Varroa Mite Monitoring with Screen Bottom Boards - Scale Hives June 6-10
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- Опубліковано 11 чер 2018
- Link To Document on monitoring for mites in Ontario with thresholds: www.ontariobee.com/sites/onta...
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Explaining how I use the screened bottom board and sticky board as a monitoring tool for understanding varroa mite infestation levels. - Наука та технологія
Devan really find your videos informative! Thanks for sharing all of your experiences!
Hey, your videos are very helpful! Thanks a lot!
I hope you continue to film.
I am not a bee keeper, but if you want to make sure you see all the mites, I would recommend drawing some grid lines on the file folder before you coat it in shortening, Then just scan each zone prior to clearing it. Just a thought.
Here is a tip...... MACTAC....I at one time was a hobby beekeeper....till a neighbor figured out I had bee hives in my back yard. That ended that. But I was also a printer, and a product we kept on hand was called MacTac. That is a brand name but other paper suppliers may carry the same stuff under a different name. MacTac was the stuff if someone wanted a bumper sticker, that was what we used. I cut it to size to fit the bottom board, peel the back off and put it into the hive. Sticky side up. Anything falling through the screen was captured. I would bet that anyone could go to any print shop and get it cut to size, pretty cheaply, and get a really good count of hive pest count.
Super videos Devan. THank you for sharing
Thanks alot for the video! I really like your style of doing videos, great educational value for a beginner! Also refreshing to see other than elderly ladies keeping bees. Keep up the good work! :)
Greetings from Finland.
Great work Devan, I love your videos, they're always so informative! You're right on the money for treatment recommendations, though if you're gunning for accuracy, nothing beats an alcohol wash of 300 bees to determine your level of infestation, which is what you really want to know. However, stickyboards, if used often, can be a useful indicator for determining mite levels over a long period of time. No excuses everyone, monitor your mite levels and your bees and your neighbours will thank you for it!
Awesome! I've been looking forward to another scale hive video. Of course, monitoring and treatment of Varroa mites is irrelevant to this beekeeper, but I still find it interesting to see how others manage them.
You're on that lucky part of the earth then.
Southeastern Ohio Honeybees . Australia is The Lucky Country, for sure. Even our friends across the ditch in New Zealand have to deal with mites. I count my blessings everytime I see a video like this one.
Devin, not sure that counting the mites on the sticky board to see the level of mite investation a colony has the way you described is very accurate.. I live in SE Ariz. And I was doing the same thing as you and not seeing hardly any mites on the sticky boards and thinking that my hives had very few mites. (another beekeeper nearby was doing the same) But on December 1st I started a Apivar treatment in my hives and after just 6 days of a 42day treatment period I counted about 85 mites on one sticky board and on the sticky board of another hive there were over 200. Luckily all dead. Perhaps a powdered sugar or alcohol wash is a more accurate way of monitoring the level of mite infestations a colony has. I plan another treatment in the spring before the honey flows. This will be an annual treatment regime for me. Enjoy your videos! 🐝
Hey, those are still very low numbers for 6 day drops during an Apivar treatment. I've counted hundreds and hundreds of sticky boards sampled in all sorts of conditions over my time. Lots of times during any 3 day period near the start of an apivar treatment there can be thousands of mites to count. It depends on time of year, current colony status regarding amount of brood, and population size, but usually a 3 day sticky board drop is still more sensitive to total mite numbers than an alcohol wash with a 300 bee sample.
example given is that our thresholds for treatment here in Ontario, Canada is when you see ~3 mites per hundred bees in an alcohol wash, or when you see ~9 mites per 24 hour period on a sticky board. For any given population of mites in a colony, we typically see more mites on the sticky board than in the alcohol wash. But I think either of them are acceptable monitoring methods. The main thing is that you're actually out there checking.
good job thanks
What part of Ontario are you in? I’m keeping bees east of Kingston. Thanks for the videos !
last year in the fall, I had 1 beehive with many mites a day more than 10. my other 3 beehives 2a 5 mites per week.
but with a treatment with oxalic acid. There are almost as many mites everywhere. so do not be fooled with the natural mites drop
Hi Devan, your videos are fantastic. I've seen so many videos on UA-cam where the presenter says "and we'll check back in a week and see how things are doing" and that's the end of the video and there is no followup video. As a novice beekeeper, I'm very excited to follow you and your scale hives through an entire season in real time. Unfortunately, in Vancouver we're a few weeks ahead of you so I'm learning too late everything I should have done. Next year I will have to be more diligent about swarm prevention ;-).
A couple questions: 1. Will you check all your hives using sticky boards or will you rely on the scale hives as an indication of general mite pressure in the area? 2. Can you recommend a source in Canada for the Mite Away Quick Strips?
Thanks.
