What's going on with Hopguard?

[Intheswamp]

In regards to mite extinction....who's gonna treat the ferals?

Ed

[dnichols]

Good thought Ed. I guess we all need to start bee lining.

[ky_mike]

Add me to the list of people that thinks hopguard works. I only had 2 hives at the time, but I started this thread when I used it because I think it was fairly new and wanted to pass on the information to people.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/show...ard-experience

I've only been beekeeping for 3 years now, but can attest that it saved my hives. I need to update that original thread, but the hives are doing great and they have only been treated once (3 weeks in succession) and it was during the early summer.

I will be up to around 20 hives this year and do agree that it will probably be expensive to use it again if I need to, but I am excited to see the HopguardII may be in the works. It is also messy, but like I said, it saved my hives.

[wildbranch2007]

a follow up question on bee-l about how the 40% mite kill by hopguard was figured.







http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/w...&F=&S=&P=81393






Sorry Allan:
I guess me being slow!
It is calculated after the three treatments of Hopguard. Then we applied Apivar as a finishing treatment. All collected mites were then counted and calculated based on the relative efficacy to Apivar. The efficacy was 40% relative to Apivar.

We have also calculated the washed 300 mites / hive before and after the three Hopguard treatments. The efficacy was 55% reduction of mites on bees.

Before you hit me with another question.

Mites doubled their number in the control without treatment over the treatment period based on collected killed mite after using the finishing treatment. For the 300 bees washed bees the mite % infestation went down by about 20%. Keeping in mind the bee population doubled during spring.

For fall the story is different. Mites tripled in the untreated control based on collected dead mites from the finishing treatment. In the washed 300 bees the mite increased 7 times in the untreated control during the treatment period.

Allan A lot of mite counting, we suffered from nightmares (mitemares) when you think about it.

Randy: by the way regardless you try to use harmonized groups of certain percentages of mite infestation and colony strength, bees don't very much follow rules and don't like to follow what researchers like to do with them. They are wired differently.

Medhat

http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/w...=&S=&P=83084It is calculated after the three treatments of Hopguard. Then we applied Apivar as a finishing treatment. All collected mites were then counted and calculated based on the relative efficacy to Apivar. The efficacy was 40% relative to Apivar.

We have also calculated the washed 300 mites / hive before and after the three Hopguard treatments. The efficacy was 55% reduction of mites on bees.

So, if I have this right, You treated on group of hives three times then dropped the remaining mites with Apivar.

You also had controls which were not treated during the test, but got the same Apivar treatment as you used for finishing the test hives.

You assumed that you dropped essentially all the mites with Apivar and compared the drop from the test hives to the control count and found the Hopguard hives had 60% as many mites and reported this as a 40% efficacy?

Is that right?

Almost there! Yes Sir you are right... Love the way you simplified it.


Medhat