okay well that's about enough of the scary music but anyway I'm looking in
the integrated pest management tray of a flow hive - that has Sasuke trans bees
in it now you can see the familiar varroa destructor just to the right
there but what's this little six legged creature with the pincers in the front
I'm surprised to find it now of course I pulled the tray out I don't know that
this thing runs through the hive itself or if it just managed to get into the
tray but one thing's for sure this little things a meat eater it's got
those pincers but it also has little transparent appendages right on his face
and you're probably wondering does it walk around can it move what do you
think it is well I'm gonna show you of course I was just getting ready for
tomorrow's frequently asked questions and I was looking over the varroa
destructor that have died and drop down into the tray here and that's when I
came across this curious little critter look at it just grabbing that little
dead varroa flipping it around and look how it's got these little feelers that
stick out look at the tail tail kind of reminds me of a leech that seems
prehensile almost reaches around pokes on the ground it stabilizes it while it
bites things do you know what it is it's tiny
this little thing if you look at a varroa destructor that thing is a little
over a sixteenth of an inch and so this thing right here is about 3/16 of an
inch to a quarter inch well there's another row there a little piece of
propolis it looks like or maybe there's a little bit of pollen that fell down it
kind of investigates everything I'm glad you watch it look at how it walks around
it's obviously a predator it has to eat things and it's not having a good time
finding anything alive to chew on here but he didn't notice when it pauses at
the carcasses of dead animals like the varroa destructor mite it pauses and
looks like it's actually feeding from them a little bit let's follow it around
here I had to focus manually so there's another little piece of what looks like
pollen again it could be propolis but it's more likely pollen that fell
through the grid there's another varroa destructor that's dead that's what I'm
looking for here today is all the varroa that fell down because we're going to
talk more about them tomorrow look how he pauses here you see that
little transparent appendage just inside the pincers there it seems to be feeding
for the varroa like that thing once around scavengers around how would you
like this wandering through your house better yet maybe you're asleep and
something tries to go up your nose now that's terrible I don't want to give you
that kind of visual there is chewing on another varroa destructor oh yeah what's
he doing pushes his face right up there it's pretty aggressive
I'm actually going to tell you a little bit about this rascal
because you might find one in your integrated pest management tray or your
Varela count board sticky boards whatever you got I hope you actually
don't find it on your sticky board because this thing is not as menacing as
you might think at first glance I'm gonna run it all over oh there's a fly
can i suck some goodness out of that fly just look at him go maybe it wasn't his
favorite it's gonna keep tooling around do you know what it is if you know what
this is right off the bat I'm impressed cuz I had to look it up I've never seen
one of these before at least spent time of course it's about context this thing
was inside my betray so then I wondered was this thing getting up into the
Beehive now the bees wouldn't put up with that and that tail to you the
behavior the tail only that just like sticks to things now one of the
comforting aspects of finding it here is that it didn't seem to be able to walk
up these vertical plastic sides of this tray and again this comes with your flow
hives and it's very interesting to see what you find out in that now that tray
was perfectly clean it was installed under the hive for one day because I
wanted to see how many varroa destructor castoffs there would be so there was no
syrup in it which is why this little rascals still alive and didn't die when
it got in there normally it might put mineral oil or cooking oil or olive oil
or something in that tray so the things that fall in and die but these varroa
died before they went down that's what we're going to talk about tomorrow
varroa control because as it turns out this basket rats bees don't handle
varroa very well I mean they put up a good fight but the numbers were just too
high so we had to do some soft treatment it's called we're gonna talk about that
tomorrow and again what do you think this is I'll
tell you this is just a lacewing larva look at all these dead burl around here
so that little lacewing larva and if you've ever seen the lacewing green
lacewing look I'm out one of the friendliest cutest looking most delicate
flying insects you'll come across and this is alarming but at the larva stage
they eat aphids they do pest control I would bet you if one of these little
varroa were alive that thing would actually get ahold of it and kill it who
knows maybe some of the varroa that are in this board were killed by it to begin
with because we don't know how long it's been in there but I wanted to share this
with you today somebody else may be looking up their burrow account board
their sting keyboard or their trade from their flow hive - and they may find one
of these in wonder what the heck was that and then somebody else is gonna go
Fred knows what it is that's a lacewing larva so thanks for
watching I hope you tune in tomorrow we talk more about varroa destructor and
how we're gonna have to intervene enjoy your evening