Apiary Diary August 2020

[Alastair 8,630]

Found some of these today, new wax.

 

 

 

 

[jamesc 4,924]

16 hours ago, Stoney said:

Certainly done it’s job jimmy.. and now the spring build up varroa battle begins..

what have you decided to use as spring medicine this time round? 

Not sure. Still ruminating.

Three options.

1.  Bayvarol  - instills confidence, but expensive.

2. OA staples- cheap, but a little bit nervous after the last stuff up.

3 Natural selection- no treatement, build up survivor resistance and hope like hell.

First step is to do a mite count, asses the nation.

Then staples, mite count ... continue with staples or call in reinforcements.

[Stoney 1,584]

5 hours ago, jamesc said:

 

Then staples, mite count ... continue with staples or call in reinforcements.

Sounds like a plan to me.. getting  them in sooner rather than later and keeping on the front foot. 

 

[Stoney 1,584]

Spent part of the day today out on the plains with @Maggie James in Leeston.. was a great day learning from her many years of experience producing big fat Italian queens.. armed with some fresh knowledge just in time as I prepare for the spring requeening of my lot.. 

this season I will have the time to do my own and have a great new site for my cell builders beside an unused shearing shed next door that has a lean to roof for those marginal days and plenty of power pollen sources within range...  

who knows what’s ahead of us this season but one things for sure.. positive thinking and adapt and overcome will be the mantra 

[Gino de Graaf 1,030]

Some nice person thought I needed a reduced work load.

[Dennis Crowley 1,351]

On 9/08/2020 at 12:31 PM, jamesc said:

Not sure. Still ruminating.

Three options.

1.  Bayvarol  - instills confidence, but expensive.

2. OA staples- cheap, but a little bit nervous after the last stuff up.

3 Natural selection- no treatement, build up survivor resistance and hope like hell.

First step is to do a mite count, asses the nation.

Then staples, mite count ... continue with staples or call in reinforcements.

Expensive strips depends on how many hives you loose without them I guess.

For the last 5 yrs, after watching someone else do this,every spring and autumn,(except last Autumn where I tried O/X staples) I have been using a combo of Bayvarol and Apivar at the same time. I haven't seen any varroa in my hives, or at least very very very low levels, that I don't stress to much about them. I always treat during kiwi pollination as a preventative and Autumn as a winter treatment. Some times in July August I have used a ox dribble.

I run double 3/4 brood boxes, in each brood box I place 2 bayvarol and 1 Apivar strip, so total strips in 2 brood boxes are 4 Bayvarol and 2 Apivar which is a complete treatment for each box. 

Last Autumn I ran ox staples and lost a few hives and had a few that dwindled away to ###### all, the money I saved was well and truly spent on queens and cells to replace what I lost, not blaming all that on the staples, but I believe they had a big impact. The trouble with ox staples is that they still hit and miss and a lot more research needs to be done before they will have the ability to say" just put this many in here and you will get this results".

Not promising anything just letting you know.

 

 

[Dennis Crowley 1,351]

I have always heard that gull diesel is cheap because you don't get as far with a tank full. So over the last few months I did a wee experiment. I drive a nissan navara ute 2014, 310000ks on the clock and have a lead foot.

I filled the ute up untill the bowser clicked off each time and ran the ute until I got the fuel needle lined up onto the 1/4 fill marker. I did 4 fill ups using Gull and then 4 fill ups using BP. The average of both was the same.

Average ltrs to fill up from the 1/4 marker was 55ltrs, and they both averaged around 536kms traveled. 1 trip on each type of gas was a long run to Auckland and back of around 400kms the other 3 tanks were my usual local running around trips I do.

News you can use.

[ChrisM 1,277]

13 minutes ago, Dennis Crowley said:

in each brood box I place 2 bayvarol and 1 Apivar strip, so total strips in 2 brood boxes are 4 Bayvarol and 2 Apivar which is a complete treatment for each box. 

not wishing to quibble too much. but under the ac veterinary mediclnes act is it permissible to do this? Is it not going against the instructions on the labels of each product and their legal approvals? Essentially going off label for all your treatments? Much is made on the forum and on social media of going "off-label". To be compliant wouldn't you need to use 4 bayvarol and 2 apivar in each box?

[Dennis Crowley 1,351]

1 hour ago, ChrisM said:

not wishing to quibble too much. but under the ac veterinary mediclnes act is it permissible to do this? Is it not going against the instructions on the labels of each product and their legal approvals? Essentially going off label for all your treatments? Much is made on the forum and on social media of going "off-label". To be compliant wouldn't you need to use 4 bayvarol and 2 apivar in each box?

Chatting to a vet, they do use 2 meds at the same time, as to if I should use 4 and 2? as if I placed the bayvarol in one box and the apivar in the other each box is getting a full treatment.

