Possible non-chemical treatment for varroa mites?

[magnet-man]

A friend of mine who has a Sundance pollen trap said he finds quite a few mites in his pollen. He speculated that going through the pollen screen is also knocking off some of the mites. I have never used a pollen trap so I have no first hand knowledge if mites get knocked off. It does sound logical to me.

If this is the case, a pollen trap might be a way to control varroa mites. The problem is the bees need to get pollen into the hive. In the Sundance pollen trap bees leave the hive through escape cones and return through the pollen screen. What if we reverse the order?
Bees have to move through a pollen screen to leave the hive and can only enter the hive through the bee escape cones thus letting in pollen.

I see two potential problems with this trap.
1) Drones will be trapped inside the hive.
2) Workers foraging life might reduce because of wear and tear on the wings going through the screen. Would this shorter life be offset by a healthier hive?

I would like to kick this idea around in the group. It seems logical, but I have never seen reference to mites being knocked off by pollen traps.

http://members.cox.net/wsamplesis/pictures/varroatrap.gif




[This message has been edited by magnet-man (edited September 05, 2004).]

[jfischer]

> A friend of mine who has a Sundance pollen trap said he finds quite a few mites
> in his pollen.

Then he needs to clean it better! ^.^

> He speculated that going through the pollen screen is also knocking off some of the
> mites.

Sure, and some just happen to fall (or jump) off by pure chance when a bee is
returning to the hive.

> a pollen trap might be a way to control varroa mites.

Sorry, but too many of us have run too many pollen traps to have
missed this happening if it was happening. It isn't.

I, for example, have 20 of the Sundances deployed right now to collect pollen.

> The problem is the bees need to get pollen into the hive.

A decent pollen trap removes (at most) only one of the two pollen pellets
brought back by the bee.

> In the Sundance pollen trap bees leave the hive through escape cones and return
> through the pollen screen. What if we reverse the order?

I would think that it would make no difference in terms of varroa impact either
way, but you could certainly ask Lloyd Spear (lloyd@rossrounds.com) what he thinks
of the idea. Lloyd owns the company that makes Sundance pollen traps.

> Workers foraging life might reduce because of wear and tear on the wings going
> through the screen.

I've never seen damaged wings from going through the screens of any pollen trap.
Has anyone?

[loggermike]

It wont work simply because most of the mites never leave the hive .They stay around the brood and young bees for the most part until its time to go into another brood cell.I dont think a pollen trap would knock off that many as they can snug up pretty well against the bee.

[Michael Bush]

From what I've read it's where they got the idea for the screened bottom board. They noticed mites in the pollen trap and wondered if it was dislogding them. In the end they decided they were just falling through the screen and would have fallen anyway without the pollen trap. The results were that they made a SBB and the SBB was just as effective.

My guess is if the trap IS dislodging a lot of mites that the foragers are bringing them back from a crashing hive somewhere.

[magnet-man]

Thanks for the replies.

[loggermike]

Well,just keep thinking about it.I know one of you bright guys(or gals) is eventually going to come up with something that will nuke the mites reliably and economically!