It was whilst catching up with Tanya that I learnt about another mite that the bees live with and one that closely resembles the varroa mite......BRAULA.
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Braula, also know as 'The bee louse' |
Braula are small reddish brown mites that live on the backs of bees. Also known as 'the bee louse' these flies eat honey in the hive and are seen as harmless to bees. The reason that we don't know much about them and probably don't see them much is because they mingle in with the varroa well in our own hives and also the methods we use in which to control the varroa mite are also effective in killing the Braula. You can see in the above picture how very similar they are and how easily you could mistake one for the other.
These mites were originally brought to Tanya's attention whilst doing an inspection and gave her quite a scare as she had never seen them before and really thought she had a hive with varroa, find out more about that here.
The reason I am posting this is because in all the time I have been beekeeping these mites have never been mentioned to me and now I find myself wanting to look that little bit closer at my varroa drop to see whether some of these mites are there too...it may mean that where I thought I had a lot of varroa and was listing incredibly high numbers they may not be as bad as I first thought.
Of course I don't expect to find a hive varroa free but it is always nice to know exactly what you are looking at and that you are identifying and logging things on your records right.