powdered sugar & bee cozy

On a 40°F November morning, I opened the hive top and applied/dusted one cup of powdered sugar onto the hive by tapping a flour sifter with a hive tool.  The rarely used bee brush found a purpose - this time to brush off powdered sugar resting on the top bar of the frames.  I left the boxes stacked as one unit and carefully let the powdered sugar fall straight downwards onto adult bees and not into cells.  After five hours I inspected the debris on the counting board - it's mostly powdered sugar with a trace of tiny light colored phoretic varroa mites and a dozen or so small hive beetles (SHB).   This is the first year that powdered sugar dusting knocked down SHB.  Past years knocked down many larger dark colored phoretic varroa mites .

I added the bee cozy and made bungee cord adjustments to keep the top vent and bottom entrance open. The cozy fits best on my eight frame hives when stacking one deep box and two medium supers.  Hives with two deep boxes requires that I curl over the top of the bee cozy to make things fit.  Like last year, I am going into winter with a screened bottom board and no counting board.

powdered sugar

My powdered sugar goals:

• use a soft (natural) varroa mite treatment in conjunction with the screened bottom board
• dislodge phoretic varroa mites when brood rearing is low
• limit powdered sugar entering open cells
• treat the bees when most of the workers are in the hive

By design, I waited for cooler temperatures to try powdered sugar dusting as a varroa mite treatment.  John Jones agreed to provide a third hand, act as the voice of reason and take pictures too.  As the weather was just 50°F, the two deep hive bodies were treated as one (not separate) unit.   One cup of powdered sugar was placed in a flour sifter.  A uniform straight-down dusting of the bees was achieved by tapping the sifter with the hive tool.  In the end, the bee brush was used to clear the bars of powdered sugar. After one hour, many phoretic mites were dislodged.  The mites on the counting board appeared to be dead and lying on their backs.   In hindsight, I could have sifted through the counting board debris to see whether a significant number of mites are buried in the deep pile of powdered sugar. I'm puzzled why the mites are not found along bee space lines (gaps between frames). Next, the counting board was cleaned, sprayed with oil and returned.  After 24 hours a few more mites were dislodged.

You can see from the slides the bees fanning on top of the inner cover.  The insulated outer cover and bee cozy seem to keep these bees warm.