Mini magnifier

[pargyle]

The ONLY problem I've found with the little microscope is it width of field is very small and its depth of focus is small. T............... I check whether the mites are dead or alive and whether they are damaged - a way of checking whether my bees are exhibiting hygienic behaviour. If there are a high percentage of live mites, the bees may be just grooming them off themselves or their neighbours and if they're damaged, they may be aggressively going after the mite by cutting off body parts (legs or antennae) or denting/cutting the carapace.

All in all the mini scope was a bargain and is used on every monitoring board inspection.

CVB

I found that by plonking it down bang on top of what you are looking to magnify and getting the thing focused for the size of beastie you are looking at and then keeping the barrel there it works most of the time. But you are right ... it can be a bit fiddly ... I use mine in exactly the same way as you do ... I've got quite a heavy mite drop at present but I'm seeing about 20% of the varroa on the board as live mites and about 50% are dead juveniles (I suspect these are coming from cells being cleaned out after drones have hatched). The bees don't seem to be affected to any extent at present so I'm just keeping an eye on the situation ... sorry, pun not intended !!