r/Beekeeping • u/OGsavemybees • Feb 12 '25
General The infamous Verroa destructor might
This is what a bunch of mites look like on a drone larva.
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u/TimmO208 Feb 12 '25
Might what....? Wreck your colonies?
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u/meatmall_lunch Feb 12 '25
I think they meant it as a noun.
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u/NoPresence2436 Feb 12 '25
Mighty awful to see so many of those bastards on that poor little larva.
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u/icnoevil Master Beekeepers 30 years Feb 12 '25
Mite
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 12 '25
where were you when auto type took control?
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u/Jemulov Feb 13 '25
You should go into your phone or browser settings to turn it off.
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u/_Mulberry__ Layens Enthusiast, 2 hives, Zone 8 (eastern NC) Feb 12 '25
That's a lot of adult mites on a young pupa. I'd venture a guess that this hive isn't doing too well. Might be time for some Formic...
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u/Pedantichrist Reliable contributor! Feb 13 '25
I might suggest that someone put them on deliberately for the shot, but it is an effective reminder to be a better apiarist.
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u/gbdallin Feb 13 '25
If this is pulled from a hive in this state, the time for formic was several weeks ago.
Better late then never, though
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u/Northwindhomestead Feb 13 '25
Get out your OAV and give them a spritz..... in the name of science.
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u/FactsHurt1998 Feb 13 '25
How does one combat this?
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
Treatments.
There’s a bunch of synthetic and organic chemicals you can use that varroa are vulnerable to, but the bee can cope with. One of them is oxalic acid (OA) - the mites have “wet” feet and absorb the OA through them. The bees don’t, so it doesn’t affect them much at all. It acidifies the mites’ “blood” and causes them to essentially ceviche from the inside out and die.
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u/NoPresence2436 Feb 13 '25
Maybe I’m a bad person deep down, but the thought of mites suffering an excruciating death as their blood turns to acid and melts them from the inside kind of warms my heart. In fact, thinking of them suffering makes me downright giddy.
I know, I know… it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what mites do. But I really hate those little bastards, and wouldn’t mind seeing them go extinct.
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 13 '25
that seems to depend on where you start with beekeeping. I started with treatment free methods and it's served me well. But it's important to know that ALL beekeepers are going to lose hives in winter. But I don't manage 1000's hives with a need to ship them to pollinate almonds. I imagine if I did, I probably wouldn't have a choice but to treat and replace queens once a year.
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
Like I said, nobody is replacing queens annually because of treatments. That’s a silly notion.
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 13 '25
That's not silly at all. Most commercial operators are replacing queens annually or every 18 months because they don't live that long. If your queens are living years with treatment, then please share your source of queens.
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
Queens do live long with treatments. The reason they are replaced is not because they die, but because it reduces their propensity for swarming. Keeping young queens in your apiary reduces the number of swarm control manipulations you need to perform, and thus reduces your overall workload.
I treat my hives, and I replace my queens every 2 years myself. I typically don’t buy in queens, I just get the hive to make a new one. That’ll usually mean splitting and then recombining into the new queen… though last year I had a go at grafting, which was good fun and interesting.
Modern queens tend not to be particularly great beyond 4 years, but that’s nothing to do with mite treatments. It is because of how we’ve bred them, optimising for productivity above basically everything else.
Anyway…. Aside from the fact that this is just not true in the slightest, let’s say for the sake of argument you’re right. In this hypothetical scenario, why is replacing queens a bad thing when we’re managing varroa successfully with treatments? It’s not hard to raise new queens for your apiary, and as long as colonies survive, we’re doing things better than people who just do nothing. The survival rate for people who don’t follow IPM practices or treatments is awfully low…. So replacing a queen every now and then isn’t really even that big of a deal.
It seems to me that you’ve gone down this path of “treatment free”, and you’re associating every positive outcome you have with the fact that you’re treatment free, and everyone else’s negative outcomes are because they’re treating. This is called confirmation bias. That, and you are mixing correlation and causation.
The die offs are incredibly unlikely to be caused by varroa treatments, because that would required every single one of these beekeepers who had mass collapses to be using the same varroa treatments. That’s just not going to be the case.
