TooBee...
Field Bee
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2017
- Messages
- 583
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Ireland
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 2+ nucs
Hi
came across this a short while ago and thought it sounded great, in theory it works for me, the website claims to have done research, in which you can actually see a concentration of mites forming an outline around where the Bee Gym was above, but.... I'm not sure. To buy one isn't expensive, but when you are buying one for each hive...mmm
Here's their website talking about results of their experiments,
http://www.beegym.co.uk/results.html
And here is it in action, you can actually see the little girls having a good ol' scratch (reminds me of little pigs!),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeHZMlh7c8o
BUT here is a link to a research paper that claims the Bee Gym has no noticeable difference to Varroa mite drop,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260388
What do you all think? Has anyone used this?
PS: It's just occurred to me that in a natural hive (hollow tree trunk) there's bound to be more things for the Bees to accidentally or deliberately rub up against, as opposed to a man-made relatively smooth interior, and as hollow tree trunks (from what I've seen) can be very deep, it would have a similar result as an open mess floor, maybe?
came across this a short while ago and thought it sounded great, in theory it works for me, the website claims to have done research, in which you can actually see a concentration of mites forming an outline around where the Bee Gym was above, but.... I'm not sure. To buy one isn't expensive, but when you are buying one for each hive...mmm
Here's their website talking about results of their experiments,
http://www.beegym.co.uk/results.html
And here is it in action, you can actually see the little girls having a good ol' scratch (reminds me of little pigs!),
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeHZMlh7c8o
BUT here is a link to a research paper that claims the Bee Gym has no noticeable difference to Varroa mite drop,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260388
What do you all think? Has anyone used this?
PS: It's just occurred to me that in a natural hive (hollow tree trunk) there's bound to be more things for the Bees to accidentally or deliberately rub up against, as opposed to a man-made relatively smooth interior, and as hollow tree trunks (from what I've seen) can be very deep, it would have a similar result as an open mess floor, maybe?
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