Varroa Treatment

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Eat the stems, save the leaves
Place above brood below the qx if you use one
Of course rhubarb works more efficaciously if the colonies are place on a leyline facing the direction of Mars in the night sky when Sirus is rising!
Do this on Easter Sunday..
But not in a leap year.. and if Jupiter is converging with Uranus in which case just face the hive entrance away from the prevailing wind.
Yeghes da

Or 'backs to the wall' as we used to say at my single sex school if we saw a certain classmate approaching...with reference to the late Lord Montagu following his, then recent, 1954 conviction.:censored:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Douglas-Scott-Montagu,_3rd_Baron_Montagu_of_Beaulieu
 
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Well I eat lots of rhubarb and I’ve never suffered from varroa.... :laughing-smiley-014:laughing-smiley-014

Beware kidney stones: some are calcium oxalate, the calcium salt of OA. Only joking, I doubt if there's any association with eating rhubarb, but it's mentioned in the advice section of this link. Calcium Oxalate Stones
 
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I just looked up Manchester Cathedral abd he’s not listed on the “staff” there 😢 He does still keep his own bees though I’m sure
yes, he does, and now being over seventy, which is the maximum retirement age for Anglical clergy he has to officially 'retire'
 
Sorry, back to varroa. What do people think of dusting with powdered sugar? Is it what I call icing sugar?
 
Sorry, back to varroa. What do people think of dusting with powdered sugar? Is it what I call icing sugar?
It's OK if you are going to serve the bees as an alternative sweet snack to sugared almonds to go with your evening sherry.
As a form of varroa control, it's pointless 😁
 
Sorry, back to varroa. What do people think of dusting with powdered sugar? Is it what I call icing sugar?


It another method touted by people who don't like chemicals but feel they must do something.
It requires frequent applications to have any notiiceable effect and when it gets into open cells kills the larvae.

SO lots of fiddling (doing something ) and kills something (but not the varroa).
 
It's OK if you are going to serve the bees as an alternative sweet snack to sugared almonds to go with your evening sherry.
As a form of varroa control, it's pointless 😁
Might as well be treatment free and use the icing sugar to make a CAKE... did someone say CAKE ?
 
Sorry, back to varroa. What do people think of dusting with powdered sugar? Is it what I call icing sugar?
I’ll add my bit. Icing sugar has additives which are best left out if the moist hive environment. Powdered sugar is just that. Fine sugar. You can make your own from granulated. But make a cake with it. As above ..... its invasive and kills open brood.
 
It does have a use for the bees but only a t-spn full or two if you perform sugar rolls to get an idea of varroa infestation with a cup full of bees.
But as others have said it has no generic use in the hive.
 
I’ll add my bit. Icing sugar has additives which are best left out if the moist hive environment. Powdered sugar is just that. Fine sugar. You can make your own from granulated. But make a cake with it. As above ..... its invasive and kills open brood.

Oxalic acid anhydride is added to icing sugar as a agent to prevent clogging...
for my money you would be better off with a leaf or two of rhubarb!!
 
Sorry, back to varroa. What do people think of dusting with powdered sugar? Is it what I call icing sugar?
You can use icing sugar, ethanol, etc in a device like this Varroa EasyCheck to monitor varroa in a sample of 2-300 bees. Early in the season, you can also monitor natural mite drop over a period not less than 3 weeks. This is an initial assessment of the infestation though. It is not a treatment.
 
I found dusting bees with icing sugar in a freshly collected swarm (still in the container before hiving them) a relatively innocuous way of stripping phoretic mites off them and based on 8 swarms ( collected from around the town a few years ago) treated this way produced mite drops (typically between 60 to around 150 mites ) similar to those dropped after dribbling the bees of other hived swarms with oxalic a few days after hiving them. Once there is brood the use of icing sugar is a complete waste of time and potentialy harmful to larvae if they get coated with it.
 
I found dusting bees with icing sugar in a freshly collected swarm (still in the container before hiving them) a relatively innocuous way of stripping phoretic mites off them and based on 8 swarms ( collected from around the town a few years ago) treated this way produced mite drops (typically between 60 to around 150 mites ) similar to those dropped after dribbling the bees of other hived swarms with oxalic a few days after hiving them. Once there is brood the use of icing sugar is a complete waste of time and potentialy harmful to larvae if they get coated with it.
I'm not sure why having brood is an issue. If you use a varroa Easycheck (or similar) device, you have the choice of a destructive (using an ethanol wash) or non-destructive (using icing sugar) test on the WORKERS - the icing sugar doesn't have to come into contact with brood unless you want it to.
 
Swarms yes or a vape before brood is laid up.
 
I'm not sure why having brood is an issue. If you use a varroa Easycheck (or similar) device, you have the choice of a destructive (using an ethanol wash) or non-destructive (using icing sugar) test on the WORKERS - the icing sugar doesn't have to come into contact with brood unless you want it to.
Two different things here ... dusting all the bees in the hive is a suggested treatment (ineffective) for varroa ... and it kills any open brood. You are talking about testing for varroa with a sugar roll.
 
Two different things here ... dusting all the bees in the hive is a suggested treatment (ineffective) for varroa ... and it kills any open brood. You are talking about testing for varroa with a sugar roll.
Yes. That is right. Icing sugar is not a treatment. It's one of several ways beekeepers can get an estimate of the initial infestation in their colonies.
 

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