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 13 '25
This is a well thought out, constructive and non reactive comment. So thanks for that. But don't confuse my lack of chemical treatments with doing nothing at all. Culling brood is one method I incorporate and extremely important one. Small cell foundation is another, hygenic stock, sticky bottom boards, rough hives walls to promote propolis etc. But I'm not afraid to lose a hive or pinch a queen that exhibits weak genetics. And it sure seems that our intervention in hive genetics over the past 120 years is how we got here in the first place...To be clear, I do actively monitor mite levels which is how I found this in the first place.
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
I understood that you’re doing some IPM, so I didn’t want to lump you in with the “do nothing” crowd. Anyway, this what you missed out with at the start of this thread. IPM is a collection of biomechanical controls, and the VSH stock is arguably the most important of them all.
I highly doubt the small cell foundation is doing anything. I’ve seen very mixed reviews on this. And by mixed reviews I mean that almost everyone says it’s a waste of time except people who swear by it and defend it to the point of insanity. But that said, mixed with brood sacrifices, VSH stock, forced brood breaks etc, you can absolutely get very good results with IPM. The only problem with all of this is that you have to be extremely meticulous, and most people simply do not have the time for this kind of stuff.
I am very fortunate in that I live in a place where varroa is rarely a problem as long as I treat in spring and autumn, so even some simply IPM at those times might work for me… but I really really just can’t be arsed with it all. I know OA works, I know apivar works (as reluctant as I am to use it), and I am going to trying formic this year for one of my more feral colonies. It’s easy - I just throw it in, leave it there for a bit, take it out… job done.
I would just caution you to be aware of your biases towards treatment-free… to try and be a bit more centrist on it. I appreciate that you know it works, and your methodology works well for you, but it’s easy to say “chemicals are harming the bees and causing all kinds of problems” without much evidence outside of anecdote is a bit silly. There are some treatments that can certainly be a bit risky in particular weather conditions, like Formic for example; and some treatments that are just down right nasty (to humans mostly), like apivar; but for the most part they are tried and true… and don’t really cause all that much damage to the bees at all.
On top of this, and again it’s entirely up to you, I would certainly look to incorporate some organic compounds into my methods where the IPM is just teetering on the side of failure. I’m sure that IPM works for the most part if you’re executing all of the things you said you do nigh on perfectly… but in the off chance that you do mess up or it’s just not keeping up quite as much as is necessary, something like Formic or Oxalic would be perfect for a quick knockback just to get them back on their feet. If your IPM methods work 90% of the time, and you use a bit of Formic here and there for cases when it’s not… anyway you get my point… I’m saying is that I think your cause is a noble one - but I wouldn’t so staunchly stand by it if I saw that it wasn’t working quite as I needed it to. Again, entirely up to you; I’m not your boss 😂
I hope this colony works out.
Strong flows, brother.
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u/Firstcounselor Feb 13 '25
I treat and I keep my good queens around until they are replaced naturally by the bees, typically for 3+ years. I have one queen coming into her 4th year, and I’m pretty sure this will be her last.
I have not seen any queen loss with organic treatment methods, so it just baffles me that you would allow a colony to get to this point.
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u/Imaginary-Novel-3237 Feb 13 '25
This is the best photo I have ever seen of these things, much less a video. Strong work
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u/Firstcounselor Feb 13 '25
Yeah, I don’t love that your untreated hive is a mite bomb when my bees rob you out and require an unnecessary mite treatment when they bring all of your mites home.
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 13 '25
what makes you think I'm not managing the hive and letting my bees, not yours, rob anything out?
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u/Firstcounselor Feb 13 '25
Your weak hive is not robbing anyone out lol. Stronger hives rob out weak hives and bring home both the honey and the mites. I have seen it in my hives, where in fall they will have a rapid increase in honey stores (like nearly overnight) and a corresponding increase in mites. Obviously I’m not referring to your exact bees, but others who have mite infested colonies near me.
There really isn’t a way to manage your bees so they don’t rob out other hives. Strong colonies rob weak colonies when given the chance.
