icing sugar dusting

[beren]

I bought one of these

I came across this on ebay, which is used in poultry for getting diatom powder into the crevices of chicken houses to prevent red mite.

Powder Pesticide Insecticide Dust APPLICATOR Diatom


On the face of it, it looks like it might work to puff icing sugar either in between frames or up through a top bar ( as Phil Chandler, I think, suggests)
I have bought one, but unfortunately, my top bar bees are on their way out and everything is a little unsettled with my other hive ( bad tempered so and so's who I am requeening) so I didn't think it was a great idea to smother them with icing sugar at the moment.
I have, in the past, sprinkled icing sugar over the top of the brood box through mesh and brushed it inbetween the frames, but that always seemed to make them clear off! I always thought that at least it was something you could do that may have some impact on varroa numbers while there was a honey flow on. I know it is limited because most of the mites will be in brood cells.

Icing sugar dusting has been shown to work. I remember reading the report on an experiment conducted in the USA. To get it to work properly though they had to dust the bees every few hours every day for about a month. The man hours and the amount of sugar required made the whole thing rather silly.

I bought one of these chicken dusters from ebay myself just before I read the article on the USA experiment which put me off a bit. It works but it is not very powerful and I have given up dusting now. Apilife Var works, it is organic and if you buy from fragile planet the cost isnt much

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

Or, to put it another way.

Ask 10 beekeepers a question, and get 15 different answers.

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[Chris Luck]

Apilife Var works, it is organic and if you buy from fragile planet the cost isnt much

Arsenic is organic as well to name but one "organic" substance that is far from harmless. Sadly it's one of those words that is banded around these days to make something sound OK.

Chris

 

[beren]

Arsenic is organic as well to name but one "organic" substance that is far from harmless. Sadly it's one of those words that is banded around these days to make something sound OK.

Chris

For something to be sold as organic it has to abide by strict rules. Organic these days is different to the days when organic just meant you bought your spuds with soil still on.

The point I was aiming at was that if you sold your honey as organic then using apilife Var wouldnt affect your organic status whereas using oxalic acid might.

 

[susbees]

On the "other side" the B**A Basic Certificate guidance on the website has icing sugar as IPM. So it must be right. Sorted

 

[greatbritishhoney]

Our SBI recommends using icing sugar as part of IPM.
I guess the argument is... if it removes a few varroa and does no harm to the bees then why not use it?

 

[Gardenbees]

Research

Following on from Finman's comments: I'm aware of some IBRA research on the subject. However I've seen research that both supports and refutes the efficacy of icing sugar dusting.

International Bee Research Association:
The efficacy of dusting honey bee colonies with powdered sugar to reduce varroa mite populations.
Author(s)
Amanda M. Ellis, Gerry W. Hayes, and James D. Ellis
here: http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/20090217_5

Conclusions: overall not very effective

University of Helsinki:
Effectiveness of confectioner sugar dusting to knock down Varroa destructor
from adult honey bees in laboratory trials
Author(s): Kamran FAKHIMZADEH*
here: http://www.majorbeehives.com/Effectiveness%20of%20sugar%20dusting%20to%20knock%20down%20Varroa%20destructor%20from%20adult%20honey%20bees.pdf

Conclusions: overall quite effective

Beecraft America, Nov 2009 (and other publications):
Powder Sugaring Bees – Does it work?
Author(s): Dewey M Carron
Here:http://www.countryrubes.com/images/BCA_Nov_2009_powder_sugar.pdf

Conclusions: overall not effective, but worth persisting with until further more suitably-tailored research is carried out

A quick search also revealed some research into how harmful the sugar dusting might be to brood:

University of Nebraska - Lincoln, Dept of Entomology, Year 2005
Only large amounts of powdered sugar applied directly to brood cells harms immature honey bees
Author(s): Nicholas P. Aliano, Marion D. Ellisy
here: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1184&context=entomologyfacpub&sei-redir=1#search="icing+sugar+dusting+bees"

Conclusions: only really heavy drenching with powdered (icing) sugar caused significant harm to brood. NB. that last paper has a few links to other research about varroa and sugar dusting.

Apologies if I've mis-interpreted any of the above findings. And do bear in mind that most researchers have a certain amount of vested interest one way or the other.

My personal feeling is that the icing sugar helps with counting mites by dislodging them a bit more and stopping them from scurrying off the edges of the board before they can be counted. However, the proportion of mites actually on the bees at any given time is low, and the use of icing sugar probably doesn't actually hit the overall infestation level very much. So I sometimes use it when I want to count mites and be reasonably certain that the count is giving me a good idea of the numbers present. I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it for overall mite control.

Depending on the types of bees and/or hives involved, and their own experiences, I'm sure there'll be as many views as there are beekeepers, multiplied by however many minds they happen to be in whilst they're thinking about it!

 

[Chris Luck]

For something to be sold as organic it has to abide by strict rules. Organic these days is different to the days when organic just meant you bought your spuds with soil still on.

Somewhat meaningless in the case of this product. A chemical can be and often is "organic" and this is exactly how this product is being marketed, nothing to do with Organic or Bio produce or whether or not it may be harmful.

Api Life Var is one of the latest products available for the control of varroa using organic chemicals. The active ingredients are the well proven Thymol plus Eucalyptus Oil, Menthol and Camphor.

Chris

 

[Silly Bee]

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qed