Varroa Mites have reached Australia - Sugar Shake to Test | The Bush Bee Man
In this week's episode, Mark shows us how to do a sugar shake to test for Varroa Mites. Now Varroa Mites are here in Australia, we all must do our part by testing our hives.
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This video shows a beekeeper setting up a Queen Rearing System Cultivating Box and catches the queen to place inside.
Produced and Directed by John deCaux
Executive Producer: Mark deCaux
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Please watch: "Varroa Mites are Here to Stay - NSW is moving to Management"
• Varroa Mite is Here To...
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You have more Bees on your hat than I have in my Garden at the moment.
They also prefer drone brood, inspectors here in the southern US use a toothpick to uncap and pull out a couple of drone broods and you can easily spot the mites on the white brood
Wow, sorry to find out that the mites made it down there. Good luck.
Excellent video on the sugar shake method of varroa destructor detection. Here in New Zealand we rotate the miticide treatments making sure the chemicals used in the treatment are chemically different e.g. Formic Pro then Oxalic Acid Gel strips (or vapour) then Apivar strips
You crack me up I love watching your content don't ever change 👍🏻 hi 👋🏻 from Hampshire England
I use a preserving jar with a wire mesh lid, the kind used for sprouting beans for my sugar shakes. The problem with pure icing sugar/piping sugar is that it can get lumpy sitting in an open packet over time. With the preserving jar lid I can use the wire mesh to sift the sugar as I add it to the bees, so the bees don’t hammered by big lumps of sugar during the shake. I also shake the sugar out onto paper plates so I’m not having to clean and dry anything between hives.
The dusting test can be used with any powder sugar even if it does contain cornstarch. I've been using it for 8 years. The container you are using is for a liquid wash. For a sugar shake you need a jar with screen on top. A canning jar with a piece of 1/8 screen like what is in screen bottom hives works great. Use the screen cut in a circle in place of the flat canning lid. Roll the girls around, shake side to side and let set and shake them around again. The sugar loosens the mite's suction cup feet grip on the bee so they come off easier. Then use a paper plate to shake the sugar on leaving bees in the jar. Mist the paper plate with water to dissolve the white sugar and you'll see the tiny dark mites on the plate to do your count. All the hives will eventually have mites but keeping the numbers down is your goal. I use powder sugar to dust my bees on a regular basis to help them knock off mites through my screen bottom hives.
Sorry to hear Australia has the mites, Good on you for battling the little buggers!
That’s great for you
Varoa is a pain, but can be controlled. Here in Europe we treat them twice a year and get an inspection board on the bottom of the hive to keep a tally. There are some people in america have managed to get apiary free.
I use the powder sugar in a sifter to dust all my bees on each comb in each box for my mite dustings. It works with a screen bottom hive only as the bees groom each other knocking the mites off and they fall through the screen. It's a soft mite treatment that can be done often during the spring summer and fall. My mentor started me on this 8 years ago and I haven't stopped yet. I do it on my stacked lang hives, top bar hives and my long lang. I've had very good success after the 3rd year when I finally learned to do it often enough. I can't use a smoker so I use a spray bottle with a couple spoons of granulated sugar dissolved in the water to mist the bees when needed. Like lifting the lid, I mist them when you use the smoker and it keeps them calm and busy grooming each other then too. I've made it up to 20 hives in the late spring early summer and get back down to 8-10 for wintering over after selling nucs and queens and combining the leftovers.
That "shaker" is for the destructive alcohol testing method. Not for non-destructive sugar shake testing. You don't need the basket if you use the alky shaker for sugar shaking. Just use the canister alone.
Unfortunately I don't think people realise that the bees still die, it just takes them a couple of days. I realised this when I saw the number of dead nurse bees outside the hives that had the sugar shake test instead of alcohol.
Flour is bad for bees as the dust clogs up their tracheas. , icing sugar is ok , we use granulated sugar that we put through a bamix sugar grinder to produce icing sugar for dusting the hives to get the bees to self clean👍👍
Great attitude in my opinion, the mites are a problem but can be managed allowing bees can thrive. Nice strong colony. Ty for sharing your time, Blessed Days...
I’m really sorry to hear that varroa arrived to Australia really sad news, I started beekeeping 10 years ago, I was very happy that Australia and New Zealand were safe from this Mites, and thanks to GOD from where I come from it’s an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean we don’t have it. We’re pray GOD that it stays like this 😊🙏🏼
I would use alcohol . Can use it more than once, more accurate and quicker. You kill 300 bees but they have a lot of bees. Can also open drone brood and look for mites.
