# Powdered sugar observation



## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

I have been treating my four hives for varroa with powdered sugar. I put use about 1/2 lb per hive. I split it equally between all boxes, use a sifter and brush it between the frames. I collect sugar and mites on newspaper beneath each hive for about 1 hour. I've been doing this about once a week for about 2 months. What I have noticed is that the mites that dropped early on were of various sizes. I have seen a reduction in the number of mites that are dropping during treatment but not a huge reduction. But the size of the mites are now all the same and getting smaller each time. I don't understand this but it is definitely what I am seeing. The hives seem happier and more productive as well.

Not real quantitative I know. Any ideas what is going on? The real test will be who makes it through the winter and what mite counts I get in spring. I plan on continuing weekly powdered sugar treatments at least until honey supers go on in.

Eric


----------



## louis1st (Oct 17, 2004)

not sure how to explain this but I was wondering what you think of this method of treatment ?

Have you got many bees with damaged wings?

have you done a count of dead varroas?


----------



## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

I have always had very few bees with damaged wings (although a few). I can usually tell which hives have mites worse by the number of bees total and the overall vaiblility of hive - honey and wax productions, etc. The first time I treated, I counted like 300 mites dropped in sugar (they are not dead right away). I figure that is a pretty good thing so I kept doing it. The hive got stronger (all of them did). Last time I did treatment, I think about 100 or more dropped and that has been pretty consistent the last few time as well. But like I said, the size of the mites have been getting smaller (and more cosistent.) To me, it seems like maybe I am getting them knocked out of the hive shortly afer they emerge. But I don't know - something is happening.

Eric


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

That's interesting, I had thought our mites that were captured in powdered sugar were smaller this fall than in the spring. I tried to compare our pictures we took last spring, where they looked quite large to the one we took end of August, where they seemed smaller, but I wasn't very scientific about it and I thought I could have taken them from different distances. 
Out of our seven hives, we have one hive that has been showing 100 mites a day. That hive has the most bees, produced the most honey, so I'm trying not to be too surprised. This hive also has a few deformed wings as well, so we got a little nervous. I'm glad to hear you have been using powdered sugar every week, I was wondering if it would stress the bees too much, but apparently not. We just decided to do that to this hive until November when, hopefully the queen will have stopped laying. She hasn't yet. 
According to Dr. Eric Mussen here in California, the female adults who invade the brood cell and lay her eggs, after the bee has hatched, can reinfest a cell almost immediatley. Her mated offspring must feed on a bee for about 6 days before she can enter brood. I imagined we were capturing mostly these 1.4 offsprings with the dustings. That's why the November treatment has become very important in my mind, to capture those adults who will not have a place to hide once the queen stops laying.
Most of our other hives are in control and have much lower counts between 8 & 30. We have one other that is higher, showed 80 mites that I haven't dusted again, but planning to wait until that November date (I might change my mind now). This is our second largest hive. 
Thanks for your report.
Janet


----------



## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

When the honeybee chews the capping off of the cell and emerges, varroa in various stages of development will also emerge if present.
Also, one male varroa mite will emerge, die and fall.
Some of the mites found on stickyboards, etc are immature females and males that die on emergence.
They will be of smaller size and lighter in color.
Standard procedure is to ignore these in mite drop counts and only count mature females. They will be large and dark in color.

When the hive's brood profile changes, you will always see differences in mite drop numbers.
If for example you blindly tested a hive right after a supercedure or swarming incident, your numbers would appear shockingly high.

In the same manner, I believe that the mites that you are seeing now, eric101, that are the same size and large, reflect the fact that there is a reduction in egg laying, throwing more adult female mites into the phoretic mode, out onto the bees.


----------



## al coble (Mar 9, 2004)

Would doing a sugar roll before starting treatment and then every two weeks help determine changes in mite levels? Would this give you the female mites at the particular age needed to determine investation level?


----------



## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

Harry wrote "In the same manner, I believe that the mites that you are seeing now, eric101, that are the same size and large, reflect the fact that there is a reduction in egg laying, throwing more adult female mites into the phoretic mode, out onto the bees."

The mites I am seeing are not part of sticky board random drops and are SMALL not large. The numbers are actually pretty consistent. About 100-200 in the first hour after treatment. They are very alive - I can see their little legs spinning like mad (makes me smile). They are all consistently dark purple in color.

