vaporized vinegar

[twind59]

I've seen a few brief references to treating chalk brood, nosema, foul brood and mites with a vaporized white vinegar solution. Does anyone know anything about this? Is this legitimate and effective?

[Scot Mc Pherson]

Well vinegar has the chance of infecting the honey with mother of vinegar. Mother of vinegar is the acetobactor resposible for converting carbohydrates (usually alcohol, but can be simple sugars too). And you can end up with a hive full of vinegar. You should be smelling it before it ends up driving the bees out (if you do regular inspections), but never the less you can ruin crops if you don't use only the purest of distilled vinegars.

Certainly don't use home made vinegar.

[twind59]

Yes, I see how that could be a risk. Do you know if this treatment is effective?

[Randy Bagrowski]

I did a little experiment this past summer with vinegar. I had a colonly that had an ever increasing mite count. It was 40 mites/24 hrs in mid August. I made a 10% acetic acid mix and added it to a Burgess fogger. I fogged twice, one week apart.
I took mite counts over the next few weeks and watched them increase to over 200 mites/24 hrs. I took care of them with Formic Acid. Based on my 1 hive experiment. I would have to say that vaporized acetic acid is worthless as a mite control.

One caveat: The add in the bee journal uses 20% acetic acid, I only used 10%. Maybe next year I'll try it again!