Organization of correct wintering of bees as the first stage of anti-mite measures of the new season.

The autumn preparation of families for wintering is the most important stage in the entire cycle of works on suppression of the development of Varroa mites in the bee colonies of your apiary. It is in the fall that both success in future honey harvesting and the possibility of losing bees due to the overdevelopment of the mite population in their families are laid. 

In autumn, the first task facing the beekeeper is to interrupt the mites' reproduction chain in the bee colony. This can be done by removal of sealed brood in the fall, when there are relatively few brood in the colonies. By removing most of the young mites and founding females into a separate colony together with sealed brood, and subjecting them to radical anti-mite treatment after the young bees emerge from the brood, it is possible to achieve a significant purification of the main colonies and of a new, assembled from sealed brood and bees, colony.

At the same time, in all colonies from which the brood was taken and new combs were given, if time permits, the queens will begin a new laying of eggs, from which will born strong and healthy bees, which will become the basis of the bee colony of the next year. At the same time, a huge number of mites will be removed from working bee colonies and they will not be able to start a new reproduction cycle.

The second task is to ensure a smooth transition of colonies to cold wintering with a corresponding decrease and further termination of brood rearing. Cold wintering is the most important stage in the proper maintenance of bees in terms of combating varroatosis. This is especially true for rock bees such as the Caucasian mountain bees and Carnica bees.

This method has been known in Europe for a long time. Carnica is a European breed of bees and it is in Germany that they know how important it is to suppress its natural tendency to constantly grow brood.

It is very important to make the bees to stop brood rearing early and to start it as late as possible. It is very bad when the bees finish growing the brood in November and start growing it again in January. It is thanks to this that the mites can slowly and imperceptibly increase their quantity, and with the first large spring brood, they can sharply increase the population size to a critical value.

This is how our E-1 family died... The graph (Fig) clearly shows that exactly in this family, during the whole winter, was observed a fairly strong fall  of old mites (the presence of which in a narrow strip of projection of the interframe space to the bottom of the hive, we consider to be a sign of the ongoing reproduction process) and already in April we see the appearance the peak in the fall of immature and mature females - that is, a powerful surge in the reproductive activity of Varroa mites.

It is ideal if bees, especially the bees of Carnica breed, begin to actively rear the brood only with the arrival of stable heat and the appearance of sources of pollen in nature. It is from this moment and not earlier that the active development of families begins. During this time, if the bees are warm and supplied with nectar and pollen, they quickly build up strength. In other cases, in the hive better develops and renews the population of Varroa mites, rather than bees.

That is why in Europe and especially in Germany, cold wintering has acquired special importance in the fight against varroatosis. It is she who should not allow the mites to multiply during the winter, when we cannot help the bees to get rid of them. It is this event that will help to avoid, or at least  to reduce greatly, the first spring peak in the growth of Varroa mites population in the next year.