Major league klutz

[Hillside]

Since we're having record warm temps today, I decided to open a couple of hives and put in some combs of honey that were available from dead outs.
I didn't have much luck wintering bees that were treated only with powdered sugar. So far this year 0% survival on those. So I took the nearly full combs from those hives and was putting them in a couple of hives that were a little light last fall. Everything went well until I dropped an inner cover. It was pretty well covered in bees until it hit the snow. Then of course they all let go. I picked up as many as I could and put on the landing board. It was sunny and near 40 degrees so some may survive.

[Kieck]

I hate it when I do klutzy things like that! Hopefully your bees will survive it. Mine were flying today. I followed a few more than 500 feet from their hives and back, and the temperature was only 41F at the time. Seems to me then that yours might not be so badly hurt by a quick tumble in the snow!

[George Fergusson]

I don't think there is a good time to drop an inner cover loaded with bees. They just don't like it. I dropped a frame covered with bees last summer, I was working without gloves and just lost my grip. I was behind the hive and the bees started marching UNDER the hive stand towards the front of the hive. Within 10 minutes, they were all pretty much back in the hive. I got stung a couple of times for my carelessness.

[TRC]

Well that's not great news. I plan to use powdered sugar this year. How did you apply it, and how often?

Best,
Tom

[ January 27, 2006, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: TRC ]

[peggjam]

PS works good as an emergacey treatment during a honeyflow, but unless you are careful, will not kill and control mite levels on it's own.

Now I will explan why. I did some PS treatments last summer to see if it would work, it does knock the mites off the bees, but it will not kill them. You need to catch all the sugar that falls on newspaper when you dust, and you need to burn that to kill the mites. If they can crawl out of the PS, they can clean up and reattach to the bees if given the chance. So if you plan on using PS as a treatment, you also need to plan for collection and burning of the sugar that collects in the bottom of the hive, to ulitimily get rid of the mites.

[Hillside]

>Well that's not great news. I plan to use powdered sugar this year. How did you apply it, and how often?

I don't think you should be too discouraged by my failure. All I did was push a piece of aluminum sheeting into the hive entrance and dump some sugar on the top bars. I then brushed the sugar down between the frames. I did it any time I opened a hive, so there was no real schedule. When I was done working the hive, I pulled out the aluminun which removed a lot, but not all of the sugar.

I purposely used a low tech, down and dirty process just to see how well it would work. There were always some mites in the sugar, but I'm sure more fell after I pulled out the aluminum that eventually crawled back on the bees. I'm sure there were more mites hiding in the brood.

One of the reasons I didn't do a better job of removing the sugar (and therefore the mites) was that I had heard some talk of the sugar actually killing the mites. It turns out that is probably not the case.

I think the only way to do this right would be to have screened bottom boards. Or maybe I could put in several sheets of aluminum and pull one out every so often until all the mites stopped dropping, but I doubt that would really work.

A while back, Two Rubes had some information posted about their method of using powdered sugar. They had a specific system and felt that they were getting success with it. You might want to search for it.

I may build a couple of screened bottom boards and try again next year with a more planned methodology. Or I may just wait for you to try it. I'd be glad to copy success.

One thing I should mention is that the bees weren't really happy getting the sugar treatment. The air would be full of dusty white, angry bees. I had kind of hoped a lot of mites were falling off while the bees were out flying around, but alas, not enough.

[TRC]

>......was that I had heard some talk of the sugar actually killing the mites......

That's what I'd read, and why I was planning on using the scheme. This guy (http://bwrangler.atspace.com/bee/gbla.htm) says "A dusted mite is a dead mite." Looking at the page, it seems like he's done a lot of experimentation and is getting great results. Now I don't know what to believe.

Talking to beekeepers, I get the impression that the standard treatments have stopped working. If powdered sugar isn't the answer, is there an answer?

Best,
Tom

[Hillside]

>If powdered sugar isn't the answer, is there an answer?

I don't know if there is ONE answer. I also tested a few hives by doing the oxalic acid drizzle. Those hives are looking very good at this point.

I still think the powdered sugar could be a decent treatment if it was done on a schedule to clean up mites that had been hiding in the brood and if the hive had a screened bottom board so that the mites fell through and away from the bees.

I'll have to say though that a once per year oxalic acid treatment sure would be less work than all those powdered sugar treatments.

[Michael Bush]

http://www.beesource.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000629

This will give you an idea of what to expect with any treatment while there's brood in the hive. It's not that things like powdered sugar don't work, but you have to have realistic expectations of what "work" means. smile.gif