BBKA Forum

For the first time I have seen a few bees with deformed wing virus in one colony. The Varroa count was low going into winter, but the second inspection this year showed this problem in just one hive/colony. I have a couple of supers on at the moment to catch the OSR that is coming in. Would it be a good time to do a shook swarm on that colony when I remove the supers, or should I do it straight away?

A shook swarm won't really address the major problem of varroa.
MAQ's are advertised as usable whilst a flow is on. I have no experience of using them myself so not sure of tyheir effectiveness at this time of year.
An alternative is vaping with apibioxal at 5 day intervals (removing supers before vaping).

While I agree with Nigel, I would want a better idea of numbers of Varroa. Deformed wings are the result of a high virus level in the affected bee when in the pupal stage. A few DWV bees could be the result of several mites invading a small number of cells at a time when laying can be sporadic, while the overall mite level in the hive could be relatively low. A quick vaping with oxalic acid (Api- Bioxal) and counting what drops over a week, would tell you how bad things are and indicate whether you need to treat again. If you don't have a vaporiser, I would do an icing sugar dusting (100g) over the whole brood area and see what drops through the OMF over 24 hours. Then if the count is high go with MAQS. Anything over about 50 mites dropping would be high and needs treating. Mite levels tend to fall as spring advances, so unless numbers are high I don't treat.

Maqs is good stuff but needs plenty of room in the hive and works at an ambient temperature of 10°c and above.

If you want to vape look at this bit of kit, gas vap

Take note of safety equipment, I would also suggest eye protection as well which this chap isn't wearing

https://youtu.be/YqRyO4PQeto