Pine honeydew still running in Muğla in October — how do you sequence mite control around a flow that ends in November?
Muğla, fifteen years, 60 colonies on pine. For anyone who doesn't know our system: the pine honeydew flow here runs from late summer into autumn, and in a good year we're still supering in October.
The problem is obvious once you say it out loud. I can't have treatment strips in a hive with supers on for a honey I'm going to sell. So my mite control is squeezed into the window after the last extraction, in November, at exactly the point where the winter bees have already been reared — with mites feeding on them.
What I've done for years: a hard monitoring regime through the flow, and if a colony's numbers run away I take its supers off early and treat it rather than chase the crop. Then the whole yard gets treated as soon as the flow ends, following the label for the product and the temperature, and again in the short broodless spell if we get one in January.
Anyone else farming a late flow — Calabria, Greece — do you split the apiary so half is treated early, or accept the compromise? And does pulling brood frames during the flow buy real time?
#honeydew#varroa#treatment-timing#turkey
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4 replies
MieleMarco · Oct 13, 2026
Tuscany, and we have the same argument about late chestnut and honeydew. I split the apiary: the colonies I judge strongest carry the late supers, the rest come off early and get treated. It costs me some crop and it means the treated group is my insurance stock for spring. After a bad winter five years ago I stopped trying to have it both ways.
AbejasCarla · Oct 13, 2026
Andalusia. Your instinct about winter bees is the key point and I wish more people understood it — a colony can look fine in November and be full of bees that simply don't live long enough. Monitoring hard during the flow is the only honest way to run a late crop. muglabalci, do you find your November treatment is less effective simply because there's still brood?
muglabalci · Oct 14, 2026
AbejasCarla — yes, that's exactly the weakness. In November most colonies here still have a couple of frames of brood, so anything I use is working against a moving target. That's why the January window matters so much, and why in some years I take a smaller crop on purpose.
ImkerinLena · Oct 14, 2026
Worth adding for readers in cooler climates: this is why the northern calendar puts treatment BEFORE the winter bees are reared. The southern late-flow situation is a genuinely harder problem, not a case of people being careless. Removing brood frames helps a little but does not substitute for a proper treatment.