Pests

Two things to watch out for:

• Parasites that feed on bees

• Bacteria and Viral Infections

Parasites

Varroa Mite

• A Tick, oval shapes, 8 legs, visible to the naked eye, very tiny

• Lives inside the bees body

• Weakens the bee and transmits viruses which will weaken a colony and eventually kill it if left untreated

• Grows rapidly through reproduction

Tracheal Mite

• Can't see with then naked eye

• Lives outside the bees body

• Breeds on the inside of the bees

• Enters the bee through the prothoracic spiracle

• Bees infested with TrachealMites will crawl around in the grass, unable to fly because they cannot get enough oxygen

• Treated with Menthol Pellets

Both are treatable

Deformed Wing Virus: The Wings don't develop and a bee that will never forage

Chemical Treatment

• A pistan or checkmite strips used initially, but are no longer favored treatments

• A piguard or Api Life Var (Thymol) or MAQs (formic acid) more widely and (more wisely) used

• Recently legalized in the US, Oxalic acid, applied as dribble or vaporized

• Other treatments include Apivar, HopGuard

Non Chemical Treatment

Drone Brood Removal

• Green Plastic Frames with Large Cells

  • As soon as brood gets capped, you remove and place in your freezer

  • Can also get bees wax in the size of drone cells and cut to any size you want and place into your own frame

  • Can also uncap instead of freeze, this way you can inspect your pupa and you can see how bad the infestations are

  • Keep track and do it again and see it the % is decreasing, staying the same or decreasing to know how bad your infestation is.

Splits

• Anytime you are not raising brood, mite population isn't increasing.

• Take 1 hive and make 2 or 3 hives from that one hive by splitting them.

• Which ever box doesn't have a Queen that is a chance for a Verroa not to reproduce and die.

• This also cuts down your bee population as well

Queen Restricting

• Restricting the queen to a smaller colony or restricting her all together

• Cage the queen and go brood-less

• Take the Queen and put her on an empty cell, put her under a frame, then remove and freeze that frame

• You will loose honey production and you will loose colony growth

Genetics

• Let the bees take care of it

• They groom each other or do splits on their own

• Hygienic behavior, they will clean out their own effected brood cells.

• You can see the behaviors and characteristics in your bees