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Author Topic: powdered sugar dusting  (Read 7261 times)

Offline Brian D. Bray

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #20 on: April 16, 2008, 10:56:38 pm »
I am getting a package of bees and installing them. Should i powder sugar dust them and if so when should i start and how often.

Chances are Your packaged bees will already be pretty heavily treated for mites etc.  I would recommend waiting a few months while your hive becomes established and then doing a mite count using a sticky board and do a sugar shake, if warranted after that.  When doing a sugar shake (aka Dowd method) do 3-4 at 10-14 day intervals, weather permitting.
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Offline NWIN Beekeeper

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #21 on: April 17, 2008, 02:48:14 am »
I find no hostility in my hives when dusting so long as I smoke them as I would any other inspection.

I personally like using a mason jar with window screen and ring in place of the center lid.
This gives me an opportunity to shake the amount I feel is appropriate for the population of bees.

I like the idea of the window screen over the top bars. Dusting across the top bars does help. But if I need to intervene, the problem is probably to a level that I need to be serious about what I am doing. I pull each frame and dust the entire surface of bees.  Of second most importance is repeating every 7-10 days. 

V-Mite maturing cycle is 10 days. If you do a quality job dusting today, you should have very few mite emerge 10+ days later. So what you want to target are pre-sugar mites emerging in/on days 6-7-8-9.
If you dust 7 days after the first sugar, you get some day 6 mites before capping, and sugar will stay a little residual to be effective days 8 and 9. This is a significant sweep against mites. Dusting much after this will allow mites to re-enter the cells and dustings will be ineffective.
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Offline Cindi

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #22 on: April 17, 2008, 10:45:01 am »
Oh I don't know.  I remember reading somewhere in a site about when doing a powdered sugar dusting, just to take a couple of handfuls of sugar and dump it all over the frames, it is like an avalanche and really causes the bees to become agitated and groom like crazy.

I used a flour sifter to start with, because I thought that would be most efficient.  By the time I had gotten well into the treatment, I got fed up with squeezing the handle on the sifter and did what I remembered reading about.  Taking it by the handful (my hands are actually quite small, if someone has big hands, I would suggest a smaller handful, hee, hee) and spreading it on the bees that way.  It was about 50 times faster than using the flour sifter and it worked pretty darn good.  The mite fall on the sticky boards I put in later on were decently significant.

I had newspaper under the colonies to catch the majority of the powdered sugar firstly and I removed that -- and then I put in the sticky boards.  I caught the majority of the sugar on the newspaper because I didn't want to leave remenants of powdered sugar in great numbers around the colonies, messy, attracting ants and the like.  Beautiful and wonderfully great day, Cindi
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Offline annette

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #23 on: April 17, 2008, 12:41:15 pm »
I like the newspaper idea. Usually I wait around about 1 hour and empty the sticky board of most of the powdered sugar, then re insert the  sticky boards for 24 hours.

To much work. I am trying to have an easier time of it all. The newspaper sounds great. Just place it on the ground under the hive and how long do you wait before removing the newspaper and inserting the sticky board afterwards.?

Annette

Offline Rabbitdog

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #24 on: April 17, 2008, 05:14:31 pm »
Smoke 'em like a cheap cigar  ...... ;)
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Offline Cindi

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Re: powdered sugar dusting
« Reply #25 on: April 18, 2008, 10:01:01 am »
Annette, I would leave the newspaper in place for not that long.  The point of the newspaper is to catch the initial bunch of sugar that falls through, I would say maybe about 1/2 hour, no longer.  You want to get those sticky boards in pretty quickly to get the mite counts happening.  Good luck, beautiful day, and all that goes with it.  Cindi
There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold.  The Arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold.  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see, what the night on the marge of Lake Lebarge, I cremated Sam McGee.  Robert Service