Meaning no disrespect to anyone, and certainly not trying to start an argument:
1) I sampled 5 of my hives with the Easy-Check. Wash fluid was 30% ethanol reclaimed from insect-ID samples with a dash of dish soap in it. (I was attempting to simulate commercial windshield-washer fluid, without the blue dye. Clear liquid works better for being able to see the mites, at least for me.) My hives are also in an isolated location, approximately 10 miles from the nearest other bees that I know about. (I'm the state apiary inspector for Montana, among other things.) We do not have a lot of feral hives here. I recovered zero mites from my 5 hives. I took the 605 bees from the last two samples back to the office and looked at them under the microscope. I didn't see any mites. This is consistent with my drone-brood sampling and my examination of the bottom boards. I have a few mites, but not many.
I then sampled some “treatment free” hives. I made multiple washes and then looked at the bees. Each "wash" is the same bees, minus whatever mites came out in the previous iterations.
Hive 1) 136 mites from 321 bees.
a. 1st run recovered 121 mites.
b. 2nd run recovered another 11 mites.
c. 3rd run recovered 4 additional mites.
d. 4th run yielded zero mites.
e. Examining all 321 bees under the microscope found zero additional mites.
Hive 2) 80 mites from 311 bees.
a. 1st run recovered 66 mites.
b. 2nd run recovered another 14 mites.
c. 3rd run recovered zero additional mites.
d. Examining all 311 bees under the microscope found zero additional mites.
Hive 3) 69 mites from 358 bees.
a. 1st run recovered 63 mites.
b. 2nd run recovered another 5 mites.
c. 3rd run recovered 1 additional mite.
d. 4th run yielded zero mites.
e. Examining all 358 bees under the microscope found zero additional mites.
It seems to me that you get better recovery with fewer bees. I added back 30 mites to 200 bees and then 30 to 100 bees. I got most of them back with one wash of 200, and all of them back from 100. (I only did this a couple of times, because I was kind of tired of looking at dead bees and spilling dirty ethanol all over my office.) Some of the mites inevitably get tangled up in the dead bees, as one would expect. But multiple washes do seem to get them all (with the usual caveats about only three replications and small sample sizes, etc.)
Again, and to be clear, this is not intended to be disrespectful or to start an argument. For my purposes it answers the "do we have mites and how bad are they" question well enough, quickly enough, and cheap enough.
Thanks,
C
-----Original Message-----
From: Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of randy oliver
Sent: Friday, March 24, 2017 12:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Varroa EasyCheck
re the EasyCheck mite washer:
I recently tested it Adam. I did multiple washes of the same sample of bees and mites. I got different recovery numbers each time, often with poor recovery. I hate to badmouth a product (especially one on which I was consulted early in its development), but I'm not impressed with the final product.
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