[Maru Hoani 650]

9 hours ago, Dennis Crowley said:

Chatting to a vet, they do use 2 meds at the same time, as to if I should use 4 and 2? as if I placed the bayvarol in one box and the apivar in the other each box is getting a full treatment.

I dunno??? Will the chemicals work together or will it be like having 2 bsyvarol per box and one apivar per box and not be strong enough to kill the mites causing double resistance?

[jamesc 4,924]

The way I read it a few years ago, I think back in the early days of varroa in the US when Keepers were experimenting with treatments in their  bees to kill the critters, they were trying a cocktail of two and three different chemicals. 

Scientists warned that there  was not enough science to know whether the mixture of the two or three  chemicals negated or compromised the effectiveness and usefulness of the one.

The word on the street was that in order not preserve the long term effectiveness of one chemical.... do not mix both.

That seems pretty logical to me.

If one chemical is known to do the job, save the other until you are  against the wall and need a different calibre of silver bullet.

 

 

[Gino de Graaf 1,030]

15 hours ago, Dennis Crowley said:

Expensive strips depends on how many hives you loose without them I guess.

For the last 5 yrs, after watching someone else do this,every spring and autumn,(except last Autumn where I tried O/X staples) I have been using a combo of Bayvarol and Apivar at the same time. I haven't seen any varroa in my hives, or at least very very very low levels, that I don't stress to much about them. I always treat during kiwi pollination as a preventative and Autumn as a winter treatment. Some times in July August I have used a ox dribble.

I run double 3/4 brood boxes, in each brood box I place 2 bayvarol and 1 Apivar strip, so total strips in 2 brood boxes are 4 Bayvarol and 2 Apivar which is a complete treatment for each box. 

 

 

 

Wouldn't it be easier to just lie the strips flat between the boxes? 

[Gino de Graaf 1,030]

2 minutes ago, jamesc said:

The way I read it a few years ago, I think back in the early days of varroa in the US when Keepers were experimenting with treatments in their  bees to kill the critters, they were trying a cocktail of two and three different chemicals. 

Scientists warned that there  was not enough science to know whether the mixture of the two or three  chemicals negated or compromised the effectiveness and usefulness of the one.

The word on the street was that in order not preserve the long term effectiveness of one chemical.... do not mix both.

That seems pretty logical to me.

If one chemical is known to do the job, save the other until you are  against the wall and need a different calibre of silver bullet.

 

 

How about that drench you could be using? Aren't they a combo 

[frazzledfozzle 7,484]

I know Mark Goodwin advocates for using both at the same time so it must be work .

Edited August 11, 2020 by yesbut

[ChrisM 1,277]

I think using two together is probably highly effective. But if Bayvarol is used twice every year and apivar is also used twice every year then the onset of chemical resistance must surely be reached much sooner (?). If some beekeepers do this and have zero losses they may profit from it. But when the chemicals no longer work that might affect everyone. 

The way I imagine it is that if a single mite survives the cocktail only half treated by each treatment (sub-lethal doses) then that mite can go on to help develop a super mite that is able to tolerate higher and higher doses with a new mite in development every 6 months. In that case treatment twice a year with both will potentially accelerate forwards the date when we may effectively lose these treatments.

 

If that is correct, then it could be seen as a selfish move in a race to the bottom?

 

[yesbut 6,232]

4 hours ago, ChrisM said:

 it could be seen as a selfish move in a race to the bottom?

This applies to the whole of society, so why worry about Dennis ?

[ChrisM 1,277]

1 hour ago, yesbut said:

This applies to the whole of society, so why worry about Dennis ?

true. but the whole of society is permitted to read this (it is a public forum) and if everyone says to rotate your treatments to avoid resistance, but nobody does, then it becomes a situation of "do as I say, not as I do". When privately beekeepers at the highest level ignore this rotation mantra it is very misleading for beginners(?). Since we are quite happy in the Philbee camp using OAG tapes, I have no agenda either way about what people do with the synthetic strips.

 

A lot people have mentioned to me Mark Goodwin's influence from ~20 years ago with respect to the cocktail approach. It would be good for him to set the record straight, if that's correct, if he is misquoted, if he has changed his mind, if this was before all the viruses came in via semen imports. I don't really mind what the final advice is, but it does seem a very cloudy area, in what is meant to be our first and foremost concern to keep all NZ colonies alive (Varroa).

[Dennis Crowley 1,351]

I forgot to say at the start of my post, "I have been experimenting with".

Now me and all the OXer's are doing scientific studies on varroa treatments.

 

[Dennis Crowley 1,351]

5 minutes ago, ChrisM said:

A lot people have mentioned to me Mark Goodwin's influence from ~20 years ago with respect to the cocktail approach

I,m talking to Mark tomorrow I will ask him about my "experiment"

[john berry 5,636]

Resistance starts with one or two individual varoa  and then they spread because they are survivors. The theory behind using two different products is that those one or two individuals will be killed off by the other product and so never go on to reproduce and spread.

