# Hi i m from croatia



## dadaas (Feb 24, 2015)

Hello,
It is me dadaas, i m from croatia.
I have 9 beehives and all 9 have survived the winter so far, i have check them already and i have see that queen have already started to lay leggs. My goal is not to use chemicals in beehive. So i got to this forum since i hear that owners of this forum are having lots of beehives without treatment. I will change my foundations to no foundations like i read from mister Bush. And i will not use any treatment this year. Not sure if i should dust with sugar to check if beehive is having varoa or not?

I was dusting with sugar on top of my langsroth beehive and below i had a paper which i check the next day and see if any varoa felt from bees. Is that good test or unnecessary stress for colony?


----------



## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Welcome to this forum dadaas.
I'm not the right person to answer your questions because I still treat all my hives. I hope in future the medium to long term can get where you want to get short-term. Good luck to you and your hives.


----------



## IsedHooah (Jan 13, 2015)

Welcome to the forum!


----------



## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Welcome to Beesource!

I think you may be confusing two varroa counting methods. (And even if you choose not to treat, I think you should always be monitoring.)

One test involves using a screened floor on your hive and a sticky surface below that (in a closed chamber) to collect any mites that fall off the bees on their own. Typically you let the test run for 72 hours and then do a count and divide by 3 to give you an average mite fall per day to compare with treatment thresholds for your area and season. There is a great deal of variation from day to day in mite fall, so a single 24 hour test is likely to be misleading. I test this way all the time, year-round. Because this method only counts the mites that naturally fall off, at best it gives you an idea of the rise and fall of the mite population over time, not the number of mites on the bees. Because of this I recommend you do this test every week (at least during the spring, summer, and fall) so you can be sure to pick up any rise in the numbers. Since it doesn't disturb the bees in any way it's easy to do, except you do need the specialized screened bottom board. (You could easily make one.) It is commonly called "sticky board" testing because you use a sheet of plastic under the screen that has been coated in something that sticks any mites that fall to the board so they can be counted. I use ordinary kitchen cooking oil - most kitchens have a bit of it that has gotten a little stale for cooking use, so that's a perfect recycling of a product you might otherwise throw away. I have used both olive oil and rape seed oil.

The second method which is called a "sugar roll" is considered a better, perhaps more accurate, test of mite levels. It involves collecting a small quantity of nurse bees from the brood area - be sure not to get the queen! - and putting them in a closed jar with screened top. You add some confectioners or powdered or caster sugar (not regular granulated sugar that you might use to sweeten tea or coffee) on top of the bees. Then you shake the jar -and the bees and sugar - for a minute or two, and wait a couple of minutes and then shake again. Then turn the jar upside down and shake the sugar out on to a white surface. The mites will fall out and you can count them. When you can't shake any more mites out, you open the jar and dump the bees back out into the hive. They will be coated with sugar, but mostly unharmed. 

There are at least two other kinds or "rolls": alcohol and ether. These are done the same way but the bees are killed in doing the test by the addition of the chemicals. Some people believe they are more accurate.

Because all of the roll tests involve opening the nest to catch the bees for testing (and in two cases will result in the death of the bees tested) they are not usually done very frequently, perhaps only once per month, or even just seasonally. What they measure is the percentage of bees that are infested with mites. There is a precise quantity of bees used (I haven't gone into the details here) and that gives you the theoretical infestation rate which you can compare to published thresholds for making treatment decisions.

You can learn to do rolls by reading on the internet and and watching youTubes demonstrations of the technique.

There is a third use of sugar related to mites that some people believe works (and it may in some limited circumstances) to help remove some mites from bees: That is "powdered sugar dusting" which must be done frequently (every few days) over a few weeks. I dont think it would work effectively in curing a substantial existing mite problem, however.

In my area I need to treat my bees to keep them healthy. (I have used thymol -Apiquard; formic acid - Mite-Away Quick strips; and oxalic acid vaporization. Of the three I like OAV the best, so far.)

I can add more details about how to do the tests - and what the results may mean and/or links so you can study the issues.

To begin with I recommend you read Randy Oliver's website www.scientificbeekeeping.com. He is very respected here in the US and he does detailed tests before publishing his results. He has very good information about mites and testing and treating methods.

Enj.


----------



## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

Welcome,


----------



## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>So i got to this forum since i hear that owners of this forum are having lots of beehives without treatment. 

Barry is the owner. Pretty sure he hasn't treated for well over a decade now.

>I will change my foundations to no foundations like i read from mister Bush. And i will not use any treatment this year. Not sure if i should dust with sugar to check if beehive is having varoa or not?

Your choice.

>I was dusting with sugar on top of my langsroth beehive and below i had a paper which i check the next day and see if any varoa felt from bees. Is that good test or unnecessary stress for colony?

That's more of a treatment than a test. 

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1180&context=entomologyfacpub

Typically a sugar roll is a cup of bees in a jar with a tablespoon of sugar and you shake them good and then count mites. If you dump the sugar into water the mites will float and be easy to count.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2174&context=extensionhist
http://www.beelab.umn.edu/prod/groups/cfans/@pub/@cfans/@bees/documents/asset/cfans_asset_317466.pdf
http://www.nj.gov/agriculture/divisions/pi/pdf/varroamites.pdf


----------



## Mbartole (Nov 11, 2014)

zdravo Dadaas!
I am not treatment free, but I will be "breaking the brood cycle" as described by Mel Disselkoen on his site mad splitter.com
Good free info on his site
His book is a great purchase too.

Sretno


----------



## Dragiša-Peđa Ranković (Feb 24, 2015)

Hi dadaas,

we almost register same time today.
I send you email. Did you got it.

In our language
Drago mi je da imamo slične stavove.


----------



## Dragiša-Peđa Ranković (Feb 24, 2015)

:thumbsup:


----------



## dadaas (Feb 24, 2015)

@ http://www.beesource.com/forums/member.php?95384-enjambres
Thanks for long post, yes i know almost all of this. I know the process of sugar testing, but i never done it. I was sugar dusting from top and then conting the mites on bottom and i see that is not good test. Jar sugar dusting is not easy process. Since i need to grab bees place them in jar and then dump the mites in water or white papper to count them. And i only have 9 bee hives, so people with like 100 will spend whole day with testing each beehive. Isnt there some other way to test them?

@ http://www.beesource.com/forums/member.php?60655-Michael-Bush
thanks for all the links i will read them. Also is there some method to check how are mites falling naturally since i have LR bee hives with open bottom and sticky board to check what is falling down. I visit my bee hives once per week, so is there some method to just check this boards and count the mites and then know how bad mite infection is?

@ http://www.beesource.com/forums/member.php?105489-Mbartole
Yea, i m also spliting my bee hives in some specific way, I use method from one of the best bee keepers of Balkan, mister Belčić. In short my method is: in the time of heavy honey harvesting i split all bees in my hive, to the collecting honey bees and to the young home cleaning bees that dont go out and collect honey. Then after honey harvesting is done i collect honey and add 2 frames of sealed brood with one queen cell. And my queen that was in a chamber with young home cleaning bees i place on other spot and i have split my 1 bee hive to 2 bee hives. And by this method i have naturally cut the brood in one beehive and beehive with young fresh home cleaning bees is also not infested heavily sicne they did not travel out to gather more varoa.

@ http://www.beesource.com/forums/member.php?106861-Dragiša-Peđa-Ranković
Yea, nice to meet you, i added you as friend.


----------



## AmericasBeekeeper (Jan 24, 2010)

Welcome!


----------



## GaryG74 (Apr 9, 2014)

Welcome to BeeSource!


----------