Hey there gents! Just wanted to say, if you have time the channel the honeystead just had a hive that experienced on her videos from 1 month n 3wks ago. Randy Oliver is also a great reference. Another guy who studies so much on bee's is Fredrick Dunn. And David burns too. They're are so many.... But hopefully they'll stay away from you for at least this season, 🤞🏼 hopefully the next several. But definitely, check out Kayleigh at the honeystead if you wanna see a really bad infestation of mites. Keep close eye on the ladies wings too. That's one of the things they affect. Making the wings shriveled. Then they can't fly and essentially are doomed. So anywho, don't want you to have to deal with that. I feel bad being so glum and full of doom. Mark always makes me smile. An through in John's one liners and that's always giggle worthy. 😃 It'll be alright though. Gotta bee, just has to bee! Have a good one.
Another us Doug and Stacy off grid. Their beekeeping videos are co hosted by Dr Leo. He's more of a treatment free beekeeper, but has information on everything. He also uses the long layens hives, but I've learned so much watching him. He's translated some books to English,& I've seen him speak on other channels. Like treatment free beekeeping, but I cannot remember his last name, and don't wanna butcher it. I do know one of the books is "keeping bee's with a smile". Again, be safe,& till next time, C-ya!
I'm just cruising through south Oz now, been watching your antics since I started bees. About to start a new life in WA...I'm liking what I see in SA hope WA is similar
I thought it was the drone lavey
What the heck,how the heck did they find there way all the way to Australia
Good luck!
Here in WA we may be well isolated from the pest but I have set up ready for the inevitable. I look very carefully when I do inspections to keep on top of it.
often your first sign is bent wings and walking workers but if you are sharp eyed enough you can see them sitting on the backs of workers as they move over brood frames....like half a chestnut stuck to the thorax.
I would say the Dawn dish liquid is the best one but you lose the bees or you can use alcohol you lose the bees that way too
Dawn I have found dose the best
@@theblueshadow9365 Yes I think so too . I had a problem with my livestock and my mom passed so I neglecting my bees for about 3 months I have one Hive now I hope they make it to Winter that way I have something to start with this is my fourth season and have never lost these like this it went good for winter first full of honey this year and done really well but did not keep up with them for 3 months
Fairy ultra for non American countries
DPI has updated and asked beekeepers to now do regular alcohol washes instead of the sugar shakes.
Im not sure there's any smoke in that smoker 🤣
I had my bees euthanised by DPI last Wednesday. Absolutely devastated. It hit me harder than I expected. I'm hoping their sacrifice was worth it. Thank you for sharing how to sugar shake. The more we are checking, the better we can chase down these blighters, eradicate them and keep them from coming back. My orchard is blooming now, and not a bee in sight. Any tips on getting a fruit crop without bees around? Should I hand pollinate?!
That is so depressing :( Sorry for your massive loss.
"the better we can chase down these blighters, eradicate them and keep them from coming back. " AQIS YOU MEAN?
Glad to see you educating yourself. I was losing 50% over winter until I decided to take action. Now I lose 10% or so. Just need to keep on top of them. Hope all is well in your apiary
Can you use alcohol to test? More accurate. Or a gallon water and tablespoon dawn dish soap.
I'm in the US and I can tell you I had 27 hives my mom died and I was doing her stuff and I didn't get to my bees about 3 months I have two hives left treated them hopefully they they make the winner for me to make some more
I totally understand about your mom and the bees. My mom was diagnosed with advanced cancer early spring and passed early August. My bees have been neglected for most of that time. I'm trying to catch up now with my dustings as they've randomly happened once a month instead of 2-4 times a month to knock back the mites. It's a soft treatment but it's been working for the past 5 years after I started doing it correctly. Time consuming but covid and asthma keep me from any chemicals and smells.
You are correct that if you see mites the exact number maybe isn’t important for treatment. But Sugar shake still is not as effective as dislodging mite as iso-prop alcohol or dish soap. Look at Randy Oliver from Scientific beekeeping
They use rubbing alcohol for mite check's in the U.S.
The problem is Australia we transport the bees all over the country with curses pests and diseases to travel. The way to fix the issue is not to transport the bee’s. This would mean the hives couldn’t move the local area.
For most of the country migratory bee keeping is the only option unless you want to feed your bees sugar between the flows. I agree the risks are higher when we move but unless you are on the coast with great variety in your local flora you must move to find the nectar. Some seasons are a complete dearth with many species only producing flowers every 4-7 years. Since the standstill I have struggled to keep my bees alive where they overwintered. I would have normally moved to another apiary and made use of the spring flowering crops and eucalypts. Having missed out on this time of plenty I will now have to feed my hives sugar syrup through the spring and summer and hope they can build enough to get through next winter. The real kicker is I have hives in another apiary that is beside a neighbours canola crop and its been an even bigger struggle to stop them swarming every few days 😅 the joys of migratory bee keeping and following the flowers.
