How to treat honey bees for Varroa Mites with Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS)

[Music] so guys today I wanted to do a quick video and it's probably going to be mostly for beginning beekeepers more advanced beekeepers have probably already got this under control I want to tell you all what to do if you find yourself in an unfortunate situation of having a mite problem in your bees in the middle of a strong nectar flow now of course what we want to do ideally is keep those mites under control before the nectar flow starts so you have healthy bees going into that flow and of course even before that you need to have healthy bees might free bees or low mite numbers going into the winter time so that you have healthy bees coming out of winter into spring so you can get those hives built up into those numbers that you need to have a good strong honey harvest for the year well this year and I'm just going to be perfectly honest this year I did not do a very good job on my mites I have not been in the habit of testing for mites or doing sugar rolls or alcohol washes I have done it in the past but I kind of got complacent I did treat last winter to get my might numbers down but I didn't do any tests and those treatments were not as effective as they should have been so I'm kind of left right now in the situation of having to do something about a very serious mite problem in the middle of a gangbusters honey flow here in Georgia so I just want to let everybody know that all is not lost if you get to this point we're going to tear apart one of these hives we're going to test it for mites and I'm going to show you the signs this you need to look for for mite issues during the springtime and I'm also going to show you how to get rid of your light problems even in the middle of a strong nectar form so one of the signs that you need to look for if you're out at your bees and you glance at the ground in front of your beehives and you see a whole bunch of larvae or what you would call crawlers which would be live bees just kind of crawling around outside of the hive you'll have a lot of larva or like I said live bees crawling around out here and that's a sign that the bees that are in the hive are dragging out bees that are defective they're dragging out pupae they're dragging out larvae that is diseased and they're just dragging out junk that it's not going to be of any benefit to the hive now those viruses although they do occur naturally in beehives are vectored or spread by the mites so if you start having these kinds of problems if you start seeing if you start seeing the amount of these like this that are just hanging out on the outside of the hive if you really start looking at them you will are noticing that these bees have deformed wings they have and they may have other issues as well but that is one of the biggest things is if you start seeing that you better start treating from eyes because you've already got a serious problem so first let's look at the equipment that you're going to need to do this what we're gonna do today is we're gonna do a sugar roll on these bees now this is a reasonably accurate way to check for mic loads and it doesn't kill any bees if you do it properly first you're gonna need a mason jar not that one you're gonna need a mason jar who's inside lid has been replaced with number eight hardware cloth that will allow the sugar and the mites to fall out but it'll keep the bees inside now this is just a standard mason jar widemouth no big deal you can buy these commercially with this screen on it if you have some hardware cloth laying around you can make you one for free in about three minutes you're also gonna need an amount of just good fine powdered sugar you're going to need 1/2 of a cup measure and you're going to need a larger container just like this one as well in addition to that of course your standard equipment is going to be your smoker and your hype tool so let's go ahead and dig into this hive and see what we've got what I like to do is crack the lid just a little bit give them a little puff of smoke and then go ahead and open it so this top box is just a honey super and the frames have not been drawn out so there's not a lot of activity in it so we're gonna go ahead and get down into the next box give them just a little bit of smoke and like I said we are in the middle of a very very good honey flow here in Georgia or nectar flow whichever you want to call it and it looks like this box might might be ready to extract let's see here not quite actually nowhere in there that boxes it's got a little ways to go let's check this frame - I go into these boxes with all all intentions of doing one thing and I just get so distracted with everything all right so there's nothing useful in this box for us right now so we are going to go ahead and close it back up and let's get that into the next box all right so what you're looking for to do this test is a frame that has eggs or young larvae uncapped a brood in general would be just fine and the reason that you're looking for that is those frames ordinarily have nurse bees on it and those nurse bees are going to give you the most accurate count of how many mites you have in your hive so let's pull these frames now I split this hive not too long ago so I don't expect to see a lot of eggs in fact it looks like they've been backfilling quite a bit I don't expect to see a lot of eggs but hopefully we'll find some some older brood if nothing else and if worse comes to worse we can just we'll take what we can get so this looks like a pretty good candidate right here this is got some