The bees do not seem to mind the treatments (I've gotten pretty fast at them by now) and all the sugar is cleaned up by the next week. I did notice in the weaker hive that they left a little of the sugar on the top bar of the frames - but not much and none in the other hives. I think they like the extra sugar source.

Is it possible that the bees have become more hygenic (which is a rumored effect of the powdered sugar treatment) and maybe are knocking off the larger mites throughout the normal course of things? This would leave a higher percentage of smaller mites to be dislodged during treatment.

Finally, I think I am treating more throughly as I go (hitting more of the bees with the powder). I tried just putting the sugar over the top boxes for a couple weeks and brushing it down hoping it would fall through the whole hive. I got many fewer mites this way so went back to taking each box off to treat separately. Mite count during treatment went up again and that's when I started noticing the smaller and consistent size.

I'll try to take pictures next time I treat.

Eric


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

I agree now with the taking the hives apart. I did each super separatly of THAT hive and counted over 700 mites. I want to repost the following, its more applicable here, I had just seen the varroa calculator at http://www.csl.gov.uk/science/organ/environ/bee/diseases/varroa/varroacalculator.cfm "which I just used to figure out our mite colony in our most infested hives, now showing counts of 100 mites a day. According to the calculator, that's 7000 mites in the colony of which 90% are hiding and reproducing in capped brood (per Dr. Ellis). Last week on that same hive (and one other with 80 mites a day), I did a powdered sugar treatment because I was getting a little nervous with the high counts. I counted a little over 700 mites mixed in the powdered sugar on the more infested one (didnt count the other, you could see it had a lot of mites and I'm so tired of counting). With this info, I think that means I trapped all available mites and left about 6000 to keep on reproducing. My plan was to wait until early November when the queen stops lying and the brood has hatched and then treat all of the hives with powdered sugar or rye flour to capture all exposed mites. If I did a treatment each week for 4 to 5 weeks, I should really lower that count dramatically. 
Another question, I wonder what would be more stressful, going into the hives on a weekly basis and dumping powdered sugar to get rid of 700 mites at a time them or waiting until the first week of November (weather willing) and doing a treatment to get most of them all at once. We are talking about 4 or 5 weeks. 
Rye Flour, anyone try that or have a comment? We had an old beekeeper up here use it as a pollen substitute and was pretty happy with it. Im going to dump it on one of our hives to see how it works as a mite treatment. On these last treatments, we saw bees removing particles of powdered sugar. I thought they might like a change"
I did do another treatment yesterday on THAT hive and I'm looking forward to counting mites. You are right, it doesn't take long to unstack, dust and stack again and you get to count frames of bees to see how strong your hive is.
Janet


----------



## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

in a study on dusting hives,

"The addition of Flour, BeePro, talc, and OTC10(terramycin) dusts all resulted in significant mortality" 

http://www.bioone.org/bioone/?request=get-document&issn=0022-0493&volume=097&issue=02&page=0171 

did you miss reading this article from our last powdered sugar thread?


----------



## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

>>The mites I am seeing are not part of sticky board random drops and are SMALL not large. The numbers are actually pretty consistent. About 100-200 in the first hour after treatment. They are very alive - I can see their little legs spinning like mad (makes me smile). They are all consistently dark purple in color.<<

My guess {and please don't jump through the screen and choke me} is that they measure .043" x .063" and that for some reason they just seem small to you.

We did exhaustive measuring of varroa in 2002 and were impressed with the uniformity of adult size.

You can always measure them.

We used an optical comparator, but if you were REALLY careful I think a caliper under bright light should work.

If by chance you found that your adult varroa were midgets, I would be interested in some samples and so would your state entomologist.


----------



## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

Harry, I don't even have a caliper let alone an optical caliper. Maybe I can get a picture and put something stand next to the mites for comparison. Need some dryer weather to treat - hopefully early next week.

But the thing is I am comparing what I remember earlier on (my first dusting or two) to what I am seeing now and comparing. At first I saw a variety of sizes and (I thought) larger sizes than I am see now. The sizes are very consistent now and look much smaller. Perhaps I am seeing things but it sure looks this way to me. 

I will take pictures and make available if I can figure out how.