The scale hives may be an indication of mite pressure in this individual bee yard, but I would monitor some hives in all of my different yards. Literally any bee supply store in canada will sell you MAQS (they are made here after all), and they should be the same price everywhere, so I'm not going to plug any one retailer.
Love your videos. I tried the single brood box in Texas this spring. The bees were doing great but would not come up a draw wax on my medium honey supers. my best hive swarmed and I ended up adding double deeps to all 6 colonies. loads of bees but my wife is complaining that they keep all the honey. Is there a way to get them up and draw new comb. I even added a top feeder on a couple to see if that would work. The bees just hung out in the medium super space. Thanks for any advice.
Do you leave screens open to ground when not monitoring?
I don't have an easy answer for you, sorry. It depends on the honey flow. I've never had a problem drawing foundation when the honey flow is strong, but during off peak times they can definitely ignore the foundation. I guess you can't even temporarily move a brood frame up next to the foundation if the frames are different depths.
What do you do if your mite counts are very high but it's too hot to treat with formic acid?
What happened to part 3 of hive splitting???????
Can you always prepare for mites, or do you all wait until you get them? (I'm a noob)
Hi Devan, thanks for the video. Is the sticky board the only way you do mite counts? No alcohol wash or sugar roll?
Really time consuming methods. Put a sticky board on every hive and quick inspections really show which hive needs follow up treatment. IMHO
Devan has many videos with many different ways he checks for mites including alcohol wash and sugar roll methods.
Super helpful, Dave O. Thanks! I couldn't find a single one of the videos you mentioned.
I watched all of his videos last year and know he discusses mites in a few of them. I did search around and found his alcohol wash in "Beginner Beekeepers: 3 Essential Skills" at about 8 minute mark. ua-cam.com/video/F5vS3jKyPFo/v-deo.html Hope this helps.
Hey anyone know why you wouldn’t leave the sticky tray permanently or have diatomaceous earth to help
devan are you coming back
Mite counts been really low here in Michigan this year so fare .. after last year we were down right under attack.. not sure what's going on .. why one year there bad .. did a mead wash found 1 mite
.. after treatment OVA only seen one or two on the sticky board
Mite population is at it's peak in Aug. and Sept.
I’ve a feeling this is a dumb question, but here goes anyway.
Does the threshold count depend on the number of bees - ie with double brood boxes you’d surely get twice the count for the same infestation percent?
Hey, this is not a dumb question at all. Sticky boards are sort of an absolute measure of mites in the colony. The count you get doesn't factor in the population of the bees. So you're right, when the bee population is much higher, you could see more mites dropping, but effectively maybe have the same number of mites per bee. It's a monitoring method that requires a bit of thought by the beekeeper, and is really best to just tell you if your infestation is very low, or very high.
So, I guess to answer your question: There aren't different thresholds published for different colony sizes (that i"'m aware of, definitely not in Canada), I suppose they're all assuming a colony of average population size.
A method like an alcohol wash gives you a rate of mites per bee (or per 100 bees) because you are sampling a specific number of bees no matter the size of the colony.
Are this Langstroth hives?
I've seen a couple videos of using vaporized mineral oil to control mites naturally. Have you looked into or tried that method?
Nooooo! haha, I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I'm not at all into these unregistered, and untested attempts at controlling mites. There are lots of available options that have gone through the testing to show that the product is 1.Effective 2.Safe for bees and 3.Safe for the beekeeper. And lots of these options fall into what you might call "natural", they're registered for use in organic management. I'm not sure what is natural about vapourizing a petroleum product all over your bees.
On top of my own opinions, using a treatment like that is illegal in canada and beekeepers have been fined in the past for using chemicals off-label, or using unregistered products on their bees.
Food grade mineral oil (FGMO) was deemed safe and effective in 1999 By Dr. Pedro Rodriquez of the US Dept. of Agriculture. Search FGMO as an alternative treatment for honeybee mites. Mineral oil is not a petroleum base product.
@@privatebubba8876 mineral oil is a liquid by-product of refining crude oil to make gasoline and other petroleum products.
Do you ever get stung?
If bees are living day to day (pay check to pay check) or you want them to not slow down with resource development during inclement weather you might feed sugar water or patties or give suitable drawn foundation with nectar pollen honey.... So as to keep them going......
Sticky boards are not really necessary, just a board will do the trick. Anything falling down is usually dead or not very mobile. If you have any mites on the board? Then you will undoubtedly have hundreds or thousands more in the hive.
Devan, Have you seen this video on maintaining bee health?? What are your thoughts on this? (See second half) ua-cam.com/video/7agK0nkiZpA/v-deo.html
See second half on essential bee health.
I belong to the bee club association and our leader who has over 200 hives said this method doesn’t work.