sucrocide

[tig]

hi,

   anyone here tried using sucrocide?  i've ordered several bottles from dadant to use for mite control during the honeyflow.  i'm wondering is anyone has tried it and how effective it is.  thanks.

[BjornBee]

tig, I was hoping some others had some experience to pass on, perhaps on the upbeat side. But I guess having no response isn't much better.

So I'll give you my experience.....

About five years ago, I donated a bunch of hives to test some products prior to release for sale. Sucricide about that time just came out, and was included since not many were familiar with it. It was tested with apilife-var (out at that time) apiguard (not out yet), as well as another product yet not released.

By far, sucricide was the least effective of the products tested. That's not to say it did not work. Just that it was a bit lower in mite kill than the other products. If I remember correctly, it had around a 60% kill as compared to some of the others with 80 to 90% kill.

The downside was the fact that to be effective even at that rate, every bee, from every frame, needed to be coated. Very time consuming, and very labor intensive. (we had one pulling frames, and one spraying.) To do it haphazardly, meant just lowered the kill rate. Others have tried to do quicker methods (drench method) but I'm not sure what the outcome of the effectiveness was. And I question the potential damage since when used as directed, brood kill is possible if NOT for the bees shielding the cells from being sprayed.

If you have the time, to complete as directed, coating every bees on every frame, and doing three treatments, then a good kill rate can be achieved. But to cut corners, cheat in thinking you got most of the mites, etc., just means your mites will come back faster, since it has a lower overall kill rate to begin with.

I think for someone with a few hives, it can be a safe way of treating. But if you have hundreds of hives, forget it. Just like fogging or anything else, time and labor just makes other methods more effective and less costly.

[Sean Kelly]

Sucrocide is a real pain to use.  You will need to put it in a spray bottle and will have to spray every single frame and every bee must get in contact with it.  If not, it's totally not effective.  And if I remember, you have to do it a lot.  Tons of work for something that doesn't work very well.

Sean Kelly

[tig]

thank you for the replies.  yes i understood that one drawback was the time and labor constraints and costs, not to mention the ideal temperature for spraying.  since i live in a tropical country, temperature won't be much of a problem and labor costs here are very cheap.

there were 2 reasons why i was attracted to sucrocide, presuming they do actually kill the mites.  the first being mite resistances to apistan, which is what i have been using for almost 4 years. sucrocide will be the alternate treatment to break the resistance.  the second being the unfortunate timing of getting a mite infestation....aways when honeyflow starts wherein which i cannot treat with apistan or apilife.  hopefully sucrocide will be the answer.

i have less than 200 colonies which i visit on a weekly basis.  i understand the application of sucrocide is at 7-10 days interval requiring 3 applications. that will suit my visitation schedule very well. hopefully all works out well.

it really sucks getting hit with mites specially during the honeyflow.  our honeyflows last around 6 months which is too long to leave an infested colony untreated. so it always comes down to a choice of either treat and not harvest, or no treatment and harvest but be prepared to gamble that your colony will still survive the end of the honeyflow.

the philippine experience with mites is that an untreated colony succumbs in around 4 months if infested with varroa and  less than 2 months if infested with trophilaelaps clarae.  with no winter months, our queens lay year round so we have to check for mites all the time.  of the 2 kinds of mites, trophilaelaps is the worse.  they are carried by apis dorsata which are migratory and present all over the country, nesting even in golf courses and universities which are located in the heart of major cities.  apis dorsata aren't affected by the trophilaelaps maybe because of their migratory nature.  it is, however, extremely fatal for apis mellifera.  fortunately they can be killed using any mite control for mellifera. i am donating one bottle of sucrocide to the university of the philippine bee program to test the efficiency against trophilaelaps.  hopefully it will be effective too.

[heaflaw]

I think Sucrocide is great.  First of all, it is "natural", does not contaminate honey, and does not harm the bees.  But most importantly I believe it can be used to help the bees survive varroa until they "learn" how to control it themselves.  Our goal is to have bees that will deal with varroa and thrive without any human intervention.  (read Michael Bush's post in Disease & Pest Control: Logical Choices: No Treatments).  If we kill all the varroa, the bees never develop a method for controlling the varroa themselves.  If we treat only occasionally and partially and continually less frequently, the bees will ultimately become stronger.

If you spray with a garden sprayer down between each frame, it is really not much work at all.

Anyway, I used only Sucrocide for about 4 years until 2 years ago when I have treated only a weak hive or new swarm/split.  Since 2 years ago, when I have tested with the sugar shake method, I see very few varroa.  Maybe there is another reason why I don't have a varroa problem and maybe this year I will lose a lot of hives/honey harvest to varroa, but for now that is my observation.