Eric


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Thanks Michael, I just reread tha article on Mortality and Dust, and remembered I was a bit confused about how they stated some of their findings. To me, it seems that all of their experiments involved mixing various dusts with the antibiotic oxytetracycline (OTC). Even powdered sugar when mixed with antibiotics showed toxicity to uncapped bee brood. They also state that toxicity of various dusts are poorly known. We dusted with powdered sugar and examined the brood about a week later and we have seen brood at all stages that appeared unharmed. I havent seen them drag out anything else but dead or deformed bees. We had the experience with Wheat Gluten Flour last fall; a whole 25# bag got dragged through our yard (via a visiting pig) and totally cleaned up by our bees. If you have every worked with gluten, add water and its one sticky mess, almost impossible to clean up with a sponge. There were no problems that we were able to see with the bees.
Then there is Dr. Marion Elliss article involving 6 dusts including wheat flour. I just I found his final report here http://www.epa.gov/oppbppd1/PESP/regional_grants/2001/r7-2001-final.htm . He was so concerned with brood injury that adult bees were removed to another chamber for the experiments. He stated in past experiments there was considerable injury to brood in the larvae stage when large amounts of powdered sugar were applied to frames of brood. That could be the difference of our experiments. I do not remove the frames; I apply the dust on top and brush it in. 
Yesterday I powdered sugared the two hives with the highest counts. On THAT hive that I sugared last week and counted 700 (100 a day) mites, has considerably less mites this time. I havent counted them yet, but I would say around 300. The hive that had 80 mites a day got sugared for the first time since early September and I would have to say, there are at least 700 (not counted) mites on the board. We have one hive that swarmed sometime in September and the new queen (the one that I reported with an egg stuck to her) is laying up a storm. I treated that hive with rye flour. I marked a frame where there was brood of all ages. If I wait about 7 days, there should be advance larva and capped brood, or empty cells if they were injured, right?
I have to say, using the rye flour; the bees did not get coated as well as the powdered sugar. I added more flour and still couldnt coat them well. I pulled the tray a few hours after and already I can see there are not many mites mixed in the fallen flour. After 7 days, I will dust with powdered sugar and see the comparison. I might be making a lot of rye bread soon.
Janet


----------



## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

In the study they tested without the OTC also to see if the dusts alone would injure the hives. They found that powdered sugar did NOT but many other things did. They defined "mortality" by bees removing larvae. In Ellis's experiement, if adults were removed from the experiment, adult bees wouldn't have been there to remove the larvae. Adult bees may have removed the larvae due to a foreign substance in the cell that was not actually harming the brood. They dusted directly into cells so anything your applying to top bars may or may not end up in cells to a degree to matter. 

They made a square on the frame of brood and dusted each dust directly into the cells to see what would happen. There are pictures of this in the study where the bees go back and remove the brood in the area of the square but no where else. The bees did NOT remove brood from the squares dusted with powdered sugar. They said this may be due to the fact that the sugar is very similar to the nectar they are already feeding to the larvae.

Just wanted to point the study out to you, if you pay CLOSE attention and don't find any removal of brood then I guess its not damaging brood production.

Good luck, sounds like you are in the thick of battle with the mites!

[ October 15, 2005, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: MichaelW ]


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Thank you for your explanation. That cleared things up. I did mark that one frame of open brood (rye flour) that I will check as soon as it warms up again in a few days. Im glad you confirmed that powdered sugar doesnt have any negative effects on our larva. It didnt make sense that I was hurting our bees since we have so many of them. We have been amazed at how many mites the powdered sugar captures and hope we can continue our mite control just using this easy to find, easy to buy, easy to use method. 

We do have mites. And our strongest hives have the heaviest loads. We do not take ours to almonds or even move them to other sites, but we are surrounded by a couple of big time beekeepers who bring them up here (within a mile or so) for blackberries and starthistle. 
I have been estimating our mite counts in sugar, but I thought I would check it yesterday. Instead of pulling them out of the sugar, I thought I would dissolve the sugar in hot water and pull the mites that floated. What a mistake. The little bit of pollen and debris in the sugar turned into sticky gummy little balls, making it impossible to remove mites trapped. I guess pollen is more like flour than I ever thought.
Thanks again,
Janet


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Well, I observed the hive that I treated with rye flour. Robbing has started and there is not a drop of powdered sugar anywhere outside of any hive as there was all summer long. As soon as I removed a tray of powdered sugar, I was swarmed with bees, where I carried my trash bag with me to dispose of the sugar quickly. Powdered sugar still has lots of mites. That hive, that had been treated twice, 7 days apart, the tray showed only a couple hundred, while the hives that had not been treated since early September showed much higher counts, probably around 300. The hive that was treated with rye flour showed quite a few mites, I would say over 300 easily, it was not a very infested hive with counts around 30 a day. There was no robbing, or attempted robbing on this hive. When I opened it up, I was dismayed to see there was hardly any brood. This queen was laying quite well, and the frame I marked had all sizes of uncapped brood. There were granules of flour in all of the cells. In the powdered sugared hives, the bees cleaned all of the cells immediately. I will keep observing the health of the bees, but it looks like I will be making rye bread after all.
Janet


----------



## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

eric101 . . .

