Exactly one week later, here I am back again for another sugar dusting. I have removed the medium honey super till spring,am gently brushing those bees on the frames back into the deep and proceeded to give another sugar dusting, this time only the top deep. After 10 - 15 minutes, I looked at the bottom board and again saw quite a few mites! So glad I'm doing this treatment.
I have somehow misplaced my entrance reducer from earlier this year, so I made one up and reduced the entrance to 2 small openings.
All seems fine, and I'll return in a week or so for another treatment, probably preceded by a complete hive inspection.
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Ghosted Bees and the Varroa Mites - 9/4
I had been a bit concerned about the hive's susceptibility to varroa mites and wax moths ever since I saw a couple on the bottom board a while back. Here's what has recently happened ...
I had participated in a bee club hive dive last Sunday and we went into 3 hives over at Akin Back Farm in Franklin ... finding varroa mites on drone larvae in each of those hives, I knew I had better take a serious look at my own hive. My first opportunity to look came on Saturday, the day after the hurricane/tropical storm Earl came breezing through. Thankfully Earl had fizzled out before it arrived here and all we had was some rain and a bit of wind. Saturday had some left over wind but otherwise was bright, sunny, and about 80 degrees. Pulling the bottom board out from the hive, I could see that there were several varroa mites on the board (no moths) and decided then and there to treat the bees. Although bees may be able to manage the mite infestation a bit by themselves, if the mites get too much control, it apparently can result in wing deformation of new bees, slowly and ultimately ending in the demise of the hive as it loses it's bee force of foragers to bring in the pollen and nectar food sources to sustain the hive. I had been reading about a sugar dusting treatment and decided to give that a go - it uses confectioner's or powdered sugar as a method. Apparently by coating or dusting the bees with the confectionery sugar, it causes some of the mites to fall off the bees as the sugar gets in their suction cup feet, can no longer hold onto the bee, fall off and go through the screen bottom out of the hive, it also causes the bees to groom themselves and each other, also making the mites fall off. It obviously doesn't get at the mites that are attached to the larvae, so it requires several treatments over about a month's time to be effective and catch a lot of the mite life cycle. I built a small frame the same size as the hive L x W and stapled some screening across it. With confectionery sugar, screen, bee brush, hive tool, and smoker in hand, I suited up and approached the hive.
Removing the top cover, I also removed the honey super that I had on top - although there were bees crawling over all 10 of the frames in there, it's been on there for a good 8 weeks now and it's clear that this late in the year, the bees are not building any comb ... no honey for me this year, oh well; but, now is time to try to help the bees get ready to survive the winter. I pulled the queen excluder off and looked at the topmost deep, seeing that I had bees heavily loaded between each of the frames - a good sign. Lots of propolis made it difficult to just lift and pull a frame - fortunately that is where the hive tool helps. Looking at several of the frames, I can see capped brood, some pollen, some uncapped and some capped honey, and new larvae ... Didn't spot the queen; but also, didn't spend lots of time searching for her either. I aligned the screened fame that I built on top, and poured about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of confectionery sugar on top of the screen, using the bee brush, I evenly spread it across the screen to get sugar onto and into the 10 frames ... This stirred up lots of activity from below and from the entrance board area and because it was a bit breezy, some of the sugar got in the air, all of a sudden there were hundreds of bees all around me, confused I am sure by what was happening to them.
I had difficulty separating the 2 deeps even using the hive tool; but, with effort I lifted the topmost deep and set it aside so I could treat the bottom deep. Surprisingly, although each frame was covered in bees, the frames in the bottom deep were mostly pollen stores, I don't recall seeing young larvae down there ... I'll have to look up what this means, I would have thought the bottom would mirror what I saw in the top. I then proceeded to sugar dust the bottom deep in the same manor as I did the top. Now there were bees flying everywhere!
Reassembling everything, I could see why the sugar dusting was also referred to as ghosting the bees, because with a coating of confectionery sugar on them, they looked like they had donned white ghost costumes.
The treatment approach I read was that you return to the hive some 10 minutes or more after you complete the dusting, remove the bottom board and do an inspection to see how many mites have fallen ... this count gives you an indication of the infestation level. So I pulled the bottom board out, and sure enough, sprinkled on top of the sugar that had fallen through the hive were I would guess hundreds of varroa mites - these little red/orange colored parasites that suck the bee blood. So the treatment seemed to work nicely. I scraped off the board into the compost heap, and proceeded to try another item I had read about - that of using a cooking spray (e.g. - Pam) as an adhesive coating on the bottom board. I sprayed up the bottom board, reinstalled it. The mites will continue to fall and be trapped for my count in the "adhesive" spray.