uncapped brood in it still and it's got a fair amount of bees on it as well so what you need for this test is a 300 B sample so you're gonna get your container and start counting there's one there's two there's just kidding there's a better way to do this so here's a good example of what I'm talking about this drone brood just fell out of one of the cells and you can see it is very disease it has deformed wings and it's dead it's not going to make into anything at all I actually saw varroa mite crawling right next to it so yeah this hive has got it's got issues and it will most certainly collapse in a couple of months if nothing is done about so let's get ready to do this test what you're gonna need is you're gonna need your big container take your jar with the screen lid on it and get it ready to go take your frame and first of all you want to make sure your queen is not on it now it's like I said I split this hive not too long ago so there's likely a Virgin Queen running around here somewhere because I see a lot of Queen cells that have been chewed out so let's make sure we look really hard so we don't miss her because we don't want to we don't want to rock her around during this test and I don't see her doesn't mean she's not there but I don't see her so our next step I'm gonna get our cup ready as well our next step you just take that frame shake those bees into that container knock some down towards the bottom and ideally you want a half of a cup of bees I didn't quite get a half of a cup on that so I'm gonna get just a few more we're gonna get another frame we're gonna check that out make sure our Queens not on there and I'm not see enough so let's just get a few more we don't need many you just need a few there's nothing in your jar after that we're gonna take our jar screw the lid on we've got we got about a half of a cup sample and that is equal to three hundred bees or roughly 300 bees go ahead and put those frames back in the hive I'm going to keep our hive open at this point because this time of year is robbing is really not a huge concern because they have got nectar to go after they're not as likely to rob each other out so after that what we want to do is we want to take our container with powdered sugar in it and really you want to do about a tablespoon of this roughly don't have to be perfect you just want to coat the bees just going to get all the bees coated really good mash that down in there I'm gonna get a little bit more just for good measure and we'll just shake that around a little bit roll it around get those bees all coated in that sugar now we want to let that sit for about a minute alright so it's been about a minute we've got our jar here they have been rolling each other around here what we're gonna do is we're gonna find ourselves a white surface this is just a bucket lid we're gonna find ourselves a white surface alternatively you can get a pan of water and dump it in there and the I'm have not done that before but I believe the all the sugar dissolves and the mites float to the top so you can get a good count but we're just going to use this if the winds blowing really bad you might consider something different this is what we're gonna use today so you take this jar and you just start shaking them and I don't have to go any farther than that I don't really need to violently shake these bees because they're mites all over the place let's count we've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 sixteen in that sample right there and I bet if I I bet if I shook it some more I would get more but there's really no point because I know that this hive is thoroughly infested and we have to do something about it now so now that we've done a mic count and we've determined that we have to treat these bees your only option during a nectar flow and when your honey supers are on is might awake quick strips now this is not an advertisement from either way quick strips and they're not paying me anything but I have used that product before and it works very well so I do recommend it especially during a honey flow this is the only EPA approved option for treatment of mites during a honey flow some precautions you have to take with this stuff of course you have to be aware of where in which way your wind is blowing because if you inhale these vapors you're gonna have a hard time with your respiratory system also you should wear protective gloves because this is formic acid and it could cause chemical burns on your hands it comes in these little pails in these little plastic containers or plastic packages and it comes in different different sizes of container as well of course this one package will treat a hive that has a couple that has two brood chambers and it's very simple putting these strips on is pretty simple you do need some gloves with this I don't have gloves with me today so we're just going to be very careful and make sure we don't touch these things we're going to dump them on right out of the plastic wrapper and avoid touching it with our hands ideally you should wear some chemical gloves with it because it is an acid and you could get burned we're gonna get some of these bees on the top out of the way scrape some of our comb out of the way as well that out of the way what you want to do is you want to lay it across your brood chambers up here so what we're gonna do we're going to dump it out like this use our hive tool to lay it out and after that we're going to use our hive tool to separate these two and you get done top of your brood chamber should look like this after that all you need to do put your supers back on something