Mite bee

[olhillbilly]

So, how are ya controlling yer mites? Are ya using them screen bottom boards? Do them screen boards have a sticky sheet under em? Or what keeps the lil buggers from crawling back up.

And ya keep talkin bout the Dowda method. Yer gonna havta explain that alil better. The dowda is for mites I think, if I got it right?

They didnt have all this new fangled stuff back thirty years ago.

[beenatural101]

Excactly, Dowda is dusting em down with powdered sugar, u can buy a bellows type thing to blow dust in the entrance and out the top, coverin the bees. This makes em clean themselves and each other off. Add the screen bottom board so they can fall to the ground (my hives are 16 in off ground) and the mites can't get back up in the hive. Studies show they are very near sighted?sensed? and can only fins a bee a few inches away tops. The sticky board is to do mite counts over 24 hrs. As long as your mite fall is less than 75? (no one knows) you are good. I avg 50 or so in a strong colony. The latest thing I am doing is going to natural size cells, foundationless. That will b complete next spring. Also, I buy the fancy bees bred for mite resistance etc... And burn any hive that dies if I don't know what killed em. I burnt one last year that may have only absconded, wasn't sure so I burnt it anyway.


Just hadda correct one word. Hb

[beenatural101]

My bees died or left, so I got different bees. Also saw some deformed wing in that one hive last year, so burning it was a good precaution. They say that stuff is carried by the mites, who knows. I got more fancier bees and don't see the problems this year. since I just took the honey, its time to do a mite count and scare myself, right? time to start with the dusting for sure, its gotta help.

[beenatural101]

See the early harvest is a result of our nectarflow here, as well as the natural method(dowda) of mite control, allowing me 3 mos only where I do not have to treat. I also plan to use Eucalyptus leaves to smoke one hive and not its sisters, but I have gotta let the bees make more bees first. I think the thymol in the smoke may make the little bstrds to lose their grip, but I bet the whole hive is gonna smell like vicks. hmmm..... I generally use pinestraw its local and works well. Real local like in the beeyard. truth is about the mites they haven't figured out the real threshold and the best hope I think is to let the bees fight it their own way. Some current strains are doing well. I plan to use as many as I can with a particular queen as a mother for all my daughters next year, many as I can have hives and bees ready for, which may be a lot. gonna try an OLD trick hopefully in the spring, this year the conditions were just plain bad for it.

[beenatural101]

I currently use a screen bottom board that I made to do it, just dump a cup or 2 of 10x on the screen and brush, spreads it around good and is faster than the sifter. ticks em off good though. Nice to have a suit when you are at it.

[beenatural101]

o and i used regular size screen so the powder don't fall straight thru, got the good metal window screen from the hardware store.

[olhillbilly]

just dump a cup or 2 of 10x on the screen

Whats 10x?

And theres not many pine needles around here. How would eastern red cedar work in place of it? Usedta just use burlap but its gettin hard to find. Last I used was wood shavings from a friend that still uses a hand plane.

Yer gonna find theres lots I dont know. Lots has changed over the years. Its almost like startin over. I was gonna ask ya if ya still used the ten frame hives or are using the eight frame. But I think I recall you using a top bar or sumsuch. I should prolly start a new thread bout them.

[beenatural101]

Ok Hb its powdered sugar 4 or 10 x is the particle size. The theory behind stuff like this, (some people use organic garkic powder), is that 1 it makes the bees clean themselves and each other and 2 particles that size all nice and spered around will help the suckers to not hold on to the bee. Kinda like when you were a kid and yer mean cousin threw a handful of marbles under your feet. Them mites are tiny, bout the size of the head of a pin.
And for smoker material, I dunno bout cedar, should work as long as once you got it burnin good you packed a crapload in on top, i mean PACK. For one it slows down the burn rate and makes it smolder nice, and 2 all that on top acts like a spark arrestor to keep from burnin the bees up. Just about anything natural should work, busted up twigs even, but u might have to b careful w that, maybe a wad of damp leaves on top. You can use a lot of things, them cotton wads u can buy are kinda cheap and work good if u light em with a torch. I plan to try the eucalyptus leaves on a hive as an experiment. just remember whatever you use can't have anything in it (oils artificial stuff lile plastic or whatever), no pesticide of course. Whatevers hany and works just get er burnin and pack it full, i sit mine on a block and let it go or go out when im done, i use so little smoke most of the time i have to pump it to get it goin when i need it sometimes. The litter under a nice thick cedar will prob b good, when you get ot goin good, test it on your hand. Hell the cedar mite knock some o those mites off, saw me a study and read it, thats why I wanna try the eucalyptus. To "treat" a hive with smoke, you just pump smoke up in there for 15 or 20 secs and let the bees move the smoke out on their own, theyll do it quick. u gotta have screen bottom for this. Studys have shown that smoke irritates bees, even though it calms " them. Really all it does is screw up their scent rceptors for 10 minutes or so and makes em think the world is burnin. Studys have also shown that smoke can make a mite lose grip (fancy that, they don't like it) and fall thru the screen bottom stunned.. O and i started w all 8 frame medium depth and am going to keep it that way and go foundationless, also gonna try me a top bar or 2, just to say I did. lol. I really like the versatility of everything being the same size and not killer back breaking. I can have a hive 7 or more high, but squish it down as the season demands. 3 boxes high with one full is adequate for summer and 2 boxes high with 1 full (capped) is more than sufficient for winter here, if we have one...

[beenatural101]

I hope that'll do for dowda at least, let me talk about the pesky mites themselves. These things come off the eastern honey bee, or asian (japanese) whatever. Little cavity dweller much like our western girls we are so attached to, but different in several ways. The most important is the abiltiy of the easter honeybee to co-exist with the mites. Theyve got a shorter larval and pupal stage. When globalization brougt these critters into contact with our bees they spread out and brought on some disastrous results. New disease and a more effective host for this sucker did a job on all our bees with these crazy viruses. Paralysis all kind o stuff. Basically a little "bee tick" they use the larger cell size and longer pupal stage to breed more effectively. Then some bright guy says" they are bugs we can poison bugs" and this gives us more problems. technically the mite is an arachnid, which means it is fundamentally different than an insect. I think they stumbled on something important and related to this with thymol, an ingredient in eucalyptus. They got treatments using it, but it will be a last resort before I put it on my bees.

[beenatural101]

A very important thing I forgot to mention in the fight against mites. Divides, splits, letting your bees swarm out, re queening, whatever you want to call it or how you want to do it. Interruption of the brood cycle yearly really helps them keep ahead of the infestation. The mites breed in with the pupae, so, it helps to give the brood cycle a rest yearly. also, you get more bees usually than you have hives for, and have to teach beekeeping as a hobby.