.
Those methods and stuffs have differencies. Look here http://bees.freesuperhost.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1136436349

Vaporazing is used when outer temperature is over 17C.

* When you heat oxalic acid it turns to formic acid.
* You may use directly formic acid in pillows.
* Thymol works same way as formic acid.

These are used to hit down mite population so bees are able to raise healtier winter bees.

Oxalick trickling is used when all brood are away and bees are in winterball.

I have not needed formic acid or thymol because my mite load is very low. Trickling is enough and I do not count mites. I see load in summer from drone pupaes and in the floor when mites are dead.

Stuff versus stuff is not correct way. They work different way and you should take the method according what situation you have in your hives.

.

 

Thanks for the comments Finman.
The temperatures here in the day have been about 7C and at night about 1 or 2C.

The hives I am using are polystyrene so the temperatures in the hives are up near 85F so the cluster is not formed yet.

I could not see much progress with the fogging, of thymol, even treating every 4 days so after consulting with Dr Rodruigez we went to 4 days and then tried the Oxalic vapour. I can only observe that the difference was astonishing. Almost 10 times the increase in the count of mite drop. !!!

I should add that I had an instinctive aversion to gassing the bees with acid vapour. I found it hard to believe that it would not kill everything living inside. But the Canadian Dept of Agriculture, among others, has tested the proceedure and it is now the most recommended. Yesterday, about 34 hours after the treatment I could not see any change in the numbers of bodies on the landing board or in front of he hive. I was pouring rain so I did not open the hives. Hopefully some time this year it will stop raining. Can you put behives on an ark ??

The good thing about the findings with the vaporization treatment is that if you still have brood you can do repeat treatmeents to kill mits that come out on emerging brood. They are recommending one treatment per week for 3 weeks.

[ October 28, 2006, 08:35 AM: Message edited by: brent.roberts ]

 

Hi Brent. Here in Finland we have same circumtancies as you. When you have nearby winter it is not sence any more use fogging. When you use oxalic trickling it makes very good result if brood have all emerged.

I have used mere trickling 4 years and now I hardly seen mites this summer. They are there, and I do not calculate them. I just give the trickling and I want to kill even that "last mite". So no problem next summer.

 

.
When I first used trickling I was really afraid of killing my hives. But nothing happened. System seemed too simple to be true.

.

 

>In my mind at this early stage with Oxalic, I would have to call FGMO a preventative. If you've got 'em bad. Use the Oxalic Acid vaporization.

Exactly.

 

I have seriously considered Oxalic for one of my three hives which has high mite counts going into winter. This one i did not fog often(twice all summer( The other two were fogged every 7 to 14 days or so. For maintenance purposes, fogging kept the mite counts down in these hives.


The hive with the high counts was not fogged until i saw the high counts in early september.

I have powdered sugared, and fogged since then which dropped 60 to 100 mites per day for three days or more. It is too late for more those treatments now. I fear Oxalic may be the only answer for this hive.

Major concern is, redisue in the wax/ honey and is it harmful to consume? I have read positive reports on this but I am still hesitant

 

.

Jamie, let the hive die. So you need not be afraid.

.

 

>Major concern is, redisue in the wax/ honey and is it harmful to consume? I have read positive reports on this but I am still hesitant

Oxalic acid is in many of your foods already. Chocolate, rhubarb, honey, etc.

 

.
Here is quite clear information from oxalic acid in human. Over 90% are excreted via the urine.

http://www.emea.eu.int/pdfs/vet/mrls/089103en.pdf
.

 

.
SORRY! 90% means that oxalic acid has give into venous, not digested. Read more.
.

 

Thank you to michael B and finman. I've read the european study. That information plus beekeepers with your credentials have given me more confidence to try Oxalic on that hive. Should be broodless in a week or so at which time I will trickle OA, since it seems to be easier than the vaporization method. (no equipment needed) I'll keep you informed
Jamie

 

Saturday's counts have been added to the spreadsheet at the link listed above.

Today I treated the balance of the hives with Oxalic vapour, between rain squalls and wet snow.

I expected the counts to drop after such high numbers yesterday ... not so, virtually the same.
That's 6500 mites from hive #5 in 2 days.
Did every bee in there have a mite on it ???

 

Brent,...good work with the Oxalic acid vapour treatments. Sounds like you're knocking them down before things got too out of hand with the mite loads. I'm also having good results in using the Heilyser vaporizer. I'm planning on following up in another week or so with a 2nd treatment, and maybe a third after that.

