[worldvoyageur]

I grew up on a farm on which the apiary and all connected with it was a major part of the farm's output. Honey, beeswax, nukes (a queen and 10K or so worker bees as a starter colony, sold to other apiaries in the spring if they'd had too many winter losses), fertilizing services (drop a couple colonies off at a berry farm after dark, pick the colonies up two weeks later, profit!) and other products.

It's been over ten years since I spent any serious time with bees, but the bees themselves did a great job on the varroa mites. Sentinel bees at the hive entrance would pick the mites off the incoming bees. The problem was if the colony had a solid floor the mites would just climb back onto the next bee that passed nearby. If the solid colony floor was replaced with a mesh, the mites would fall through to the ground below while the bees could still go about their business.

We would still sometimes treat for varroa, but making it easier for the bees to handle varroa how they had evolved to was the first line of defence.

This was Canada, regular Italian bees, hard winter kills of whatever wasn't properly winterized.

[ProllyInfamous]

Instead of letting the Varroa destructor (its scientific name, representative of its devistation) fall to the ground, place an oiltrap below the mesh/screening.

And then those V. destructor can fucking drown.

"See you in hell, tell'em who sent you you little inbred pancake bastards..."

[•] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varroa_destructor> [•]

–Former Beekeeper (Bush-method, with Illinois mediums and screened oiltraps)

[rolph]

a mesh bottom board, is one part of an integrated plan.

varroa mites are obligate to brood, so interruption of brood cycle should be integrated into your cultural plan. here we are on the edge of swarming season, which is perfect time for artificial splits of hives.

you intercept swarming by moving roughly half the bees and the queen into a "package", and removing brood from the original hive except for one frame of brood. rehive the artificial swarm after 2 or three days.

this creates a break in brood cycle, allows adult bees to clean and shake free of mites, interrupts the mite brood cycle, and mitigates swarm loss.

some will cage the queen to break brood cycle however this is stressful, and must be accompanied by more hive space, or reduction of bee population.

[lostlogin]

A harsh winter probably helps with this. Where I am there is brood year round.

[rolph]

this is why you enforce a no brood condition by removing brood, and by rehiving your split into a new hive,with no brood.

the original hive can be kept as a queenless hive, and they will make replacement queens, if you keep a frame of brood.

if you get a gravid queen from the original hive, you can force broodless period when rehiving to a clean hive, and both sides of the split greatly reduce mite population.

if you have year round brood conditions, these maneuvers will be essential to mitigating varroa. you should also look at oxalic acid[careful!] as a mite deterrent.

[lostlogin]

Yes, this is my strategy, OA going in today. Auckland is warm and damp, so winter give health is a challenge.

[dang]

This is one for https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights!

(I mention this so more people can know the list exists. All are welcome to let us know at [e-mail] when you see comments we should add!)

[thisislife2]

Suggestion - instead of email, perhaps you can monitor which comments are favourited frequently and then curate the highlights from it? (I frequently do this when something is really insightful / useful to me). Making it easier to "favourite" a comment would also help here (currently it is an unnecessary 2-click process).

[dang]

Yes that's on the list!

> Making it easier to "favourite" a comment would also help here (currently it is an unnecessary 2-click process).

Probably also a good idea.

[achierius]

> We would still sometimes treat for varroa, but making it easier for the bees to handle varroa how they had evolved to was the first line of defence

I thought this was very dependent on the species -- European honeybees did not evolve to deal with varroa mites, because the mites originated in Asia. Asian honeybees, and honeybees bred with them, do have better ways of dealing with the mite; you said regular Italian bees, were they really not hybridized?

I don't have any actual field experience here, just curious!

[worldvoyageur]

I don't really know the bee science, but a) our bees were just the generic European bees and b) the bees on sentinel duty at the hive entrance were pretty good at noticing whatever didn't belong. Varroa mites are very noticeable, especially at the bee scale.

That said, varroa absolutely could overwhelm a colony. Then you had to report it, burn the infected colonies and wait for the inspectors. Not fun.

[worldvoyageur]

Update: we'd burn and call the inspectors for foul brood, not varroa. Foul brood is a nasty, fatal and highly contagious bacterial infection.

[kaikai]

One of the characteristics bee breeders look for is hygiene- more hygienic bees will remove more of their own mites. It’s not entirely dependent on the type of bee.

[ct0]

There is recent article from scientific beekeeper that goes into detail about these using their own venom as a cleaning agent.

[Hasz]

found this showing the grooming process, apparently actually getting the mite is tricky!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpdmDr7da6U

[lostlogin]

It’s interesting where you’ve landed there. We haven’t had varroa as long I don’t think.

Here in New Zealand the colonies will die if untreated. I’m putting some OA/GL strips in them today.

[eleveriven]

Wow... And I think designing the hive so the bees' own grooming behavior is actually effective seems like a much better first line of defense

[andai]

Fascinating, thanks. What does winterization involve? I looked it up online but there's a whole bunch of different information.

Also how cold does it get?

[worldvoyageur]

A typical winter day would be a high of -6 Celcius and a low of -20, but there would be cold snaps of -20 or colder. Winterization itself was several things.

1. In late fall we'd make sure each colony had enough honey to fuel them through to spring (a quick lift would tell you). If short, we'd put sugar saturated water in a tray on top of the colony. The bees would move the sugar into the colony and a couple days later we'd take out the bone dry trays. Failing to ensure enough fuel meant certain death for the colony, though for some in the trade the math was that it was cheaper to buy nukes (a colony nucleus of a queen and some workers) in the spring. Our math was that We liked to have strong colonies in the spring to sell nukes.

2. A bee colony is basically a rectangular box sitting on a frame. We had rectangular insulation that stored flat but easily expanded to slide over each colony before the first snow. The colonies would get buried in snow, which was excellent extra insulation.

3. The bees themselves did the work to survive the winter. They'd huddle in a ball, burning honey to generate heat (a bee could heat itself to something like 40 degrees C), fanning their wings to spread the heat. The bees in the centre of the ball would move out to the periphery while those on the periphery would move into the center.

A cold snap that lasted too long was a disaster as the bees would tighten the ball for greater warmth and then run out of honey within the ball. Those colonies would die. In the spring you'd find the tightly clustered ball of bees, dead, surrounded by honey not that far outside the ball.

You needed at least one brief warming period in a cold snap in which the ball of bees would expand, find a new patch on unconsumed honey in the hive and then recontract around the honey.

If we did our work properly in the fall, we'd have 90% or more of our colonies make it to spring, most strong so we could make nukes to replace our losses and sell on the extras.

[coryrc]

Have you considered electric heaters to run for a few hours just if temperatures are consistently low for multiple consecutive days?

[eleveriven]

I had no idea winter survival could come down to getting one brief warm spell at the right time so the colony can loosen up and move a few inches