To treat or not?

Integrated Pest Management(IPM) is a principal that the Ontario Beekeepers Association(OBA) is really pushing as an economical and the healthiest way to manage bees in Ontario. It involves monitoring levels of various ailments in the hive and determining if those levels have reached the economic thresholds. When the economic threshold is reached, there is a treatment available but of course this is at a cost to the beekeeper (for the chemical treatment and "downtime" of the colony).

An example of this is my current formic acid treatment for my Varroa Mite infestation. I monitored the mite drop over several days and I physically saw that their was mites in the uncapped brood. The economic threshold was reached and the hive require an intervention. I choose to use Mite Away II (formic acid pad) because I have some on hand and it is a soft chemical treatment (formic acid is found in nature). I also chose Mite Away II because it is a 3 week treatment.

The purpose of this post is that I am questioning if I should treat for prevention of Nosema and foulbrood. I treated for these in the fall of last year without there actually being any symptoms. There still are no symptoms of these diseases in my hives and I am thinking of not treating for them. The more you treat for diseases, the more that the diseases develop resistance to the drugs.

Hang on!

Varroa Mite Count : 48 hrs later

 

The trays were retrieved 48 hours after they were put in. As you can see a bunch of debris fell through my mesh floor and landed on my sticky wax paper. Note: the left tray is turned around the wrong way!

 I found a bug crawling around in the pollen etc... and took a picture of it because I was worried that it may be a hive beetle. I looked into my reference books (ie, Beekeeping For Dummies); and found out that it was definitely not a hive beetle.

Take a look at the different sources of pollen that the bees were collecting over the last 2 days. It looks like there must be four or five different sources. I tried pollen for the first time tonight. It was actually really good. I am going to have to make a pollen trap to collect some pollen for my own consumption.

The tally:
The Green hive: had a whooping 90 mites in 48 hours. Which makes a 24 hour count of 45. This is not good. It means that I will have to treat and I was planning on actually making a partial split of the hive.
The White hive: had only 10 mites in 48 hours. Which is actually really good but I think it is wrong. Well, the count is correct but I had reversed the boxes on April 5th; so the brood is primarily in the top chamber and the mites would be dropping down into the bottom box and would likely reattach themselves to passing bees at a much higher rate. I am likely going to start treating as soon as possible.

Varroa Mite Count

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an important part of keeping bees healthy and minimizing treatments.
Tonight I popped off my landing boards and pulled out the plywood tray to clean off. Take a look at what was on that tray!

This shows everything that has fallen down the screen. Take a look at all that good pollen! I threw all of this into the field nearby. It is good practice to always discard of comb and other bee products far enough away from the hive so that you do not attract skunks or other pests.

There was also a lot of mites on the bottom board. They are those shiny little football shaped critters. I think that my removable tray is so far away from the bottom board that the mites are unable to make it back in the brood nest. As you can see; bottom trays act as a passive mite "treatment".

This is what the hive looks like with the sticky paper in place and the landing board off. I will take the paper out in 2 days and do a mite count to see to what degree my colony is affected. Until then...