Knocking off Varroa Mites with Powdered Sugar

I’m not a fan of Sugar “rolling” All the bees treated to work out the mite load as done by the club apiary, pretty much died

Shaking icing sugar on bees may work but what about the caking agent?? Tricalcium Phosphate ( TCP) - how does that effect the bees?

Some icing sugar uses corn flour/starch

I’m assuming the TCP is similar to Diatomaceous earth - and just basically crushed
shells/bones?

This is what sugar “rolled” bees look like DEAD!

Mine were ok and I did all the hives twice this year. Never heard of them dying.
If you think the association technique is wrong they might as well do an alcohol wash as it’s more accurate.
Mind you it helps to use the right sugar. Whizz up your own

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I was having difficulty finding Icing Sugar without anti caking agent. So I bought some granulated sugar and put it in my coffee grinder until it was fine powder, it worked a treat. I have not yet used it though and may not this year. I would not use sugar rolling either. But may consider dusting them with a fine sieve to see if it loosens varroa.

It does loosen some and can be used as an accelerated mite count. See Randy Oliver’s site. Jury is still out whether pouring sugar powder over open brood does it harm.

Sorry Tree Meant to suggest that

to My mind that seems the best way. Having seen what Rolling does I was reluctant to do it.

Getting the girls to groom themselves and each other strikes me as better

No worries Valli. I think sugar rolling is primarily used for doing a mite count calculation rather than dealing with them. Dusting or other treatments is to get rid of them or at least try and reduce them.
My black bees seem to be throwing out any white pupae that have them on this helps to keep numbers in check. Like you I would not roll bees it looks cruel.

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Good stuff.

I have a LASI hive that does this

How do you measure your mite load?

I am a newbie so I have only taken a look very regularly at my inspection board. The most mites I have ever counted is 10 that was after a couple of days and with a MAQS strip on. Many times I have seen none at all I use a big magnifying glass so I don’t miss any. When I first had my NUC there was a couple of DWV and now I don’t see any. It must be all beginners luck. As my bees seem to be very strong, active and the colony has expanded enormously. Today I harvested 3 Flow Frames as we have a flow on. The honey has a very pronounced taste as opposed to the earlier season honey, I am assuming its Ivy.

Well done on the honey.
You must decide on a reliable method of varroa monitoring. Natural drop on your inspection board is not reliable at all. For the hobby beekeeper a sugar roll is a good method. I don’t know why Valli’s association bees died but it must be poor technique. Maybe they were left out in the sun during the waiting period? I don’t know why the dead bees are lying in a heap on the grass. You normally just tip them straight back into the hive…
As for beginners luck, I wouldn’t expect a new nuc to have a varroa problem. It takes a while to take hold which is just as well or many would give up

Dee I think it was technique - 300 bees in a jar roll them and count the mites - I think it was a cruel waste of bees - I think using an icing sugar sprinkler on the bees on the frames would have been a better way.

All of my bees have been broodless for various reasons over the Summer, so that helps and the vape.

@TreeCamper my Sapphire had a nosema problem beginning of April - and I had several bees with DWV. even though there were very little if any Varroa going into Autumn.

There is a recent article I read said the Queens can pick up DWV and other viruses from mating - they have collected phallus’ from returning Queens newly mated returning back from the DCA (Drone Congregation Areas) and have found signs of Virus from the Drones that can infect the Queens - the Queens who were previously from disease free hives were showing signs of virus back at the hive emanating and spreading from the ovaries.

Well I have to be honest and say I need to read up more on how to calculate my Varroa load. But then I thought as a temporary measure I will assume I have a problem and treat with MAQS anyway.
Even if it was not necessary it will knock back the Varroa and help the bees. The risk was that some people have reported losing bees and the queen with MAQS. From what I understand this is when they have used 2 strips and with warmer temps. So I went with 1 strip and slightly cooler temps which makes the off gassing less aggressive. When the colony starts to expand again in Spring I will put the other strip on. My challenge now is that I would like to take off my Flow Frames but the bees are bringing in an enormous amount of nectar every day. After I extracted 3 frames yesterday they all went to work on the frame near the inspection window which was almost empty it is now all glistening with nectar. Ordered a refractometer to test my crop.

It’s getting late. How much stores have they got in the brood box? That’s the important thing. They need 40 lbs in a wooden box. You will have to pull the flow frames for winter and you can’t leave them short.

They have started to put stores around the outside of the Brood Box frames they also have a totally full shallow super all capped honey above them. Then they have still more in the 3 remaining Flow Frames that I have not harvested. Today is sunny and light winds so they are busy bringing in lots more. My Cornish Black Beekeeper friend says there will be enough to overwinter on with the Brood and Shallow. Remember Cornish Black Bees are more frugal with winter stores than the more popular strains. I think I will remove the Flow Super when the bees contract in number my goal is to keep the shallow full and let them have plenty to move down into the brood box if necessary. I am prepared to suffer the consequences of set honey in the Flow Frames my priority is the bees having enough stores in the brood and shallow before I remove the Flow Super which will be at the last possible moment.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ktaFIlWME&feature=youtu.be

Or not…
“And now I have another terrible confession to make. Not one as bad and un-American as passing up short-term gain and investing in the future—but still horrible: I have never yet counted even a single sample of mites from any of my bees. I consider counting mites as a way of evaluating Varroa resistance to be fraught with all sorts of shortcomings and difficulties. It’s very time consuming and hence the size of the apiary, the number of colonies tested, the gene pool, and the income available all start to shrink. It’s also very easy for the results to be skewed by mites migrating from other colonies or bee yards. And it doesn’t show which colonies are more resistant to secondary infections–a trait I consider very important.”–Kirk Webster, ABJ April 2005, pg 314

“All the boring and soul-destroying work of counting mites on sticky boards, killing brood with liquid nitrogen, watching bees groom each other, and measuring brood hormone levels—all done in thousands of replications—will someday be seen as a colossal waste of time when we finally learn to let the Varroa mites do these things for us.”–Kirk Webster, What’s missing from the current discussion and work related to bees that’s preventing us from making good progress.

“I’ve thought a lot about how in the world to describe what’s really happening in an apiary that hasn’t used treatments of any kind for more than five years; where mites are now considered to be indispensable allies and friends, and where the productivity, resilience, profitability and enjoyment of the apiary are just as good as at any time in the past. I wouldn’t dream of killing any mites now, even if I had an easy and safe way of doing so.”–Kirk Webster, A New Paradigm for American Beekeeping

kirkwebster.com

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Michael, how many hives do you have?
How many hives do you think most hobby beekeepers here have?
How long has it taken you to achieve your treatment free equilibrium and how many losses have you sustained on the way?

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Michael, how many hives do you have?

Probably around 40 right now.

How many hives do you think most hobby beekeepers here have?

Probably 2 to 4 like I had for decades.

How long has it taken you to achieve your treatment free equilibrium and how many losses have you sustained on the way?

Once I got on small cell, no time. And that can be done very quickly.

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Like you I would not roll bees it looks cruel.

Here you are
An alternative
http://www.swienty.com/shop/vare.asp?side=0&vareid=115880

Make your own confectionary sugar by grinding regular sugar in a blender

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Hi TreeCamper, My bees are also dumping the “infants” onto the bottom screen (like 5 of them), I didn’t realize that this might actually help control the mite issue. Although a drop in the ocean probably…