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Thread: Varroa estimations during winter.

  1. #61
    Administrator gavin's Avatar
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    Just move in to the apiary and get an ear trumpet


  2. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by Emma View Post
    Would any of the devices you're looking at work for putting a microphone into a hive and streaming the sound into the house/office? That's the type of monitoring I'd most like to try. I briefly tried the Arnia monitors but was disappointed to get graphs rather than raw sound.
    Hi Emma
    The simplest device I know of that could do some of what you have in mind is the A8
    It works in a couple of ways
    The simplest is that you ring it and it sends back what it is hearing nearby
    The quality is similar to listening to any mobile phone call

    The second mode is it wakes up and rings you when it hears a noise (fixed threshold level I think)
    Again you listen to what it can hear

    The third mode is it can send you a text message either one you have given it (not used that function myself)
    OR more likely its SOS text message which it sends if the little red SOS button on the side gets pressed
    That would need some rigging if you wanted to have it pressed when someone ran off with the hive lol!

    I have one somewhere I will dig it out charge it up and have a better idea then (I forget stuff )
    One issue is battery life which is about 5 days on standby and less the more calls it makes(as alclosier says)
    Course it's using a mobile sim for its texts and calls so you might want to cost that in
    I think they are about £10 and have poor reviews because they insist on selling it as a GPS tracker which it definitely is not

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4k...p=docslist_api
    Sent from my LIFETAB_S1034X using Tapatalk
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 13-12-2015 at 02:03 PM.

  3. #63

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    Alternative possibly Emma but again not something I have tried
    https://youtu.be/msYEo1dXr70

    https://youtu.be/BJ0qDzZDxIk
    The chap behind this lump logged in and posted in November
    I wouldn't buy one but it would be easy enough to cobble something together
    Plenty room for an enormous battery
    Last edited by The Drone Ranger; 13-12-2015 at 07:00 PM.

  4. #64

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    The other option would be to trickle charge a battery via a solar panel. The electronics off an arduino would be fiddly but there is lots of info put there. However wires everywhere will start to be an issue when working on a hive. I toyed with the idea of using 4 load cells to weigh a hive via arduino but lost interest at the design stage. Sun light is so poor in Scotland at this time of year the solar option would probably be doomed. Summer might be fine. Other option is the extension lead option if at home...

    Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

  5. #65
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    interesting article about varroa ratio bees:brood in winter in the info sheet by Dr. Christoph Otten, Fachzentrum Bienen und Imkerei, Mayen.
    "whereas in summer 80-90% of varroa is in the brood, in winter this is known not to be the case"...
    They studied a colony in December with brood (to again validate this knowledge).
    the colony was treated with lactic acid
    the 400 closed brood cells were opened and studied.
    from the 400 cells they found 10 varroa mites, 4 of which were breeding.
    From the lactic acid treatment 500 casualties varroa were counted.
    - confirming that treating for varroa in winter even where there is brood will be effective.

  6. #66
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    Very interesting Calum. Do you have a link to that (though I suspect my German will not be good enough ...)? Female mites in the presence of brood have a life expectancy of ~27 days. In the absence of brood it's months I believe. I wonder if mites raised in the presence of brood are predominantly committed to the shorter life cycle, or whether - like their bee hosts - 'winterised' mites are reared late in the season to wait out the long broodless period.

  7. #67
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    hi
    here is the link
    they are posted regularly here

  8. #68
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    Quote Originally Posted by fatshark View Post
    Very interesting Calum. Do you have a link to that (though I suspect my German will not be good enough ...)? Female mites in the presence of brood have a life expectancy of ~27 days. In the absence of brood it's months I believe. I wonder if mites raised in the presence of brood are predominantly committed to the shorter life cycle, or whether - like their bee hosts - 'winterised' mites are reared late in the season to wait out the long broodless period.
    I'd like to find these mites raised in the absence of brood

    Seriously though I've thought about this a fair bit in the past. I bet that just as winter bees are physiologically different, winter (or lets call them late autumn raised) mites have a very different physiology - lack of feeding for one thing. Jury is still out on whether they feed at all on adult bees while living phoreticaly. I've PM'd you as well fatshark.

  9. #69
    Senior Member fatshark's Avatar
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    OK, OK ... I was djrunk ... one possibility might be that mites change their physiology according to the duration of the phoretic stage perhaps. If they're raised (on brood clever clogs ) and after the usual few days out and about dive into a new cell to make whoopee with themselves then they never change from being 'young' mites physiologically. However, if there's no brood to be had they're 'forced' into a different physiological state.

    I guess this might (ho, ho, mite geddit?!) be tested by looking at what happens to and with phoretic mites from a terminally broodless colony when given a frame of eggs/larvae. Do the majority dive in, or only a subset ... and, if so, what's special about them? Are those that are left duds? Presumably not or winter miticides would be less dramatically beneficial than they are.

    Which also makes me wonder about the post from Calum. What's the advantage to the mite NOT to be brood-associated in midwinter? If there's brood there surely they'd want to get in and reproduce? What proportion of capped pupae fail during winter? If it's high I can see there'd be an advantage to wait a bit. I'd have thought a heavily infested colony would have a high mite density/cell in the winter.

    Interesting.

    PS I thought that phoretic mites did feed on adult bees ... others do to ... though just 'cos it's on the internet doesn't make it true. Didn't Bowen-Walker do some 14C studies??
    PPS. I've heard it's witchcraft raising mites in the absence of brood. Only the truly gifted have the knack.

  10. #70

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    Will this otherwise brilliant idea fall down by helping varroa


    I must get some of that black tapeto insulate all my exterior wiring and make it safe

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