had to use sticky bottom board liner?

Has anyone tried breeding mites that haven't exparanced treatments for several generations. Collect the mites and seperate them according to sex. Then after mites treatment introduce the male mites to introduce a genome that has no resistance to treatments. Maybe find a way that shortens the life of the male mites. Just do it when resistance is becoming prevelant. And some time after treatment

does anyone lightly dust with icing sugar? I havent done it, but have read that it encourages grooming so helps them naturally rid themselves of the mite. Also, i have heard smoking with the birch poly pore mushroom and rosemary helps increase the bees immune system as well as providing sunflowers for them to collect pollen from, as it is packed with antioxidants to strengthen their immunity. I hate the use of these chemicals, as it must ultimately weaken the bees and prevent a natural response and ultimate cure to this accursed pest. Some eastern European countries did not treat their bees with chemicals and now have robust colonies that are much better at dealing with them. How are the wild bee colonies coping? ( if any are left, that is)

What about caging the queen for a month, then treating and then letting her go back to laying

I would say that screen-boards are one of a host of way to monitor that are extremely unreliable. Alcohol wash with very high % alcohol is the only reliable method.

What's the point of destroying so many bee hives, if the Verona Virus can also be spread by the wild bee population?

What happens in nature with mites?

It costs a lot of honey to make comb that is being thrown away

Türkçesi yokmu

The answer for eradicating the Verona mite is Chris Bowen, the minister for Climate Change. Since Bowen knows how to tame the climate, the Verona Mite won't stand a chance against that mighty warrior.

I wish someone could incarnate as a bee and teach me to bite and kill a tick

I think he got bit on the lip cause they heard him talking about killing off the drones.

I worry that we are breeding weak bees