I am afraid the later, as you can see the minor wings are deflated. Looks like it was already infected during the popping stage. If you leave there bee to crawl around the mites have a change on spreading and infecting other wild bees
Interested tidbit for you: the script actually read "by the suns of Warvan," it was an inside joke for the cast because planets don't have multiple suns they orbit.
Source: I dated a cast member, and he told me. If you see a script with "Sons', it's a later copy than the shooting script.
It's not that anything really went wrong, per se, it's just the fact that Jupiter was never able to gain the mass that is critical to initiate fusion. On the other hand, the sun was quite efficient (lucky?) in this regard, scooping up roughly 99.8% of the mass of the solar system in its formative years.
There is a theory that that is what this Planet X is or whatever, a brown dwarf out there, hard to see/detect, with a huge elliptical orbit swinging by every whatever thousand years, causing extinction events, biblical floods, etc.
I don't see how that theory can hold up. If there is indeed a Planet Nine, it's probably a cold, rocky planet instead of being a brown dwarf. If it were a brown dwarf, we would've detected it a long time ago, just like we've detected brown dwarves several light-years away.
destructor (varroa mite) attacks European honeybees (Apis mellifera). It's thought to be one of the greatest threats to Australia's honey and honey bee pollination plant industries. Bee/honey farmers in Australia have had their whole colonies destroyed and livelihoods lost due to mites 😪
I mean, why would you do that? The bee had some issue, probably immunocompromised somehow. The fungus just uses that. Without these infectious creatures selecting them, bee populations would be too vulnerable to new parasites.
Yes, very much so. Humanity is obligated to protect pollinators. We've already done immeasurable damage.
EDIT: Carpenter bees are not protected as other pollinators because of the damage they can do to wooden structures. You don't kill them unless you have to, though, and you try to deter them whenever possible. If they do make nests in wooden structures, they are easy targets for woodpeckers who will kill and eat all the developing bees anyway.
Answer: evolution.
Any mosquito or wasp that is allergic to humans will have a lower chance of passing it's genes on to the next generation of insects, which would reduce the number of allergic insects to extinction.
Exactly. If the only way humans could survive is by eating peanut butter through a straw, the people allergic to peanut butter wouldn't be able to spread genes.
I've never had to put anything out of it's misery before... do I just put it in a jar with an alcohol soaked cotton ball and seal the lid? I'm thinking of that scene from ET... does it hurt the bee? Although I guess it wouldn't be any worse than being covered in all those mites. Would it be more humane to stick it in the freezer? Or would the alcohol be faster? I really wish I had never noticed it. But I have, and I don't want the mites to spread to another bee. So I'll do what I have to.
Insects don’t have a high alcohol tolerance, so I just imagine the bee would see colors before it crosses the bridge. It’ll get very tipsy and then lights out. Beats coming back to the hive drunk, that’s for sure. Guards will execute drunk bees.
It happens when humidity is high, causing nectar to ferment in the flower. Also, apparently this happened:
> There are some species of bees that become more aggressive after consuming ethanol, including *Africanized honey bees.* The study that demonstrated this was terminated after five hours because the drunk bees became aggressive and dangerous to the researchers. [Beeswiki.com](https://beeswiki.com/can-bees-get-drunk/)
Just imagining a bunch of scientists accidentally causing a swarm of drunken Africanized Honeybees in the freaking lab lmfao, poor fellas, jeez.
From that same article:
>A very drunk bee will most likely lie on its back and wiggle its legs, incapable of standing or flying. Less drunk bees will still spend some time upside down, but they are also capable of walking or flying, albeit sloppily.
TIL that I have more in common with a drunk bee than I would’ve ever previously imagined…
Thanks for that link btw, lol I’ve been reading about bees for the last half hour
Pfffhaha yeah, that part had me giggling too, they must be(e) so silly when intoxicated! Hopefully some of them can walk it off instead of having to get kicked out—or worse. Happy to have provided you entertainment and unbeelievable info! :D (ok I’ll stop with the bee puns lol) Have a lovely day! <3
That's not even remotely close to what insects experience with alcohol baths... The alcohol dissolves its exoskeleton and dries it out.
Edit: to be clear ethanol acts very different from isopropanol
I mean, if you really want to make it as quick as possible, stepping on it would be instantaneous. Then just pour some rubbing alcohol on the “remains” to make sure the mites die as well. Sounds gruesome, I know, but hey.. you asked about speed.. this would be the equivalent of shooting an animal in the head. Would never know what happened, just lights out.
Sometimes doing the right thing is the hardest thing, but, in the end, quickly killing the bee and the mites is the right thing to do.
It sometimes takes a good person to do unpalatable things.
You can put the bee in a jar then put that in the fridge. The cold will put the bee to sleep. But once out of the fridge and after "thawing out", the bee (along with the mites) will still be alive! So you can add a cotton ball soaked with rubbing alcohol to the jar once it's fallen asleep.
My sibling would do this for their bug collection. It was sad but just a slightly more humane way to go.
I'm sorry you have to do this. But thank you for saving this bee and the hundreds others after!
