Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
affect the number of drones in the area and thus queen mating. Personally I have never
liked methods that alter the natural dynamics of the hive and the apiary.
Nevertheless, this method can be carried out as follows:
Place a drone frame in the colony. These can be purchased from bee-supply shops
or you can put drone foundation wax-sheets into the frames yourself.
The workers will now clean the cells in these frames and the queen will recognize
that they are drone cells from their size. She will therefore lay unfertilized drone
eggs in the cells.
In about 10 days the drone cells are sealed with the mites inside them.
You should now remove the sealed drone-brood frame and put it in a freezer to
kill the drone brood and mites. Alternatively, you could open the drone brood cells
with an uncapping fork (available from bee-supplies shops) and lift out the larvae.
Researchers say that, if there is no worker brood in the colony, this method can remove
over 90% of the mites with a single treatment. If there is worker brood in the colony,
they will compete with the drone brood in 'trapping' the mites, and so the efficiency rate
will be lower.
There is now even a device that will kill the mites in the cells without having to remove
the frames. The Saartan 'mite zapper' was developed in the USA and comprises heated
wires embedded in a drone brood frame. When the cells are sealed, an electrical current
is passed through the frame and thus the mites and drone larvae are killed. The house
bees will then clean out the cells.
If done correctly,
worker-brood trapping
is very effective in reducing varroa numbers but
it affects the colony because you are removing your future foragers. I don't recommend
it.
Hive splitting/drone trapping
is also very effective and is popular in Vietnam but,
again, it will affect the apiary's overall ability to maximize the honey harvest.
