Testing for Mites Using Powdered Sugar 

Thank you Hanna I’m going go back over this till I not only feel comfortable doing this but use your words from memory to teach veterans again thank you

good video. very humane and gentle way to test.

Awesome video! Thank you for a great demonstration 👍

I have heard similar comments on sugar roll vs alcohol wash as I saw below. Humid areas make this test somewhat skewed. Has anyone done a study in a high humidity environment where you would sugar roll the initial sample and count mites, then alcohol wash them to see if there is some ratio of mites that might be missed in the sugar roll. This might help establish some level of confidence in one test over the other. I would rather sugar roll however being in a high humidity area, I don't want to underestimate my potential mite infestation.

Sorry I thought I was sharing your information with another new bee keeper

Just curious as to why not already have the powdered sugar in the jar before you put the bees in? I plan on using this kind of test instead of the alcohol.

Excellent video, thanks. How does this count (7-mites) translate into a percentage infection? Using simple arithmetic, I come up with 2.3 % infection in a 300 bee sample. At what rate is there a significant problem?

What kind of gloves are those? Also what kind of powdered sugar do you use? Can you use the stuff from the store?

So you found 7 mites. At what level would you start treatment???. What is an acceptable level per 300 bee sample

Thank you! How long do you wait before you rerelease your sugared bees. I would imagine they would be very angry 😵

Thank you for doing this. I saw someone doing this test but without an explanation so I wanted to know more. By the way, is your assistant Bill Murray?

Pozdrawiam serdecznie i życzę miłego dnia

Hell, why not take your whole bee population and bounce them around in powdered sugar. Youd give them a little food boost and eliminate the mites.

I saw a different method to check for mites without killing the bees use 2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar and a scoop of the bees shake the bees till all covered shake the powder sugar out and if they have mites you’ll see them in the sugar

A sugar shake test can give VERY bad results - especially in locales with high humidity. Just as a test, I did a side-by-side test of the same hive, using sugar shake vs alcohol wash. The sugar shake give a result of 2 mites per 300 bees; the alcohol wash showed 18 mites per 300 bees. Testing w/ powdered sugar is a waste of time.