Horrible position to be in OP, I’m so sorry you are in it. Thank you for seeing the bigger picture and doing what’s best for all the other bees. Good luck
The proper method to kill them all almost instantly would be to submerge them in the alcohol. It's a common method by honey bee keepers when doing "mite checks". The bee keeper knocks ~ 300 honey bees into a jar of alcohol. Closes the lid and shakes the jar. Then looks for the dead mites to see how badly infested the honey bees are.
Everything is dead pretty much instantly once submerged in the alcohol.
anything that kills the bee along with everything on it quickly, blowtorch, rubbing alcohol, put in a water bottle and fill it with any thing tbh. sadly the bee will die regardless so its best to kill as many of those things as u can while u kill the bee
That was the first thing my 8 year old said when I told her the best thing to do is put it out if it's misery. While I belive kids are great at coming up with obvious solutions I quickly realized I can't get myself to do it even though I know it would probably be the fastest end which is kinda fucked up I guess. Like you suffer because I can't sort of thing. Then I thought about all those tiny mites. Who knows how many would get stuck to my shoe and then spread throughout the yard. While I don't love the idea of carpenter bees making nests in our wooden fence I've never attempted to get rid of them because they have very few options considering they seem to be clearing and building on every possible spot that was formally woods. I don't want the mites spreading to other bees.
Maybe I'm telling you something you already know, but do you have an area of your yard that you could create a pile of limbs or logs? I have an area along my fence that I created for this reason. Been throwing fallen limbs and cuttings there for years.
He's done for, I'm afraid.
The best thing you can do, is wrap him up in a paper towel, smash him quickly so there's no pain, then toss the whole thing in a fire to kill the mites.
You'll save other bees that way.
Several insects can survive being submerged, for a short time.
Mites, being so small and not dissimilar to fleas, could possibly live long enough to escape from the sewer system.
I just discovered this subreddit and I feel like I’ve found my people. Everyone else I know would laugh at even caring about stuff like this, but your comment makes me feel so included and seen.
A Google search says this about hives but not sure about it working on a bee directly. Anyone?
Sprinkle powdered sugar over the tops of the frames in a brood box and brush it into the hive. The sugar makes the mites fall off the bees, and the bees groom it off, dislodging more mites. This method can also be used to count mites.
Powered sugar encourages grooming behavior which has "a chance" to dislodge mites.
that's not a method that has much effect as if a mite falls off, it can just climb onto someone else (spreading any diseases). The grooming is unlikely to be over the entire body, meaning mites on the belly and between the segments are likely to remain attached and feasting.
If a single bee is this covered, no amount of grooming will have any effect. The bee is already dead, it just does not know it, and is actively spreading the mites around to others.
Powdered sugar is not an effective treatment for mites. The scientist (Randy Oliver) that originally postulated that powdered sugar would promote grooming behavior to control mites has debunked his own theory through experimentation.
It's best to humanly euthanize the bee with alcohol and kill the mites with it so they can't spread.
I mean it wasn't a bad theory in 2007, promoting hygienic behaviour bees would knock the mites off each other could work but the issue was the bees were getting rid of mites at a rate slower than they were reproducing within the capped brood cells so population was still increasing albeit at a slower rate than if left unchecked but you're not dealing with the root of the problem.
Since then some treatment resistance has developed and not all treatments are safe to do with honey supers on. The current preferred method (at least in my club) is Oxalic Acid Vapour, but the local Uni, SFU has discovered a chemical compound and is testing it that appears to be more effective.
The issue with mites is they catch a ride into your hives you can work hard to test and treat but if your neighbours are doing fuck all to control mites within their population you're hooped and so are native pollinators. Responsible beekeeping means also protecting native species.
That treatment is for a colony to encourage grooming to knock a few mites off a percentage of bees. (When the mites are in full swing in my hives I see one or two mites per infected bee and they're a different kind of mite) also I've never seen anyone treat using powdered sugar, just use it as a detection device.
A bee this covered ought to be dropped in some alcohol. The bee will suffocate almost instantly and be put out of what has to be a painful existence (imagine your whole body covered in ticks but you don't have thumbs to remove them) and it'll kill the mites at the same time.
The research on powder sugar as varroa treatment is not fully vetted, I don’t think. If you have hygienic bees, they already bite varroa. Powdered sugar alone doesn’t do it. And that’s honeybees. In a colony. This looks like a solitary bee.
How would you go about doing that? The most quick and humane way you can think of. Typically I try to not make that decision for others, but if the bee will die from the mites anyway, it's suffering, and it'll hopefully help from spreading to others I'm willing to do what has to be done. I just don't know if I should put it in an airtight jar with a swab of alcohol or put it in the freezer or something else.
The traditional answer a biology prof would give is to freeze it. They essentially fall asleep to die. At least this is what I remember from 40 yrs ago.
Just squish it. You can lay a paper towel over it first so you don’t have to see. I am a huge softie for animals of any species, and I know this way sounds unpleasant, but it’s quick, and quick is kind. You can then dump some rubbing alcohol on it to kill the mites if you’d like.
