Hi Anne,
- Sticky boards have to be and stay sticky otherwise the mites get up
and walk away or get eaten by ants.. Cooking spray doesn't cut it. Neither
does cooking oil. It either pools or runs off. Crisco or lard will work in
a pinch, but if you have ants around, they'll eat it and the mites.
Vaseline is good, but beginners don't like to mess with it. Tanglefoot is
great and the original sticky board stuff, but it's a pain in the butt to
work with.
- You have to know how long the sticky board has been in there in hours
and it can't be for weeks. Simple enough, but it doesn't happen.
- Sticky boards need to stay flat and need to fit easily in the slot
below the screened bottom (if that's what you're using). One season is
okay. The next season those bottoms have warped, the insert has warped,
wax moths are living in the grooves, etc. The boards either won't budge or
won't stay in place. Those that do move have all the debris, mites, and
goo scraped off when they're pulled out. Whether because of the ants, the
wind, or the light, the bees will start propolizing the screen.
- You mostly can't grab them because they're pushed in flush with the
back of the hive.
- To insert them in the front of a solid bottom, the bottom has to be
smooth and free of those little propolis hoo doos and the bottoms of the
frames have to be clear. Let's not even think about TBH or Warre.
- Those bees are gonna get ya!
- Sticky boards don't take into account the colony population size. You
need a per capita count. Say there were 3 murders in Longmont (pop 100K)
last year and 3 murders in NYC (pop 8,750K). Which city is safer?
Obviously Longmont's gonna succumb to varroa.
- Mites just don't fall off that much and all the way to the bottom even
less.
- Often they have to be taken back home to be looked at in bright light
with some magnification.
- The counts aren't all that meaningful. You can see that there's
really really a lot or just a few, buit anything in between can be hard to
interpret.
- They can be useful in some research situations, especially working
with small colonies like nucs, but those aren't beginner situations
And then there are the issues with screened bottom boards.
So, this is beginners, not experienced beekeepers. I think they choose
this method because they saw it on youtube, it doesn't kill bees, and they
don't have to open the hive. Beginners need to be assured that you can't
learn to keep bees on youtube, you have to get into your hive - it's the
fun part!, and a poor count is gonna kill a lot (50,000) of bees, some of
them mine.
That was supposed to be simple. Sorry.
Cheers,
Kristina
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