# Asking about IPM and sugar



## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

Ok, so i have brood in one half of my split in a nuc now. I was considering a non TF powdered sugar dusting every other day for a week before the brood gets capped to theoretically offset the mites which have multiplied and are not yet within brood. Clearly my bees have mite loads they can't tollerate which contributed to their DWV symptoms a few weeks ago and then all the undersized crawlers in more recent weeks. The last drones have hatched now. 
I understand the powdered sugar is not a TF method that is supported, but if it's supposed to make mites disengage from adult bees and there are no mites within brood, wouldn't it be an opportune moment to use a gentle treatment on a colony expressing heavy loads that has had this brood break?

I don't understand the TF acceptance of feeding sugar syrup but not powdered sugar. Michael Bush said sugar syrup upsets the gut biology of the bee, so I am assuming the powdered sugar will to a lesser extent. In an IPM strategy, surely powdered sugar dusting a few times in this specific case could benefit the bees. I have no way of knowing if my bees were actually feral stock or just a swarm from a chemically managed hive. Their docile, mild behavior and their inability to handle their mite load at this time of year leads me to believe they are not feral stock.

The timing of the powdered sugar if it does lower mite loads on adult bees seems advantageous for a colony in my condition. I have a TF vsh queen now and I would like to have less of a load for her to manage. I am changing their genetics, so I will hopefully not be maintaining this action in my IPM strategy.
Can you please tell me if there are other factors I have missed about powdered sugar application or why it's not "allowed" under the treatment free umbrella.

I also intend to trap drone brood, do splits, source more TF feral bees etc.

Anyway, I'm curious as to what the TF community thinks is a good idea for my colony at this point.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Have you read Randy Oliver's discussion of powdered sugar treatments, on his site www.scientificbeekeeping.com? He is always informative, based on his detailed tests of whatever he's discussing.

Also I think you mean powdered sugar _dusting,_ not powdered sugar _wash_, which might mean using powdered sugar in way similar to an alcohol _wash_ as a testing method for mites. I point this out only because searching on the wrong term may produce confusing results.

What if anything have you done to assess your mite levels? A sugar roll (sugar-based variety of an alcohol wash) might not be a bad idea if you don't have the equipment in place to run sticky boards.

A pre-treatment assessment, followed a week or so after whatever intervention you try by a second test will tell you if it had an effect and would be worth repeating, or not, in similar circumstances. It will also tell you where you are in terms of starting-line infestation rates as your VSH queen's daughters get down to business.

Bees, even those with expressed DWV, are not necessarily doomed in the short run. Changing their queen may be helpful all by itself.

Enj.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

Sorry, I meant dusting, not wash...I am usually distracted around here.

I read his article and excepting his colleague's experience with what seemed to be higher mite loads due to more successful reproduction of remaining mites, i didn't see a reason that it wouldn't be beneficial in this circumstance. They however, weren't using dusting solely in a broodless situation or changing their bee genetics that I saw.

I have been doing mite counts of what lands on the pull out part of the screened bottom board, but I just started oiling them. I am almost four weeks into beekeeping. Now that the boards are oiled, I may be getting a more accurate picture for this method. I know its not the best indicator of mite levels.

I think the mite load is higher than this colony can handle due to the amount of DWV, crawling brood and dead bees within ten feet of the hive. I really can't sacrifice any bees currently to do an alcohol wash right now. I think it's gotta be an opportune moment to do something about the mites before they infest brood and grow exponentially.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I've heard stories both ways and some studies didn't get good drop rates with it, but I know some people had fair success with it. Honestly, I don't see why you would go this route, rather than just dropping in some apivar and calling it a day, it's much easier and more effective. Then you can proceed with the whole TF business and really test how the bees handle mites building up.


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## MTN-Bees (Jan 27, 2014)

I would recommend keeping bees alive for a year or two before going down a treatment free road. If your a first year beekeeper your chances of succeeding are very low. I would look at organic treatments such as OA or Thymol. A few years ago I tried the sugar dusting route. I saw little or no decrease in mite levels. A few hives increased their mite levels. It did work really well at making several hives really aggressive to work with.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

As I understand it. The apposition to sugar dusting by some is due to the idea that any interference with the bees managing mites is a setback. Think of it this way. they are doing a study on what percentage of colonies manage to control mites. For that study to be accurate, nothing can be done to the bees that would interfere with the final results of the study. The thinking is that you have to let those that are inadequate fail without interference. Leaving you with only those colonies that can manage without treatments. I would generally consider this approach requires a large number of colonies to produce any results at all. You have to be able to withstand the losses and still have any remaining colonies. This also indicates why it is advised that if you want to be treatment free, you start with bees that are already treatment free. Manage them correctly or they will not remain that way.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

In your circumstances, what have you got to lose? (Though in my own, modest, experience sugar dusting does make the bees pretty cranky.)