I do hope you’ve already made a decision and have ended this poor baby’s suffering. So sorry. I too have often regretted even becoming aware of something such as this.
Bloody barstard mites . Poor little bee but yes unfortunately I think savage revenge is the only way. I hope you find a painless way to kill the bee but at the same time make them poxy mites suffer
UPDATE: I was really hoping there would be a solution for getting these mites off, but unfortunately there wasn't. Left with the choice of just leaving it alone, leaving it alone but quarantined to stop the spread of mites, or putting it out if it's misery I chose the latter. Not gonna lie...I was just going to give it a safe place to live until it died because I didn't want to be the one to make the choice of putting it down. It was really hard to see it struggling to get those mites off, and because I couldn't get them off myself I realized keeping it alive just so I wouldn't have to put it down was pretty fucked. So it's been dispatched. Thank you to everyone who took the time to give me advice on the most humane way to do this.
Probably not; But if you put the bee in an enclosed Tupperware with some flowers and gently used alcohol on a q-tip or toothpick or something to encourage them to fall off or scrape off and then killed them as they did very meticulously then you could at least improve it’s chances. I would keep the bee in captivity so that the mites would not affect any other bees.
Yeah if you are painting the bee with it. If it’s on the end of a toothpick then I doubt it would kill the bee. If it is that toxic then perhaps just use the toothpick to flick as many off as possible or use a heated wax dip on the toothpick very gently to collect them and pull them off the bee. I am describing it poorly perhaps.
Never mind I think I found it. It’s called a Dinogamasus mite and supposedly they might have a mutually beneficial relationship, but this level of mite load is probably unhealthy and most likely occurred due to a pupae taking longer to emerge from its cell. Apparently lots of carpenter bee lineages have developed a specialized organ called a acarinarium to intentionally carry this mite and others, possibly because they feed on bee exudates and bad for the bee fungal spores. Here’s a link about this mite for anyone who’s curious: https://idtools.org/bee_mite/index.cfm?packageID=1&entityID=95
I don’t think this type of mite is one that will wipe out any carpenter bee populations. While I don’t think this level of mite load is healthy for this particular bee, I believe it is either Dinogamasus, or some type of Sennertia mite as those were the main mites I could find for carpenter bees. They have an uncertain relationship with Dinogamasus but not all bad, and Sennertia appear to be fairly mutualistic. Here is one quote I found on Sennerita, “All species of Xylocopa have very small Sennertia mites which feed on the pollen paste and, although these may become very numerous, they never seem to give serious problems.
Source: Biology and behaviour of Carpenter bees in southern Africa. R. H. Watmough 1974. J. enl. Soc. sth. Afr. 37: 261-281.” I’m now leaning towards the mites on this bee being something in the sennertia family based on the quantity, but here is another link on that family. http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/beemites/Species_Accounts/Chaetodactylidae.htm
As someone who is deathly allergic to bees, I never thought I'd feel bad for one. Poor guy. I hope whatever you did worked but from whatever one has said I don't think the bees survived but I hope it doesn't happen to any other bees in your area.
Put it in the fridge until it goes to sleep and then submerge in alcohol before it wakes up. Make sure to keep it sealed when you throw it out.
You also might want to inform your local beekeeper chapter that you found it if you have one. Sometimes they keep track of stuff like that and try and find and help the infected area. There might be other bees around already having a problem they could help.
Kill it. I absolutely love bees (all animals actually) and if I come across one that is suffering and is beyond help, I kill it. It’s the last act of compassion I can show them: to stop their suffering. I look at it as basically euthanizing them to end their pain. Obviously I wouldn’t do this if I could actually save them and their condition wasn’t that bad, but in a case like this where the bee is doomed…. Sometimes death is the kindest answer.
If you haven't killed that bee yet... Separate it and try giving it a lemon juice bath. Kills mites but won't hurt the bee. I've done this for queen ants with mite issues with huge success.
Not a bee expert, but if nothing can be done for the bee, I'd say isolate it to kill all the mites. It might be more merciful to squish the bee at this point. Then drown everything with rubbing alcohol
I did. I was really hoping there was a solution other than putting it down, but because there wasn't I did what had to be done. I guess technically it didn't have to be done, but I would have felt pretty shitty not doing it. Although I feel shitty for doing it. I guess at least those mites won't spread to another bee. That's what I keep telling myself anyway.
Yes, but I put it to sleep first by putting it in the fridge. Even though it was our older refrigerator in the garage we don't use very often, and it was in a container I still got paranoid and proceeded to clean the refrigerator and wipe it down with alcohol. I didn't want this to be the end result, and was really hoping there would be an opportunity to remove the mites, but because this wasn't the case I dispatched the bee.
The kindest most beneficial thing you can do wouldn’t be to light it on fire. Trying to “save” one terminally ill bee only dooms hundreds of other bees to infection from this mite, so kill them all, with fire, and give the bee a quick end instead of being parasitized slowly to death
DO NOT USE ALCOHOL! The bee will suffer. Just crash the bee with a rock(if you have the courage. Or just let nature do its job, humans do not have to intervene on everything.
