Preparing Bee Hives For Winter - Varroa Mites & How/What To Treat

Hey friend, how’ve you been? I can’t believe that labor day weekend is THIS WEEKEND! Wow time sure flies. I am oddly excited for the winter months. There is a lot that I am working on for BeeFit Beekeeping and the Lord knows I need more time to get everything accomplished.

But anyways, since winter is nearing, this means that our honey bees are going to need a little extra care to make sure they are ready for winter. And one of those methods of care being….making sure our mite levels are down. Now I am fully a treatment free beekeeper now. The only “treatment” I use now are brood breaks in July. But if you are new to beekeeping and don’t know which option is best for you, I am going to list out the different forms of varroa mite treatments below so that you can make your own best judgement on how you want to proceed.

There is no one way to keep your bees. Over time we all gather information and experiences from each other and form our own method of keeping our bees that works best for us. It is said that in history books beekeeping is referred to as an art. Because, really it is!

But okay, lets chat about treatments…

First…

Brood breaks

The reason I like them is because honey bees naturally want to form a brood break on their own 1-2 times per year when the colony prepares to swarm. But, in our method of beekeeping we try to stop our bees from ever swarming. This disrupts that natural cycle of cutting the mites back. But, here is what the brood break does.

So, in order for varroa mites to reproduce they need open larva present in the colony so that they can go into the cell and hide until the cell is then capped. Once capped they begin feeding on the larva, laying eggs, and producing more mites. But, when there is no brood present and all of the varroa mites are forced to be on the bees…Then, when the next round of brood comes, all of these mites (in theory) flood the cells. This results in there being more mites per cell than there normally would be. Meaning, there is less food to now sustain these mites and their offspring.

You see…this is problematic because once the cell is capped these mites are trapped in there until the bee emerges but by then they have sucked all of the nutrients they can from that baby bee larva. So now, they run out of food and end up starving to death. This is great for the bees because yes they end up losing their first round of brood. But, now the mite count drops dramatically in the hive so that the next round of brood is able to thrive and develop without any interruptions.

Okay, sounds great but how do I perform a brood break?

Like I mentioned above, I like to perform my brood breaks in July when there isn’t much of a flow. As this is the natural time when the bees will decrease in size slightly anyways. And, this gives the bees enough time to build back up for the fall flow (if we have one) before going into winter.

There are 3 ways to perform a brood break.

Remove the queen and move her plus 2 frames (1 brood, 1 honey/pollen) into a nuc for her to build up. Then either..

1. Let the bees in the original hive make their own queen in what would be a “walk away split” this will take a full 4-5 weeks until you have a laying queen again. By that time all of the brood has emerged so all of the mites will be on the bees (that’s what we want). The down side to this method is this can be risky and can take quite awhile. Especially if you live in a northern climate, our summer season is short so walk away splits may not give your hive enough time to build up for the winter.
2. The 2nd option is my 2nd favorite method, and that is to time the brood break perfectly with some ripe queen cells. When you remove the queen from the hive, wait a few days, then come back and remove any queen cells that you find. (You can also move these cells into another hive that is strong and has a lot of resources to finish capping the cells). Then, place 1 capped queen cell in the hive for them to work and raise as their own. This will cut an extra week off of the whole process but still give you the 3 weeks of no laying as you wait for all of the brood to emerge. It takes 16 days from egg to emerging queen for a queen to develop. 
3. Now my favorite way of performing a brood break. And, that is to introduce a virgin or mated queen. After removing the mated queen from the original hive I will then let the hive make queen cells and cap them. This will take around a week or so. At that point I will remove all of the queen cells and make splits out of them or put them in mini mating nucs. Then, introduce your new virgin queen. It will take a few days for her to orient herself to the hive but then she will go out on her mating flight and come back ready to lay. 

• If introducing a mated queen I will time out when the cells should be emerging (remember it takes 16 days from egg to emerging queen, but if they are using young larva to make their queen it can take 14 days. I have even seen some hives take only 12 days! So keep an eye on them and don’t be afraid to sacrifice a cell or 2 to open up and see where they are at on your time line). A day or 2 before their estimated emergence date I will move them into a nuc where I will keep an eye on them and live catch them when they begin to emerge. Queens will generally emerge all right around the same time. At most they will have 2 waves of queens maybe a day or 2 a part. I have also noticed that queen like to emerge at sunset so keep that in mind too! Going back to the original hive though…once the cells are removed, add the mated queen in a cage. It is important that there are zero queen cells in the hive. Other wise they will kill the new queen. This method gives around 2.5 weeks of no laying queen. This is the shortest amount of time that I would go without a laying queen as it is just enough time for the brood to emerge just as the new queen starts laying again. 

Here is a video explaining brood breaks and how I use them