Note for Seasonal Management

2010

Please read this note before using the treatments recommended in any of This Month in the Bee Yard articles.

Keeping honey bees in North Carolina in 2010 is much more involved than it was 26 years ago before the tracheal mite and considerably more involved than it was 20 years ago before the varroa mite.  The tracheal mite was first detected in North Carolina in 1984 and the varroa mite was first detected in NC in 1990.  I, along with most of the other beekeepers in North Carolina, continued to keep bees by using various chemicals to control these two mites.

The tracheal mite is a parasite of the adult honey bee and it spends its entire life cycle (except for transferring to a new bee host) in the tracheal or breathing tubes of the honey bee.  The tracheal mite can kill most or all of the adult bees resulting in the loss of the entire colony.  I feel we have some good news on this mite.  From my experience, damage from the tracheal mite during the past few years has been low.   

The varroa mite (varroa destructor) is an external parasite, which attacks both adult bees and developing larvae.  The varroa mite can also serve as vectors of several viruses that can kill bees.  As noted in the NCSU Beekeeping Note 2.03, the varroa mite is the most serious pest of honey bee colonies worldwide.

According to Note 2.03, one method to control the varroa mite is to cover all the adult bees with fine dust particles such as powdered sugar.  This dusting technique can be quite laborious but it requires no chemical pesticides.  Very little data has been recorded on this research but one article using powdered sugar as a means of detecting and controlling varroa mites was the subject of a Doctoral Dissertation by Dr. Fakhimzaheh, University of Helsinki, Finland in 2001.  Dr. Fakhimzaheh described the sugar dusting, in some cases, knocked down as many varroa mites as fluvalinate on package bees which was 87%.   When the honey bee is covered with fine powdered sugar the varroa mites lose their grip and fall to the floor of the hive.  The impact of dusting, according to this dissertation, was studied and it was found that no sugar was found inside the tracheal ducts of the bees involved in any of the treatments.  Dusting had no adverse effect on the capped brood and the adult bees in the colonies.  No queen supersedure occurred in the sugar treated colonies.

If you would like to use powdered sugar to control the varroa mite, you might want to try the procedure developed by Tom Dowda, Florida Bee Inspector.  These directions were published in the November 2005 issue of the American Bee Journal and are included in the table on the following page.  Dusting with powdered sugar involves no chemical pesticides and thus can be used at any time, even during a honey flow.  Tom did mention a note that should be highlighted and that note is as follows:  For best results, the hives should be placed on a 1/8-inch hardware cloth, (screened) bottom board, allowing mites to fall to the ground.   

This section, Seasonal Management, also includes a Brood Inspection Checklist and twelve articles entitled, This Month in the Bee Yard, January through December.  These articles can also be viewed on line at www.alamancebeekeepers.com .

I hope you find these monthly articles to be helpful in identifying the bee-related work that each of us should be doing to make sure that both the bees and the beekeeper are ready for what’s ahead. 

K. G. Pipes

November 17, 2009