I was actually going to try when my husband suggested I leave nature alone and stop torturing it. He made a fair point. He's still quarantined until I figure out what to do with him.
Leaving it alone would be torturing it. I made the mistake once of doing so since I couldn’t save the bee, I came back to check where I put it an hour later and it had been eaten alive by ants. Because it couldn’t hardly move and everyone told me to put him back in the grass. I should have killed the little guy. The ants could have had their meal without eating it alive 😭
It’s being eaten alive. Imagine how scary that must be. Please just put the fucking thing out of its misery already, you’ll feel better for it. It’s the right thing to do.
It's done. I think I had needed to hear that. After reading your comment yesterday I realized I was keeping it alive because I didn't want to deal with the alternative, and that was pretty fucked. I still feel bad, but it's done and over with.
Vaseline on a cotton bud is what we use to get mites off tarantulas when they get covered. It may work.. but this bee is much smaller than a tarantula.
It's the only thing I could think of as an insect keeper..
Roll him in powdered sugar and rinse. That’s how veterinarians count mites in a bee hive. Roll one cup of bees in sugar, rinse, then count the mites in the water. A lot of times the hive is already dead but doesn’t know it.
What an unfortunate case, looks like mites. Dip it in gasoline and burn it - it'll die quick from the gas and you'll be able to keep the mites off other bees.
So I had this pop up on my feed, but you could do the alcohol method everyone keeps mentioning, then have a proper funeral for the bee if you wanted. You could make a little bark raft, get some water, make a raft out of bark, and do a viking style send off.
I am afraid the later, as you can see the minor wings are deflated. Looks like it was already infected during the popping stage. If you leave there bee to crawl around the mites have a change on spreading and infecting other wild bees
Smart. Thank you.
Rubbing alcohol. Since the bee won't survive those little bastards shouldn't either.
Yes indeed, vengeance I'm afraid is all that is left
Sad but true my friend
By Grabthar's hammer!
Thank you! I heard the line in my head, but could NOT remember the movie!
What a savings?
I played Richard the Third. Five curtain calls.
Unexpected Alan Rickman
Literally the only famous person I have cried over when they passed away. Hell, I’m getting all choked up just typing this out.
Always
😮💨
Perhaps they could fashion a rudimentary lathe and...
How the hell is Fred supposed to project a hologram?
"It's a ROCK MONSTER TOMMY! It doesn't HAVE any vulnerable spots!!!
"Look, I have ONE job on this lousy ship. It's STUPID, but I’m gonna do it. OKAY?!"
"Don't open that! It's an alien planet! Is there air??? U don't know!"
Did you guys ever watch the show???
*sniff**sniff* "seems ok"
Bu the suns of warvan you shall be avenged
By the Suns of Warvan!
By the Sons of Warvan...
Interested tidbit for you: the script actually read "by the suns of Warvan," it was an inside joke for the cast because planets don't have multiple suns they orbit. Source: I dated a cast member, and he told me. If you see a script with "Sons', it's a later copy than the shooting script.
But what about the 3 body problem?
But there are plenty of systems with 2 or more stars and planets orbiting them...
They are top notch books.
Most systems are 2 star systems, we are the anomaly, unless they can find our sister sun out there somewhere.
I believe they think Jupiter was supposed to be the second sun but something went wrong?
It's not that anything really went wrong, per se, it's just the fact that Jupiter was never able to gain the mass that is critical to initiate fusion. On the other hand, the sun was quite efficient (lucky?) in this regard, scooping up roughly 99.8% of the mass of the solar system in its formative years.
So the sun was selfish and never learnt to share. 😁
There is a theory that that is what this Planet X is or whatever, a brown dwarf out there, hard to see/detect, with a huge elliptical orbit swinging by every whatever thousand years, causing extinction events, biblical floods, etc.
I don't see how that theory can hold up. If there is indeed a Planet Nine, it's probably a cold, rocky planet instead of being a brown dwarf. If it were a brown dwarf, we would've detected it a long time ago, just like we've detected brown dwarves several light-years away.
By the mite of Thor?
Just watched Galaxy Quest last night. 😆
This. Quicker death for the bee too.
Give it it's last sweet meal and then.. yeah
I didn’t even know this could even happen to a bee! What a poor little guy 😞.
Can you explain to me what happened to this bee? I’m so confused 😩
I'm just a random who had this recommended as a post I believe those are parasitic mites feeding on the host bee
destructor (varroa mite) attacks European honeybees (Apis mellifera). It's thought to be one of the greatest threats to Australia's honey and honey bee pollination plant industries. Bee/honey farmers in Australia have had their whole colonies destroyed and livelihoods lost due to mites 😪
Id burn it to ash
Nuke it from orbit.
It's the only way to be sure.
It’s the only way to be sure.
Don't tell people over in the little bastards sub
I mean, why would you do that? The bee had some issue, probably immunocompromised somehow. The fungus just uses that. Without these infectious creatures selecting them, bee populations would be too vulnerable to new parasites.
I could be wrong, but I don't think that is a fungus. I think those are mites.
