I read somewhere several months ago that ant put off a natural toxin that kills the mites just like formic pro. True or not I do not know but I am hearing more and more. My black ants are not enough to over power my hive. I have no mites. But if someone had the big red ant or fire ants, then I would worry.
so black ants getting into hive and destroying it ??? if weak hive ??? but can you talk a bit more about that danger.
can the bees keep ants out of their hive? discovered ants can be useful.
i put a house plant loaded with spider mites out last summer thinking that was the end of it. to my surprise it became covered in small black ants which took care of mites and now have a beautiful healthy plant back in the house.
Do black ants eat varroa mites
On July, 6, Claire help me install my Formic Por strips in my 6 hives, after we were done she asked if I would check my white boards / sticky boards in a few days, the main reason because I do not do a alcohol wash, she would like to know if I had a mite issue or not and what the count might be.
On July, 14, I check my white boards, they all had very few mites on their boards, as I was looking, to me it look as if I might have more mites then I could see because of what I was looking at were skeletons and parts of mites. I also saw little black ants on all of my white boards.
I did some research on the Internet and found out the black ant will eat the varroa mites form your white board, in short if you are trying to get a close approximate count from your white board / sticky board and their black ants present, you will get a false count.
I attached a couple links that other Bee forms have discussed about black Ant and varroa mites, they say it not a bad thing for the black ants to be on your white board eating the things that drop from your hive as long as the hive has a strong colony of bees, but if the hive is weak they will move up into the hive and destroy them.
In closing I would say the best way it determine you're mites count would be through your alcohol wash.
https://www..com/threads/little-black-ants-eat-varroa-off-sticky-boards.327356/
https://beekeepingforum.co.uk/threads/do-ants-eat-varroa-mites.44368/