ugcheleuce
Field Bee
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Messages
- 669
- Reaction score
- 1
- Location
- Apeldoorn, Netherlands
- Hive Type
- National
- Number of Hives
- 7-10
Hello everyone
In this month's local beekeeping journal there is an article about a new kind of hive with the usual accompanying gadgets.
An interesting thing was the method of varroa control during swarming (artificial or otherwise), by trapping the varroa behind a screen. I must add that this is a one-storey hive, so the screen is vertical, but I suppose it can work for horizontal hives too. My question is whether this is a known method, and if so, what is it called in English and/or where can I read about it.
The hive has two flight openings -- left and right (normally the left is open). Normally the brood nest is against the left of the hive. When the bees start to build swarm cells, all the frames are moved to the right of the hive, and then the old queen and one frame of open brood is moved to the left again, plus a few empty frames. Between these two "nests" comes a follower board that contains two meshes -- a coarse mesh on the right-hand side and a fine mesh on the left-hand side (so fine that the varroa can't go through it). You then open both flight openings, and the forager bees fly out the right opening back to the left side of the hive via their usual left opening. Eventually the swarm cells hatch and the right side of the hive go through a period of no active brood cells.
The theory is that since the right will (eventually) contain no brood cells that are about to close, and since the left will contain brood cells that are about to close, the varroa will sense this and try to move towards the left of the hive (apparently the cells that are about to close give off a certain scent). Only, they won't get there, because of the fine mesh, and eventually they die there, desperately trying to get to those cells just centimeters away.
Obviously this won't work 100% but in theory it sounds interesting.
Does this sound familiar?
Here's a picture of that varroa trap:
Samuel
In this month's local beekeeping journal there is an article about a new kind of hive with the usual accompanying gadgets.
An interesting thing was the method of varroa control during swarming (artificial or otherwise), by trapping the varroa behind a screen. I must add that this is a one-storey hive, so the screen is vertical, but I suppose it can work for horizontal hives too. My question is whether this is a known method, and if so, what is it called in English and/or where can I read about it.
The hive has two flight openings -- left and right (normally the left is open). Normally the brood nest is against the left of the hive. When the bees start to build swarm cells, all the frames are moved to the right of the hive, and then the old queen and one frame of open brood is moved to the left again, plus a few empty frames. Between these two "nests" comes a follower board that contains two meshes -- a coarse mesh on the right-hand side and a fine mesh on the left-hand side (so fine that the varroa can't go through it). You then open both flight openings, and the forager bees fly out the right opening back to the left side of the hive via their usual left opening. Eventually the swarm cells hatch and the right side of the hive go through a period of no active brood cells.
The theory is that since the right will (eventually) contain no brood cells that are about to close, and since the left will contain brood cells that are about to close, the varroa will sense this and try to move towards the left of the hive (apparently the cells that are about to close give off a certain scent). Only, they won't get there, because of the fine mesh, and eventually they die there, desperately trying to get to those cells just centimeters away.
Obviously this won't work 100% but in theory it sounds interesting.
Does this sound familiar?
Here's a picture of that varroa trap:
Samuel
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