else that I like to do personally and this is just for my own record-keeping purposes I like to write the date that I treat and what I treat with on the bottom of these hives I'm sorry on the bottom of the top cover of the hives so today's date is 5/3 I believe of 18 and I used might away quick strips or max can I use two strips of it after that throw your lid on and there's one more step now this is a step you only have to do if you have screen bottom boards if you have solid bottom boards you can disregard this step so what you want to do is we're gonna plug this bottom up as best that we can those strips are made out of a well the active ingredient is formic acid and that formic acid needs to stay in the hive as much as possible if your hive has supreme bottom boards a lot of that formic is going to dump out of the bottom and you're not gonna get as much of efficacy or effectiveness or whatever as you would if you had a solid bottom board I'll link to an article I believe it's on Randy Oliver's website of his tests on mightily quick trips and formic acid treatments that the efficacy doesn't go down that much but it does go down some so your best bet is to go ahead and plug up that screen bottom board as best you can I just used some flashing this is very thin aluminum flashing I cut it to the to the shape of the screen bottom board in this bottom and I just stick it in there and after three days you can remove that and you'll be good so guys a few other things I want to mention about my towei quick trips that I didn't mention in the course of this video you want to make sure that your outside temperatures are between 50 and 80 five degrees when you apply this label says that if your temperatures are greater than 92 degrees in the first two first three days of treatment that you might experience some excessive brood loss and you may experience some brutal offs anyway but it's probably it's going to be minimal compared to the amount of brood loss that you would experience if you have collapsed unifor mites by the way quick strips is approved for the production of organic cutting even when the supers are on your hives formic acid naturally occurs in beehives anyway the honeybees can handle a certain amount of formic acid but the mites can handle a threshold that is lower than what the honeybees can handle so what happens is what's the formic acid level in the highest hits a certain number because of the quick strips the mites die off but the bees are fine what's so great about might away quick strips is it's the only treatment that I'm aware of that actually penetrates the cappings on the cells and kills mites inside of the cells as well as the fur etic mites that are on the beans now after you treat them for the first few days first two or three days you might see a whole bunch of Fanning and your bees might be noisier than normal that's not that is normal because those these are trying to get that formic acid out of their hive because they don't like it very much there was a time when you had to put a spacer ring in the place on top of the brood chamber that you were treating out to get some space around those trips you don't have to do that anymore which makes it really convenient you can just put those strips on top of the top bars of the frames over the brood chamber and then put your honey super directly on top of it now we counted about 17 miles out of that 300 or so beast sample earlier now that is way way way more than the economic threshold to treat your bees now economic threshold does vary from place to place a good rule of thumb is that if you get three mites for 300 bees that's probably when you should start treating now I'll find an article and link to it that will give you a more scientific scientific count more scientific opinion of your economic threshold but a good rule of thumb is three at least in the springtime in the springtime if you've got three especially early in the spring those numbers are going to act potentially multiplied until you've got an out-of-control situation on your hands that is what has happened to my hives unfortunately now again this is a case of do as I say and not as I do you're supposed to wear some good chemical gloves when you're handling this stuff because it is an acid and it could give you some burns on your hands so don't do what I did today I did handle it with the packaging and my hive tool for this hive but you should definitely get some chemical resistant gloves because this is some pretty nasty stuff and I cannot stress enough how important it is to light your smoker so you can see which way the winds blowing so you can stay upwind of this stuff because if you inhale it you're gonna be hacking and gagging because it is some strong strong stuff but guys that's going to do it for today I really appreciate you watching and I hope that I hope the show learned something from this I hope I was accurate and what I said and besides that I've got these that are that are visiting me right now so we're going to end this video and again thanks for watching don't forget to hit that like button and subscribe if you haven't already a few other things I want to mention about might away quick strips if the babies of leave me alone

Channel: Fall Line Ridge

Views: 222,484

Keywords: Varroa mites, bees, honeybees, honey bees, honey, mites, disease, MAQS, mite away quick strips, nectar, nectar flow, honey flow, apis, apis melifera, apiary, fall line ridge, homesteading, deformed wing virus, viruses, virus, formic acid, organic honey, beekeeping

Id: 1WQe9rq65mM

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Sat May 05 2018