Jose Thayil

I put my treatments in at end of March for about 8 weeks which takes it to about end of May. But thats not a definite. You will need to assess the hive and see how the general health of the hive is. If its deteriorating early then you need to treat early. When the bee start filling the brood nest with honey and start reducing brood area in preparation for winter you know its time to put your treatments in. The timing of treatment varies depending on where you live and all. Some places get a longer summer and some get a longer winter.

I do get away with one treatment for my Carniolan hives. They do have a brood break in winter though. So by the time the autumn treatments come out of the hive there is no brood in the hives. They only start raising brood again in early spring/late winter,so there is no chance of varroa to breed in the hives. As long as most of the beekeepers around you treat their hives around the same time and there is no re invasion of varroa into the treated hives it works well. With Italians there is always some brood in the hive through out the winter. But if the daughter queens from my breeder show

The hive does show some varroa resistance. You can see bees opening brood cells with pupae with purple eye which is typical VSH behaviour. The hive does have less varroa compared to other hives at the end of the season. I think we maybe able to get away with one treatment a year but I haven't tried it yet though. I will see how her daughters do and try one treatment in autumn with a few hives and see how they do.

Last season queen open mated in Hamilton. She did very well last season and her bees looks like she mated with Italian drones mostly. Has a very good brood pattern too. Her mother was one of the queens from the VSH program.

I got some nice Italian queen picture coming soon.