Varroa Mite Inspection and Treatment

This week was normal feeding and a mite inspection and treatment with Oxalic Acid. There are some pictures forthcoming, but I wanted to get the basics down. First, find a frame in the colony under test having capped brood and bees BUT NOT THE QUEEN!

Shake the bees from this frame into a container.

Scoop 1/2 cup of bees (300 bees) into your test container. We used a homemade contraption with two glass jars separated by hardware cloth so mites can go through but bees can not. This has enough isopropyl alcohol to kill bees and mites.

Then vigorously shake and swirl the contraption to get mites off of bees and so bees are on one side and mites fall through the screen to the other.

Count the mites. Depending on the mite count (over 2 or 3% I recall) you treat.

Our counts were over 3 percent. So we treated. This involved using a small squirter...

... to squirt Oxalic Acid solution between the frames of the hive.

Here is a cryptic recipe for the Oxalic Acid solution and application rates...