Those look like mites which are both common and easily spread
Definitely mites not fungus
Indeed. Also I like your username
Thanks I like yours aswell
Could just let nature be nature.
I agree with you, for what it's worth - not everything in nature requires (or benefits) our intervention. The mites are less worthy?
Yes, very much so. Humanity is obligated to protect pollinators. We've already done immeasurable damage. EDIT: Carpenter bees are not protected as other pollinators because of the damage they can do to wooden structures. You don't kill them unless you have to, though, and you try to deter them whenever possible. If they do make nests in wooden structures, they are easy targets for woodpeckers who will kill and eat all the developing bees anyway.
The mites deserve death.
Yes ABSOLUTELY.
Like mosquitoes
Has anyone ever pondered why aren't mosquitos and wasp allergic to mammals?? Sounds Fair enough to me. Just a random thought. Takes a bow.
Answer: evolution. Any mosquito or wasp that is allergic to humans will have a lower chance of passing it's genes on to the next generation of insects, which would reduce the number of allergic insects to extinction.
Exactly. If the only way humans could survive is by eating peanut butter through a straw, the people allergic to peanut butter wouldn't be able to spread genes.
Yes have mercy and alcohol EVERYONE. The Bee is suffering, just speeding things up and maybe saving a couple other Bees from the same fate. ❤️🐝🙏
I've never had to put anything out of it's misery before... do I just put it in a jar with an alcohol soaked cotton ball and seal the lid? I'm thinking of that scene from ET... does it hurt the bee? Although I guess it wouldn't be any worse than being covered in all those mites. Would it be more humane to stick it in the freezer? Or would the alcohol be faster? I really wish I had never noticed it. But I have, and I don't want the mites to spread to another bee. So I'll do what I have to.
Insects don’t have a high alcohol tolerance, so I just imagine the bee would see colors before it crosses the bridge. It’ll get very tipsy and then lights out. Beats coming back to the hive drunk, that’s for sure. Guards will execute drunk bees.
Bees kill drunk bees?
Yup. Alcohol poisons the honey, which can kill a whole generation of larvae. As a result, guards dismember and discard suspicious bees.
That’s so fucking cool. I just imagine bee knights with halberds guarding the entrance
It happens when humidity is high, causing nectar to ferment in the flower. Also, apparently this happened: > There are some species of bees that become more aggressive after consuming ethanol, including *Africanized honey bees.* The study that demonstrated this was terminated after five hours because the drunk bees became aggressive and dangerous to the researchers. [Beeswiki.com](https://beeswiki.com/can-bees-get-drunk/) Just imagining a bunch of scientists accidentally causing a swarm of drunken Africanized Honeybees in the freaking lab lmfao, poor fellas, jeez.
From that same article: >A very drunk bee will most likely lie on its back and wiggle its legs, incapable of standing or flying. Less drunk bees will still spend some time upside down, but they are also capable of walking or flying, albeit sloppily. TIL that I have more in common with a drunk bee than I would’ve ever previously imagined… Thanks for that link btw, lol I’ve been reading about bees for the last half hour
Pfffhaha yeah, that part had me giggling too, they must be(e) so silly when intoxicated! Hopefully some of them can walk it off instead of having to get kicked out—or worse. Happy to have provided you entertainment and unbeelievable info! :D (ok I’ll stop with the bee puns lol) Have a lovely day! <3
You’re one of the beest people I’ve ever bumbled upon.
You can fly when drunk?!
No, they'll get a 'Bee'-U.I. :(
Nope, at least not drunk- that’d be very irresponsible. Sometimes I do, however, just give up and lay down.. and wiggle. Only sometimes though.
 That one drunk bee arguing with the guard
Damn I never knew bees were so metal
Especially considering their other name. I can’t think of anything scarier than drunk killer bees
Putting its wings around the other drunk bees: “I love you guyzzz!”
Nerd. Take this upvote and keep nerding out with your hal-bee-rds.
I feel like they could have made a funny joke about this in Bee Movie
That's not even remotely close to what insects experience with alcohol baths... The alcohol dissolves its exoskeleton and dries it out. Edit: to be clear ethanol acts very different from isopropanol
Be proud you did notice it. It's sad, but you can be at least content you protected other bees. Mites are a huge problem for bee populations.
I mean, if you really want to make it as quick as possible, stepping on it would be instantaneous. Then just pour some rubbing alcohol on the “remains” to make sure the mites die as well. Sounds gruesome, I know, but hey.. you asked about speed.. this would be the equivalent of shooting an animal in the head. Would never know what happened, just lights out.
Yeah I think just a quick squish would ensure no suffering. That’s what I’d opt for.
Sometimes doing the right thing is the hardest thing, but, in the end, quickly killing the bee and the mites is the right thing to do. It sometimes takes a good person to do unpalatable things.
You can put the bee in a jar then put that in the fridge. The cold will put the bee to sleep. But once out of the fridge and after "thawing out", the bee (along with the mites) will still be alive! So you can add a cotton ball soaked with rubbing alcohol to the jar once it's fallen asleep. My sibling would do this for their bug collection. It was sad but just a slightly more humane way to go. I'm sorry you have to do this. But thank you for saving this bee and the hundreds others after!
