Do THIS Now - Your Bees Will Thank YOU!

Today I'm going to talk to you about spring treatments for varroa. Now my varroa treatment process is as follows. I take my honey off the middle of August, I put my Apivar strips in for 8 weeks, I come back, I do the final feed, and then I go in with apibioxal around the mid to end of November because I find for North Wales that's probably the optimum time to have a brood break. As soon as we get into December and January, I find that there is a lot of brood in these colonies behind me here, which means that apibioxal as either a drizzle or a sublimation isn't anywhere near as effective. You need to find the best broodless period for you. However, I've had a few people message me recently saying they've gone in to do their checks on their colonies in December or early January, and the colony has completely absconded. And what that means is that you open up the colony and there isn't a single bee left. They have just left and gone somewhere else. And 9 times out of 10, that is as a result of a high varroa infestation. The bees cannot cope with the varroa. They cannot cope with the viruses that are being transmitted to them. So they try and give themselves a clean break by absconding. And obviously if they do that in December or January, they've got no chance whatsoever and the colony fails. So you might be watching this video and that might have happened to you, or you might not have done the proper varroa treatment in the spring, or you might have been going treatment-free and realizing that your bees are really not looking that healthy and you want to make a change. In this video, I'm going to give you my advice for how best to treat your colonies in the spring for varroa to ensure that you get really, really healthy bees throughout the spring and the summer. Now, if you've followed all of the processes before and you've done your autumn treatment and you've done your late autumn, early winter treatment, You don't necessarily need to treat in spring, but it's not going to harm your bees if you do. So please don't take that that you must treat all of your colonies in spring for varroa. I do not treat any of my colonies in spring because the system that I use for me in North Wales is effective. But I do appreciate that some people would like to treat their colonies in spring. So the best spring treatment in my view is going to be Apivar once again. Now Apivar is just a brand name for amitraz, which is a highly effective miticide. It's impregnated onto little plastic strips and it works by the bees moving over it, walking on it, spreading that amitraz around the hive, and then the amitraz is what actually goes and kills those mites. So if you use Apivar strips in the middle of winter when it's -10 and the colony is fully clustered up, it's not going to work very well because you don't get that movement over the amitraz. And if you kind of cycle back through some of the videos talking about why I condense my colonies down and pack them in, the reason for that is I get really nice distribution of amitraz. because they're so congested in the colony and it spreads it really nicely. So conversely, in the middle of winter when they're clustered up, if you put the Apivar strip in, it's just not going to work at all. The other constraint that you have with Apivar is that it's a full 8-week treatment. So you can't do it for 3 weeks, you can't do it for 15 weeks, you need to do it for the full 8 weeks. And then the final constraint is that you can't put supers on whilst you've got Apivar in the brood box. But if you tie all of those little pieces together, it means that there's quite a neat opportunity in spring, in early spring, from I would say the beginning to the middle of February, all way through to the beginning to the middle of April where you can comply with all of those constraints. You're not going to be putting any supers on, so you've not got to worry about the honey being tainted. It's not super, super cold, and if it is super, super cold, I would delay the treatment until a more suitable time. But generally, kind of early to middle of Feb, it's not that bad, especially if you've got polyhives. The bees are moving around inside, so it's going to work. And finally, because it's so warm and warming up there, the bees aren't going to be clustered, and it means at that point of the year that Apivar is a highly effective treatment. So if you're in any of those situations and you're thinking about doing a varroa treatment, that would be my recommendation for you. 1st of February, go in, open up the colony, determine how many frames of bees you've got in there. For every 5 frames of bees, you want to add 1 Apivar strip. Don't do it if they're clustered up. You want to open up the colony and see that they're moving around. So long as they're moving around, 1st of February, go in, pop your Apivar strips in, wait 8 weeks. Before you put your honey supers on, make sure you take all of your Apivar strips out, and your bees will thank you. That is a highly, highly effective treatment for that point in the year, and it will really set your Bees up well going into the spring. Final caveat to add: don't think that that's the final treatment of the year. That is your spring treatment to try and kind of get your bees up to a certain level. The varroa in that colony will build up very, very quickly again. Don't delay your treatments in the summer. Get in there middle of August, take your honey off, get your apivar strips back in, and then your bees will be very, very healthy for the following year, and you shouldn't have to repeat that spring treatment. Now, if you're thinking of using apibioxyl or oxalic acid to do a spring treatment. That will work as well. But just be aware there is almost certainly going to be a significant amount of brood in there and that you're only targeting the phoretic mites, the mites that are actually living on the bees with oxalic acid. Any of the mites, kind of reproductive or non-reproductive within the cappings, are not going to be affected by that. So you do need to do multiple 5-day-apart treatments to coincide with that reproductive cycle of the Varroa mite. Don't do it every 2 days, don't do it every 7 days, every 5 days, and that will work very, very well as well. I would do multiple treatments at that point of the year because doing one single treatment really isn't going to do a huge amount. So I would suggest if you've got a heavily infested colony, do 3 to 4 treatments of apibioxal or oxalic acid depending on where you are in the world, and then that should set your bees up really nicely for the spring.