Icing sugar for dusting

[sandysman]

Hi team.
Having benefited from seeking your advice in the past may I seek your collective thoughts about the benefits or downside of using icing sugar to dust our girls with as part of varroa control/management. And if you use it, how often do you do it?
Thanks
Andy

 

[For want of a better word]

Schools out on this one

I preferrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr to sprinkle icing sugar on my Honey Cake.... forms a a nice crunchy honey golden crust on the top... is it teatime yet??????????????????????????/

There are loads of mixes and potions to treat varroa.. oxallic acid ... thymol... etc etc
administered in a conglomeration of methods


anyone tried diatomaceous earth.... keeps bugs of the chucks!

 

[mbc]

Icing sugar is good for instant monitering of varoa before there's any drone brood to fork but its a drop in the ocean if you think its going to reduce varoa loads over time.
I agree with icanhopit in that its good on cake

 

[Chris Luck]

The only known downside is that you have to buy it, otherwise it's completely harmless to the bees even if the jury is out on the level of benefit obtained from using it to help reduce varroa.

I dust the bees with it when I remove the supers for the last time, (usually August), and then dust them again about three weeks later...

...as I've said before, I have no idea whether it does any good or how much good but I don't use any other treatments and I haven't lost any colonies due to varroa related causes..

...but of course the French studies suggest that there is no significant difference between treating and not treating if the bees are not manipulated and allowed to swarm, so maybe my colonies would be the same without the icing sugar.

Chris

 

[peteinwilts]

I dust mine twice at this time of year a couple of weeks apart.

I have dusted, gone off back to the farmhouse to get another brood frame and come back less than an hour later everything is spotless as if I had not done it.

There does not appear to be negative effects, and if it encourages the bees to knock just a few extra off, it is worth it. (IMHO)

I use a 90% icing sugar, 10% flour mix.

I am not sure what else can be used to help combat varroa when stores\honey is building fast (as it is now).

 

[RosieMc]

I dust mine every couple of weeks. I don't know if it works, but having lost my first colony to varroa I am not taking any chances. It does no harm and as yet, have a very low varroa count last time I checked.

Check this link http://www.lancashirebeekeepers.org.uk/documents/Basic-Assessment.pdf about the BBKA Basic Assessment in Apiculture Examination which suggests the use of icing sugar.

A couple of years ago the IBRA (International Bee Research Association)published their findings on the use of icing sugar as a means of varroa control. They concluded that it had no significant effect -

"Controlling varroa mite (Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman) populations in honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) colonies with acaricides has been a challenge for beekeepers due to the rapid development of resistant mite populations. For this reason, many beekeepers are adopting Integrated Pest Management strategies as alternatives to chemocentric varroa control schemes. One non-chemical tool that has been used for varroa control is dusting bee colonies with powdered sugar. The objective of our study was to determine the efficacy of powdered sugar as a varroa control by comparing mite populations, adult bee populations, and brood area in untreated colonies with those in colonies dusted every two weeks for 11 months with 120 g powdered sugar per application. We found that dusting colonies with powdered sugar did not significantly affect the adult bee population (treated: 10061.72 ± 629.42; control: 10691.00 ± 554.44) or amount of brood (treated: 4521.91 ± 342.84 cm2; control: 4472.55 ± 365.85 cm2). We also found no significant differences between the total number of mites per colony (treated: 2112.15 ± 224.62; control: 2197.80 ± 207.75), number of mites per adult bee (treated: 0.080 ± 0.010; control: 0.097 ± 0.010), or number of mites per capped brood cell (treated: 0.112 ± 0.013; control: 0.106 ± 0.018). All data are mean ± s.e. Within the limits of our study and at the application rates used, we did not find that dusting colonies with powdered sugar afforded significant varroa control."
Extract taken from http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/20090217_5

 

[Gardenbees]

I dust mine when I want to count the mite drop. I feel that you get a better impression of how many mites there are on the bees, i.e. it does make them scrabble around a bit and dislodge a few more. I certainly wouldn't consider it to be an effective treatment as such, though.

Only one of my colonies has a mite problem at the moment, and I'm treating it with Apilife Var - although this doesn't suit every colony, I used it last year and it really did the trick without any obvious ill-effects.

Hivemaker's famous thymol syrup recipe is about as effective too: I used it on my long hive and they've been pretty much varroa-free since. It takes them a long time to build up numbers, but then they get to a stage (like one of my colonies) where a whole batch of new mites comes up in the drone brood, and numbers go up pretty quickly after that. So, unpleasant though it is, destroying drone brood really helps if the little horrors are starting to take over. But I'd like to think I can normally stop it getting that far...

 

[Swarm]

anyone tried diatomaceous earth.... keeps bugs of the chucks!

Please don't try this. It will kill the varroa and it will also kill your bees.

 

[For want of a better word]

Quote:
anyone tried diatomaceous earth.... keeps bugs of the chucks!
Please don't try this. It will kill the varroa and it will also kill your bees.

Has anyone actually tried it ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I am loathe to sprinkle anything over my bees other than a massive amount of affection!

 

[louiseww]

Hi team.
Having benefited from seeking your advice in the past may I seek your collective thoughts about the benefits or downside of using icing sugar to dust our girls with as part of varroa control/management. And if you use it, how often do you do it?
Thanks
Andy

Most recent books which refer to recent research say that this is ineffective as varroa control - but it is a treat for the bees!
If you do it, make your own icing sugar with a grinder rather than using the supermarket stuff as it has an anticaking agent in it!
Louise

 

[Swarm]

Icanhopit,
The way it works is that each particle of the powder is very abrasive. This damages the coating of external parts of insects, causing dehydration and death.

 

[Silly Bee]

Said to be of minimal use, unless you have OMF's

 

[region2]

Said to be of minimal use, unless you have OMF's

...which most of us do, surely!

I see it as a small part of mite control along with all the others.

R2

 

[Silly Bee]

I daresay many do not.

 

[For want of a better word]

Icanhopit,
The way it works is that each particle of the powder is very abrasive. This damages the coating of external parts of insects, causing dehydration and death.

Thanks for that info Swarm,,,,,
other use besides as a pest control on chickens ? is it is used in fire safes as an instrumescent filler!!!

I am a mind of useless information

 

[sugarbush]

I think the most effective method to control mites is the make your colony queenless and crash the mite population. While the bees work to make a new queen and all the brood in the hive emerges, the mites die off and are not able to procreate.

I used to sugar coat, but quite a few years ago. I also haven't used any other chemical treatment. I look for mites when doing hive inspections, if I see more then a few, the hive looses the queen, Usually I split out a nuc and winter it on top of the main colony.

 

[Luminos]

Thanks for that info Swarm,,,,,
other use besides as a pest control on chickens ? is it is used in fire safes as an instrumescent filler!!!

I am a mind of useless information

You can feed diatomaceous earth to your chickens and it will kill internal parasites (worms).
I would not get it anywhere near my bees though