Annual Treatment Plan

Treatment plan in 15 minutes

The objective of the annual treatment plan is to avoid that the Varroa mite causes damage to the hive, by keeping the number of mites under a certain threshold.

In this video, Wolfgang Wimmer explains how to achieve this goal by using the Varroa Controller and the Duplex-Frameboxes.

Challenges

Warmer winters result in shorter or no disruption of the breeding cycle of the bees – this provides ideal development conditions for the Varroa mite. Classical chemical treatments against Varroa are less effective because the mite has become resistant to some of the chemicals used.

The overlapping of the honey harvesting period and the classical chemical-based treatments leads to a potential risk of contamination. Bee keepers are “running out of time” or cannot use late blooming seasons. An effective treatment that can be applied early in the year is therefore required.

Solution

Keeping a low threshold of Varroa inside the hive, it is ensured that it does not harm a healthy strong colony. One efficient and bee-friendly method to keep a low threshold of mites is heat treatment, also known as hyperthermia.

The basic principle behind hyperthermia is that the bee pupae can tolerate a higher temperature than the Varroa mite, and that 80% of the Varroa mites are inside the brood frames.

Hence, we expose the capped brood frames to a warmer temperature that is harmless for the bee pupae but lethal to the mite. Due to this treatment, the Varroa mite forms heat shock proteins, causing cell damages that lead to the death of the mite in about 20 hours.

According to the development of the bee colony and the mite population, we advice three heat treatments during the year: a first treatment in spring, a summer treatment and a fall treatment. With the mentioned three treatments, the mite has no chance to harm the hive and colonies stay healthy.

Advantages

Users of the Varroa Controller report about their beekeeping success by applying the Varroa Controller and by following the annual treatment plan