This colony was INFESTED with mites. Did the APIVAR treatment work?
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- Опубліковано 17 жов 2024
- Was APIVAR effective in treating an infested colony of honeybees for varroa mites? Watch and see!
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@brucesbees is a beekeeping channel, a vlog of sorts. Here we discuss apis mellifera, aka the honeybee. We give people a look into our sideliner beekeeping operation. We share successes and failures. We show how we feed bees and treat bees for pests, such as varroa mites, small hive beetles and others. I am not a treatment free beekeeper though at one time I thought I wanted to be. We also discus things that are important to us that I think apply to beginning beekeepers and more seasoned beekeepers alike. We also show the beekeeping techniques we use to manage the bees and harvest our honey and sell our honey. We talk about beekeeping equipment and tools. At times we also catch swarms of bees and have even done a few cutouts, though I usually leave that for the professionals. This is not Beekeeping 101, though hopefully the information here is useful. As my good friend @Mike Barry says, this is not a necessarily a "how to" channel. It's a "how I do" channel. I hope you will continue to join us as we continue to perform hive inspections, discuss important matters in the beekeeping world, meet other beekeepers, perform splits, grow our operation and just continue down the path of this wonderful beekeeping adventure. Let's GO!!!
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Great demonstration and nice work knocking mite counts down. We just finished our round of treatment and placing pollen patties here in California. Heatwave this week🥵
Wow man. Very hot out there! Stay cool and hydrate!
Great Job, Just noticed you are only 1,000k Subscribers from 18k, and only 3k from 20k! Hope to see the numbers go up! God bless
Nice Bruce. Glad to see that Apivar is apparently still working.
This colony did still have a few but I tested 12 other colonies and had a total of 4 mites in those 12. 10 of the 12 had 0.
Glad to see those numbers coming down!
Good stuff Bruce. I've had decent results from Apivar. Probably do some washes once I'm done traveling for work and actually home.
Great video Bruce. I've always had good results using Apivar in August and follow up with OA vapor in Nov, Dec and Jan. Will probably switch up next year but Apivar been "berry berry good....to me". 😆
Up North here…Apivar goes in after the fall pull…40 days later 3 oav treatments each 5 days apart…then wrap and insulate for winter
Good video Bruce. Every time I think wow I don't need my gloves I get stung. Looks like the same for you. I hope the apivar works well for you. I will be putting it in all my colonies this Friday. It's my third season and I have been using o/a vapor the month of August and then apivar September into October while I feed. So far so good, low mites and 0 lost colonies. Not sure what you do but on day 21 I pull the apivar and I scratch it up good with my hive tool to possibly reactivate it. Good luck with your bees this fall.
Good stuff. Best wishes for your continued success.
Only the most Apivar resistant mites remain now. Will you have to do something else?
no matter what treatment I use Oxalic Acid vapor after it.
I will most likely hit them again in a couple of months. Will probably use OA around thanksgiving time. May try Apiguard. Not sure if anything is 💯 every time but this truly knocked them back. Just checked my 7 backyard hives. Washed 3 mites in one colony. The other 6 washed zero.
Bruce, good job. Had the Apivar been in for 6 weeks? I’ve always had good luck with Apivar but it is a little pricey and I think that’s because of Mann Lake.
Yes it had been in for 6 weeks. I think the price is pretty consistent across the board. Unfortunately.
Great vid in southern NSW here in Australia varroa has turned up and I’ll have to start doing treatment at some stage now.
I imagine it is quite stressful for beekeepers over there. Hopefully you guys can get things under control soon.
different times are ahead. Is it much work keeping a lid on the varroa mites? Have you lost any colonies to them do the mites are they attracted to some hives more then others?
@fanatamon it seems like there are always some that have more mites than others. It is tough to keep them under control for sure. It is critical to use IPM (Integrated Pest Management) to try a stay on top of them. I imagine there will be a difficult learning curve in Australia but you will figure it out. It is hard to tell if a hive does due to mites because it is a slow process. Fortunately the rest of the world has been dealing with mites for many years so hopefully you guys can get ahead of the curve more quickly than other countries did.
Thanks Bruce I really appreciate your knowledge on this.
Great video Bruce! It is good to see that Apivar works well for you too! I love the design of your bee suit. What brand is it?
Guardian Bee pullover. I really like it.
Great demo Bruce and good kill. Well more than 50% kill.
