How to Do an Alcohol Wash

[Music] an alcohol wash is the most effective method for monitoring verites in your honeybee colonies so how do you do it open the hive and look for a frame of older uncapped brood covered in nurse bees make sure the queen is not on the frame if she is you can secure her in a queen clip or simply move her to another frame when you're ready shake the bees off and into a wash basin check one last time to make sure the queen is not in your sample bang the bees into one corner of the Basin use a measuring cup to scoop up a half cup of bees pour the bees into a pint jar that has 250 ml of alcohol use a 70% concentrated alcohol or greater you can use either ethanol or isopropyl alcohol seal the jar and shake roll or swirl vigorously for 60 seconds once you're done shaking replace the solid lid with a mesh lid the mesh should be made from hardware cloth that is eight squares per inch to allow the mites to pass through but hold the bees back pour the alcohol out and through a coffee filter a a permanent filter with white fabric is best for viewing mites some mites are likely still mixed in with the bees so vigorously shake the bees up and down to get them to fall into the coffee filter pour the alcohol back into the container of bees and rinse them one more time swirl the bees briefly then pour the alcohol through again look at the coffee filter very carefully and notice any veroa mites that might have collected how many can you find here be sure to record the number of mites you find in your alcohol washes a half cup scoop is roughly 300 bees and an acceptable number of mites is 2% or less so if you counted more than six mites in your wash of 300 bees you need to act for more information visit the pen State Extension website and search for [Music]