You can do nothing. Or you can do something to try and give the your new VSH queen and her progeny a better chance to get things under control by starting from a less perilous place.

You have already chosen to bring in the F-2 genetics from a VSH queen, so at this point you are not breeding "survivor" bees. That will only come once you can get the hive to survive. Dead hives contribute nothing to the genetic progress. Even if you could magically remove all the mites that are in there now, your bees will continue to be challenged by newly-introduced mites, so they will have plenty of opportunities to develop - and display - their own responses to the ongoing threats.

Personally, I would opt for a more effective jump-start, in the form of an oxalic acid dribble so that the problems in the original colony don't carry over as much into the new queen's reign. The adult bees (except for the new queen) in the hive are the temp-workers, and to some degree expendable. And they are not part of the long-term TF equation, at least in my view. Why hobble your new queen's chances at TF success by starting her out with what may be an insurmountable challenge? 

(I am suggesting OA dribble, rather than OAV, because as a possible one-time use, the cost of the necessary equipment wouldn't be economical.)

Oxalic acid, though classified in chemistry as an "organic acid" is not to be confused with an "organic treatment". (Nor is thymol.) 

But if powdered sugar is more to your taste, then I see no harm in giving it a shot (with monitoring before and after, of course.)

What I wouldn't recommend is letting some internet forums, or even philosophical ideology about what does, or doesn't, constitute TF orthodoxy constrain your thinking. These bees are your bees, and you can and should do whatever you want to do with them. Because you have already chosen to re-queen with a VSH queen it seems to me that your bias is towards a live colony vs. bees left completely on their own resources, to live or die with no intervention.

If you want to be a beekeeper, you need bees to keep (or to non-coddle, if you will). You can't build your skills at beekeeping without live bees. It may take awhile to hit upon a strain of bees that can prosper under non-coddling conditions in your area.

But what I want to know is whether you are having any fun with your bees, yet?

ETA: Sticky boarding done conscientiously (once per week for 72 hrs) under good conditions (boards oiled and protected from ants, etc.) produces excellent, actionable information about mite trend levels. Far better, in my opinion than a once-or-twice per year alcohol wash. It's not the absolute presence of mites, or not, that is the issue. (You don't have to test for that - if you've got bees, you've got mites.) It's the assessment of the mite population dynamics that regular sticky boarding reveals. What have been your average 24-hr. mite counts so far? 

Enj.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

I did try sourcing treatment free bees, nobody who has them will part with any, so I did the next best thing and started with a feral swarm. In a week I hope to set up a swarm trap up by a treatment free apiary and I hope to get a nuc from a different treatment free apiary. I had to start with something though. Hopefully with three lines of treatment free genes I can get something through to next year.
I have only begun oiling the board, I don't have any 24 hour assessment as of yet. I have been counting what is on the board after three days, but without the board being oiled, I imagine many could have crawled away. The numbers of those checks were low. I am judging the colony can't manage the load they have due to their expression of viral problems.

I did a sugar shake and I really didn't like what it did to the bees. It felt really invasive and overly disruptive. I think doing that weekly for an extended period of time would be very upsetting to the bees. I may do it tomorrow one more time before the first brood is sealed. I can now see how that could undermine the colonies' efforts to remove and deal with mites over the long run.

I'm going to monitor mite levels so I can compare them to other hives and the colony in the future.

Found 29 mites, about ten still alive.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

I assume what you mean by "sugar shake" is a powdered sugar dusting, not a sugar roll test for mites, which also sometimes called a sugar shake?

(I went nuts the first couple of years sorting out these similar-sounding and confusing terms.)

And, I agree with you: powdered sugar dusting can be hugely disturbing to the bees. Mine just hate it! (I recently added some probiotics to the hives via a sugar dust carrier, and my bees were mad as wet hens about it.) And sugar in the open brood can be damaging, I've read. In fairness, I have done it so few times some of the bee-distress is likely to be my own operator error, and if I used it often enough I would get more skilled doing it, with less rumpus all around.

