The bees have varroa mites and one way to get rid of them is to sprinkle powdered sugar on them. The mites slip off the wood and off the bees into the sticky board below. It is suggested to use Vaseline, but that is a petroleum product and I want nothing to do with that. I used it once and it was so nasty to clean up I decided I would look for something more natural that I could compost. It was funny to send my friend on an errand into the Castro Walgreens to buy a giant sized tub of Vaseline, though. This time I bought a giant tub of soy margarine from the health food store. It is enormous and it made me wonder what on earth you would do with this much margarine if you did not have bees to take care of.
The bottom board of the hive is a wooden frame with a screen on the bottom and a landing strip out front. This allows for air circulation and to keep pests out of the hive and to allow condensation to leave the hive. The hive boxes sit on top of that. The one I have has a slot in it to slide the sticky board, thin white plastic rectangle, into the bottom board. So I buttered up the sticky boards and slid them into the hive bottom boards of both hives. Each sticky board has a little plastic loop so you can pull it back out again without having to use pliers.
Then I took a sifter and showered about 1 cup of powdered sugar over the hive.
The bees were a little startled but right away began grooming the powdered sugar off each other. This is one of the ways they can knock the mites off each other. I closed up the hives and let the bees take care of their new snowfall. In 24 hours I will remove the sticky boards and see what I have caught.
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