How to Do a Sugar Roll Mite Test

A sugar roll mite test is one of the easiest ways to check if your bees have too many Varroa mites — parasites that weaken and kill colonies. It takes about 10 minutes and costs almost nothing. Keep in mind that sugar rolls tend to under-count mites compared with alcohol washes, so they give you a useful snapshot but may miss some mites. They are a practical monitoring tool, and any positive result should be taken seriously.

Step 1: Collect Your Bee Sample

You need roughly 300 bees in a jar. The easiest way is to find a frame with plenty of young, uncapped brood (baby bees still developing). Shake that frame gently over a wide-mouth jar until you’ve got a decent pile of bees at the bottom — aim for about an inch or so of bees covering the jar’s bottom.

Don’t use the queen or a frame with mostly capped brood. Young bees are easier to shake off, and they’re the ones Varroa mites prefer anyway. If you’re testing in cool weather and bees aren’t moving much, warm the jar slightly by holding it in your hands for a minute.

Screw the lid on loosely or cover it with a cloth. You want air to flow but bees to stay inside. If you can’t test right away, keep the jar at room temperature for a few hours — don’t refrigerate. The bees should stay calm and alive during collection and testing.

Some beekeepers use a special “bee brush” to gently brush bees into the jar rather than shaking. Either method works. The goal is getting a representative sample without crushing bees or making them angry.

Step 2: Add Powdered Sugar and Shake

Use regular powdered sugar — the kind you’d use for baking. You need about 2 tablespoons (roughly 1 ounce or 30 grams). Sprinkle it directly onto the bees in the jar while they’re still covered.

Now shake hard for about 60 seconds. Shake the jar vigorously side-to-side, up-and-down, and in circles. The powdered sugar coats the bees and makes Varroa mites lose their grip. You’ll see white powder everywhere — that’s normal.

After shaking, hold the jar up to the light. You should see mites falling to the bottom as the sugar coats them. Some mites will stick to the jar’s sides or to the bees themselves, but most will end up at the bottom.

Let the jar sit for 30 seconds so mites settle. Then carefully pour the contents through a fine-mesh strainer or piece of cheesecloth into a white bowl or plate. The sugar and mites fall through; the bees stay in the strainer. Rinse the strainer gently with water to wash more sugar and mites into the bowl. The bees are fine — they’ll clean themselves off and you can return them to the hive.

Step 3: Count the Mites

Look at the white sugar pile in your bowl under good light. A magnifying glass helps but isn’t essential. Varroa mites are reddish-brown, roughly the size of a pinhead, and have eight legs. They look like tiny ticks. Debris and sugar crystals won’t have legs or move.

Count every mite you see. Take your time. If you’re unsure whether something is a mite, assume it isn’t — you’re looking for obvious, moving (or recently-moved) bodies with visible legs.

Write down the number. This is your mite count from 300 bees. Some beekeepers prefer to count mites on a white sheet of paper instead of a bowl — whatever gives you the best visibility works fine.

Step 4: Interpret Your Result

Mite-count action thresholds are guidelines, not a single universal rule — they vary by source, region, and time of year, so always check with your local beekeeping association, extension service, or the Honey Bee Health Coalition’s Varroa management guide for the most current recommendations in your area. That said, most guidance agrees that any detectable mites warrant close attention, and counts in the range of several mites per 300 bees during the active season are a signal to act.

These thresholds also shift with the calendar. Mite populations build up over the season, so a low count in early summer carries less urgency than the same count in late summer or early fall, when colonies are raising the winter bees that need to be as healthy as possible.

If you’re getting concerning counts, you have options: you can treat with approved miticides, use integrated pest management techniques (IPM — a strategy that combines multiple methods to reduce mite loads while minimizing chemical use, such as drone brood removal alongside targeted treatments), or combine approaches. Talk to local beekeepers or your regional extension office about what works best in your area — treatments and their legality vary by region and season.

Test again 2–3 weeks after treatment to confirm it worked. A good treatment should drop your mite count significantly. If counts stay high after treatment, the mites may be resistant to that product, and you’ll need a different approach.

Record your results. Tracking mite counts across seasons and years helps you spot patterns and plan better for next year.