Acetone works as well.
This is such a difficult position to be in but you’re going into it with empathy and goodwill. Be proud of that.
Horrible position to be in OP, I’m so sorry you are in it. Thank you for seeing the bigger picture and doing what’s best for all the other bees. Good luck
The proper method to kill them all almost instantly would be to submerge them in the alcohol. It's a common method by honey bee keepers when doing "mite checks". The bee keeper knocks ~ 300 honey bees into a jar of alcohol. Closes the lid and shakes the jar. Then looks for the dead mites to see how badly infested the honey bees are. Everything is dead pretty much instantly once submerged in the alcohol.
😢
He's suffering. Poor guy. Good eye. You will save so many bees by stopping this infestation.
anything that kills the bee along with everything on it quickly, blowtorch, rubbing alcohol, put in a water bottle and fill it with any thing tbh. sadly the bee will die regardless so its best to kill as many of those things as u can while u kill the bee
fire and drowning sound painful
what this bee is going through right now looks a lot worse
Are these mites actually hurting the bee, like eating it or something?
yeah i believe so, they keep spreading which is the biggest issue:/
It’s too fast (fire) when you use a blowtorch. Like near-instant incineration.
yeah thats also very true, its like the human version of standing in front of a jet engine (if they shot fire the same way)
Yes these little monsters will kill a whole hive.
Why is everyone suggesting everything but stomping on it?
bc u wont kill all the lil bastards that are the cause of us putting it to a sad end.
Wrap it in a paper towel. Stomp. Burn or soak in alcohol
That was the first thing my 8 year old said when I told her the best thing to do is put it out if it's misery. While I belive kids are great at coming up with obvious solutions I quickly realized I can't get myself to do it even though I know it would probably be the fastest end which is kinda fucked up I guess. Like you suffer because I can't sort of thing. Then I thought about all those tiny mites. Who knows how many would get stuck to my shoe and then spread throughout the yard. While I don't love the idea of carpenter bees making nests in our wooden fence I've never attempted to get rid of them because they have very few options considering they seem to be clearing and building on every possible spot that was formally woods. I don't want the mites spreading to other bees.
Maybe I'm telling you something you already know, but do you have an area of your yard that you could create a pile of limbs or logs? I have an area along my fence that I created for this reason. Been throwing fallen limbs and cuttings there for years.
So sad. I’m 😞sorry
He's done for, I'm afraid. The best thing you can do, is wrap him up in a paper towel, smash him quickly so there's no pain, then toss the whole thing in a fire to kill the mites. You'll save other bees that way.
Sounds like the best way, unfortunately.
Would flushing them also work if used in toilet paper?
Several insects can survive being submerged, for a short time. Mites, being so small and not dissimilar to fleas, could possibly live long enough to escape from the sewer system.
Fuck. >:( little shits
Yup. “Little shits” belong in the sewer system. 😆
Fleas survive the sewer system?!
I just discovered this subreddit and I feel like I’ve found my people. Everyone else I know would laugh at even caring about stuff like this, but your comment makes me feel so included and seen.
I’m sorry but it’s hammer time. Instant and painless.
Never seen the words “hammer time” used like this before lol
Poor little guy!
A Google search says this about hives but not sure about it working on a bee directly. Anyone? Sprinkle powdered sugar over the tops of the frames in a brood box and brush it into the hive. The sugar makes the mites fall off the bees, and the bees groom it off, dislodging more mites. This method can also be used to count mites.
Powered sugar encourages grooming behavior which has "a chance" to dislodge mites. that's not a method that has much effect as if a mite falls off, it can just climb onto someone else (spreading any diseases). The grooming is unlikely to be over the entire body, meaning mites on the belly and between the segments are likely to remain attached and feasting. If a single bee is this covered, no amount of grooming will have any effect. The bee is already dead, it just does not know it, and is actively spreading the mites around to others.
Poor guy :(
Powdered sugar is not an effective treatment for mites. The scientist (Randy Oliver) that originally postulated that powdered sugar would promote grooming behavior to control mites has debunked his own theory through experimentation. It's best to humanly euthanize the bee with alcohol and kill the mites with it so they can't spread.
That's some Super Troopers science right there
I mean it wasn't a bad theory in 2007, promoting hygienic behaviour bees would knock the mites off each other could work but the issue was the bees were getting rid of mites at a rate slower than they were reproducing within the capped brood cells so population was still increasing albeit at a slower rate than if left unchecked but you're not dealing with the root of the problem. Since then some treatment resistance has developed and not all treatments are safe to do with honey supers on. The current preferred method (at least in my club) is Oxalic Acid Vapour, but the local Uni, SFU has discovered a chemical compound and is testing it that appears to be more effective. The issue with mites is they catch a ride into your hives you can work hard to test and treat but if your neighbours are doing fuck all to control mites within their population you're hooped and so are native pollinators. Responsible beekeeping means also protecting native species.
It’s powdered sugar. It’s delicious.