Do you find the easy check bottle leaky? I did some washes today and the alcohol was all over the place.
A little but nothing significant. Has seemed to work fine.
Thanks, just one more thing in what turned out to be a pretty bad day. One hive had a 15% mite load and my best hive had a 7%. The rest are actually ok. I'm really bummed out right now. I guess I'll have to pull the supers and bring out the Apivar.
If temps are ok you can use Formic Pro with honey supers on.
It was 95 today 😂
Yup definitely too hot.
Did you say, 1\3 cup plus a few? Instead of 1\2 cup? What is your idea behind that?
Apivar coming out now. Should have my Instavap on Tuesday, gonna give them a few rounds of OA and do my checks after that. Hope to have them knocked out pretty good by then.
I have always had great luck with apivar , this year I’m trying just OA , hopefully I get good results
Hope you have good results as well.
Hi from Ukraine) We`ve just checked our hives using this method
Good deal. What did you find?
@@brucesbees two mites, and I`m satisfied with it. Our scheme is working. In spring it is oxal acid (pouring between frames), in the end of a summer it is strips with Flumethrin . And control treatment in the middle of an autumn- pouring with Bipin
The bees seem in a much better mood this time around.
Yes they are much calmer now.
Posted a similar video a few days ago. Apivar wasn't great for me this year. One hive went from a mite wash of 6 to a 5 and another went from a 5 to a 3. That was with Dawn Ultra. I'm currently following up with Apiguard now that it's low 90s and after 3 days the bottom board has hundreds of mites on it.
That’s why we check. Good stuff.
Thanks.
Did you count the bees afterwards seemed like more than 300
I didn’t have a 1/2 measuring cup. So it was hopefully around a 1/2 cup. Actually more I imagine.
@@brucesbees got ya... I thought so... too bad you can’t go back and count the bees
I could have done that but that can be time consuming. As long as I had at least 300 I was good.
Mite numbers will bounce back quickly in my opinion.. 5 is pretty high
Yeah we’re gonna stay on them. This was the only hive that I checked that had a significant number of mites though still under threshold. Remember that they were at 16 mites before treatment. At Honey Hill Farm I washed one mite total in 5 colonies. And yesterday afternoon in my backyard Apimaye colonies I washed 3 mites total in 7 colonies. All 3 mites were in one colony so the other 6 washed zero. Overall pleased with the Apivar. But probably going to hit them with something else in a month or two and then maybe OA in the winter.
Have you seen a change in attitude in the yard since you started treating? Are they less aggressive???
Overall my bees are less defensive now. Not sure why. But it is nice.
I have heard high mite load makes them moody.
I imagine it does. I’m sure it is very aggravating to the bees.
Have you ever tried Taktic?
Bovitraz. Yes. Currently have some on some colonies. But really can’t share the “off label” stuff on this platform.
@@brucesbees 🫣🤫😆
I did 10 hives with it. One hive started with 9 mites the other with 4 using the dawn wash method. Zero mites on the one that had 9 and 1 mite on the on the one that had 4. I didn’t check anymore after those numbers, figured no sense in killing any more bees
@@raydeese8859 what was your method of application?
Shop towels (cut roll in half )with 4 oz bovitraz and 10 oz canola oil. I put it in an coffee can and let towels soak up liquid. I made sure to mix solution well before I put the towels in. Leave on 7 days
Do the bees you wash die?
Yes. But it is a minimal number and worth it if it can save the overall colony. It is the only way to accurately assess mite infestations and effectiveness of treatments.
Is this a troll comment?
If so, after being washed they are put out to dry and later returned to the hive smelling all fresh.
I tried Apivar and lost 28 hives from Mites. Oxalic Acid does much better
There are different approaches. OA is effective is used properly. I will probably use it when there is less brood. Have had good success using Apivar/Amitraz products. You have to do what works best for you. Glad you are having success with the OA.
Have you done mite washes to measure effectiveness? I have not done it much in the past but am starting to do the washes more. I want to get an idea of whether or not treatments are actually working. I have also used OA in the past. I am not opposed to it at all.
Apivar recommends repositioning and scratching the strips after 3 weeks to sort of reactivate them for more efficient mite knock down. It takes more time but may be more effective. Link to the Instructions (Last title in Yellow on the second page of the PDF discusses this) www.betterbee.com/images/Apivar-Instructions-USA-2018.pdf
Sounds like a good idea but I just don’t have the time do that.