Thymol tray

[BEEn Stung]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think I pretty well have the thymol procedure figured out except for one question.My hives are 3 deeps and will be for the winter. Do I need only one tray for the top box?
should it be on the second box. Or do I need 3 trays per hive?
What is the bottom of the tray made of?
OK so that is more then one question.
I found a place to get tymol today and should get it tommorow.


------------------
Erwin

[Axtmann]

Thymol crystals have to evaporate in the hive and the vapor kills the mites. But you need a certain amount of vapor in your hive before Thymol starts to kill the Varroa and the trachea mites.

If the concentration is to low the mites smiling.

You can use 1 or 3 trays in your hive what ever you like but you need at least 12 grams Thymol crystals for 1 treatment of 2 deeps with brood.

During summer it takes approx 48 hours evaporation to fill the whole hive with enough Thymol vapor before it’s starts killing the mites, and the enter must be very narrow. During the colder time of the year you better save your money and go for oxalic acid.

Under the best conditions Thymol kills up to approx 80% of the Varroa and is a good treatment if nothing better is available.

When using the Thymol crystals make sure bees can’t reach the tray, they clean it in a few hours and dump the crystals outside.

[Ricko]

Axtmann,thank you for sharing your experience with the use of Thymol crystals.
I purchased some of the small wooden Thymol crystal trays at the same time I purchased my OA vaporizer from a Canadian firm. I've got the crystal and am ready to use them.
My question is by how much do you reduce the entrance when using the crystals. At the moment, I've got a Varroa screen on top of my bottom board which reduces the height of the entrance by a small amount. Yet the length of the opening runs the full length.
My concern is at the moment our nights are in the low to mid fifties and our daily highs are lower eighties. Humidity is high and 2 of my 4 hives have a good 2 lbs. of bees covering the whole front and part of the side of the two chamber hive day and night! Now you say I should reduce the entrance even more to be able to use the Thymol crystals??????? The bees seem awlfully stressed at the moment.
Would it be best if I were to wait until the temperature got into the 70's and the humidity was down a little more to use the Thymol? At the moment, I'm prepared to treat with either Thymol crystals in the small screened wooden boxes, fume with OA crystals using the auto battery charged vaporizer or menthol towels. I could wait until the end the month when the bees aren't having such a hard time keeping the hive cool to treat them. What do you suggest as a treatment plan for going into the winter? Perhaps I should just do a couple of treatments with the OA and call it good,forgetting the Thymol all together? Thanks again for your help.

[Axtmann]

Ricko I wouldn’t use the Thymol this time of the year. The outside temperatures should be at least 15º / 59º F even during the night. With lower temperatures the Thymol evaporates not enough. Save the Thymol for the spring and put it in you hive in April for a treatment. The crystals are not cheap; store them on a dark cool place.

A bad site effect from Thymol is it kills eggs and unsealed brood.

When I put the trays in a hive I could see that the bees removed everything close to the trays in a few days. Instead sealing the brood they removed the larva.

The guys from the bee institute in Switzerland put the trays during spring on top of the pollen frames to the outside wall, even than there was no brood in the next frame.

I wonder why FGMO user heat up the Thymol and blow it in the hive every week or two? But that’s not my business!
I have a friend in California who has 4500 colonies and he tested FGMO and cords on 100 colonies and he followed exact the recommendation for several years. In the beginning it was fine but after the 4th year there was NO SURVIVOR.

You can treat your bees anytime with the electric Vaporizer; there is no harm to bees, larva, eggs and queen. After 10 minutes you can open the entrance and your bees are back to normal in a short time.
I already treated my colonies 3 times 5-6 days apart. The natural mite fall during a month was 0 but I found between 18 and 47 mites in my hives a few days after the last treatment.

Now I will wait till there is less or no brood in the colonies (Nov. – Dec.) and treat ones again, maybe a second time depends on the mite fall. The temperatures must be a few degrees (3-5) higher then the freezing point.