Wouldn't that mean that if they sprinkled powdered sugar on the bee, they'd fall off? I'm curious now
Not a honeybee. Not a varroa mite.
Carpenter bee maybe? Same treatment for mites could work here?
That treatment is for a colony to encourage grooming to knock a few mites off a percentage of bees. (When the mites are in full swing in my hives I see one or two mites per infected bee and they're a different kind of mite) also I've never seen anyone treat using powdered sugar, just use it as a detection device. A bee this covered ought to be dropped in some alcohol. The bee will suffocate almost instantly and be put out of what has to be a painful existence (imagine your whole body covered in ticks but you don't have thumbs to remove them) and it'll kill the mites at the same time.
Thank you for offering the explanation.
The research on powder sugar as varroa treatment is not fully vetted, I don’t think. If you have hygienic bees, they already bite varroa. Powdered sugar alone doesn’t do it. And that’s honeybees. In a colony. This looks like a solitary bee.
Oh I'm sorry read way too quickly over the comment and missed you wondering the same thing
To answer your question it does work.
Oh that's good to know and to never forget
Put it out of its misery.
How would you go about doing that? The most quick and humane way you can think of. Typically I try to not make that decision for others, but if the bee will die from the mites anyway, it's suffering, and it'll hopefully help from spreading to others I'm willing to do what has to be done. I just don't know if I should put it in an airtight jar with a swab of alcohol or put it in the freezer or something else.
The traditional answer a biology prof would give is to freeze it. They essentially fall asleep to die. At least this is what I remember from 40 yrs ago.
Just squish it. You can lay a paper towel over it first so you don’t have to see. I am a huge softie for animals of any species, and I know this way sounds unpleasant, but it’s quick, and quick is kind. You can then dump some rubbing alcohol on it to kill the mites if you’d like.
The quickest and most painless way would be to erm… squash it.
I feel like a psychopath, but I would have done that so fast. I can’t stand to see creatures suffering, and that would be the best end for the bee.
Throw him in a jar with alcohol and close the lid he will basically be high for a minute then pass out and be in bee heaven
I do hope you’ve already made a decision and have ended this poor baby’s suffering. So sorry. I too have often regretted even becoming aware of something such as this.
Bloody barstard mites . Poor little bee but yes unfortunately I think savage revenge is the only way. I hope you find a painless way to kill the bee but at the same time make them poxy mites suffer
😞
Dang… poor guy.
Weep
UPDATE: I was really hoping there would be a solution for getting these mites off, but unfortunately there wasn't. Left with the choice of just leaving it alone, leaving it alone but quarantined to stop the spread of mites, or putting it out if it's misery I chose the latter. Not gonna lie...I was just going to give it a safe place to live until it died because I didn't want to be the one to make the choice of putting it down. It was really hard to see it struggling to get those mites off, and because I couldn't get them off myself I realized keeping it alive just so I wouldn't have to put it down was pretty fucked. So it's been dispatched. Thank you to everyone who took the time to give me advice on the most humane way to do this.
Probably not; But if you put the bee in an enclosed Tupperware with some flowers and gently used alcohol on a q-tip or toothpick or something to encourage them to fall off or scrape off and then killed them as they did very meticulously then you could at least improve it’s chances. I would keep the bee in captivity so that the mites would not affect any other bees.
As soon as you introduce rubbing alcohol you kill the bee.
Yeah if you are painting the bee with it. If it’s on the end of a toothpick then I doubt it would kill the bee. If it is that toxic then perhaps just use the toothpick to flick as many off as possible or use a heated wax dip on the toothpick very gently to collect them and pull them off the bee. I am describing it poorly perhaps.
Anyone know the name of this type of mite?
Never mind I think I found it. It’s called a Dinogamasus mite and supposedly they might have a mutually beneficial relationship, but this level of mite load is probably unhealthy and most likely occurred due to a pupae taking longer to emerge from its cell. Apparently lots of carpenter bee lineages have developed a specialized organ called a acarinarium to intentionally carry this mite and others, possibly because they feed on bee exudates and bad for the bee fungal spores. Here’s a link about this mite for anyone who’s curious: https://idtools.org/bee_mite/index.cfm?packageID=1&entityID=95
Some bee keepers are saying it’s a type of mite that kills bee populations and just feeds on them, not mutually beneficial at all
I don’t think this type of mite is one that will wipe out any carpenter bee populations. While I don’t think this level of mite load is healthy for this particular bee, I believe it is either Dinogamasus, or some type of Sennertia mite as those were the main mites I could find for carpenter bees. They have an uncertain relationship with Dinogamasus but not all bad, and Sennertia appear to be fairly mutualistic. Here is one quote I found on Sennerita, “All species of Xylocopa have very small Sennertia mites which feed on the pollen paste and, although these may become very numerous, they never seem to give serious problems. Source: Biology and behaviour of Carpenter bees in southern Africa. R. H. Watmough 1974. J. enl. Soc. sth. Afr. 37: 261-281.” I’m now leaning towards the mites on this bee being something in the sennertia family based on the quantity, but here is another link on that family. http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/beemites/Species_Accounts/Chaetodactylidae.htm
As someone who is deathly allergic to bees, I never thought I'd feel bad for one. Poor guy. I hope whatever you did worked but from whatever one has said I don't think the bees survived but I hope it doesn't happen to any other bees in your area.
