Honey bees are troubled by a number of powerful stressors, often most devastating are Varroa mites and the viruses they transmit. The requirement for strong colonies almost year-round to meet pollination demands means that for most commercial beekeepers there is often no break in the brood cycle. While there are physical manipulations to force periods of broodlessness, they are too labor intensive to be applicable on a commercial scale. Without that break in brood effective treatments means multiple applications of miticides to get effective control. This greatly increases labor and material costs and can be difficult to keep applications on schedule. This presentation will cover initial experiments utilizing indoor-cold storage to create a period of broodlessness immediately after the honey flow; with discussion for the potential of improving mite control while reducing the number of miticide applications.
Presenter: Dr. Brandon Hopkins, Washington State University
Brandon Hopkins is an associate research professor at Washington State University. He helps manage about 250 research colonies along with the production of queens. He is interested in research project involving Varroa control, virus control products, queen breeding, reproductive technologies, and indoor wintering.