Everything I've read (including the research of Randy Oliver at Scientific Beekeeping) AND personal experience has shown that sugar shaking is a wildly inaccurate way to get a mite count. It's especially dangerous when you get a false Zero count. The best way to get an accurate count is to use a small amount of detergent diluted in water (Mr. Oliver recommends 1 table spoon of dawn ultra per gallon of water) followed by isopropyl alcohol. I *highly* recommend you avoid sugar shake as a method, and implore you to take into account the experience that beekeepers working under the threat of varroa have gathered. I know it sucks to kill bees, but its better that 300 bees die rather than a whole hive, especially since Australian genetic lines have no known resistance to varroa (as far as I know).
At the moment here in Australia, we're not looking for a "count", purely trying to determine if a hive (location) has them at all. As it stands, the area of known mite infestation is relatively small and our agricultural department is aiming to eradicate them entirely by means of eradication of all hives within the area of initial incursion plus bait stations forming a perimeter out at the edge of foraging range. In the meantime, all beekeepers within NSW are required to conduct routine mite checks and report the result (positive or negative) so the authorities can track and act on any spread.
@@bradleymarshall8840 this still applies. if the sugar shake gives you a false zero count, you can't take appropriate action 😕
Do you have asian bees, european bees, african bees or is there any austrslian bees?
Omg hope it dosnt get we’re. We are
holy crap hes not using the ol ladies measuring cups? how long til he loses them haah! right on
It appears New South Wales got on top of it and wiped the varroa out. Australia has once again averted a true disaster. Thank you for your wonderful content from us here on the Gold Coast in Queensland.
Counting varroa mites is interesting, but it does not rid you of them. That can be done if the hive design is both humid and well insulated. If you change the hive environment by changing its design features you can be varroa treatment free. You just need to make an environment that reduces the varroa replacement value over each generation. This is not so hard. Forget chemicals. Honey bees in Cuba and South America have apparently learned to deal with it. The reason is likely to be that the climate is hot and humid. The question is how far north will it go in Australia. The propensity for varroa to die away in a humid hive was found out by accident when a laboratory hive was accidentally left at a higher humidity than others and that one lost its varroa. The precise mechanism of varroa destruction by high humidity remains a mystery. A standard bee hive entrance at the floor level with ventilation at the top causes a cooling stack (or flue) effect internally. This cools the hive in winter and takes away its humidity all year. The temperature difference in winter between inside and out is greater as is the ventilation, when it is not needed, but less so in the summer when it is. Trickle top cross bee entry and ventilation in a beehive rather than bottom entry causes it to be more humid allowing a bucket of humidity to form and which also appears to be controllable by the bees, because when the outside ambient temperature falls at night the humidity rises by up to 20% points in a top entry hive. I invite you to try this. The only thing you have to lose is your varroa. The propensity for varroa to die away in a warm hive is due to the time that a bee pupa takes to hatch which varies between 10 days (35C.) and 15 days (31C.) which depends on when and where it is in the brood nest. A highly insulated external hive envelope serves to keep the brood temperature up throughout the hive and over time, allowing the bees to hatch quicker and therefore for the varroa to not have enough time to mature in the cells. Winter in the UK is varroa breeding heaven, but insulation confounds them and reduces the winter stores consumption to about half, as a bonus. The ZEST hive is made from aerated concrete blocks which have 39 times more Resistance (R) to the passage of heat than a thin walled wood hive has and consequently is functionally free of varroa. If you want to know more about varroa free hive design go to the ZEST web page, and read the free E-Book going to pages 21 to 24 and 50 where the mechanism for varroa free will be revealed. There is a U-tube that you may also want to view titled “Build your own bee hive-heathy bees-zest hive”.
Do not take everything this guy says seriously. Varroa have become resistant to apistan in some areas due to foolish people not using it correctly. Varroa has no resistance to OAV. Please take mite information from reputable sources like Scientific Beekeeping.
I do think top ventilation isn’t good for most situations. But I don’t live in an extremely hot location.
Congratulations on not having any thing in that container
Es a vergonha de todos os apicultores
I hate to hear that because they are bad little bugs they will take them out
Let the mite go... to many idiot's in beekeeping... honey price needs to drop to $3 kg Almond industry has created idiot's in bees