okay so a happy Saturday everyone today I'm gonna answer a single question for
frequently asked questions episode 27 this question comes from John McNeil
I saw cedar Anderson recommending vegetable oil for hive beetles can you
explain how this works well we're going to go a step further with the flow hive
two systems this is the seven frame here on the right and the six frame size on
the left and they have these pest management trays and in these trays you
have some options for what to put in them to trap things at the bees scrub
off and drop through the grey in the bottom of your hive these are sticky
traps you use these for mice and rodents some people do I don't use them for bugs
and if it's nice and warm outside things that fall through the tray and the
bottom board of your beehive will get stuck on those the next tray we're gonna
fill with mineral oil mineral oil is crystal clear it lasts for a very long
time it is stable and to answer John's question how it works any bug that falls
into any oil is going to suffocate insects breathe through their abdomens
if they get coated in oil they stop breathing and they die and this includes
small hive beetle and varroa mites now we have varroa mites and small hive
beetle is where I live and so we're gonna test out all of these over a three
day period and here we've put Crisco so I just spread the Crisco around some
people put that small hive beetle traps unfortunately well fortunately for me I
don't have very much trouble a small hive beetle because my bees just take
care of them and keep them out of their hives but we're gonna put these trays
into service and we're going to see what we find in them after three days
installed in the hives 75 degrees outside and I mentioned that it needs to
be warm for stinky boards to work if it's wintertime they simply don't the
good news is Crisco and all the other oils that we demonstrated do work
year-round all temperatures so here's the bottom tray of a flow hive - this is
a flow hive - six frame which matches up with an eight frame lying straw and it
has bee weaver bees in it these are marilla resistant bees and that's
important to know because we want to see how they treat the burro when they get
them on themselves and this is also a flow hive to the larger version it is
the seven frame and that matches a ten frame length straw and you can see that
there's an aluminum piece there at the entrance that is a grid that allows
things to fall through the bottom and once they fall through where do they go
into the tray and these trays slide in from the back and that's also where you
control ventilation into the hive so that's what we're doing for this test we
are going to put both of these trays in and let them sit in there for three days
and then we're gonna pull them out and I'm going to show you video and some
macro images of what we find this is the back opening to it of course Flo I have
two large version and it's in the vented position with the vents up and you can
see that it's level being level is really important when you're putting in
liquids like this and this is what it looks like from underneath when you pull
the tray out all you see is the aluminum grid so you could pull the tray out and
let the ides really ventilate I leave them in year-round and just change the
venting position here on the back and this one has SAS Katraj bees in it now
here's the thing we have honey in the flow frames this is the first one the
flow hive to six frame as you can see and they're almost full they're almost a
capping time so you could not treat for mites right now because you have honey
on there maybe some that are approved for treatment if you're trying to
mitigate mites right now I personally don't use anything during a nectar flow
and we're just going into the nectar flow so these bees are doing fantastic
let's close this one up and then we'll move over to the other one this is the
seventh frame so this is the largest flow hive - and look they're already
filling up now I install the package of Sasuke trapeze is spraying in fact we
did three of them and look they have filled a brood box a medium super and
now here's the flow super that they are filling so they have built up fantastic
and we're going to take a look at their hygienic behavior when we check these
integrated pest management trays in the bottom we're gonna see what they're
doing what we find having trays now you can have a board
and put sticky stuff on a bored in the bottom two if you've got a
screen bottom or something but in this case we're focusing exclusively on the
flow hive to system because it has that plastic tray and we're gonna see what we
get here we are all buttoned up of course and it's in the vented position
and the hives are perfectly level and I'm just giving you a close-up here at
some of the beams work in those cells they've already got the propolis in here
between the frames they've sealed up the joints it's holding honey and normally I
wouldn't see this much honey stored even in a year old colony until another
couple of weeks because the goldenrod is just now starting to open and we've had
some nectar resource from other flowering plants like all over but we're
about to hit it now these are garden bees look at the look at the females
here hanging on the landing board and a jump every time somebody flies over and
that's because they're ready to intercept you see this one that's facing
us with a mandibles open and she's got our four limbs off the ground everybody
flies over they ground so these are of course the believer bees and they go
after we row up like crazy they groom them off of each other sometimes they'll
grab a bee when it first goes into the hive and they Park it right there while
a bunch of workers and groom off anything it might have brought in with
it so these are very arian beads they win it over well here
in northeastern United States in the state of Pennsylvania and that this is
my first year with the SAS katratzi so we're gonna look at them to lots of
interesting stuff in this one and instead of doing a normal frequently
asked question series that I do here on Fridays generally I've broken this down
I have several subjects that I have to address one by one because I want to
make videos like this one they give a more detailed answer to the question so
