help with treatment decision please?

[LCbee]

Hi good people,

I'm a newbee in Maryland really struggling with the question of how to treat my first year hive with a high mite count.

sticky board 24 hr mite count last week: 35
this week: 50

3 medium 8-frame brood boxes, no other treatments so far, hive doing well otherwise

I need to treat NOW.

I'm all ready to do the powdered sugar treatment 4X, 5-7 days apart, but have been warned by just about all the conventional guys that it won't be enough. None of the people that I've spoken with in my area have used the powdered sugar method, and everyone is really laying it on thick about how it won't do the job, and how thymol really isn't THAT bad, etc.

Background info: The hive was started from a nuc rather late in the season, and then I had queen problems (a problem with all the queens from that source). By the time I got that straightened out the main flow was 1/2 over. Here we get only two good months of flow, and it wasn't a good year, plus I missed some of it. So I have a couple of strikes against me.

I really value a chemical-free hive, but I also value having living bees come spring. Am I too late for the sugar treatment? Should I go with a stronger treatment this year?

I know there aren't any guarantees, but I surely would appreciate any thoughts you all might have.

Thanks,
LC

[Sundance]

There are thymol based strips for the
immediate help. When brood is over then
oxalic acid is very effective and cheap.

Here's a new one.. no experience with it.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/orioleln/Thymol.htm

And Oxalic acid strips..... they use them
even with brood present.

http://www.members.shaw.ca/orioleln/new_oxamite.htm

[SilverFox]

LCbee; I know an 'old beek' that has been keeping bees for 30+years and he is giving powered sugar and screened bottom boards a try, sometimes you gotta think out of the norm. Just think if you try powered sugar the way country rubes suggests and it works you'll much further ahead/ I know of another 'old beek' that wants to know of my results w/sbb and powered instead of giving it a shot himself. Remember they told the Wright brothers they would never get off the ground. ;)
I'm not familiar w/thymol or oxalic acid so can't give my opinion on them, I try to keep any type of chemical out of my hives. The word "acid" kinda gives my the 'willies" ;) .
Give the powered sugar a try and if it works others will follow. ;) ;)
This summer I've not noticed any Deformed wing or chalk brood where I have in the past years. Just my observations so far, SSB's and the powered sugar appear to be working for me.

[ August 21, 2006, 01:31 AM: Message edited by: SilverFox ]

[2rubes]

Hi, welcome to beekeeping.
Dusting your hives with powdered sugar is something you can do right away to knock down a lot of mites and get them off your bees. Since it late in the season, do try to treat them every 5 days and do it 4 times. That’s 20 days and should capture most of the mites that have been in capped brood. Then wait 7 days and see what your drop is. You can use the powdered sugar as often as you want, we did last year trying to save our bees and it worked. We did start our treatments early in spring and I do realize you are going into winter, but you still have a couple of months to work with your bees. Are you smoking your bees before reading your sticky board? I’m finding that makes the mite counts almost double.
I'm not sure the configuration of your SBB; you do need to remove the powdered sugar, especially if there is not a big gap between your sticky board and your screen. What will happen is the sugar will harden up and the mites will just walk around on it. If the sugar builds up close to your screen, they will just hop right back up through the screens and reinfest. The powdered sugar causes the mites to detach from the bees and they might die by suffocation in the sugar, but a lot of them live, so you do need to get the sugar (and mites) out of there.
Thanks Silver Fox, you hit the nail on the head. I was told by those on Bee-L and that our hives wouldn’t last two years, I think based on the fact that if you do nothing to your hives that start with just a few mites, it will take two years for those hives to collapse. My two years will be up next spring (07) and our hives never looked healthier. No DWV, no stomach problems like Nosema and dysentery (that’s was the other prediction using powdered sugar with cornstarch. There has been some pressure about using OA in the fall, but I’m not going to do it. Our counts have been very low, with the exception of one hive that was in the shade for most of the morning (we just cut down the offending non-producing tree). That one hive (20ish mites) we just put in drone brood, we are extracting again next week and I’ll dust them all then.
Just want to add why we didn’t dust immediately. When you dust, you really notice the bees drifting into other hives. Since we sell to a health food store, I would have a hard time keeping one hive isolated from the others and do not even want to take a chance that powdered sugar could show up in honey I was selling. I feel confident that I can bring that mite count down by doing a little more dusting on that hive before winter sets in.
I don’t think it is too late to use powdered sugar, especially if you start today!
Sincerely,
Janet

[LCbee]

Thanks, team.

The powdered sugar is on the agenda for today!

I don't smoke the bees before collecting the sticky board, so those counts aren't inflated I don't think.

Do you keep the board on there during the dusting or remove it? I was planning on not having it on there.

Do you put something on the ground to collect the sugar? And do you remove the sugar during the same operation as the dusting? Or do you go back a day later? Can I just hose down the area under the hive?

Thanks for the details on the procedure. And thanks for even talking about the powdered sugar--I read it here first!

Any other comments welcome.

