SourwoodGrace · North Carolina, US · Pests & Disease · Jul 20, 2026
Sugar roll undercounts mites — is killing 300 bees for an alcohol wash actually worth it?
Third year, 6 hives in the NC piedmont. My club teaches sugar roll because 'you don't kill bees', but I've been reading that sugar shakes recover maybe 80–90% of the mites an alcohol wash finds on the same bees — so you're systematically undercounting by 10–20%, right when the difference between 2% and 3% decides whether you treat.
Last August I sugar-rolled a hive at 6 per 300, decided to wait, and it crashed in October. I can't prove the roll missed mites but it's been eating at me.
A colony makes 1,000+ bees a day in summer. Is sacrificing 300 of them really the ethical problem people make it out to be, or is the false comfort of a low sugar roll the bigger risk? Genuinely torn, not trying to start a fight.
#varroa#alcohol-wash#sugar-roll#monitoring
▲ 21 votes💬 5 replies
5 replies
GeorgiaWes · Jul 20, 2026
22 years in Georgia and I switched to alcohol wash a decade ago for exactly the reason you describe. 300 bees is under half a percent of a summer colony — the queen lays that back before lunch. A missed treatment window kills all 40,000. The wash also gives you a repeatable number: shake hard for 60 seconds and you recover essentially every phoretic mite. Sugar roll results swing with humidity and how vigorous you shake.
VTBeeHannah · Jul 20, 2026
I'll take the other side, politely. I sugar roll and just adjust my thresholds down to compensate — if I see 2 per 100 on a roll I treat as if it were 2.5. The undercount is only a problem if you pretend it isn't there. For a hobbyist with 2 hives who monitors monthly, the bees add up, and I inspect better when I'm not dreading the kill.
TexasBeeSam · Jul 20, 2026
VTBeeHannah's correction approach works IF you're consistent, but most people aren't — that's the rub. Rolled bees also need to be shaken in the jar hard and long, and lots of folks go gentle 'to be nice' which makes the undercount way worse than 20%. Whichever method you pick, do it the same way every time. The trend matters as much as the absolute number.
ImkerinLena · Jul 21, 2026
One nuance: make sure your 300-bee sample comes from a brood frame (check the queen isn't on it!). Nurse bees carry roughly twice the mites of entrance foragers, so sampling location changes your count far more than wash vs roll does. A sloppy alcohol wash from the wrong frame is worse than a careful sugar roll from the right one.
SourwoodGrace · Jul 21, 2026
This is all really helpful — especially the nurse bee point, I suspect my October crash sample came off an outer honey frame. Going alcohol wash from brood frames on a fixed schedule and I'll stop agonising over the 300. Thanks for keeping it civil, this topic gets ugly elsewhere.