On the other hand not all chemicals are compatible and combining them can make them ineffective or you can have a synergistic effect that makes them even more potent against the varoa or possibly the bee itself. 

In theory anyway combining two varoa chemicals should make it a lot harder for the varoa to become resistant.

[Jamo 534]

9 hours ago, ChrisM said:

I think using two together is probably highly effective. But if Bayvarol is used twice every year and apivar is also used twice every year then the onset of chemical resistance must surely be reached much sooner (?). If some beekeepers do this and have zero losses they may profit from it. But when the chemicals no longer work that might affect everyone. 

The way I imagine it is that if a single mite survives the cocktail only half treated by each treatment (sub-lethal doses) then that mite can go on to help develop a super mite that is able to tolerate higher and higher doses with a new mite in development every 6 months. In that case treatment twice a year with both will potentially accelerate forwards the date when we may effectively lose these treatments.

 

If that is correct, then it could be seen as a selfish move in a race to the bottom?

 

Another way to think about this issue is that if any mites develop resistance to one chemical then the other one should take them out before they have the chance to bread up and spread about. Maybe this is a positive rarther than a negative for other neighboring beekeepers. My opinion is if you are going to treat with 2 chemicals you need a full dose of each so quite spendy. 

[Alastair 8,630]

8 minutes ago, john berry said:

The theory behind using two different products is that those one or two individuals will be killed off by the other product and so never go on to reproduce and spread.

 

Will this theory still work when the products are used at only 1/2 strength?

[Dave Black 3,520]

9 hours ago, ChrisM said:

But if Bayvarol is used twice every year and apivar is also used twice every year then the onset of chemical resistance must surely be reached much sooner (?). If some beekeepers do this and have zero losses they may profit from it. But when the chemicals no longer work that might affect everyone.

With respect, this is very confused post (all of it). Using low dose treatments can be a problem, but not because it ‘promotes’ resistance. Resistance is like Lotto; sooner or later the right ‘get-out-jail’ number will turn up. Resistance might arise even when you are not treating at all. What a low dose will do is allow a resistance to multiply. Rotation of treatments means that, even if one number comes up, nek-minute, you’ll need another because I’ve added another lock.  Combining treatments with different modes of action doesn’t increase the possibility of resistance, it decreases it. The probability of two different sets of changes arising simultaneously is much lower. However, when this is done (and it’s done often) the drugs need to be at full dose. ( @Dennis Crowley) The reason it’s only done when it’s important is that you’ve just doubled the cost of your treatment; it’s not a way of saving money.

 

I have written about resistance many times here; some relevant stuff still sits in the beyond Bee Books blog. In 20 years a lot of us have learnt things and perhaps changed our approach to some things - lets hope so anyway.

[ChrisM 1,277]

5 minutes ago, Dave Black said:

With respect, this is very confused post (all of it). Using low dose treatments can be a problem, but not because it ‘promotes’ resistance. Resistance is like Lotto; sooner or later the right ‘get-out-jail’ number will turn up. Resistance might arise even when you are not treating at all. What a low dose will do is allow a resistance to multiply. Rotation of treatments means that, even if one number comes up, nek-minute, you’ll need another because I’ve added another lock.  Combining treatments with different modes of action doesn’t increase the possibility of resistance, it decreases it. The probability of two different sets of changes arising simultaneously is much lower. However, when this is done (and it’s done often) the drugs need to be at full dose. ( @Dennis Crowley) The reason it’s only done when it’s important is that you’ve just doubled the cost of your treatment; it’s not a way of saving money.

 

I have written about resistance many times here; some relevant stuff still sits in the beyond Bee Books blog. In 20 years a lot of us have learnt things and perhaps changed our approach to some things - lets hope so anyway.

 

Hmm well, with a double brood box hive there are in effect two apivar strips somewhere in the hive for a full treatment of one brood box and there are four strips of Bayvarol somewhere in the hive for a full treatment in the other brood box.

So, is that full treatment for two boxes(?).

Does it really matter how the strips are dealt out?

So then what is defined as full dose?

 

If I have a horizontal format hive with say 20 frames of brood, what is the best way for me to treat it if money is no object? What is a full treatment for such a hive?

 

Why do many people bang on about alternating apivar and bayvarol treatments and is that not important if both are being used together? 

 

Just seeking clarity and best practise..

 

[Alastair 8,630]

Well according to this, the ultimate would be a full dose of the two, twice yearly. Which for a 2 brood box hive will cost something around $64 annually. Rather a lot of money when you consider the uproar that happened when hive levy went up to $1.30.

 

Since $64 won't work for a lot of folks, and a low dose has been suggested to be potentially problematic, my view is to fall back on mainstream practice, which is to use one product at label strength, alternated each time.