Early Detection

Identifying mites early will prevent the whole colony from being infected. It took 14 years before we got our first mite infestation and it took us by surprise.  Complacency led us to misdiagnosed it as mold which resulted in the whole colony being infected (over 100 trays). A number of things happened to make the perfect storm for mites:

• We misdiagnosed mites before we went on holidays for 2 weeks (See below video).
• Whilst on holidays we reduced maintenance by feeding and removing old wet food every 2nd day instead of every day. This resulted in extra moisture and humidity.
• Australia had the hottest summer on record which resulted in extremely high temperatures.
• We were very busy undertaking renovations, projects and partnerships.This resulted in us doing a patch fix for our ventilation which failed whilst away.
• I was not around to see the infestation develop and when we got back it was very severe.

Below is a video which shows how easy it is to misdiagnose mold for mites in the rush of doing regular maintenance and not knowing what to look for…particularly for your first time.

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Now Lets Take a Closer Look at the Mites

So lets have a look at the mites zoomed in….yes you will need to look very closely to see them. If you are have over 40 bad eyes like me, you may need to grab your glasses. You may need to watch this video a few times and focus on a single dot and watch it move. Its not obvious at first but the closer you look the more you find.