Oxalic acid works best in the cooler time of the year when moisture is in the hives. In a dry hive (summer) the acid disappears in a few days. When the acid fog comes in contact with moisture in the hive ( wall and frames) it creates microscopic fine acid drops all over and this works much longer.

You can see it on a picture from http://www.mellifera.de/engl2.htm go to Vaporization of oxalic acid in colonies with winter brood. The efficiency is far up to 44 days.

I treated my hives last year end of November two times 7 days apart and couldn’t find any Varroa till middle of July this year.

[Ricko]

Thanks Axtmann,appreciate your advice. Sounds like OA is the answer and easiest too.
I have some menthol towels going now. Do you think that by doing the OA treatment for the varroa that it will also help with the Tracheal mite?

[Axtmann]

The following tests are made with an electric Vaporizer.

Don’t heat up the oxalic acid to long and to fast with a propane torch, almost all the acid will be burned and destroyed and only ash is left.

The byproduct of oxalic acid evaporation is formic acid and formic acid kills tracheal mites. Since I use OA as a mite treatment I never had any problems with tracheal mites.
--------------

By-products with vaporisation of oxalic acid
In an independent laboratory it was examined which substances arise from the vaporization of oxalic acid. The arising vapours were sucked into a water bath and the water late analysed. As it cannot be assumed that problematic compounds of higher valency arise they searched for oxalic acid, formic acid, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde. The limit of detection for formaldehyde was at 100 micrograms per gram of vaporised oxalic acid; for acetaldehyde at 80 micrograms per gram oxalic acid.
The amount of formic acid that was found was 1 % of the weight of the vaporised oxalic acid (10 mg formic acid per gram oxalic acid). Neither formaldehyde nor acetaldehyde were detectable.
By-products
Limit of detection µg/g presented oxalic acid Found with 1 g vaporised oxalic acid Formic acid 10 mg, Formaldehyde 100 none, Acetaldehyde 80 none.
Furthermore, the amount of oxalic acid that is not destroyed through vaporisation but vaporises and precipitates afterwards was examined. With vaporisation of loose oxalic acid crystals, on average 54 % of the used oxalic acid could be found.

Rate of finding oxalic acid after vaporisation

When heating, about half of the oxalic acid decomposes into harmless carbon dioxide and water. The other half vaporises and forms fine drops and dusts of oxalic acid that precipitates everywhere in the hive. Because of the even distribution of these fine particles the high and consistent efficacy against the varroa mite is possible. Moreover, it was examined if the acid that was found after vaporisation was really identical with the presented oxalic acid. With this aim in view the FT/IR spectrum of the white precipitation after vaporisation was determined. With the “fast fourier transformation with infra-red detection”, the so-called Finger-Print-Technique”, it could be guaranteed that the acid that was found again was identical with the presented acid.

It seems legitimate to compare the spray with the vapour leaving the hive. Most of the droplets produced with the spray method have a diameter of a few µm. Mellifera e.V. developed the spray method and performed various tests on it. In the case of the spray method, the oxalic acid is dissipated as so many small droplets that a surface area of up to 4.5 m² is produced in a cm3 of oxalic acid mist. Due to the enormous surface area, the small particles quickly dry to create oxalic acid dust and high-percentage acid. In contrast, with vaporisation, it can be assumed that the condensed oxalic acid particles do not remain dry, but rather immediately bond with humidity in the air.

Conclusion

According to the presented research results we assume that the application of the vaporisation method is justifiable because the necessary safety precautions can easily be kept. User safety is in every respect greater than that offered by internationally used and
recommended spray methods. In terms of handling of the acid, it is even safer than the trickling method.

Radecki has measured the remnance of oxalic acid in the honey from 12 treated families the remnance in all 12 cases of oxalic acid in honey is extremely low and under the limits of detection of 25 mg per Kg honey.

The acid is insoluble in wax and cannot be detected in wax.

[The Honey House]

Getting back to the thymol trays,
Will the 12 grams of crystals fit inside one recycled queen cage?