Bee-Saving Electronics Prototype -- Episode 581

here is an informative writeup by authorities in Maine USA explaining why you just can't leave the bees to deal with the mites themselves.
https://www.maine.gov/dacf/php/apiary/documents/Managing%20the%20Varroa%20Mite_April2016.pdf

here is an informative writeup by authorities in Maine USA explaining why you just can't leave the bees to deal with the mites themselves.
https://www.maine.gov/dacf/php/apiary/documents/Managing%20the%20Varroa%20Mite_April2016.pdf

this is a very debated topic among beekeepers. the bees natural tactic to kill intruders is to swarm the m inside the high and rub against each other to increase the temperature to a high enough degree to kill off the intruder. they also do this when infested with a lot of mites. the trouble is that this is very demanding on the colonies stamina and has avery high risk of "verbrausen"(german beekeeper term, not sure what the english term would be). meaning they take more damage themselves than they can sustain heating and cooling the hive in panic until they die. artificially heating the hives is controversially discussed, as some mites might get killed but the bees react with flaying their wings to cool down the hive and exhaust themselves while the positive effect is minimal, not justifying the risk.
NONE of the mites inside enclosed cells can be treated this way as the temperature influx needed to heat the inside of these sells would have already killed the brood and a lot of workers.
while heating could medigate the mite infestation in early stages, it is not a sole recommended solution by our agriculture ministry and caries risks as any other method.

Also dividing brood is a highly discussed topic as "the natural way" bees deal with to high mite population is to swarm and leave the hive /splitting up into more hives. This is also not as simple as it seems and all measures have tradeoffs and risks.

there is no simple solution and no single cure.

Apparently simply taking the ambient temperature up above 50C for an hour will kill mites without killing bees. I don't know if there is any collateral damage. It is probably tough to get everything up to 50 C without creating hot spots (bees wax melts at 60C) but hopefully where the mites are gets hot enough.

Ah got it , I think my dad has a few of those.

thanks! ...now I need to google PawPaw....

Great project Clem,

I rely on Bees to pollinate my blackberry and PawPaw plants.

The number of bees is definitely down, but I did get a good crop from both this last year.

Keep up the good work and save the bees.

thats how far I got...during the courses the warning was..have a dedicated honey room if possible, because everything ..EVERYTHING will be sticky forever.

"...but now idea yet how to deal with all the sticky honey yet..."

I'd recommend spreading it on some warm buttered toast for breakfast.

the heating element is in basic terms not much different, so yes any resistive heater can work for this, cleaning of the residue must be possible tough.