>
> >A question for Randy:
>
I'll give it a shot, Allen, but I'm just in from a very long day of pulling
honey and putting on pollen supp, and the data is no longer fresh in my
mind.
>
> > ... In an experiment I recently ran, I dusted a single-story colony with
> powdered sugar, collected the mite drop for 1 hour, then killed all the
> bees, washed the mites from them, and counted ‘em all. During that hour, 34%
> of the phoretic mites fell onto the sticky—in one hour, I collected as many
> mites as I would have in nearly 6 days of “natural” mite drop
>
With a short-term powdered sugar accelerated drop, most of the mites that
drop are phoretic. In a natural drop, if brood is present, about half of
the mites that drop are ones coming out of emerging brood, that would not
survive for more than a few hours (Lobb 1997 Mortality of Varroa jacobsoni
Oudemans during or soon after the emergence of worker and drone honeybees,
Apidologie 28:367).
So the two methods are not directly comparable. What I was saying was that
the accelerated drop caused as many mites to fall, as natural drop would in
6 days. This wasn't meant to imply that 34% of actual, viable phoretic
mites drop in 6 days.
>I read several other pages on your site and and still could not figure out
> exactly what procedure you used to apply the sugar.
>
Wow, you are right! I've given ppt presentations with step by step photos
so many times, that I thought that I had put them into an article. I will
try to get them onto my site (I'm sending you a ppt of them).
>
> >Makes the sugar, however you did it, look pretty good!
>
I don't use it any more. I find the other natural miticides to do an
adequate job.
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com
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