Mite Zapper

[Solomon Parker]

I followed one of the ads in the banner at the top and found a new product called the Mite Zapper. It appears to be a drone frame with a built in 12 volt heating element. Instead of freezing drone brood, you heat kill it and it can be done in the field without opening the hive. mitezapper.com

Under our definition of treatment, it appears to be a manipulation like freezing drone brood.

Any thoughts?

[Charlie B]

It looks like it would be fun to play around with at first but if you have a lot of hives, it could be a lot of work. Notching out a groove in all your boxes, hooking up your 12 V battery to each hive, turning it on and waiting for it to zap. I think it would be easier for me to just take the drone frames out and freeze them.

What if you bought one for each hive (expensive) and the electronics eventually failed after one or two sessions?
What's the life of this thing? Even if you had a warranty, now you have to go through the hassle of replacing it.

[jim lyon]

Seems like one small solar panel (think solar fencer) would probably power a whole string of those things each set up to kick in on a different day. A good project for some of you techie folks. A solar panel might even be enough to get the stamp of approval from some of the treatment free crowd.

[johnblagg]

well if its treatment then at the very least it should be considered natural treatment it seems to me it would be more of a method of ipm rather than treatment actualy

[NasalSponge]

It is definitely innovative I must say.

[Solomon Parker]

There is no such thing as a natural treatment. You're thinking organic, or pesticide free, or herbal, or green, or something. Natural treatment is an oxymoron, if it was natural, it would already be happening in the hive.

It's like a few months ago, someone came in here and said something about 'treatment-free treatments.' Really? Treatment-free is not some word like organic that can be mangled into meaninglessness by the chemical industry. In my book, any thing you do out of the ordinary to cope with disease is a treatment. However, the definition we have agreed upon does not include manipulations, so that's its own thing. IPM is fine in my book, but it's still a treatment. It's not-chemical and non-lasting, which is good, but it's still doing something the bees ultimately don't need. And if the bees don't need it, then I don't need to do it.

I might consider propolis as a natural treatment but never an electrified frame.

[Ray4852]

all you need is a good marine battery to supply the power. its new I'm sure we will here more about it soon. I'm going to get one soon.

[LenInNorCal]

And your results?

[Solomon Parker]

I could be wrong, but I'm not sure anybody tried it.

[guyross]

I would like to know how well they draw these frames. Is the wax destroyed every time it's connected to a power source?

[tefer2]

What happens when your queen has her butt into a cell, and you turn it on ?

[deknow]

...in order for this to work, the queen would have to feel compelled to fill the frame with drone brood. If the bees already are "drone right" (have been raising the number of drones that they would "naturally" do without beekeeper intervention), she simply will not do this.
...so it can be considered "natural"...but it requires a very "unnatural" situation in which to work.

deknow

[Oldtimer]

IF it works. I've still to find anyone who's tried it after a year of looking. Drone brood harvesting reduces but not eradicates mite numbers so it could be assumed the mite zapper would give similar results.

Natural? Not an issue on this forum, many here force their bees onto man made comb foundation with a cell size the bees don't take to readily, and even after years the bees will still "mess up" this foundation by trying to make the cells larger. So we are giving the bees something they don't want, if we believe we know better and it's actually good for them.

[jim lyon]

If you have a hive with few if any drone combs in them it seems as though you could accomplish the same thing by putting a frame with no foundation in the brood nest, removing it every 3 to 4 weeks and cutting out the drone combs that the bees will almost certainly build in them. It would only take a couple minutes to remove the frame shake the bees off, cut the comb out and replace it. The secret is if you keep the hive a little lean on drone brood it is rare that the bees will build anything but drone comb when they have the opportunity. I have never understood the attraction of freezing the frame (or in this case heating it) and making the bees clean up the resulting mess.

[lenny bee]

Dead bees confinded in a heated frame, that kind of smell it will give off is really bad. umm cooked drone
on honey .

[virginiawolf]

Cool post Solomon! I enjoyed seeing a new mite killing device that didn't involve chemicals. I had some similar questions as others on here like if it could hurt the queen so I read the instruction manual. It says it should be 70 percent capped before you zap the comb. I guess when you turn it on the temperature change would cause the workers and the queen to move away from the frame and only the capped drones and mites within would perish. Cool Idea to kill some of the mites. I wonder if it effects the mentality of the bees when they find all of their brothers incinerated or frozen. It seems like it could be beneficial to someone who doesn't want the labor of pulling out drone frames to freeze. The question of the odor it gives off is one i wouldn't have thought of. Good question. I am hoping that gradually going toward small cell comb, breaking the brood cycle each year, and breeding off survivor queens will mean that I won't need any form of treatment down the road. I will have to be patient to know if it will. In the meantime I want drones so the queens can get mated. Mites are awful. I wish there was something that killed mites without chemicals and without killing the drones too like some little tube the bees went through that combed the mites off so they fell through a screened bottom board and died. I like seeing the drones. They are awesome looking.

[waholloway]

It seems as though the ad conflicts with the instructions.how can it be used without opening the hive if you shoud only use it when the brood is 70% capped? You are going to have to open the hive and pull the frame in order to inspect it. By then, you might as well just go with removing and replacing.

[Solomon Parker]

Two things:

First: one could time it, though there would be no guarantee that the queen had decided to lay in it at any given point.

Second: Don't trust ads....less so ads for gimmicks.