Treat for mites while waiting for hive to rear queen?

[beezerk]

I have what was a booming hive until 2 weeks before 5/19 -- when I found tons of drone brood, supercedure cells, no new brood, do not see Q -- conclusion is they are most likely superceding a failing Q. Checked for mites, and it's about 90/day, obviously needs treating. However, there is a break in the brood cycle, so if I put in MAQs or Hopguard (I have several supers on already), it would kill the phoretic mites but there's no brood with mites to worry about. Plus I'm concerned about going in while they may be waiting for a queen to mature and mate, not only for the disturbance but perhaps interfering with the queen pheromone distribution. To complicate things, I'm heading out of town for 7 days starting Sunday, so I really need to figure out what to do. I'm thinking of just leaving it alone til I get back. Advice would be welcome.

[motj3]

I would not treat until you have a laying queen. Also, not while it's hot if you are using MAQS.

[beezerk]

Thanks for the advice. I requeened today with a spare queen; put her in a cage with attendants, laid her on top -- bees seemed pretty happy with that, so I'm hoping there's no virgin queen activity in the hive. Going to leave them alone for 10 days -- hopefully I'll come back to eggs, larva. Then we'll see about the mites. They did yield 10 sealed frames honey, and still have 3 supers on them -- hoping they're gonna move all that honey from the deeps back up there....!

[rbz]

If you have no brood I would dribble some oxalic acid, since you re-queened anyway. If you have 90/day that's very high.