again we're just looking at close-up ease this was filmed this morning
actually and then here's the flow hive choose a larger version and these are
the Sask attract bees and there is a firefly walking back and forth on that
landing board these are demonstrating very good build up strength their
behaviors excellent they are passive you're seeing some pollen coming in here
that's going to pick up really fast because the sunflowers are also coming
into bloom and they provide a heavy pollen load we're also gonna get
goldenrod another great source of pollen and nectar now we're gonna look at the
sticky boards first we pull this up and what do we have we've got this ant I
don't know if I feel bad for this ant this little thing could sting look at
the mandibles on it it's stuck in the sticky trap so that's the first thing as
we pull the drawer open and here we've got pollen stuck on it and we've got a
brood cap over there on the left and the white stuff that you see is actually new
beeswax that fell through the cracks and we couldn't get it back so there's also
bits of propolis here and you're looking at canola oil at the top and mineral oil
at the bottom so the mineral oil is crystal clear if you want to photograph
something and you want to see in great detail I recommend that you put mineral
oil in your trays not the canola oil because the canola oil also you notice
the pollen bleeds out a little bit in it so we've got white bits here we've got
some propolis the propolis looks like amber you can see lights were at the
pollens a little more dense as you can see here's pollen that's leaked a little
bit into this mineral oil and now I'm just showing you the tray we're moving
it around a little bit here and don't worry we're going to show some still
photos because there are some varroa I found one varroa mite in the P Weaver
group and set in the sastras group and this of course
is Crisco here and then the canola oil and then the minimum oil and then we've
got these sticky traps which by the way if you're trying to trap mice I don't
recommend these I have other mice things now we've got a dead ant I thought that
was gonna be a small hive beetle but it wasn't it's just an ant so I'm sorry to
tell you I did not find any small high beetles and now we're at the flow hive
to here also we're gonna open it up pull that out see what's going on
again no small hive beetle but we did get some aroma here and I'm
going to show you those up close I'm also going to show you what they look
like in the field there so Chris go again we set up both of these exactly
the same put them in at exactly the same type time and of course the hives are
experiencing the exact same weather so we had clear weather and no rain during
this period so that was interesting too the weather cooperated for once and just
give me a slow look here do I recommend Crisco and not really but if they fell
in it and I was told that small high beetles are actually attracted to Crisco
but they don't seem to be here's a varroa mite and look at that little dude
right there in suspension of this video I took still photos too and I'm going to
show you those right now and here it is there's a furrow mite now I took a wide
shot here so you can see what it would look like to the left is a capping from
the brood dead center is a little varroa mite you can see his little appendages
now here's a close-up shot now this thing is completely intact it's on its
back so its feet are up it has its feet has its little proboscis it has the
ability to bite things now what we're looking in this picture is at a larvae
that the bees discarded and there's a little capping off to the left so the
cool part is to look to see what else is on the bottom here we have a pupa that's
been pulled part of the capping is there and a pupa is a capped brood so this
thing was in developmental stages they pulled it apart and discarded at why
because there's a varroa in there here's a varroa with a tiny fly for comparison
and this is in the mineral oil suspension and here's a nice close-up
look at little pendens the good news here is
they've been off its feet so I like that the Sasuke trash bees are actually
biting the varroa so that's positive here we're looking at the back of one
this little dude looks pretty much intact
now to answer the question how does the oil kill him it suffocates them so once
they fall through the grid if they're groomed off even momentarily they're
dead here is a head of a developing bee and
we're looking at the underside they chewed it apart pull it out why because
there was a burrow in its cell and they discarded everything these are other
bits and pieces of other developing larvae and the bees if they're if
they're hygienic they're gonna get rid of bees and have a row in their cells
here's another close-up of a Verona legs are missing the biting appendages are
still there so again of course they're all dead which is great I love seeing
dead varroa and here's another one and verall by the way if they didn't fall
into oil crisco a sticky trap canola oil mineral oil they would still be able to
run around here's one on its back in the Crisco and it's lost its legs and it's
lost its biting parts that's my favorite part
so it looks like these Haskett rats bees will nip them apart on their way down so
this one wouldn't have run away anyway of course it's adjacent to a larvae that
was completely pulled apart and cast out here's a wider view you have the capping
and look what's on that capping to the left there a varroa mite right on top of
it so they cast that out and it got stuck in the goo and doesn't go anywhere
here's close up again of the cappings and we've got some pollen next to it and
to the left you've got some propolis so that's it I hope you enjoy this and my
personal preference right now is for mineral oil in those trays you get
crystal clear photos of things you get to see the varroa die and you get to
examine exactly what kind of damage was done to them and what other kind of
parts are being cast off I hope you enjoyed it I hope you have a fantastic
weekend and coming up next I will be answering some of your other questions
as the week progresses I'm not going to compile all the
questions together I'm going to do individual videos thanks for watching
tastic weekend