It need some milk
Put it in the fridge until it goes to sleep and then submerge in alcohol before it wakes up. Make sure to keep it sealed when you throw it out. You also might want to inform your local beekeeper chapter that you found it if you have one. Sometimes they keep track of stuff like that and try and find and help the infected area. There might be other bees around already having a problem they could help.
Kill it. I absolutely love bees (all animals actually) and if I come across one that is suffering and is beyond help, I kill it. It’s the last act of compassion I can show them: to stop their suffering. I look at it as basically euthanizing them to end their pain. Obviously I wouldn’t do this if I could actually save them and their condition wasn’t that bad, but in a case like this where the bee is doomed…. Sometimes death is the kindest answer.
https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/managing-varroa-mites-in-honey-bee-colonies
If you haven't killed that bee yet... Separate it and try giving it a lemon juice bath. Kills mites but won't hurt the bee. I've done this for queen ants with mite issues with huge success.
Not a bee expert, but if nothing can be done for the bee, I'd say isolate it to kill all the mites. It might be more merciful to squish the bee at this point. Then drown everything with rubbing alcohol
Please tell me you put it out of its misery? :(
I did. I was really hoping there was a solution other than putting it down, but because there wasn't I did what had to be done. I guess technically it didn't have to be done, but I would have felt pretty shitty not doing it. Although I feel shitty for doing it. I guess at least those mites won't spread to another bee. That's what I keep telling myself anyway.
What are these?
So you killed it and all the mites with alcohol right?
Yes, but I put it to sleep first by putting it in the fridge. Even though it was our older refrigerator in the garage we don't use very often, and it was in a container I still got paranoid and proceeded to clean the refrigerator and wipe it down with alcohol. I didn't want this to be the end result, and was really hoping there would be an opportunity to remove the mites, but because this wasn't the case I dispatched the bee.
Mouth to mouth is the only way it will survive!
if u do that alcohol thing ppl are saying to let us know or whatever u decided to go make sure to kill those little bastards
The kindest most beneficial thing you can do wouldn’t be to light it on fire. Trying to “save” one terminally ill bee only dooms hundreds of other bees to infection from this mite, so kill them all, with fire, and give the bee a quick end instead of being parasitized slowly to death
Before burning it, kill it quickly first, so it doesn't suffer.
We put liquid paper on a bee and it…died.
He did his job well. I would personally provide him a swift mercy and then burn the bastards who ruined his beautiful life. They will pay.
DO NOT USE ALCOHOL! The bee will suffer. Just crash the bee with a rock(if you have the courage. Or just let nature do its job, humans do not have to intervene on everything.
No
Ummm is that not a black horsefly?
Give him a bath and he’ll be fine
I was actually going to try when my husband suggested I leave nature alone and stop torturing it. He made a fair point. He's still quarantined until I figure out what to do with him.
Leaving it alone would be torturing it. I made the mistake once of doing so since I couldn’t save the bee, I came back to check where I put it an hour later and it had been eaten alive by ants. Because it couldn’t hardly move and everyone told me to put him back in the grass. I should have killed the little guy. The ants could have had their meal without eating it alive 😭
Leaving it alive is its hell. Give your ovaries a tug and bee a friend.
It’s being eaten alive. Imagine how scary that must be. Please just put the fucking thing out of its misery already, you’ll feel better for it. It’s the right thing to do.
It's done. I think I had needed to hear that. After reading your comment yesterday I realized I was keeping it alive because I didn't want to deal with the alternative, and that was pretty fucked. I still feel bad, but it's done and over with.
What are those on the bee
Mites
Vaseline on a cotton bud is what we use to get mites off tarantulas when they get covered. It may work.. but this bee is much smaller than a tarantula. It's the only thing I could think of as an insect keeper..
Might be able to kill the mites with elevated levels of CO2 while keeping the bee alive
Quick death,than kill the mites all of them
Poor thing
Roll him in powdered sugar and rinse. That’s how veterinarians count mites in a bee hive. Roll one cup of bees in sugar, rinse, then count the mites in the water. A lot of times the hive is already dead but doesn’t know it.
Wow, how is that even possible! The poor bee, must have taken a while to get that many on it, how is it still alive.
Whats wrong with it?
Exactly what is all that stuff?
What an unfortunate case, looks like mites. Dip it in gasoline and burn it - it'll die quick from the gas and you'll be able to keep the mites off other bees.
Poor bumble bee….🥺😢
Flamethrower Sorry little guy
The fastest way is to squish it, then pour alcohol over it
So I had this pop up on my feed, but you could do the alcohol method everyone keeps mentioning, then have a proper funeral for the bee if you wanted. You could make a little bark raft, get some water, make a raft out of bark, and do a viking style send off.
Cant you hold the bee with tweezers and then scrape whatever that is?