But the truth is that none of these anti-mite tactics comes without some distress. I weigh that distress carefully against the expected potential efficacy of the results in choosing which things to use. And I would weigh that distress in general against the danger of untreated mites in a hive already expressing significant mite-vectored disease signs and symptoms

Twenty-nine mites in 24 hours would stand my hair on end, which because it is long enough to sit on, would be quite a sight. Unless that was the forced-drop after the sugar dusting? (Sometimes after an oxalic vapor treatment, one will find 500-2000 dead mites on the second day. But at least they're definitely goners at that point.)

I think your plans to try and acquire TF bee swarms are sound (though as you know not all "feral" swarms are also mite-tolerant, or even whatever is meant by "survivor" bees.) And I think it's a good idea that you bought a VSH queen to help this first swarm get back on its feet, again. I think it is also a sound short-term tactic to give them an extra boost by trying some relatively mild ways to lower the challenge. VSH is all very nice but it is not a reliable curative for severe mite problems. I think of it more as a maintenance trait able to hold it's own against mites, but not expected to eradicate them in one fell swoop. (If it was curative, it would a treatment, wouldn't it?)

Anyway, it sounds like you are deeply engaged with your bees, so that is a good thing.

Enj.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

enjambres said:


> Anyway, it sounds like you are deeply engaged with your bees, so that is a good thing.


yep.

nc, i mentioned earlier about not getting too caught up with this or that definition. the guidelines for the forum actually allow for the use of 'treatments' when 'employed as part of a plan to becoming treatment free'.

especially since you are dealing with a small number of colonies, do what ya gotta do to keep your bees alive until you have the opportunity and can see what 'proven' genetics will do in your neighborhood.

we are very interested to see how your experience plays out and i appreciate that you are taking the time to share it here.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

I got all freaked out when I looked outside today at 3, I thought my weaker hive with the new queen was getting robbed...and then slowly it dawned on me that it was the afternoon, that most of the bees inside had been the young ones and that it was probably an orientation flight going on. I noticed bees lapping up excess powdered sugar on the landing board and a general sense of congeniality.

I figure if I can get two true TF colonies and my vsh queen hive going by next month, I will end up with bees next year. If the colonies can be split in the spring next year, I will be able to have fairly strong chances of good genes just from the diversity of my own drones, as long as I don't cull the drone brood before mating flights.

I am really hoping I can get my colony going.


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## ruthiesbees (Aug 27, 2013)

On a side note with the drone brood, my TBH colony built 8 new combs of drone brood this spring. I didn't want those kinds of mites in the main colony but I love the queen's genetics and wanted her boys flying, so I pulled those bars over to a nuc and let the drones hatch out in there (they had a little worker brood on the comb as well). I could do a powered sugar shake in there as often as I wanted to knock the pheoric mites off the adult bees, and there weren't any new eggs being laid, so there was no chance of me damaging them (that can happen in a real hive when you do powder sugar dusting with open larvae). The small group of worker bees hauled in enough nectar to feed the boys. I even ended up sticking a queen cell in there to get her hatched and mated and then I disassembled the nuc by putting the bars of now nectar back into the main hive to be used as honey comb.


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## marshmasterpat (Jun 26, 2013)

If you are seeing signs of DWV as you stated, your hive currently has significant issues. Realizing you don't want to treat, I think I would treat these with an oxalic dribble, just to help knock back numbers like some others suggested.

I have lost several hives to mites due to my lack of treatment and never seen DWV appear yet.


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## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

diymom said:


> Sorry, I meant dusting, not wash...I am usually distracted around here.
> 
> I read his article and excepting his colleague's experience with what seemed to be higher mite loads due to more successful reproduction of remaining mites, i didn't see a reason that it wouldn't be beneficial in this circumstance. They however, weren't using dusting solely in a broodless situation or changing their bee genetics that I saw.
> 
> ...


Curious, how many DWV, dead bees per day we are talking about ?


