Introduction to Varroa Mites and Integrated Pest Management
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- This is the first in a series of short videos from the Honey Bee Health Coalition on how to manage varroa mites successfully. Whether you have a few colonies or you manage large apiaries, the videos show practical steps you can use to better control varroa mites.
Why should you effectively manage varroa mites in your honey bee colonies? Every honey bee colony in North America either has varroa mites or will in just a few months. When colonies are not treated, or are treated ineffectively, they weaken and may be more susceptible to other negative factors, such as pesticide damage, virus infections, and other maladies. Failure to control mites endangers not only your colonies but also colonies in other apiaries and feral honey bees in your area. Widespread colony deaths can cause major economic damage for beekeepers and harm essential agricultural pollination services.
The most effective strategy is Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, a proactive common-sense approach that seeks to control varroa mites before they reach population levels that harm the colony. IPM involves using a variety of practices and controls (cultural, physical, biological, and chemical) as appropriate.
The other videos in this series show you how to use two methods for monitoring for varroa mites as well as several treatment methods.
LINKS:
The Honey Bee Health Coalition: honeybeehealth...
More varroa resources: honeybeehealth...
All very interesting, thank you!
Thank you for the past few weeks my bee colony's Where dying and I don't
Screened bottom boards and powered sugar
"Honey Bees are not capable of surviving varroa infestations on their own"? That's demonstrably incorrect...
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. 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 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 causes it to be more humid and 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. 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. Unfortunately in Australia and USA you have a timber framed housing system generally and do not have an aerated concrete block manufacturing process as we do in the UK. The 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”.
With an increase in humidity/temperature, don't you run into mold issues? Also, what if you live in a hotter climate? Won't the bees overheat?
@@privateassman8839 Mould is caused when water vapour (a gas) as Relative Humidity (RH) is raised to 100% . The water vapour then condenses (changes its state to water) on any colder surface, where mold will form. Insulation prevents the surfaces getting cold enough to turn humidity (a gas) into water (a liquid) so mold does not form.
The bees have the management techniques to moderate the temperature downwards in hot conditions.
Florida is as hot and humid as it gets and the mite problems are worse due to a longer brood rearing time. I don't believe your assessments are accurate.
Honeybees in Cuba and south America are Africanized which have a biologically shorter brood cycle not allowing the mites to reproduce effectively.
Solom o‘zbekiston respublikasi ua-cam.com/video/d0a9Kmo4zUU/v-deo.html
Know why
Decent information but the images kept repeating so often it was distracting. I would have liked a more orderly explanation of the steps in IPM.
Australia has lost control of its varroa infestation. Your attempted solutions have all been tried before without success elsewhere in the world. It can only and easily be solved by a hive redesign.
The varroa problem lays in the thin walled hive designs that are universally deployed and which support the life cycle of varroa in 2 ways.
1. Low humidity. It is well known that varroa do not thrive in a humid environment. The precise mechanism is unknown, but it is an observed result.
With a bee entry at the bottom of the brood chamber the natural (heavier) humidity runs out the entrance. Putting the entrance at the top of the brood will form a bucket of humidity.
2. Low insulation. A thin walled hive has very little insulation value and the temperature of the brood varies over the time of day and season.
Above 37deg.c. and below 29deg.c. the pupa die.
At 35deg.c. the pupa takes 10-11 days to hatch with 96-98 surviving.
At 31 deg.c. the pupa takes 14-15 days to hatch with 89-100% surviving.
Thin walled hives do not maintain a constant and high temperature internally that the bee pupa need to hatch quickly, allowing time for more varroa mites to hatch from each cell in which they are laid. A male first, and then a female, every thirty hours after that.
I suggest that you utilize the excellent aerated concrete blocks that have for sale in Australia to make a ZEST DIY horizontal hive and reduce the varroa replacement rate to below stable.
There is a free E-book on the ZEST hive webpage which shows how to do your own DIY version. Try it. You have nothing to lose, except your varroa.