Hello, and welcome back to The Bee Vlog
Today I'm going to be doing some mite counts
This is not something that I normally do because, as a treatment-free beekeeper
if the hive has a high mite load, I'm not going to do anything about it anyway
so, really what's the point in counting them?
This year I'm going to be participating in a local citizen science project
where my bee club and some other bee clubs in the area are going to be counting up our mites
Some people may be doing treatments, others won't
We're going to have some control groups, some treated groups, to see how treatment vs non-treatment works
Various forms of treatment
Various forms of "not-treatment," meaning the different equipment that's being used in the hive
and really kind of nail down, in this area, what we can do to help the bees deal with the mites
Now, if you're not familiar with mites, what I'm talking about mainly is the Varroa mite or
in the scientific community known as Varroa Destructor
Very appropriately named because these mites, they're found in every hive but if they get out of control
they just destroy the hives, and it's a major problem for all beekeepers
So it's something that we really focus on a lot in our beekeeping efforts...trying to deal with mites.
What I have here to use to count the mites is what's called a screened bottom board with an inspection tray
or a mite counting tray, or sometimes called a sticky board
and the way it works...
I normally keep these bottom boards on my hives year-round
It's a screened board with a #8 mesh...that means that the opening is an 1/8th inch
or there are 8 wires per inch
And this board just stays on the hive year-round
(Loud buzzing noise)
Okay, the neighbor is digging trench for sprinklers and it doesn't sound like he's going to let up anytime soon
So I'm going to turn the camera around so the mic is facing away from the noise, hoping we don't pick up much of it
and I'm just going to keep going
So, this bottom board is something I keep on year-round
It has that wire mesh so the bees can't go through and it protects them from other pests and predators
But it allows better air flow as well as putting in an inspection board, or a sticky tray
And the way this works is, it just slids in under the mesh, in a little groove, and it looks like that.
This board is just corrugated plastic
Really light weight, cheap stuff
And I put a grid on it. A 1 inch grid, for counting mites
It doesn't have to be exactly 1 inch, the grid is really there just to make it easy to count
so as you go along you don't accidentally double-count mites or skip some
You can mark it down on a grid paper and so on
Then after putting the grid on, before putting it in the hive, I just smeared it with some petroleum jelly
and then slid it into place
Now, you can leave this in for 24 hours or 72 hours to get a mite count
I'm doing it this time with a 24 hour time period
I'll take all the boards out, take them home, take a magnifying glass, and count mites
I'm labeling each tray with the name of the hive so I know which one it came from
This one came from Louise
And here we are, all set up to do some counting
I was very careful in bringin the boards in, not to rub them against each other
That's to not wipe off any of the debris and mites and other things that are on the board
The tools you need for this are pretty basic: just a magnifier, a pencil, and some light
I've got a few extra tools that I'll be using
I've got a digital microscope that I can use to capture video and photos
I'll actually be using my smart phone as a magnifier
There's an app on here that I can use that is a very handy little magnifier that can also snap photos
I've got my paper grid that matches the grid on the sticky boards
So as I count I can write down the numbers in the appropriate grid space
I'm going to be starting with Queen Helen's sticky board
This is a hive that a couple months ago was suffering from Chronic Bee Paralysis
which is a virus that is spread by Varroa mites
Now, here's a really good image of a Varroa mite
They are a small, oval shaped insect
This one is on its back stuck in the petroleum jelly and is wiggling his little legs
They're approximately 1.5 mm across
What these mites do is they feed off the hemolymph, or the blood of the bee
They like to breed inside the capped cells of the brood
and feed off the larva
where they mate and the females lay eggs
the eggs hatch
and then the young can feed off the larva
The adults will also continue to feed off of the adult bees
They damage the exoskeleton and can cause injury to the bees
They also cause injury and development problems to the larva
In addition to spreading viruses that cause problems with the hive
and can, in significant quantities, can kill a hive
Here's another mite that is able to walk around a little bit
Stuck in the petroleum jelly, but has some minor mobility
At least it's on its legs
This is how they would typically look
You see their legs kind of poking out in the front
They look like a little crab, but the legs don't go to the sides, they go out the front
There are many things that can be learned from doing a sticky board inspection besides just doing a mite count
You can look at the other debris that's on the board
and get an idea of what's happening in the hive
For example, I see bits of yellow flakes here, that's from the pollen
So it looks like they're bringing in some pollen
some source of pollen that's yellow
It's hard to see on that other board, but on this one
you can see most of the debris is over here on this side
indicating that that's where most of the hive activity is, that's where the cluster's located
and they're hatching brood, there's little bits of debris of wax from the cappings of the brood emerging
This is a helpful diagnostic in the winter time when you don't want to open the hive, but you want to
see where the cluster is, about how big they are
are they eating through their winter stores
and as long as you're finding debris
usually wax cappings, you know that they're eating through their stores
Also in the spring you can use these boards to see if there's a nectar flow on
You'll see little white, clearish flakes from the fresh wax that they're drawing out
I don't have much of that right now because there's no nectar flow
It's not enough nectar flow for them to want to draw out new wax
As I do the count I'm going to go square by square
looking for those mites
And if I see any mites within the square I count it
Any mites that are on the lines, what I'm going to do, since I'm working from the top left corner
working to the right, row by row
I'm only going to count any mites that are on the line
if it's in the top or the left line
That way I don't accidentally double-count as I go along
So this first square I see, there's one mite that keeps walking in and out of the square
I'm just going to count her, plus there's one just outside of the square
on the left side
So I'll count those 2 in that one square and mark it down in position A1
And so on, moving across the board to B1...
I don't see any...
C1 has 1
and just continue on...
Alright, I finished counting all 6 boards and that took a couple hours
It didn't look too bad
The 3 hives that overwintered last year: Elizabeth, Helen, and Jezebel
Of those 3, Elizabeth had the least count of only 14
Helen had the most with 69
and I kind of expected that hive to have the worst count
that was the one that had the Chronic Paralysis Virus
and Jezebel had 21
Of the other 3 hives, they were all swarms that I caught this year
Karma had 7, Louise had 3, and Natalia had 0
which doesn't surprise me too much, Natalia has the smallest population of bees as well
so I figured they're going to have the smallest population of mites as well
I also had a lot of fun playing with the digital microscope
I found a bee head on one of the boards
and I've been playing with that and getting pictures of the eyes
Pretty cool stuff