Varroa Management

Allow me to start with an excellent assessment by Bee Culture’s Phil Craft (BC July 2015):

Perhaps beekeepers who have come to the craft in the last few decades aren’t aware of the effect varroa had when it first arrived on this continent and of how it earned its full name, Varroa destructor. Whatever the reason, every year, beekeepers all over the country lose colonies to mites and the viruses of which they are carriers, and they never know what hit them. They blame pesticides,or CCD, or habitat loss, and sometimes those really are causes, or at least significant factors. However, too, too often, the underlying cause is a lack of effective management, which allows a mite infestation to overwhelm a colony or weaken it to the point that it succumbs easily to other stressors. The most frustrating thing about these losses is that they don’t have to happen.

Watch Dennis vanEngelsdorp explain why mite management is critical for colony survival, and which methods work or don’t at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bm3Y4t1NwQ

Oxalic Acid: Part 1- Questions, Answers, and More Questions

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Powdered Sugar Dusting – Sweet and Safe, but Does it Really Work? Part 3

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The Learning Curve – Part 4: The Synthetic Miticides

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Powdered Sugar Dusting – Sweet and Safe, but Does it Really Work? Part 2

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The Learning Curve – Part 3: The Natural Miticides

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Powdered Sugar Dusting – Sweet and Safe, but Does it Really Work? Part 1

Powdered Sugar Dusting – Sweet and Safe, but Does it Really Work? Part 1 By Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First Published in ABJ in Dec. 2008 Updated 9 March 2017 The dusting of colonies with powdered sugar as a means of varroa control has become quite popular with hobbyists. Unfortunately, there is precious little published data […]

The Learning Curve – Part 2: Killing Mites without Killing Your Bees

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The Learning Curve – Part 1: 2009 Progress Report

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Trial of HoneySuperCell® Small Cell Combs

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Miticides 2011

First published in: American Bee Journal February 2011

Miticides 2011 Randy Oliver ScientificBeekeeping.com First published in American Bee Journal February 2011 Colony health and production these days is largely a function of varroa levels in the hives—the more mites, the more problems. It is no longer a matter of simply knocking the mites back once a year with a “silver bullet”—it is becoming […]

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