so guess what happened as i spoke of recently in a recent video we got packages from man lake these
are saskatches two out of three were dead look in here all the bees are dead on the bottom look at
the green stuff down there that is high fructose corn syrup gel i'm going to wash these bees
why because i want to find out are there any mites in with them we might as well they're already dead
so i'm going to put some of this dawn detergent in here that's going to be the release agent
now this is similar to what you would do with live bees if you were going to do a mite count
but these are already dead so we got nothing to lose we can test hundreds of them a thousand of
them if you want to all three pounds so i'm just scooping them in here this is hot water
of course mixed up with this dish soap just stir them in there put a couple good scoops in
keep stirring them for a while i won't make you watch the entire sequence there
look at this this is that green gel that came with it and the bees were stuck all over it it was
free-floating through the pack fell out of the jar that it came in not good news you
can hear honeybee flying around one escaped so that's good to know we got a couple live there
so we're gonna watch the water we're gonna see little bits and pieces floating around look at
them all or any of those varroa mites that's what we want to know if a package of bees came already
loaded with varroa mites we would want to treat the package or we want to treat the mites before
the bees get into capping their pupa so this is a great opportunity to see all these bits and pieces
they look suspicious i'm going to show you how to check them out
so of course i back lit it stir it a little more look for the little bits and spots and
b toes and whatever else is in there there goes a b abdomen
and nothing really looks like a mite yet but we're going to find out i'm going to show you what to do
after things settle here looking at the bits and pieces on the bottom as well
but we can't count them this way so what we're going to do is we're going to count them on a
coffee filter i'm going to show you what i do i put this white colander in the sink there and then
i'm going to take a large paper coffee filter this is what i use for my mic counts normally
and i'm going to center it there and get it wet because we want it to stick i don't
want it to move when i start to pour the water in here that i'm going to wash over
the bees that we're looking at
that's good enough and you notice the water just pours right through it now i'm going to use
this screen and i'm going to pour the dead bees into that and i'm going to wash them off
onto and through the coffee filter here we go now one of the things you want to be aware of
when you're doing this make sure that the water going into the colander below does
not go higher than the edges of your paper coffee filter we don't want anything to get
away we want to know what's in there and i'm going to pull out that little piece of gel too
because we don't need that but i wanted to give you a close-up i think this is the culprit it made
a lot of the bees sticky bees that still seemed alive that otherwise probably would have made it
and the gel seemed like a good idea was up inside a plastic jar this is slow motion of course and uh
i think there was some rough handling maybe too and these bits and pieces fell out some
people when they were dumping their packages into their hives watch chunks of this gel
go into the hive too so you want to get that out of there before you install your packages
now we're back to normal speed all these bees they didn't really need to die i suppose you
can also look at the bodies of the bees to see if anything is on them but if there were dead
mites on them this is a pretty good way to wash them off keep in mind see a little edge there
make sure that your water never goes above that we don't want to lose any evidence here
we're dealing with reputations you want to make sure your accounts are legitimate
because the question is hey if there's no mites in here maybe you don't need to treat
your bees and it's a great opportunity to check them out just like i said
now i'm using a corel plate and it's white because that's going to give me the best contrast and i
flip it over and i use the back of it so i'm also going to peel my coffee filter out here
lay it on the back of this very expensive corel dining wear and you can see little black bits
and pieces on there i have a macro camera standing by in case you find a mite let's take a close look
here all the little bits and pieces that were in suspension are now on the filter
but guess what and i'm not disappointed none of these are mites they're not even parts of mites
little b parts and little random tan pieces and
little amber colored chunks of maybe problem looking stuff maybe bits of wax
not one might that's good news because i have another package that's alive and based on my mic
counts with this package i see no reason to do an early single treatment of oxalic acid vaporization
because there's no justification for it the packages came together i'm going to count
them all as clean two packages were dead neither of the dead outs had evidence of mites in them
so that's good news this will satisfy a lot of people that were wondering what to do
you can also do mic counts on your live bees if you want to but when a package comes in wait let
them get settled first that's my suggestion but here we go lots of dead bees no mites
possible rough handling they were definitely all sticky from that high fructose corn syrup gel
not excited about that thanks for watching i hope this was helpful
you