>Randy, enjoyed your new mite article in the new ABJ.
Thanks Bill. We can all share experience and learn together.
> My technique is to wash the bees in a pint narrow mouth mason jar for at
least a minute,though I don't see many stingers, so you must have pretty
good wristaction!
I've since discovered that the hard shaking may not be that important. In
order to build a mite-wash table (that could shake 12 samples at a time), I
studied various types of agitation in various container configurations to
determine which would give best mite recovery. I found that some designs
were far more effective than others!
I've now (as of the past two weeks) changed to a different field mite wash
"jar." It requires no shaking at all, and results in extremely quick and
efficient mite recovery. I've only begun to collect data, but I appear to
get close to 100% recovery of mites in less than 30 seconds, with only
gentle swirling, rather than hard shaking. SOOO much easier on the arm!
Yesterday I experimented by swirling for only 5 seconds, counting mites,
then swirling for another 5, counting, and so forth. Preliminary results
suggest that optimum swirl time is slightly less than 30 seconds. When I
find a highly-infested colony I will collect better data.
My current design uses two clear plastic tapered soda cups (Solo 16 oz),
nested together, with a lid snapped onto the top cup. The inside cup has
the bottom 1" cut off, and a flat piece of package cage screen heat welded
across the new bottom opening.
To use, drop the inside cup into the outside cup. Fill with alcohol to
about 1-1/4" above the level of the screen. Drop in a level 1/2 cup of
live bees (that will be about 325 bees). The alcohol should cover all the
bees (I'm guessing on the 1-1/4" measurement from foggy memory).
Then snap on the lid and hold the cups from the top with your arm hanging
down. Gently swirl the cup in small circles with a relaxed wrist. The
combination of the tapered cup and the friction of the screen only at the
bottom (this does not work well if the screen goes up the sides) causes the
bees to tumble (I tested by dropping in little pieces of paper to study the
motion).
The taper of the cups creates a dead space in the alcohol below the screen
into which the mites drop like rocks. On the table, they drop immediately
to the bottom. With hand swirling, they tend to stay suspended due to the
added up-and-down motion.
The key thing is that the mites don't get washed back up into the mass of
bees, as they do with the shaker jar.
The problems that I am now trying to work out is that the cups are a bit
fragile to extended field use, and that the welding of the screen to the
plastic tends to break with repeated use. I'm trying to find better
off-the-shelf components with which to build this device, and would
appreciate suggestions from others WHO ACTUALLY BUILD ONE THAT WORKS.
--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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