LC

[2rubes]

I think its best to remove the sugar right away. I would put someone down under the hives to collect the sugar to dispose of. Can you use the sticky board and pull it out without scraping the sugar off? That's the easiest. Out here in California, we see the little black ants taking away mites from ground under the hives when we leave them open. I put our boards in when we dust with powdered sugar and then pull them out and dispose of the sugar. If there is a dearth, the sugar will attract bees and actually promote robbing, and since the mites don't die, they will jump quickly back on the bees. I'm not sure about hosing it down, could work.
I do remove the sugar twice, once after a few hours, and then again in 24 hours. The bees groom themselves for several days and the mite count is high during that time.
Janet

[LCbee]

Thanks, Janet!

LC

[Sundance]

Just curious..... What is the big fear of
using OA in the fall? It is a natural
occuring acid and is at least as natural
as powdered sugar and corn starch.

I am all for powdered sugar and am happy
it is working for folks. Just too darn
labor intensive for me to treat lots
of colonies. Thymol and FGMO, small cell,
and OA only for problem colonies works
well for me and I sweat a lot less ;)

[2rubes]

That's a very good question, and I've been pondering it. We innoculated our kids, horses, dogs and cats. And have medicated them with all sorts of stuff, including wormers (not our kids). We tried to cut down on the wormers with the horses, because the horse manure gets fed to our red worms and becomes worm compost. We produce almost all own fertizler, buying only gypsum, soft rock phosphate and kelp. With our orchard and garden, we would rather let something die than treat it. But we wouldn't do that with any of our animals, including our chickens and we sell organic eggs. The only medication we have had to use is on the baby chicks, sometimes terrymicin when necessary.
If our kids had lice, yes, we would use the medication needed. If we couldn't control the mites with powdered sugar, OA would be our next choice, I just couldn't let our bees die. I feel OA is more harse on the bees than powdered sugar. I know powdered sugar is very labor instensive, but it doesn't hurt anything, it doesn't kill the mites except by suffication according to Dr. Mussen. I know OA would burn my skin and the vapors would hurt my lungs, if I don't have to expose my bees to that, I'm happy. If it stops working, the next step would be OA. I am looking at small cell, but I'm so busy with our farm and our bottom boards (I'm still helping making them to keep up with orders), I'm not quite ready to start something new.
I guess it's personal. It might be ok for the honey, but is it ok for the bees? I know OA would burn my skin, but powdered sugar wouldn't. We have 8 hives and it is work, I would admit that. I just feel better not using it.
Sincerely,
Janet

[Sundance]

I hear you Janet and good reply. If I had
a few hives I would probably do the same.
But the thought of powder sugaring even
the 110 I have makes me sweat.....

OA is only used by me for problem areas.
Small cell, etc make its use fairly
rare. Mainly I use it on aquired hives
until I can get small cell in place.

[LCbee]

Hi all,

Well I dusted the bees today. It was a good day for it--dry and not too hot. It was very easy and didn't take long at all. It was a pleasant task, except I did feel a bit badly about creating such a huge housekeeping headache for them. They seemed to have a moment of sheer disbelief at all the mess.

I decided to dust each box separately to avoid the clean-up worries 'twixt screen and sticky board. I put each box on a plastic sheet and let the excess fall there instead of down to the screen. I did hose off the area around the hive where sugar had spilled.

Now, a couple of questions:

I'm wondering if there's a risk of suffocating the bees, too. I didn't see anyone in trouble except for a couple who were sort of drowning in the excess on the plastic sheet. When freed, they flew off just fine.

And there were and still are many bees bearding on the outside of the hive, and they are sugar-free. I guess you can't get 'em all. I thought everyone would help with the housecleaning project, but I see that many are still outside. I wonder how much to be worried about the ones outside.

Will let you know about the mite count a few days out.

If you haven't looked at Janet's website with the instructions and pix of this treatment option, do check it out, it is very helpful. Thanks, Janet!
http://www.countryrubes.com/instructionspage4.html


LC

[LCbee]

Just another note on how the treatment went:

I powdered the hive at around 6pm yesterday, and an initial peek at the sticky board revealed 100+ mites dropped within the time it took me to clean up the area after working it. Then I left the board in all nite and came back around 10am to take it out.

I expected to see a mighty gnarly sticky board paved with mites and gasped when I saw no mites at all! What I did see was 3 little red ants walking around on the sugar residue. I got my magnifying glass and saw that one of them was toting a mite! They'd done a heck of a tidy-up job overnight, and if I'd been 10 minutes later I would have missed seeing the ants.

Awfully glad I did see them, or I might have concluded that the treatment hadn't been successful!

Cheers,
LC

[Hobie]

Stupid question: Since the sugar does not kill the mites, what do you do with the pile of sugar & mites that come out the bottom? I caught mine on a sheet of white poster board and just dumped it elsewhere.

[2rubes]

We use a plastic drywall knife and scrape the sugar and mites in a plastic trash bag and leave it in the shade in the bee yard. Picture half way down on this page, http://countryrubes.com/instructionspage4.html The ants do take out the mites. And when we vent our hives, you can see the lines of them with ants. You would think there would take some sugar, but no, just mites. We have the little black ones here.
Janet