From Another satisfied customer: Shinebone of BS.
Got up to about 60F today here in Denver. I took advantage of the warm temps to do an OAV of my 10 hives with my new Provap 110, . . . the Provap worked great! http://oxavap.com/
Just to flesh-out my brief comments from above:
I've got 10 hives in my backyard apiary. I saw the videos and comments on the Provap, and it looked it would solve my only complaint about the Varrox, which was it was slow to use. Looking at my local weather forecast, I saw a handful of days above 50F predicted for the next week, and decided to order the Provap and do a mid-Winter OAV of my hives. This because I had not done my usual late Fall OAV due to time constraints. I placed my order and SNL shipped the same day. Since I was trying to hit an imminent weather window, the quick shipping by SNL was appreciated. I also ordered organic acid filter cartridges for my facemask (
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005YSRW0E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 ), and picked up a 1/4" oak dowel from the local hardware store.
I run all mediums, and my winter configuration is 3 medium boxes. I drilled a 1/4" hole in the middle of the top box on the back of each hive, and plugged the hole with a 2.5" length of 1/4" dowel. I ran an extension cord to my apiary and operated the Provap according to instructions. I fired up my smoker to use as a wind direction indicator. I did a test run where I filled the top cap with 1/2 teaspoon of OA, inserted the cap into the Provap with the Provap inverted, and then righted the Provap and let it discharge the OAV into the air so I could see how much vapor it produced and for how long. I watched the temperature read out during the process.
The Provap worked great and a big dense cloud of OAV vigorously issued from the nozzle. During operation, righting the Provap causes the OA in the cap to fall into the heated bowl, and converting the OA powder into OA vapor absorbs heat energy. This shows up as the bowl temp falling, and then starting to climb again once all the OA has been vaporized. It is actually nice that you can monitor the vaporizing process via the temp readout, where the Varrox is operated blind. The Provap was mostly done producing vapor once the temperature readout started to rise. It took about 20-30 seconds to vaporize all the OA from the cup.
I next did the same procedure to a hive where I inserted the Provap nozzle into the 1/4" hole of a hive before righting the unit. I essentially did what Lauri does in her video of using the Provap [
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYC1XveCxU ] (Lauri rights the Provap before inserting so viewers can see how much OAV the unit produces, where I inserted the Provap into the hive
before righting), as well as what is shown in the Provap-produced video [
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYl63Akou3E ]. I had plugged the hive entrances with a wadded up paper towel. Within about 10 seconds, I could see OA vapor "leaking" out of the seams of the hive. Based on how much vapor the Provap had produced in my test run, and seeing the vapor leak out of the hive, I am confident that the OA vapor flooded the entire hive. This took about 30 seconds. Once inserted and righted, the Provap operates hands-free, and while the hive was being OAV'ed, I was scooping the next charge of OA into the second cap for the next hive. Since I was working at the back of the hive, I didn't even need to wear my bee suit. I was thankful I had on the face mask, though. It was all super easy and fast.
I've got a day job and other time consuming projects, so, for me, time is my main bottle neck for working my hives. The Provap works much faster than the Varrox (although, the Varrox is still an effective unit, it is just slow), and so is a big help for me.
I treated on Sunday, and will check mite drops on Wednesday. I will post photos of my sticky boards so people can see for themselves the resulting mite drops.
.