You could save a "sample" of the mites between layers of clear box tape or contact paper, then compare the "big" to "little" when needed.

I have counted many, many, MANY mites. I have not noticed "consistantly" small mites at any time (dusted w/ sugar only a couple of times). I always have a range of sizes and as stated, some are ALWAYS smaller that others.

There is always some dark ones and some light ones. They range from pure white (hard to see on white paper), off-white, tan, light brown to dark brown and some are almost black. I have never seen a 'purple' mite. Maybe Im color-blind









When you have little or no brood, mites are not hatching - so the mites that are falling are ALL OLD mites - probably the "same" size.

If you hive(s) are being invaded w/ mites from other sources, they too are OLD mites - probably the "same" size.

At this time of year (in VA), I would expect to find ALL OLD mites.


----------



## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

2rubes . . .

Sounds like you are knocking down a lot of mite using powder sugar. That's GREAT!

Please dont hate me for asking but . . .
Have you ever checked to see how many mites are left in the hive after treating w/ PS?


----------



## Murphy (Jun 7, 2005)

Hi 2rubes,

I am down in the Bay Area. I have been using powdered sugar for about 9mths and so far the mites seem under control. 
I was wondering how long you have been doing this dusting. Also have you done a powdered sugar in a jar test?
My hives are all on screens and slatted bottom boards and I leave them open all year.
I was curious do you close up your SBB in the winter?

Thanks everyone for the great disscussion.


----------



## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

2rubes 
Sorry to hear about the floured hive. I guess the scientists were right this time, thats not always the case however.

The silver lining is you can take advantage of the fact there is no brood in the hive. Since the brood cycle is broken, mites will not be emerging from cells for a period of time. Seems like if you treat that hive heavily with powdered sugar while no mites are emerging, you will have a good chance of knocking their population down dramatically.

I've been thinking about how one would use powedered sugar in combination with breaking the brood cycle for varroa control. Maybe do something like remove or kill the queens in early summer to have the hive raise a new queen and therfore break the brood cycle. This would be right at the time varroa populations are really exploding and the honey flow is over. Then you can treat with powdered sugar heavily during the broken brood cycle and see what kind of counts you end up with after that. Then in fall you would have to make sure bee populations are built up in time for winter. You may have to feed extra syrup to stimulate brood rearing.


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

I have been checking our mites with the sticky board after we do these treatments. I like to clean the boards about 5 days after a PS, and then wait 3 days and read the results. According to Dr. Dewey Caron, he gets the same results with a powdered sugar roll and sticky boards. Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote me, I can't emphasize enough the importance of monitoring. I also have on the MAAREC site (http://maarec.cas.psu.edu/) the Powdered sugar monitoring - our correlations look very high (>86%) that the number we get in Powdered sugar and sticky boards match - I prefer Sticky boards. But that is a good idea; I will do a powdered sugar roll to see if I get close to the same figures. 
I have always closed kept the floors of our screen boards in, until this summer, I left them out. We did get a lot more brood, the much better honey production from each hive than last year, and a lot more varroa mites. I think that had to do with more brood. We have put our inserts in again. Im a little worried with the cooler weather, that the varroa has more of a chance to mature in the cap brood.
Harry Vanderpool has a method of trapping and caging the queen in the early summer during blackberry season, and then releasing her after 24 days, (its on another post). This would be the same idea and I do think it is an excellent one. Either when you capture the queen or let the hive produce a new one, in 3 weeks, all the mites should be out of the cells and on the bees, making them perfect victims for a powdered sugar treatment. I do plan to do this next summer. It sounds like an excellent way to prevent your mite population from escalating out of control.
Thank you everyone for your responses, this has been so helpful,
Janet


----------



## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

2rubes . . .

>our correlations look very high (>86%) that the number we get in Powdered sugar and sticky boards match

Ah . . .
The point I was trying to make was, If you are knocking down say, 700-800-900 mites, thats GREAT. But, How many mites are STILL in the hive?

Im not saying PS doesnt work, Im just asking if you know HOW WELL IT IS WORKING!