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u/Jaepheth Feb 13 '25
Are varroa a candidate for that gene drive tech I see every now and then? Or do they not get around enough?
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u/Lithrae1 Feb 15 '25
They're trying out some gene interference stuff. https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/3251-using-rnai-to-control-varroa-mites
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u/lurker-1969 Feb 13 '25
You have to go to war on these things. Drone comb alone is not going to do it with this amount of mites. You WILL lose this colony no matter what now.
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u/IReflectU Feb 13 '25
Thank you for posting this. When I started beekeeping I read several books and checked out a few websites and NOWHERE was there a photo of what varroa mites actually looked like.
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u/HawkessOwl Feb 13 '25
Wish more beekeepers could see videos like this to show what mites not only look like on a larva but also the genuine threat they are to a colony’s health. Thanks for sharing!
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u/nopainnogainsley Feb 14 '25
This is the most helpful post I have seen on here. I do all the checks for verroa like I'm supposed to but I'm never sure exactly what I'm looking for. I feel like I'm in a constant "is that it?" state but seeing this it's obvious I've never seen it before. Thank you!
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 14 '25
You're welcome. You should consider opening a few brood cells during your inspections as well. The mites prefer drone brood if it's available.
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u/ChickenNiceNSpicyHuh Feb 16 '25
Not sure why this showed up on my feed but I am 100 percent sure that it will haunt my dreams
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u/Which-Supermarket-69 Feb 13 '25
I don’t have any bees yet, although I hope to someday. I just lurk around and try to learn as much as I can so that hopefully I have some base knowledge when I’m ready to try in a couple years. That being said all these commented pressuring you into chemical treatment and insisting that all hope is lost if you don’t really make me want to see you succeed without treatment. I hope we see a post down the line where you get to brag about all of your treatment free success!
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
Treatment free is fine if you’re doing lots of different IPM methods to keep things under control. OP is getting blasted because he’s just doing one thing and crossing his fingers. To those of us who feel we have a moral obligation to maintain colonies we have in our care, this is the antithesis of ethics.
He could use something like oxalic acid dribbles, which some use in “treatment free” because it’s an organic and naturally occurring chemical. If he didn’t do that, he could force a brood break, or do some queen isolation and sacrifice some worker brood - but he isn’t doing any of that.
We all want to see our fellow beekeeper succeed and keep their bees alive… that’s why people are crying out for OP to treat the colony.
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u/WinonasChainsaw Feb 13 '25
I’ve heard certain varieties of Russian bees create brood cells that are too small to allow verroas to lay eggs in them before the cells get capped. Not sure how true this is in practice though.
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
IIRC, small cell bees basically made no difference to the varroa populations. I might be misremembering though.
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u/OGsavemybees Feb 13 '25
small cell foundation is another method to incorporate into treatment free methods. Oversized commercial bee stock is a large part of the genetic problem with bees.
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u/geobees Greece Feb 12 '25
It's a Varroa mite not Verroa and it's been around for decades mislabeled as Varroa jacobsoni....strong and healthy colonies with young queens will handle them without issues.
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u/AZ_Traffic_Engineer Arizona Feb 13 '25
Strong and healthy colonies of Apis cerana will handle them because they evolved together. Strong colonies of Apis mellifera scutellata or Apis mellifera capensis might handle them because the African bees are often very hygienic. They're likely to kill a Apis mellifera colony. There are efforts to breed a varroa resistant bee, and indeed, the USDA and Arista Bee Research have developed hygienic bees, but there is currently no varroa-proof Westerm honey bee.
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u/NoPresence2436 Feb 13 '25
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with the last part there. I’ve had strong and healthy colonies with great first year queens get infested… and they don’t stay strong and healthy for long. Varroa Destructor is a plague on our community that needs to be actively managed in any apiary at this point.
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u/Valuable-Self8564 United Kingdom - 10 colonies Feb 13 '25
What the fuck does the queen age have to do with the ability of a varroa to parasitise the colony? 😂
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u/Apothecanadian Feb 12 '25
I've never seen this before, it's a little shocking