Mite Counting- And a New Thing To Make

Despite my conviction at the beginning of this  year that I needed to kill mites early and often- I got convinced to hold off as it would interrupt brood rearing and therefore the honey harvest. Now I think this was a mistake and I should have held the course, but its hard to know- at sometime, between now and the beginning of the season, I should have treated.

Yesterday, with a dearth beginning, I began my mite counts. It was a bit of a shock- very high counts, pushing 10%- and exceeding it in a few hives. I don't know why I was shocked- it should have been totally what I expected- but I was suffering from wishful thinking I guess, that this year might be a little different. I haven't seen any in drone brood, no deformed wings, etc.

I have to admit to doubting that a mite count is essential- at least in my operation at this point- and considering last year's struggles. The likelihood of finding that they are below the threshold, in any hive, seems improbable. And, if I find the count high in one hive- I treat everybody. So why waste the time? And why not knock them down earlier? I'm not sure.

Nevertheless, the great RO recommends mite counts as part of IPM and does them, so I do. Here's how I do it- its just a standard sugar roll, but I added a piece of equipment yesterday that I made that really helped and is easy to make.

First step in counting- I stand in front of the hive to be tested and lay out the following: my smoker and an upside down white 5 gallon lid (also in this picture, is an upside down feeder and a one handed queen catcher- which is a great tool for catching and marking queens, way better than what I used to do using a catcher and transferring the queen to a marking container)....

...plus this stuff, a quart mason jar, with a threaded ring lid and a piece of 1/8" mesh cut to fit, some new powder sugar, my color coded calendar log book, and a special built funnel:

The funnel is a prototype- quickly made from thin aluminum- but has the innovation of adding a Mason jar threaded ring at the end. I couldn't figure out how to made the funnel not flop over off the jar, or blow away, and so I cut the hold a half inch smaller than the small top opening of the lid, then nipped it with shears to make tabs, and bent it all around to attach it. This allows the funnel to be securely screwed to the jar. Works great!

Hard to see the tabs, but they are bent into the ring

As an aside, another piece of homebuilt equipment I used during the count is this super scale , made from a non-digital luggage scale (less than 10 dollars), some chain, and some bent metal nail plates. This year I added a dowel handle, which really helps to make it easier to read and lift up:

I hook the bent plates into the handle holes of the super I want to weigh (above). The plates have a couple of bends to them, which make it lock in when I pull up. These could be stouter- but fit into the handles and under the hive if there are no handles.

Then pick it up with two hands to weigh it.

Back to the mite count- I screw the funnel onto a quart jar, and set it down onto the supers which I have pulled off to weigh. I put it down on a little wax, so it won't fall over too easily, I take out a frame of bees from the brood chamber...

Then I shake the frame vertically (first checking for a queen of course) into the funnel- then I shake the funnel and they all slide neatly into the jar.

I unscrew the funnel, set it aside, and screw on the meshed lid and add 3 tablespoons or so of powdered sugar, and shake them for a minute, set them down for a break, then shake once more- pretty standard operation. I have marked the bottom of the jar to show how many bees I need to have.

Then I shake the sugar onto the nice white lid, and count the mites. Each little black spec is a mite. I think this shake showed only 8-which is only 3% or so- but one hive showed 57. Sugar rolls don't knock off all the mites- so even this numbers are likely low.

Mites in the sugar- a big surface like a lid works great as you don't bury and miss them. Pollen also shakes off, which are the gray clusters.

Last step is to dump the sugared and shooked bees back into the hives, where they immediately start fanning. I am not sure why- I assume they are blinded by the sugar- but I don't know why they'd fan. In any case, they are all fine, and I close up the hive and move to the next one.