Sugar/mite experiment?

[animal]

I've been thinking, which my wife says it means I'm about to get into trouble. I built my hive boxes as Langstroth 10 frames because that seemed to be the most popular design and frames, parts, etc. seemed standardized and readily available. I cheated a little on building the frames thanks to screws and polyurethane glue, but kept what I think is the original Langstroth outer dimensions (the width of the top bar is the same as the tops of the end bars for 2 inches at each end . future frames will not be like that, though they do look cooler from the top) and used wire to secure comb from a cut-out in them.
After listening to you guys, reading some, and playing a little bit; I've changed a few things and considering changing a few more.
The first change was thanks mostly to Ben Framed and Beemaster and that was the addition of a screened bottom board with oil trap for  beetles
Another change already made is in the frames. Thanks to Michael Bush's ideas, all the ones not already in use had the inside of the frames cut 45 degrees on both sides to form a 90 degree peak that acts as a comb guide, and the addition of bamboo skewers for extra support for the combs.
His idea of 9 shaved frames in an 8 frame box also intrigues me. After learning more about poly hives thanks to 15th member, I'm considering changing the interior dimensions of my 10 frame boxes to that of 8 frames. While bead styrofoam gives me the creeps, XPS (extruded polystyrene) doesn't if areas the bees might chew are covered with aluminum tape (real aluminum with a peel-off backing, used primarily for ductwork, not run-of-the-mill duct tape). So, the idea is to add aluminum reinforced sheets of XPS as removable inserts on both sides of the box(super-easy). My main reason for doing this is because I'm a bit clumsy and being able to pull them out would immediately give more working room and less chance of banging the frames of bees against each other while working on the hive. (shoulder injuries and trying to do things "normally" sometimes yield unexpected results. Think "drinking problem" in the movie Airplane, but not quite as bad. )
Anyway. Lesgold got me thinking about screened bottom boards for mites again.

As I understand it, a sugar shake for counting mites works by interfering with the mites ability to hold onto the bees.
Having the extra room equivalent to 2 frames removed is a lot, and would allow for spray from the top to reach the entire frame.
I already have a full screen bottom board with a kill pan underneath.

So here's the really weird idea.
Load an old-style powder insecticide air pump sprayer with powdered sugar and fog the frames in turn. (fog, slide the frame over, fog, slide frame over, etc.)
It seems to me that for any chance of effectiveness at all, it would have to be done often, perhaps once a week as maintenance. Because of the short life cycle of the mites, every day for a known infestation, and probably ineffective even then.

So is this just crazy, completely ineffective, and not worth trying? Would the sugar be harmful to brood ? What do ya'll think ? Also, is the XPS insert a bad idea?

[Michael Bush]

The problem is that any treatment that is even 100% effective on phoretic mites, will only keep up, but not get ahead, even if you treat every week while there is brood in the colony.

https://bushfarms.com/beesvarroatreatments.htm

Powdered sugar is more like 50% effective.  If you add 50% garlic powder maybe it might hit 75% effective.

[Michael Bush]

>Would the sugar be harmful to brood ?

Sorry, I missed this one.  The research says it is hard on the just hatched brood, but the bees don't have a lot invested in them.  The older larvae tolerate it just fine.

[Ben Framed]

> The problem is that any treatment that is even 100% effective on phoretic mites, will only keep up, but not get ahead, even if you treat every week while there is brood in the colony.
 


I can't speak for your idea with the sugar animal. I do like your out of the box thinking and I'm open minded to hear more!!  May I encourage you to keep sharing your good ideas.

Below you will find a good in depth discussion which covers a lot of productive ground, along with charts of times and mite count drops etc. which show 'effective progress' as well, by "Coolbees" and "Beeboy01" who later coincided with Coolbees thoughts , but not when used weely, but every three days for nine treatments which is a game changer in my opinion. i.e. 5 days for "NigelP". In fact it is my further opinion, our friends from Australia would do 'well' to read the following topic and file it. Together we all learn!!


