How to do a Sugar Shake Mite Count – Video

In this video we show you How to do a Sugar Shake Mite Count, using a sugar shake jar and icing or powdered sugar. Monitoring your Varroa mites levels is very important to ensure you know if things are getting out of hand in your colonies and if you need to take some form of action or treatment.

Doing a Sugar Shake or Sugar Roll gives you an instant count of your mite levels, that you can record to watch for trends throughout the bee Season.

What you need

1. A 500 ml preserving jar “Sugar Shake Jar” (The ones with the metal ring tip)
2. Two Table Spoons of Powdered Sugar/Icing Sugar
3. Something to collect the bees
4. White Plate with water

5. A half cup measuring cup

The center lid of the preserving jar is replaced with mesh that bees can not fall through, but varroa mites can.

NB: 1/2 cup is a three hundred bee sample

We sell the Sugar Jars as well!!

There are two versions of the video well.

Just the Sugar Shake Part for a quick refresher (8 mins)

The full inspection (Including doing a Sugar Shake, and treating with Api Life Var) (21 mins)

Also please refer to this post for further information about Sugar Shakes, This article gives some step by step guide with photos.

Powdered Sugar Shake – Counting Varroa Mites using icing sugar

This is the first video we did with two camera, one wide shot and a chest mounted one. So you can see what the the Beekeeper is seeing. We hope you enjoy this video we would be keen to hear your views below, or tell us what mite count you are got.