> Impressed by your and allen's results we did our experiment: > we shaked 59 jars with 1 spoon of icing sugar and more or less 100 ml > of bees in a 390 ml jar with full net lid, quite hard for 90 seconds. > The result is that sugar dislodged a mean of 94.9% of total mites I guess I just did not shake hard enough or long enough. I just did the same as I have been taught to do with alcohol. >...After 1 hour more or less 10 bees (3%) > were dead... I don't know > Which was the life expectancy of the others My main reason for wanting to use sugar -- rather than alcohol -- is to preserve the bees. Torturing and killing bees this way does not seem to offer any advantages over killing them swiftly in alcohol, and it requires more time spent shaking them -- plus the counting is more difficult. Anyhow, I think I have concluded my examination of sugar, alcohol and drops and formed conclusions. I'll be summarizing my thoughts in my diary at http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary shortly. Most of my writing is there more or less in real time, and a bit bleeds over here. Recent diary topics are constructing a boom loader (c/w drawings and parts list), building extractor drives, making a bee truck out of a pickup, skunk control, PF-100s and Pierco, etc., applying formic pads, mite drops and alcohol washes, Apivar, and patty feeding in fall, to mention only a partial list... *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm