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81K views 304 replies 46 participants last post by  Duncan Thacker 
#1 ·
With and all the positive feedback on its use and so many commercial beekeepers using OA in a dribble and others using it in a vaporized, why are YOU not using it?

It's pennies per treatment whether used in a dribble or vaporized (outside the initial cost of the vaporizer). Well below the costs of other treatments.

Again, unless you've remarkable bees that resist both the varroa mite itself and all viruses the mites bring into the hive OR have decided to go the treatment free route,
why are you not using it?
 
#100 ·
>Which with sublimation, at least, would not generally be the bees guts or pollen/ honey etc, only things on the surface, and for a short duration, as opposed to trickle which the bees consume, and because of the syrup content would end up mixed with both pollen and honey to some extent.

Agreed. It will in general, though, lower the pH of everything in the hive becaue of the residue, but certainly less than trickling will. Trickling also has the downside of damaging the malpighian tubules.

>Agreed, but far greater numbers of pesticides and fungicides are added by the bees.

The large amounts are mostly things added by the beekeeper. The lower amounts are things of greater number as the treatments (approved and unapproved) used by beekeepers is a small number.

The world would be a much healthier place if we weren't so intent on killing everything... weeds, insects, fungus...
 
#101 ·
The world would be a much healthier place if we weren't so intent on killing everything... weeds, insects, fungus...
Killing everything ........sure, that' crazy.. Obliterating other things, aids, small pox, malaria, mites.......those need killing... Michael we all know you don't have mites, but you are indeed among the minority worldwide. Do you think your could replicate your success worldwide? If you had to treat to save your bees, what would you use?
 
#102 ·
>we all know you don't have mites

But I do have mites. Mites are endemic.

>but you are indeed among the minority worldwide.

I don't think I am a minority of people doing natural beekeeping with natural comb and succeeding against mites. I may be a minority of beekeepers in general.

>Do you think your could replicate your success worldwide?

I only have bees in my climate, and certainly all beekeeping is local, but there are people all over the world doing treatment free successfully.

>If you had to treat to save your bees, what would you use?

What if there were no rhetorical questions?

I was desperate enough to treat at one time and lost my bees anyway. Treating was not an improvement. It certainly was not a solution. I don't have to treat.
 
#103 ·
>If you had to treat to save your bees, what would you use?

What if there were no rhetorical questions?

I was desperate enough to treat at one time and lost my bees anyway. Treating was not an improvement. It certainly was not a solution. I don't have to treat.
Michael, that's not an answer that inquiring minds want to hear (at least mine anyway). I'm not trying to be contrary, but I am putting you on the spot because I'd really like to know. If you had no other recourse to save your bees from mites other than to treat, what would you use?
 
#104 ·
I see a very difficult question being asked here. And this is why I see it difficult. The majority assume that treatment is an answer. they also assuem that others see treatment as an answer. But what if you you do not? As Michael said. he has tried it and it did not help. So even if worse came to worse and he was loosing all his bees. Why would he then resort to something he believes and has experienced does not help?

I will ask a different queston of you Michael. If you found your bees suddenly collapsing. Do you have any other courses of action you would take to prevent it? I also realize that question is difficult given you cannot address a hypothetical ailment. So the real question is, Do you believe you are doing the best you can in every way. and if it fails you are up against creating some entirely new solutions?
 
#105 ·
>If you had no other recourse to save your bees from mites other than to treat, what would you use?

There is no logical point in answering a hypothetical question. It is merely hypothetical.

>I will ask a different queston of you Michael. If you found your bees suddenly collapsing. Do you have any other courses of action you would take to prevent it?

Hypothetical again for the most part. They were collapsing, and I did try treating and I decided it was worse than not treating and treating was not the solution to the problem.
 
#106 ·
I don't think Mike Bush is being elusive in not giving the answer to the hypothetical question, I just think he feels confident that what he is currently doing is "the" answer to his previous mite problems, and that unless mites somehow eventually evolve to the extent that they can reproduce much better in small cells, there will be no need to re-evaluate using a treatment. I guess you can say that he intends on crossing that bridge when and if he comes to it.
 
#108 ·
snl, only thing I can say (not being MB) is that if I did not have mite losses for 10 years or so by using a strategy that is not a treatment, and prior to that had mite losses with and without treatments, I would put some degree of faith in what I was currently doing. To have an answer prepared ahead of time, in case anyone asks what I would do if what I was currently doing didn't work anymore, is not something that I would spend much time thinking about beforehand. JMO.
 
#113 · (Edited)


The above photo is not from a peer reviewed study, but something we did on our kitchen table (I helped my nephew replicate it for a school project and the results were the same).

The photo is the data. Each jar has an equal amount of water and sugar and is kept at the same temperature (temp regulated water bath).
The jar on the left was the control, the next one had 1 drop of FA, the next 3 drops, 5 drops....etc. The FA we got from a local beekeeper and was at the strength it was supposed to be used at.

After the sugar was dissolved, the FA added, and the temps stabilized and equal, an equal amount of bread yeast was put into each jar, and a glove fitted around the rim to measure the gas produced from the yeast fermenting.

A picture is worth a thousand words.
http://www.beeuntoothers.com/NoBeeIsAnIsland.pdf
 
#114 ·
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...-for-European-Foulbrood&p=1049683#post1049683

Perhaps I'm more attuned to this stuff than most (having the task of writing a beginning beekeeping book from scratch makes you think of all the people with a book in one hand and a package in another who never mastered the art of setting the clock on their stove), but when giving any kind of advice, one has to think of _all_ the people that might try to follow that advice.
I'd bet that 90% (or more) of beekeepers that cite 'checkerboarding' as a swarm prevention technique think that it refers to manipulation in the brood nest. The technique that Walt has championed (for better or for worse) is decidely different than what beekeepers 'try' when they dismiss 'checkerboarding' (I'm not referring the MP here, but I know beekeepers of equal caliber who clearly don't understand the concept, and dismiss it for the wrong reasons).
Anyone that really wants ideas, thoughts, concepts, techniques, caveats, warnings, etc. to be understood must take some care in making sure they are being understood.
I've not seen such care here, or on 'the vendors website'. Seems a shame that being understood by ones customers doesn't seem to be as much a priority as securing the customers.

deknow
 
#115 · (Edited)
Yes giving people the whole story is important. And in the spirit of that I would point out that this thread is about the vendors product, OA. The experiment shown as an example in post #113 did not use OA, I feel this should have been made clearer. We want people to understand, rather than be confused.

I am sure there would be any number of common household products could have been added to the mix to kill the yeast also. Table salt, for example.
 
#116 ·
The experiment shown as an example in post #133 did not use OA, I feel this should have been made clearer. We want people to understand, rather than be confused.
I'm confused. OT there are only 115 posts here at the time you posted. Kill yeast???
 
#121 ·
I am reminded of the story from back in the days of alchohol prohibition. A guy was speaking to a crowd from a platform about the evils of drink. To demonstrate, he gets a jar of live wiggly worms and holds it out for the audience to see. Then he gets a bottle of whiskey and tips it over the worms. After a short pause, he holds the jar up and the audience can see the worms are floating and dead.

"What does that teach you?" he asks. A bum in the audience yells out "if you've got worms, drink whiskey".

Likewise, putting 65% FA into a small jar of liquid containing yeast, does not equate to vaporising one gram of the different product oxalic, into a beehive. A more honest experiment would be to swab a beehive prior to treatment. Then vaporise a gram of oxalic into the hive. Leave perhaps a month for all traces of oxalic to be gone, and do another swab.
 
#122 ·
A more honest experiment would be to swab a beehive prior to treatment. Then vaporise a gram of oxalic into the hive. Leave perhaps a month for all traces of oxalic to be gone, and do another swab.
Yes it would be.
Also the formic talked about on this thread is nothing like OA sublimation, formic is a vapour, a gas, with a very fine molecule size which can even permeate brood cell capping to kill mites, plus the bees to kill tracheal mites, and no doubt other things, 1 gram of OA when sublimated turns quickly back into a crystal, some of it even before it leaves the apparatus, and just leaves a surface coating on whatever it lands on...and soon breaks down or is removed by the bees.
 
#125 ·
Oh apologies Deknow, no attempt to impune your honesty intended.

I just added clarity, as I felt that to a casual reader (and there are lots of casual readers), it could have slipped their observation that oxalic acid was not used in the experiment, and as the context of the thread is oxalic acid they may have assumed that. I also have doubts about the value of ex vivo experiments (referring in this case, to the hive as an organism in itself). They have their uses but can also be set up to demonstrate pretty much anything.
 
#127 ·
>We all answer hypothetical questions.....

Foolishly, we probably do from time to time. But why waste the time and effort on somthing that isn't a real question. "If there were no such thing as gravity, what would you do to stay on the planet?" is not something you should spend a lot of time trying to answer...

> It's a legitimate question that he has chosen not to answer.

How are hypothetical questions legitimate? What if I asked, "if you were beating your wife everyday and someone suggested this was a bad idea..."

Hypothetical questions are not "legitimate" questions, they are, by definition, not real questions, they are hypothetical.

By asking what treatment I would use if I HAD to use one, you're asking me to choose what damage I consider acceptable to do to the ecology of the hive. I don't consider any damage acceptable if there is any way to avoid it, and there is so I avoid it.
 
#128 · (Edited)
> It's a legitimate question that he has chosen not to answer.
Michael, I was going to let go of this until you responded. You call it a a hypothetical question, I believe it as a very real one and one you've chosen not to answer. That's fine. However, for many of us who must treat to save our hives, it is a very difficult decision to decide with what to treat. We have reached out to you for guidance since many of us say to ourselves from time to time "What would MB do?" You offer so many valid and good opinions as to how to do this or how to do that so that asking you, what you would use to treat your hives if what you were doing no longer worked is very real.
 