If you have 3500 mites in your hive, and your killing 700, is that an effective treatment?

It your hive is like mine it may have 15,000 or more mites. I sure want (must have) something that kill more than 700-800-900.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>It your hive is like mine it may have 15,000 or more mites. I sure want (must have) something that kill more than 700-800-900.

I'd say anything less than 80% isn't really effective. You need to get rid of more than 900 if you have 15,000.







9,000 or more would be more like what you need.


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

I agree that I still have a lot of mites. When someone said you need to learn to tolerate high mite counts, I felt they were talking directly to me. I feel a lot of mites are hidding in capped brood, and our queens are still laying. The weather has been really nice here in northern Calif, balmy and warm. I counted boards yesterday, and we still have a lot of immature mites, which means they are coming out of the capped brood. Our counts on the sugared hives are much lower. THAT hive, that we powdered twice in two weeks suddenly is down to 28, which almost corresponds with the mites in the sugar numbering 300. The next highest mite count, we only sugared once and that has 36, which is our highest count. The next five are all low. We couldn't count the hive that we used rye flour on, the flour is darkish and hard to see mites in, unlike powdered sugar. They are still cleaning the rye flour out and the sticky board was coated in it. On the other boards, I can still see lots of immature mites, so brood is still hatching. I'm waiting for broodless time to do a big treatment when I hope to knock down most of the mites. I realized I will never get them all, but hope to keep them in managable numbers. 

I agree with the above, you really do need to understand the life cycle of the mites and bees to understand these numbers and know when to take action. This has been quite an education for me.
Thanks,
Janet


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Ok, I think I have this figured out. Am I on the right track? I would love to get rid of more mites at a time, but I dont think so with Powdered Sugar (PS) Treatments. The only residual actions I see are increased grooming for many days after, unlike other treatments that treat days like fumes. 
I can only remove 10% of the mites when using PS, because the other 90% of the reproducing mites are there making 1.4 babies (I remove drone brood) in capped cells. When the bee hatches, the mother and reproducing daughter, along with her immature daughters and son (who we do not count) are released. So we have doubled the reproducing population, but mom mite might only be outside the capped brood for a day or two until she finds a suitable cell (Eric Mussen, CA State Bee Guy, 9/25/05) to reproduce in, where her reproducing daughter has to feed on adult bees for at least 5 days before she starts to lay, and then shes hardly seen again. Other treatments will get additional Moms and daughters that are released for days after the initial treatment, where PS does not.
If you are using PS, then 3 or 4 treatments are essential. I see where weekly treatments would really keep mites at low levels; I let THAT one hive go way too long. After two treatments, I have the count lowered to 28 from 100. I waited exactly 7 days between treatments. Would I treat that a 3rd time? With the mite count that low, I think I will try and wait until broodless time, but if it increases, I feel I have a safe option of using PS. It is wonderful to be able to keep close tabs on the mites with sticky boards. I would like to tolerate higher mite counts then entering the hive too often (time constraints, my lifting issues (not supposed to) and stressing the bees). 
This thread has been so informative and helpful. Thank you everyone.
Janet


----------



## Dave W (Aug 3, 2002)

>If you are using PS, then 3 or 4 treatments are essential . . .

Dont ASSUME that after "3 or 4" treatment you have kill ALL the mites in the hive.

If "each treatment" is not killing 100% of the mites OUTSIDE capped cells, you may never reach zero, reguardless how many times you treat!!!!


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Yes, you are right, I will never kill 100%, that won't be my goal. Its more like, live with an acceptable level, monitor and take action when I see high mite loads.


----------



## Dick Allen (Sep 4, 2004)

> ...where her reproducing daughter has to feed on adult bees for at least 5 days before she starts to lay


"Mites artificially transferred from one cell to another, without passing any time on the adult bee, *are still able to reproduce although at a reduced rate* when compared with mites that have spent some time on an adult bee. However, under natural conditions mites need only a short time on the adult bee, less than one day, for their subsequent reproductive ability to be unimpaired."

from 'Mites of the Honey Bee'


----------



## guatebee (Nov 15, 2004)

I wonder if anyone wishes to comment on this:
1. Dust heavily with powdered sugar
2. At the same time, enclose the queen under a large push-in screen cage for a week to break the brood cycle
3. release the queen and dust again three or four times a week apart.

Will this get rid of all adult mites? How easily or quickly does a mite-free hive get re-infested?