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

I was finding about 5-8 deformed wing bees a day for about five days, with non deformed, undersized crawlers too, amounting to a combined 12-15 bees a day. Those were just the ones I found.
It seemed really weird to me my first week into beekeeping to have so many dying bees. I asked about it on here...
Isn't oxalic acid hard on queens or destructive to larvae? I just got my queen and really want her to be healthy, I don't want to kill brood unnecessarily either.
I certainly don't want to set up this colony for failure. I just can't understand why the mite load was so high in a swarm that was supposedly only three weeks old.
I will look into a dribble for this hive. 
Monday I get to go shadow the 83 year old TF beekeeper in his local feral yard a few cities away. I am going to help him out at his workshop in exchange for a nuc or split. Then I should have bees with a little more provenance and hopefully, stability.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

diymom said:


> In a week I hope to set up a swarm trap up by a treatment free apiary and I hope to get a nuc from a different treatment free apiary.


That is a good plan. You mentioned in another thread a tribe of treatment free beekeepers. I would stay connected with them so that you can take advantage of the steep curve of both their methods and, hopefully, bee genetics.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

Diymom; When a swarm leaves it's parent colony it can take as much as 45% of the varroa mites in the colony with it. Swarming is one of the methods bees use to allow a colony to survive a heavy infestation of varroa.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

heavy varroa infestations are also known to cause a colony to abscond their hive. so if that 'swarm' was an abscond instead it could have been heavily laden with mites to start with.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

diymom said:


> Monday I get to go shadow the 83 year old TF beekeeper in his local feral yard a few cities away. I am going to help him out at his workshop in exchange for a nuc or split. Then I should have bees with a little more provenance and hopefully, stability.


I only have about a hundred questions that I would like you to ask him. What is his perspective on how bees fare over time; when and how does he feed; how was he affected when varroa came in; what brings him the most joy in beekeeping; what kind of frames; what hive configurations; does he swap lower and upper brood boxes; why not; does he laugh when you ask him about screened bottom boards; how does he raise queens or increase hives; does he use swarm traps; how and what kind. I hope you don't annoy him too much and will share some of what he has to say.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

I already know the answer for screened bottom boards.... he didn't know why anyone would need them. He didn't have an opinion either way but he found them interesting. He doesn't seem to monitor for varroa. I will confirm this of course, but he doesn't keep up with new stuff or techniques. He just lets bees be bees. He tells everyone to just leave them alone most of the time. He doesn't use reducers.

Update on my hive, I checked colony one...no queen laying, apparently, the one I found dead outside their colony was their only shot and I am so glad I bought a queen. They had a few of the original queen cells, one had been recalled but was empty, one had an egg in it. Clearly they are trying and want a queen. I put the original colony above the other for a newspaper combine. 
I am a little worried though, it appears there may not be enough bees in the queen right half to be taking care of the young larvae. There were so many eggs but not a ton of brood being fed, this is . There were two spots of capped brood about a baseball size on both sides of one frame, there were lots of eggs all over two other frames, but almost no brood being raised, they had no stores above the brood.. I really hope the colony reunites and works to grow the brood and fast.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Oxalic acid is not harmful to queens and brood (and OA vaporization is even less harmful than OA dribble.)

You may be thinking of formic acid (another organic acid, but a different one). That one does have some queen and brood loss problems, particularly in temps above the low 80S F. If you use MAQS (Mite-Away Quick Strips) you can reduce the dose and only use one pad (a good idea for a new colony, anyway), and repeat 4 weeks later. It is now labeled for that half-dose. (See Randy Oliver's discussion on this.) I have used MAQS and never had a queen or brood issue, but I am very picky about the daytime temps during the week it is in place - I choose one where my day time highs will scarcely break 80 F for the first three or four days - which considering I am in northern NY is not difficult to find. In So Cal, that may be more of challenge.

Which is why I suggested OA dribble in your situation. I use Savogran Wood Bleach, and small container which will provide many dozens of treatments costs about seven or eight bucks. I have already purchased the equipment to do OAV (the vaporizer and the personal protective gear) so I would use that method, but since you may not be ready for that, OA dribble will work fine. It should only be done once, and as early as possible, while there isn't much capped brood. It does not kill mites under the cappings.

MAQS does kill mites under the cappings, but at the cost of a small risk to queen and brood.

Enj.


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## diymom (Apr 8, 2016)

Ok, I am still undecided about the dribble, I don't know what to do. Inner conflict. I will look around for the wood bleach, thanks for suggesting the brand, I heard some brands may have added ingredients-that you need to call and check. I read the scientific beekeeping article on the oxalic dribble. I watched some videos, I don't get how it works, the bees ingest it and that poisons the mites??? Also the formulas are confusing.
If I wait, more brood gets sealed with mites...less effective...higher temps...
now I am back down to one hive... 
I need another three hives going to feel ok.


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