Phillip

https://beemaster.com/forum/index.php?topic=54131.msg490296#msg490296

[The15thMember]

I think that doing a sugar shake, like you are describing at least, exclusively to count mites is both a waste of sugar and time, both for you and the bees who have to clean it all up.  A sugar roll, using a ball jar, is far easier and gives you more meaningful data, since you can easily calculate a mite/bee ratio, as opposed to a mite/hive ratio, which will be difficult to compare since the hive changes size drastically throughout the season.  Simply shake a frame of workers from the brood nest (being sure you don't have the queen first of course) into something flexible (I use one of those plastic garden totes you can get at any farm store, I think Little Giant makes them), pour them into a ball jar with a mesh lid, roll them around to coat them in the sugar, let the jar sit in the shade for about 5-10 minutes, then shake the sugar and the mites out onto a paper plate or something to count them.  A 1/2 cup of bees is about 300 bees, and I always multiply the number of mites by 1.3 to account for a little bit of error in the sugar roll compared to the alcohol wash.  This way you have used 1-2 tbsp. of sugar and made no more than 900 bees upset and coated in sugar, instead of using 3-5 cups of sugar and making the whole hive upset and coated in sugar. 

I have treated with sugar dusting before and the only time I've had it work with any success is on a very small broodless colony by dusting them several times a week for a week or two.  Now that I have an OAV wand, I'd just use that if I had a similar circumstance in the future.  If you were doing something like sugar dusting regularly for maintenence, it would again be a huge expense in sugar and would be SO MUCH WORK for the bees, when they could have spent that time gathering nectar or caring for brood or doing a whole host of other more productive chores.  My concern about atomizing the sugar would be whether it would be okay for the bees to breathe that in.  Just speaking from experience, knowing what happens when I've accidentally inhaled powdered sugar.  I know their respiratory systems are different, but still.  What you are describing is basically how OAV guns work, and honestly oxalic acid is so cheap, that would probably be cheaper, safer, and more effective than doing that with sugar.

I would also like to mention that if in this scheme of yours to adjust the interior dimensions of the hive, you are going to be coating two walls with aluminum tape, it will be very difficult for the bees to propolize on something that smooth, and there is more and more evidence that propolis is very important to the bees's health.  That may not be reason enough to not do it, since they'll still have two rougher walls to work with, but just something I thought of. 

[NigelP]

To say nothing of all this added sugar possibly contaminating the honey.....

[animal]

I haven't fleshed out a procedure for an experiment but the general idea  was to reduce or maintain mite numbers rather than counting mites.
However, along the way, there's no reason that mite counts couldn't  be done; both by sugar roll and drop count into the kill tray.(Reintroducing the 300 after the sugar fog)
Also, I would pay closer attention to measuring bees gathered from comb to try to get an idea of population per square foot on the comb.

And, of course, I have zero experience when it comes to experimenting on bees. I've only done a sugar roll once, found it to be a real pain in the butt, and the results were zero found.
The amount of sugar used per bee would be much less than in a 300 bee sugar shake.
The cost of the sugar seems negligible at .50 a pound if I make it myself for pure powdered sugar (a real pain) or .75 a pound for confectioner's sugar, but that has cornstarch. Other thoughts in passing like using other powders, or potential problems of cornstarch have occurred but not yet looked into.
part of the goal is to irritate the bees : the idea being, is that dusting them will simultaneously stimulate grooming and loosen the grip of the mites. Stimulating the bees to work against weakened mites, so to speak.
This seems like a simple idea to me and even too simple to work, and that's part of what interested me. I've run into several situations over the years where I passed over simple ideas that would work by over-complicating the problem. Maybe looking for a little revenge by being the simpleton in this?
What's been bugging me is question, "has this been tried?".

aluminum cladding on the XPS board would be on the edges and corners where chewing might be expected, not on the full face. the flat face of the board would probably be coated/sealed with beeswax. Painted on with a brush with the beeswax barely warm enough to be a liquid and the board warmed a little under a heat lamp to cut down on clumping and/or loading the head of the brush.
The wood of the hives was finished in a similar way. Over 3 days, all interior surfaces were repeatedly painted with beeswax, exterior with paraffin; while under heat lamps. The first day was to get the wood extra dry before applying the waxes. (I only had about 2 lbs of beeswax but had 10 lbs. of paraffin and had no idea how much it would take. and didn?t want to pay 20 bucks per pound for additional beeswax, so I "stretched it" with the paraffin.)

[The15thMember]

What's been bugging me is question, "has this been tried?".

What you are describing is basically sugar dusting.  Many beekeepers, including myself, have tried it based on the very logic you are describing, but it just doesn't work as well in reality as it does in theory.  In my experience the efficacy of the sugar is not high enough and the amount of work it causes the bees sets them back too far to be productive.