Control of varroa by combining trapping in honey bee worker brood with formic acid treatment of the capped brood outside the colony: putting knowledge on brood cell invasion into practice

Biotechnical varroa (Varroa jacobsoni) control methods are based on the principle that mites inside brood cells are trapped and then removed from the bee colony. In our experiments trapped mites were killed with formic acid. Worker brood used for trapping was retained and returned to the colonies. The observed percentage of mites trapped and killed by formic acid treatment was 87% and 89% in two experiments. The effectiveness could be predicted using prior knowledge on brood cell invasion behaviour, which thus proved to be valid for the design and improvement of trap-comb methods for ecological varroa control.