Varroa Sound

[Black Comb]

I've not seen this before. Looks interesting.

http://www.varroa-sound.de/

A revolution in combatting varroa
mites with ultrasound!

• 100% organic
• 100% residue-free
• harmless to bees
• simple to use
• economical price
• can be used during foraging
• optimal effect

With this device the bee colony is exposed to high frequency sound (c.15,000 Hz at 90 decibels) over a period of 25 days.

The bee colony is then almost varroa-free. This frequency is inconsequential for the bees and does not disturb them.

The varroa mites' uptake of food is severely affected, so that old mites die within c. 10–20 days. The sound is also effective in the brood: juveniles (young mites) die in the brood cell within a day, and adult mites in the brood are so disturbed that reproduction no longer takes place and they die out. After 25 days the colonies are healthy.


Varroa Killer Sound should be employed twice a year.
Ideal periods: February to mid-April and July/August
Important: always treat whole apiaries
(to prevent re-infection)

[Greengage]

I cant read German but have seen this before,
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/natural-disasters/the-honeybee-varroa-vibration-and-ccd/

[Mellifera Crofter]

I was going to ask how John Harding find these Electromagnetic Geopathic Stress Lines that vibrate at 250hertz. Surely not by dowsing. But yes, it is. I found the answer here. (http://www.landandspirit.net/html/beehive-location.html)


... attuning to Bee deva, holding a pair of L-shaped dowsing rods ... I don't know what a Bee deva is - but it's probably cheaper than the Varroa-Sound box. As for effectiveness ...
Kitta

[Black Comb]

I cant read German but have seen this before,
http://modernsurvivalblog.com/natural-disasters/the-honeybee-varroa-vibration-and-ccd/

the difference here is that the sound box resonates at 15,000 Hz whereas this chap is talking about 250Hz.
It needs some field testing. I can't afford one.

[Greengage]

Could I bring this to the hive and leave it on repeat, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITyKEf4bu0I

[Black Comb]

90 decibels?

[Thymallus]

It needs some field testing. I can't afford one.
Sounds like snake oil....let someone else spend their hard earned euros testing. If you want something a little cheaper I don't recommend the Bee Gym
(http://www.beegym.co.uk/shop.html). There was someone selling cds coated with tiling plaster that the bees used as a back scratcher to remove the varroa. It was so successful they don't seem to be available any more.....presumably demand :)

[Greengage]

Re The Bee Gym here is a report from DARG In Devon, http://dargbees.org.uk/Article%20Trialling%20the%20BeeGYM%20(003).pdf

[Calluna4u]

Would be lovely if it worked........ but.......

Related patents in place in 1988, and again in 1998. A patent linked to this thing in 2001.....renewed a couple of times, then abandoned (due to non payment of the fee apparently) in 2008.

If it truly were the magic bullet I suspect we would all know about it by now........some 29 years after initial patent, and some 16 years after the direct ancestor of this device appeared.

It would also have been manufactured in a cheap provenance and be available for very little.


Several years ago I had a visit from some German guys who were being taken round the country to meet key players (at least ones who would give them a listen) and they had a strange device ( a box with a secret set up inside) in the back of their car that they used 'to charge up' special clay discs that they then inserted into the hive close to or even within the broodnest. (Apparently it only required 0.6w to do this.)

It was claimed that the field from these discs promoted colony contentment and boosted their health, and that this made them able to cope with varroa on their own.

Would I consent to them running a trial on some of my hives? Not being one to be unhelpful to researchers I agreed, and some long redundant dummy boards were unearthed and they got on with using a disc cutter to make a hole in the dummies so the clay disc could be inserted and held in place with silicon.

So later that day we went off out to the field and opened some hives and the end frame of the nest was removed and the dummy with fitted disc put in its place and pressed across firmly against the last frame of those remaining.

To my surprise the guys, all of them, said you could hear a change of sound in the hive to a deeper more settled tone, and in their opinion the bees were happy and their changed sound indicated that. (I heard no change whatsoever.)

They went on their way, but before they did I got their offer document that detailed the price of the discs (not cheap) and their fee for coming to recharge the discs, which needed to be done every few months. Again not cheap. The discs also remained their property and when ding the freshening up visit they needed the existing discs back.

Weeks passed and there was no difference at all between the hives with discs and the others, bar the faffing about that having a dummy board that protruded into the end comb caused (large circular recess on the face of the comb or all joined together by the bees and thus a possibility of rather 'hauling the guts out of' the comb. (that made them rather 'discontented').

They called back to ask how we were getting on with the discs and to see if I was ready for them to come, recharge the discs, and extend their experiment up to full scale in our unit, and said I was the only one that had not reported any advantage. They were rather disappointed that I did not want to go into their method in a bid way. They never came to get their discs back and I never heard from them again. Apparently they did several in the UK at the time and I wonder if anyone else gave their ideas a chance. Not sure if this 'happy frequency' the discs were supposed to emit is in any way related to this.

[Jon]

You could post each forum member one of those 'happy frequency' disks to see how it improves our collective lives!
I plan to microwave and consume mine when it arrives.

[Black Comb]

This information came via the local association, I assume the originators sent out a mail shot.
Discs are passé.
Discounts are available for early orders and even bigger discounts for group orders.
I still can't afford one!

[Greengage]

I was telling some of the beekeepers about this sound idea :rolleyes: last night and the told me it was nothing new and to look up the late Eddie F. Woods who invented The Apidictor and patented, and marketed it in the 1960s. So i did and came across these articles even one to build your own.
http://www.beehacker.com/wp/?page_id=103
http://beesource.com/build-it-yourself/apidictor/

[gavin]

I was telling some of the beekeepers about this sound idea :rolleyes: last night and the told me it was nothing new and to look up the late Eddie F. Woods who invented The Apidictor and patented, and marketed it in the 1960s. So i did and came across these articles even one to build your own.
http://www.beehacker.com/wp/?page_id=103
http://beesource.com/build-it-yourself/apidictor/

That very small DARG study by Richard Ball (ex head of the inspectors south of the border) is compatible with the bee gym working as advertised. However one hive with a bee gym and one control isn't nearly enough.

The Apidictor listens in (and seems to work) whereas the Varroa control thing blasts them with sound. The Apidictor filters out the sound of several thousand young bees getting ready to fly off with the swarm. Swarms have many young bees in them and this preparation of young bees to fly is characteristic of colonies approaching swarming.

[The Drone Ranger]

http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/555-astable-calculator
http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/e24-resistor-sizes
http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/555-astable-calculator -- work out the values you need

Just use the above to adjust the values for this little project
Resistors and capacitors are only available in certain values hence the tables

http://www.instructables.com/id/555-Crriter-Repellant/step2/Prototype-The-Circuit/

The authors circuit is for a much higher frequency so you don't need a piezo buzzer just a small speaker
Also you will be able to hear it or at least a younger person will be able to so no fancy measuring tools required

The decibel requirement of 90db ?
You would need an audio amplifier as well as the frequency generator above
"a pneumatic road drill 3 metres ways is about 90 dBa"
Since 15Khz is in the normal hearing range I don't think that the neighbours will like the idea much

[gavin]

You would need an audio amplifier as well as the frequency generator above
"a pneumatic road drill 3 metres ways is about 90 dBa"
Since 15Khz is in the normal hearing range I don't think that the neighbours will like the idea much

Unless they are old, like me, and have a hearing range well below 15kHz.

Sounds like a nasty thing to do to a bee colony and possibly dangerous for the beekeepers too.