Does sugar dusting do any good if you don't have a sticky or greased bottom board? I have a screened bottom board that drops to the ground, the hives are on cinder blocks and 1x4 planks - won't the mites just crawl back up the cinder block and across the boards, or is there still benefit?
Thanks!
CC
I've never done it yet but I would put something down under the hive, plastic, trays or whatever that I could pull out after done. Seems to me it would make a big mess if you don't take it away. If you throw it away, or dissolve in water, put in the compost pile..or burn (my favorite :evil:) the mites can't come back! Others wiser than me will know what to do! Jody
I have a good population of ants that hang out under the hives waiting for dead bees to be discarded . . . I was assuming they'd clean up the dust pretty quickly?
Quote from: ccwonka on June 25, 2008, 12:59:42 PM
Does sugar dusting do any good if you don't have a sticky or greased bottom board? I have a screened bottom board that drops to the ground, the hives are on cinder blocks and 1x4 planks - won't the mites just crawl back up the cinder block and across the boards, or is there still benefit?
Thanks!
CC
Sugar dusting doesn't require a sticky board that is used solely for the purpose of doing mite drop counts. If your hive is at least 2 inches off the ground and you're using SBB the mites can't climb back up into the hive--an inch, maybe, more than 2 not so likely, and more than 3-4 absolutely not.
The powdered sugar used is consumed by both bees and ants.
Hi guys,
Every swarm I collect I always dust them in icing sugar. Why?
We don't know if the swarm is carrying any form of disease or how many Varroa mites have hitched a lift. So I always run in the swarm into a Nuc box which has a sticky floor, by that I mean I layer a very thin coating of petroleum jelly on the floor to hold any mites that fall off once I have dusted. As soon as I dump the bees on the running board I cover them in sugar, and this has the effect of mites not being able to hold on to the bees exoskeleton and also the bees will clean each other. I leave for 24 hrs then replace the swarm into a hive with foundation.
(http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn206/Bcrazy_2008/Swarms/Swarm1.jpg)
In this photo I have not dusted because I took a video of the bees running into the Nuc. With this colony I left it for about an hour and then dusted each side of the frames in the Nuc.
Regards Bcrazy
Quote from: ccwonka on June 25, 2008, 01:35:14 PM
I have a good population of ants that hang out under the hives
Yeah me too- little black ants. I have cardboard scraps under some hives so I can see what goes on down there. Ants will run out and grab anything that drops, including mites or the occasional bee part. They even seem to work on propolis bits and other various hive debris. Oh and ants aren't the only thing- there is an entire ecosystem, a hierarchy of organisms to be found under a hive, fascinating to watch. I guess the "king" would be the spiders, but I've read of something called a pseudoscorpion and I'm still waiting to see one of those.