#132 ·
>We all answer hypothetical questions.....

By asking what treatment I would use if I HAD to use one, you're asking me to choose what damage I consider acceptable to do to the ecology of the hive. I don't consider any damage acceptable if there is any way to avoid it, and there is so I avoid it.
snl,
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think he did answer your question as honestly as he could. Just because you don't like his answer, doesn't mean he didn't answer it. Personally, I think it was a loaded question...

It's like if someone were to ask you...."I know you don't beat your kids or believe in beating kids...But if you had to beat one of them, which one would you beat?"

And then being upset because they won't name one...
 
#133 ·
snl, I am a small sideliner and totally treatment free, the only thing that I have done other than watch my bees die from mites the last two years is to try some vsh queens a few years back, and they died, I should say collapsed, just like all the others did. They didn't even last 7 months. I have thought seriously about treating out of disgust, but even though I have had disastrous losses I am still commited to remaining treatment free for the same reasons Michael Bush has. After having to practically start over every year with new bees the last several years, I am now going to try it Michael Bush's way, and not just his, but others here on the forum doing the same thing with success. Yes, its going to cost me even more money changing over to narrow frames, small cell, and northern adapted queens, but what other choice do I have if I don't want to treat?

Don't you think we use too many chemicals in this country already? Even though OA and some of the other treatments may keep bees alive longer comparatively speaking, how do we know that we aren't creating other problems (the types of problems MB speaks of) for the bees that we don't see, its like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
 
#134 ·
Michael Bush has already answered with his actions. Started over more than once. More convincing than a verbal answer to me.

Next question will be; What would you do if you had the last bees on earth and mites were killing them?

I do not think he will buy OA or endorse it. But good luck trying.
 
#135 ·
Next question will be; What would you do if you had the last bees on earth and mites were killing them?
Salty, I'd treat......not sure with what as I don't know what would be available to treat with at that time. Maybe some "silver bullet" would have arrived by then.
I do not think he will buy OA or endorse it. But good luck trying.
Salty, was never trying to get MB to buy or endorse OA treatment. He has already tried it prior to going TF. I envy him his great success on TF. TF just does not work for me and evidently many others. However, just as we ask speakers in a conference (and BS is really an online conference) questions, I was just posing the question to him, one BS member to another... not as a vendor because we are both vendors here on BS.
 
#142 ·
From Michael's website: What I do.

I use the small cell/natural cell and Screened Bottom Boards (SBB) and I monitor the mites with a white board under the SBB. As long as the mites stay under control, and so far, since 2002 they have, that's all I do. If the mites were to start going up while the supers are on I would probably fog with FGMO or dust with powdered sugar. If they were still high after fall harvest, I would use Oxalic Acid vapor. So far I haven't needed them since the bees were regressed. Basically just small cell has been effective for me for both kinds of mites and adequate under normal conditions.
 
#144 ·
Well, snl should have just posted that up in the first place.

Of course, something as cheap and easy as using OA seems like a simple solution to Varroa infestation, but it not only leads to a factory farm model of beekeeping, but there's also an unintended consequence on Honeybee stocks in the U.S. .

We now have two main hybrid managed stocks: the western and the eastern U.S. commercial stocks.

After having looked as some of the genetic analyses that has been done on them, and knowing how utterly dependent they are on treatments, we've inherited two problems.

Honeybees have not only bottlenecked into two hybrid groups (they're not as diverse as some think), they're also stuck on the treatment treadmill.

They're not that different than livestock found in large scale operations at this point.

So, why not use OA (or other treatments)? Because you'll be stuck in a bottleneck while on a treadmill.

We really do need to do a better job of developing resistant stocks without the bottlenecks.

You can't do that by using OA.
 
#146 ·
From WLC:

Well, snl should have just posted that up in the first place.
I posted it when I found it on his website. Michael should have been more forthcoming in his answer.

Of course, something as cheap and easy as using OA seems like a simple solution to Varroa infestation, but it not only leads to a factory farm model of beekeeping, but there's also an unintended consequence on Honeybee stocks in the U.S. .
We now have two main hybrid managed stocks: the western and the eastern U.S. commercial stocks.

After having looked as some of the genetic analyses that has been done on them, and knowing how utterly dependent they are on treatments, we've inherited two problems.

Honeybees have not only bottlenecked into two hybrid groups (they're not as diverse as some think), they're also stuck on the treatment treadmill.

They're not that different than livestock found in large scale operations at this point.

So, why not use OA (or other treatments)? Because you'll be stuck in a bottleneck while on a treadmill.
But if you don't ........most of us will have dead bees. The choice is ........yours.

We really do need to do a better job of developing resistant stocks without the bottlenecks.
Agreed.
You can't do that by using OA
Or with any other treatment I would think. But if those of use who are not fortunate enough to have bees that survive TF and wish to save what we have will treat with either OA or their preferred treatment. From my research, OAV seems for me the least harmful of treatments that work.
 
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