My understanding is that dusting with powdered sugar helps with the veroa mite not shb. There are several methods of getting a count. You could place a sticky sheet on the bottom or you can fill a jar with bees dust them and count mites on glass. You cand do a quick search and get all the details!!

Good luck

 

My understanding is that dusting with powdered sugar helps with the varroa mite not shb.

Exactly. Powdered sugar won't do anything to help with SHB. Varroa and SHB are two entirely different problems.

As of now, I don't think I have a problem with SHB, at least I haven't seen any under the inner cover.

Then why are you wanting to treat? The idea behind IPM is to treat when you have a problem, not just because.

 

If you are brave enough... http://www.extension.umn.edu/honeybees/components/pdfs/Sampling-plans-for-Varroa-destructor.pdf

If you are slightly less brave... http://www.extension.umn.edu/honeybees/components/pdfs/poster_168_varroa_samplings.pdf

If you want an overview of sampling methods... http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/444/444-103/444-103.html

I'm not sure they've developed similar methods to test for SHB. At least my limited google-fu could not find them.

 

Dusting is also not strong enough to take care of mites. You will only get those falling off from bees, but not those that actively breed inside of the comb cells. Its only good to get a mite count. For small beetle build yourself a CD case beetle trap and see if you catch any. For checking mites it may be best to open drone cells and check in there, unless you see them on your bees. A digital camera is a wonder full thing for inspect the frames taking your time on the computer. It's amazing what you can pick up looking at images.

 

Dusting is also not strong enough to take care of mites..... Its only good to get a mite count.

Used regularly, dusting is an effective means of keeping mites under control in my experience. It is true that at the time of dusting, you will only get the mites on the nurse bees, but those mites are the next in line to go into brood cells so you are interrupting the cycle of mite breeding. If you use dusting as one time treatment only, you have only slowed the population down briefly as they will emerge from the cells and then get on the nurse bees to await their turn for cells with larvae. However, if you time the dustings so as to be continually getting the newly emerged mites, you are steadily decreasing the population.

In my opinion, it is far from just a tool for monitoring the mite population. At least is was for me last year, when alcohol wash mite counts showed no need for formic acid or any other mite treatment.

Way

 

Fom what I was reading on the Freeman beetle trap page, he does recommend dusting for SHB as long s you have a trap that will grab them (like his). I have never seen one of his traps, so this is all online reading. I guess the sbb on them is very different than standard sbb for SHB to fall through...


Dusting doesn't get the varroa in the cells, but that's why they recommend doing it every three weeks.

 

Dusting doesn't get the varroa in the cells, but that's why they recommend doing it every three weeks.

I think you'll have to add a regimen of drone brood removal to make any real impact. One of the frustrations of powdered sugar dusting is that while the short term impacts are easy to see, the long term benefits haven't been demonstrated. Perhaps in concert with drone removal it will work.

 

I didn't like the idea of all of the dry powder in the hive, especially when it has been demonstrated that large amounts of powdered sugar can kill eggs and brood. Not being able to control grams very easily, especially when it is so windy up here all the time anyway, I didn't want to do something that could hurt developing broods.

I've used the sugar drench (1:1 w/ essential oils and api-go) method every time I look though my boxes and have been pleased with my results. I did it to all boxes the first time, but getting to that lowest brood box has gotten to be a pain. I usually spray in through a gap in the second frame when I'm using a frame prop-- I don't get everyone in that bottom box. Dare I say my mite counts three days after treatment was 0? Of course, all of that sugar water creates lots of clumping bees that are hard to disperse, even with a smoker. XD

I'll be done with the three treatments needed next week, and then I'll do a mite count in two weeks and decide if I need to repeat.