Looking now at the front of the hive, the ghosted bees were all over the front. Fortunately as the day went on, they had completed their grooming and returned to their normal tasks. By the end of the day, the hive appeared as normal again.
I should do another sugar dusting in about 10 days time.
I had participated in a bee club hive dive last Sunday and we went into 3 hives over at Akin Back Farm in Franklin ... finding varroa mites on drone larvae in each of those hives, I knew I had better take a serious look at my own hive. My first opportunity to look came on Saturday, the day after the hurricane/tropical storm Earl came breezing through. Thankfully Earl had fizzled out before it arrived here and all we had was some rain and a bit of wind. Saturday had some left over wind but otherwise was bright, sunny, and about 80 degrees. Pulling the bottom board out from the hive, I could see that there were several varroa mites on the board (no moths) and decided then and there to treat the bees. Although bees may be able to manage the mite infestation a bit by themselves, if the mites get too much control, it apparently can result in wing deformation of new bees, slowly and ultimately ending in the demise of the hive as it loses it's bee force of foragers to bring in the pollen and nectar food sources to sustain the hive. I had been reading about a sugar dusting treatment and decided to give that a go - it uses confectioner's or powdered sugar as a method. Apparently by coating or dusting the bees with the confectionery sugar, it causes some of the mites to fall off the bees as the sugar gets in their suction cup feet, can no longer hold onto the bee, fall off and go through the screen bottom out of the hive, it also causes the bees to groom themselves and each other, also making the mites fall off. It obviously doesn't get at the mites that are attached to the larvae, so it requires several treatments over about a month's time to be effective and catch a lot of the mite life cycle. I built a small frame the same size as the hive L x W and stapled some screening across it. With confectionery sugar, screen, bee brush, hive tool, and smoker in hand, I suited up and approached the hive.
Removing the top cover, I also removed the honey super that I had on top - although there were bees crawling over all 10 of the frames in there, it's been on there for a good 8 weeks now and it's clear that this late in the year, the bees are not building any comb ... no honey for me this year, oh well; but, now is time to try to help the bees get ready to survive the winter. I pulled the queen excluder off and looked at the topmost deep, seeing that I had bees heavily loaded between each of the frames - a good sign. Lots of propolis made it difficult to just lift and pull a frame - fortunately that is where the hive tool helps. Looking at several of the frames, I can see capped brood, some pollen, some uncapped and some capped honey, and new larvae ... Didn't spot the queen; but also, didn't spend lots of time searching for her either. I aligned the screened fame that I built on top, and poured about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of confectionery sugar on top of the screen, using the bee brush, I evenly spread it across the screen to get sugar onto and into the 10 frames ... This stirred up lots of activity from below and from the entrance board area and because it was a bit breezy, some of the sugar got in the air, all of a sudden there were hundreds of bees all around me, confused I am sure by what was happening to them.
I had difficulty separating the 2 deeps even using the hive tool; but, with effort I lifted the topmost deep and set it aside so I could treat the bottom deep. Surprisingly, although each frame was covered in bees, the frames in the bottom deep were mostly pollen stores, I don't recall seeing young larvae down there ... I'll have to look up what this means, I would have thought the bottom would mirror what I saw in the top. I then proceeded to sugar dust the bottom deep in the same manor as I did the top. Now there were bees flying everywhere!
Reassembling everything, I could see why the sugar dusting was also referred to as ghosting the bees, because with a coating of confectionery sugar on them, they looked like they had donned white ghost costumes.
The treatment approach I read was that you return to the hive some 10 minutes or more after you complete the dusting, remove the bottom board and do an inspection to see how many mites have fallen ... this count gives you an indication of the infestation level. So I pulled the bottom board out, and sure enough, sprinkled on top of the sugar that had fallen through the hive were I would guess hundreds of varroa mites - these little red/orange colored parasites that suck the bee blood. So the treatment seemed to work nicely. I scraped off the board into the compost heap, and proceeded to try another item I had read about - that of using a cooking spray (e.g. - Pam) as an adhesive coating on the bottom board. I sprayed up the bottom board, reinstalled it. The mites will continue to fall and be trapped for my count in the "adhesive" spray.
Looking now at the front of the hive, the ghosted bees were all over the front. Fortunately as the day went on, they had completed their grooming and returned to their normal tasks. By the end of the day, the hive appeared as normal again.
I should do another sugar dusting in about 10 days time.
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