----------



## louis1st (Oct 17, 2004)

I have used powder sugar once (very heavily as I was spreading the sugar on every side of every frame in the hive).
I was amazed how fast I was getting some dead or dying varroas by the entrance... and I didn't notice any particular death in the brood
As this was done only once, maybe somebody else would like to comment further on this?

Regarding putting the queen in a cage, i would prefer to kill the queen and let the bees do a new one, you would then get a period without brood and this would be the perfect time to treat.
Also, this brood free period enables the bees to store the honey instead of giving it to the brood (well known management method in France) which means there is no need to feed as the brood chamber is full of honey...

Also, I have done an artificial swarm this year after noticing a lot of bees with damaged wings,(which is a less cruel equivalent to killing the queen) and let the bees do a new queen, this is now one of my best colonies (i used once powder sugar and then switch to FGMO )


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Harry Vanderpool told me about caging the queen for 24 days during late spring honey flow (which is our blackberry season) and then releasing her and doing a powdered sugar treatment with great sucess as it gets almost all phoretic mites. Killing the queen and have the bees raise another would also work. I guess it depends on your queen, how good she is, how expensive. I am going to try it next year. I don't think we will ever be mite free, and they do reinfest pretty quickly. The article in Bee Culture 9/05 shows 100 mites reproducing to almost 12,000 mites in 56 days. Being able to observe mite fall is essential to monitor mite load. Now that I have heard someone dusts his hives every week with no ill effects to his bees, I plan to dust more often.
Janet


----------



## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

I don't really understand how caging only 24hrs would help. Wouldn't she only miss laying eggs for one day? 

I don't think it has to be as long as the time it takes to rear a new queen but 24hrs seems short. I'm thinking I may pull all capped brood and most large larvae from hives next summer to make splits. I would give these splits a new queen and leave the old with the parent hive. This would create a break in the brood cycle of about half the time it takes to develop a worker bee in both colonies. A longer break would be better, but I had trouble getting colonies started this summer by letting them make their own queen. It took them extra time to get things going again without the spring flow. I think if you did not split the hive but just killed or removed the queen, the colony would do fine. I had one colny do this on their own and they are doing good.

Doing the above summer split, I would look at mite counts just before splitting to see what mite treatment I would use. Powedered sugar if reasonable counts, Apilife or Sucrocide if high.


----------



## 2rubes (Apr 28, 2005)

Oops, its 24 days, not hours that you would cage the queen. I would be reluctant to kill a really good queen. That's a good idea, if you made the split with uncapped brood frames and then treated the bees with a dose of powered sugar. My first very infested hive was a split that I made with a lots of frames of capped brood, and then put the hive under a tree that shortly leafed out. Double whammy with Deformed wings and tons of varroa. We were able to bring that hive back.
Janet


----------



## MichaelW (Jun 1, 2005)

ah, that makes sense







I thought I had read 24hrs in a post of his too.


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

Of course 24 days is exactly the emergence time for a drone so the hive should be ENTRIELY broodless.







Of course killing (ore removing so they raise a queen) works out almost exactly the same.


----------



## eric101 (Mar 8, 2005)

The last couple times I treated, I noticed the bees in my two healthier hives have really flown out of the hive to attack me when I removed the upper brood chamber. I think they are getting wise to the treatment and are not happy about what I am going to do next. The treatment counts were down on these two hives, they have lots of stores, and lots of bees. I think I'll back off sugar treatment until the spring for them - too much stress it seems to me.

Eric


----------



## GaSteve (Apr 28, 2004)

I just completed my 3rd powdered sugar treatment - 2 cups of sugar per hive body and brushed in between the frames. It does seem to knock down a lot of mites. As others have said, it doesn't kill the mites. They lay on their backs and wiggle their legs in a blur. I guess the real proof will be in the post-treatment sticky sheets. I also noticed that the treatment also always knocked down 4 to 6 adult SHB. They were walking around in the sugar with their wings extended -- at least I think it was their wings. None of the hives had any evidence of SHB larva or damage.

I did get some sick satisfaction out of dumping the live sugar coated mites onto a fire ant mound.

BTW, I have read where some have concerns of nearby ants bothering hives. A very large fire ant hill has developed right under the entrance of one of my hives. It's been there about two months now with no apparent effect on the hive. I've never seen any ants in the hive. I figured they would make short work of any SHB larva that crawled out of the hive entrance.

[ November 26, 2005, 09:29 PM: Message edited by: GaSteve ]


----------

