Varroa Easycheck

01 · THE SAMPLE

300 bees off a brood frame, and no queen

The white basket carries two marks: the lower one is about 200 bees and the upper one about 300, which is the one that gives the finest result. The bees are taken from a frame of capped brood, where the nurse bees the mite travels on are, and with one condition that allows no slips: the queen must not be in the sample. Find her before you shake the frame.

02 · THE THREE METHODS

Accuracy or live bees: you choose

With alcohol the sample is immersed and shaken: it is the most accurate method and the one used as the reference, but the sample is lost. With powdered sugar you roll the jar, the sugar makes the mite let go of the bee and the bees go back alive to the hive; it wants a dry day and gives slightly less accuracy. With CO₂ you inject the gas for five seconds through the holes in the basket, wait ten until the bees are asleep and shake for fifteen: quick, and also without losses.

03 · THE SUM

Divide by three and you have the percentage

Count the mites left in the clear base and divide by 3 if you took 300 bees, or by 2 if you took 200. That number is your infestation percentage. Write it down with the date: what decides a treatment is not one isolated reading, but how the series moves and which threshold your region works to.

04 · WHEN TO MEASURE

Four moments worth the trouble

Early spring, to know where you are starting from. During the flow, so it does not run away from you while you cannot treat. Late summer, which is the reading that decides the treatment before wintering. And a few weeks after treating, to check that it worked: measuring afterwards is what separates treating from assuming.

05 · BEFORE YOU BUY

The CO₂ method needs an injector gun, which goes separately. For the alcohol method methylated spirit does the job, and plenty of people use windscreen washer fluid.