Varroa Sugar Dusters

[beren]

Does anyone have any great ideas for speeding up sugar dusting for Varroa? Im fed up using my sugar shaker so I just bought a powder/dust sprayer off ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SPRAYER-DIATOMACEOUS-EARTH-Or-other-powders-/170497853114?pt=UK_Pet_Supplies_Poultry&hash=item27b276c6ba

I have no idea if it is going to be any good. Interested to hear what other people are using

 

[oliver90owner]

It will be interesting to read how you get on.

Personally I would dust the whole colony when broodless. Nothing less seems worthwhile; considering about 85% of the mites will be merrily reproducing, nicely sealed in capped cells, when you go trying to dislodge a few phoretic mites.

So I use a table spoon , or simply pour from the bag.

RAB

 

[victor meldrew]

I gave up sugar dusting years ago , I found that it reduced the mite load by a none discernible amount !

John Wilkinson

 

[beren]

I only dust the bees when the colony is broodless. Any other time is pointless. I have been using a sugar shaker but this tends to deposit to much sugar at once. It doesnt so much dust the bees as bury them! Its also to slow, I want something that does a quick puff and the job is done.

When it warms up I will hit the colonies with Apilife Var. Right now its a good opportunity to reduce the mite population while theres very little brood.

Its easy to scoff at sugar dusting and dismiss it as an amateur activity but whatever you have to say I know the mite drop is huge after dusting and if you have no brood you can nearly wipe the Varroa population out before the season gets going. Why miss the opportunity?

 

[RoofTops]

Assuming you are not taking the frames out to dust them I would suspect this method of dusting sugar onto the top bars and hoping enough falls down between the gaps would be very wasteful. The normal way recommended is to sprinkle it on the top bars and then just push it down the gaps with the hive tool. It lands on the upper bees between the frames and then gets spread around by the bees.

However, sugar dusting is usually done as part of chemical-free varroa control but from your comment above it looks as if you are going to be using thymol soon. This seems to be an odd mix of approaches. If you are happy with chemicals OA is much more effective in the broodless period and normally needs to be done only once, although a second application after a shook swarm is getting to be more widely recognised. I'll be trying it this year.

 

[oliver90owner]

Try sugar rolling. Take the queen out first. Can be done with safety while there is open brood.

RAB

 

[beren]

Assuming you are not taking the frames out to dust them I would suspect this method of dusting sugar onto the top bars and hoping enough falls down between the gaps would be very wasteful. The normal way recommended is to sprinkle it on the top bars and then just push it down the gaps with the hive tool. It lands on the upper bees between the frames and then gets spread around by the bees.

However, sugar dusting is usually done as part of chemical-free varroa control but from your comment above it looks as if you are going to be using thymol soon. This seems to be an odd mix of approaches. If you are happy with chemicals OA is much more effective in the broodless period and normally needs to be done only once, although a second application after a shook swarm is getting to be more widely recognised. I'll be trying it this year.

I do remove the frames for dusting. I grab the opportunity when the temp is high enough on the odd day to take each frame out and dust them quickly.
Im not sure how effective pushing sugar dust between the frames would be. I have never tried it that way.
I believe in bib and braces, thats why I do dusting and apilife. The harder I can make it for the mites the better. Plus, sugar dusting gives the bees a nice snack.

 

[beren]

Try sugar rolling. Take the queen out first. Can be done with safety while there is open brood.

RAB

Sugar roll a whole colony, do you do it with one big bucket or a jar's worth of bees at a time? How does that work out for you? Sounds like a time consuming activity.

 

[oliver90owner]

Sugar roll a whole colony

Not part of it.

Lightweight nuc box or cardboard box. Less time consuming than messing around with each frame. There is likely brood in the colony already, so now is likely too late if it is not too cold.

RAB

 

[RoofTops]

I do remove the frames for dusting.

Beren, you said earlier you only dust when they are broodless - this normally means in the middle of winter - obviously not the time for taking out frames. The only times outside the winter when you have them broodless are after an artifical or shook swarm or of course if the queen goes off lay for a long while (2+ weeks).

Either way, I would use OA syrup - it should be about 95% effective when used on a broodless colony and this is a lot better I think than you would get with sugar.

There is an account here (link below)of some experiments suggesting efficiences of only about 4% to 5% of the phoretic mites (and that figures is just a percentage of the mites on the bees) - or at least that is my understanding of the article - there are some conflicting views there and much of it is about regular dusting with brood present.

If your dusting is knocking a lot of mites down it may because you have a lot of mites - not that the treatment is effective.

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72

 

[beren]

Beren, you said earlier you only dust when they are broodless - this normally means in the middle of winter - obviously not the time for taking out frames. The only times outside the winter when you have them broodless are after an artifical or shook swarm or of course if the queen goes off lay for a long while (2+ weeks).

Either way, I would use OA syrup - it should be about 95% effective when used on a broodless colony and this is a lot better I think than you would get with sugar.

There is an account here (link below)of some experiments suggesting efficiences of only about 4% to 5% of the phoretic mites (and that figures is just a percentage of the mites on the bees) - or at least that is my understanding of the article - there are some conflicting views there and much of it is about regular dusting with brood present.

If your dusting is knocking a lot of mites down it may because you have a lot of mites - not that the treatment is effective.

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=72

Where he states a 4% or 5% mite drop he questions his own methods and states that this answer is likely not correct because it would suggest a mite pop of around 20,000!
Further down the article has a section where it states using a european dust bellows to pump a sugar dust cloud into the hive can achieve an 80% to 85% mite drop.
That is exactly the kind of kit ive been looking for! Thanks for bringing that article to me

 

[beren]

http://www.pestcontrolonline.com/~p...id=232&zenid=81bbb208d98b1d0fd3200f12b79985cb

This looks good. Bet you could blow a good cloud of sugar in with it