Questionable Sugar Roll

This is my first year with bees. I have 4 hives...2) Italians started as packages in April, and 2) Russians started as Nucs in June...all of which are on stands side by side. The other week, during an inspection I decided to do a sugar roll on all hives. 1/2 cup of bees pulled from the brood area and left in the sugar for 5 minutes (I know...statistically wrong) and worst case was no more than 5 mites. All else within the hives looked good...low mite count...all is well. A couple of days later we were supposed to have a cold snap so I slid the IPM boards under the Russians for 2 days. When I pulled them out, one hive had a lot of mites. So I slid IPM boards under all four hives (no time to make them sticky) and left them for 3 days. The result was around 300 mites on 1) Italian and 1) Russian. Thats about twice the "Treat" amount. There were 6 or 7 mites on the other 2 hives. It seems strange to me that #1, there was such a huge difference between the hives and #2, the sugar roll was so inaccurate. What do you folks think? :scratch: I will be treating the 2) infested hives w/ Formic Acid.

This is obviously just my opinion, but I would treat all of the hives since they are in the same area. Mite counting is very inaccurate and I would rather fail on the safe side. Are you using MAQS? I haven't been at this long, but they seem to work for me.

MAQS before a long Maine winter??? You will kill a whole brood cycle with that formic!!!

My neighbor used formic acid according to this document and had great results. The gentleman at University of West Virginia who wrote this document attended the local bee club here last Saturday and has revised this method somewhat. But as you can see (or read) his results are pretty good. I understand MAQS is way too strong.
http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/varroa/varroa06.htm
I'll let you know how it goes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Belewsboy

My neighbor used formic acid according to this document and had great results. The gentleman at University of West Virginia who wrote this document attended the local bee club here last Saturday and has revised this method somewhat. But as you can see (or read) his results are pretty good. I understand MAQS is way too strong.
http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/varroa/varroa06.htm
I'll let you know how it goes.

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Yes they do a VERY nice job of killing mites but queens as well. Make sure to slide the cover a bit off. IMO formic is good in spring to knock off any mites and swarming intensions.

I used the fumigator per instructions in late august and lost 3 queens out of 20 hives. Those have now requeened themselves successfully. Queen loss would be fatal to the hive at this late date.
I also used hopguard on some hives that had high mite counts, and a good population of bees but were suffering from pms and had a low amount of brood. After two weeks of treatment the mite count was over 30 on a sugar roll of 200 bees. Maybe the stuff works for some folks but I won't waste my money on it again.

just a question on your sugar roll hopefully not insulting but did you shake the sugar and bees? it sounded like maybe you just let the bees walk around in it for 5 min? just wondering

I shook them up pretty well. If fact, when I released them from the jar they looked like Albino Bees flying around! Just to catch up, I used the Formic Acid Fumigator method over the weekend and resulted in really large mite drops. They are supposed to keep dropping for a week or so due to emerging new bees so we'll see how that goes. It was very easy and went really quickly. I have no experience with any other method, but I am impressed with this fumigator. The secret to keeping your queen from being balled is to use Honey Bee Healthy with the Formic. According to the UWV tests, there is a very low percentage (4%) of queen loss. From what I read on Beesource, queen loss is alway possible no matter what you use. And at least with Formic Acid, the mites cannot become "immune" to it ... at least not in my lifetime! The next thing I will try is the HBH Drench. Sounds like this is great preventative treatment.

How long does it take to fumigate one hive?

Fumigation boards must be built. Formic Acid / Honey Bee Healthy must be mixed. After that is done, remove outer cover, remove inner cover, apply acid mix to board and set on top of brood boxes. Acid dissapates in 2 hours, remove fume board in 24 hours ... done. Actual application time is 2-3 minutes per hive. Cost is about $1.00 per hive per treatment. I was just reading on an earlier post about Apiguard taking 3 weeks? Who wants to wait that long? I will post PDF's on the actual proceedure for the whole operation later today. My neighbor posted videos of the process on Youtube. You might want to search for that.

Here is the link which explains, not only how to mix formic acid /honey bee healthy, but how to make the fume boards as well. Also there is a good article on performing a concentrated Honey Bee Health Drench. I'm sold on the fumigator, now to give the girls a good drenching before winter and once again this spring. http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/varroa.htm