Varroa sugar treatment
As mentioned previously, our hives have Varroa mites and as a family we've decided that we're not going to chemically treat our bees. If we loose our hives then we'll just start over.
There is a powdered sugar treatment that we've decided to try along with using foundation-less frames. This is our first time so it was all hands on deck again to observe.
The theory is that you sprinkle powdered sugar throughout the hive and the bees will work to clean themselves & rid themselves of the mite. The mites also find the sugar slippery, loose their grip & fall off. This treatment is also used in conjunction with a bottom mite board. It's a screened bottom so that the mites fall through the screen onto a bottom board that is coated with something sticky. They get suck to the bottom board & cannot get back up into the hive. We have no idea how successful this will be but it's worth the try so I've taken a video of our process.
Sorry...I've tried to upload the video of the process but after 3 days of it working through it's process...I just cancelled it. So no video until I can figure out a faster process.
These are a couple of pics just after we were done. The bees started to beard on the front of the hives. Probably getting used to the new screen board bottoms.
There is a powdered sugar treatment that we've decided to try along with using foundation-less frames. This is our first time so it was all hands on deck again to observe.
The theory is that you sprinkle powdered sugar throughout the hive and the bees will work to clean themselves & rid themselves of the mite. The mites also find the sugar slippery, loose their grip & fall off. This treatment is also used in conjunction with a bottom mite board. It's a screened bottom so that the mites fall through the screen onto a bottom board that is coated with something sticky. They get suck to the bottom board & cannot get back up into the hive. We have no idea how successful this will be but it's worth the try so I've taken a video of our process.
Sorry...I've tried to upload the video of the process but after 3 days of it working through it's process...I just cancelled it. So no video until I can figure out a faster process.
These are a couple of pics just after we were done. The bees started to beard on the front of the hives. Probably getting used to the new screen board bottoms.
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