 

<6500 mites, Did every bee in there have a mite on it ???>

Seems huge, but good. Mites concentrate in last brood cells and violate badly youngest wintering bees. Winter ball will be smaller than without mites.

We use here vaporazing too and then you need not other methods.

 

Sunday's results:

Hives #1, which add a few days with counts of 0 to 3 mites dropped, suddenly went over 100 after the OA vapour treatment.

Hive #3 which add be dropping 25 to 30 in the last few days shot up to 411 !!!

The previous high count hive #5 has finally started to slow down, dropping almost 1/2 of the previous 2 days.

Hive number 2 for some reason went back up to it's largest drop ever.

An Excel sheet of the whole sorry tale can be seen
at http://www.hhrobertsmachinery.com/private/mites.xls

 

.
Brent, have you looked brood inside the hives?
.

 

I understand when people say something like "FGMO is only a preventative". I wouldn't presume to assume what others have read about FGMO but based on my reading my understanding is the fogging is one part, the cords are another. The fogging and the cords work together just fine. They don't do very much apart. So if you just want to fog then fine but you're getting 30% of the effect you would get from fogging and using cords.

I totally understand why people just fog and don't cord. Fogging is easy. Those cords are a pain in the patootie to make. I think it would just be easier to OA the girls and don't bother with the FGMO if you're not going to cord. Obviously OA works with pretty instant gratification type results.

Best,

Frank

 

Finman
I have looked once aobut 3 weeks ago and the brood was almost zero. Some hives had maybe 20 or 30 capped cells, most had less. When I first started the fogging I was finding a few live mites on the tray but 95% dead. About 10 or 15% were light coloured. Now they are all very dark brown.

Frank
I have the cords ready to go in but it has p*&^%$d rain here almost every day for the last 9 weeks. I didn't want to do the cords when it was cold and wet. (not sure if that was selfish preservation of me or them ... but I did transplant trees in the rain so... ) I was corresponding with Dr R and he also was encouraging me to get the cords in . He says they will help a lot thru the winter when you can't fog.

==============

Todays counts when haywire. Most hives went way up except the original 2 that were treated with OA first. It was warm here so for the first time in weeks and the bees were out. So I am thinking the ones that flew dropped a lot of dead mites that were not counted. This experience makes me think that counting drop rates once a week or 10 days is not nearly a good enough sampling rate to know what is happening in a hive. My hive #1 had several days of counts between 0 and 10 in the last few weeks and today dropped 539 !!!! Where did they come from.

For whatever it's worth the full spread sheet mentioned above has been updated. Read it and lose confidence in your counting.

[ October 30, 2006, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: brent.roberts ]

 

> Did every bee in there have a mite on it ???

Looks that way. Those are incredible mite counts. You will probably want to plan on 3 treatments, 5 - 7 days apart, to make sure you clean them out.

I had 4 hives last year with counts like this and thought they were doomed. I did 3 OA Vapor treatments very late fall and 3 of the 4 colonies made it fine to spring. I believe the 4th would have make it also but the cluster worked itself into a corner and isolated itself from stores and they starved.

Are you seeing any signs of DWV?


( Did the visual tour of your place.... looks like a resort.

Thanks for sharing

[ November 03, 2006, 05:57 PM: Message edited by: Mike Gillmore ]

 

MIke
I found only maybe a dozen deformed wings in the #5 hive, the worst one. This was also the strongest in numbers of bees, by far. Did not see it in any of the others ... that doesn't mean it wasn't there. With it getting cold I've been trying not to open the hives much. I am planning a second treatment very soon. There was virtually no brood anywhere when I started the OA. Maybe a couple dozen capped cells in the best hive.

I'm feeding pollen and sugar. They gobbling the pollen patties and not doing much with the sugar yet. I hope to stimulate a bit of laying before it gets real cold.

Your results are encouraging. I'm pushing to get all of them thru the winter.

Thanks for the comments. Just been here 3 years. Should have moved out of the city 30 years ago.

I've just posted tonight's counts. Half the hives are below 100, one below 50 and not one over 200. Real progress.

 

Yesterday, Sunday, I treated hives number 2 and 5 a second time with the Oxalic Acid vapour. Then today the weatherman stuck his thumb up and the temperatures went up to nearly 65F. Thousands of bees went flying. There was nothing out there but they at least flew to the syrup I put out.

But the effect of the weather on the rate of drops was amazing. For example one hive was about 90 mites yesterday and it hit nearly 400 today ... and that was not a hive I treated yesterday. The total drop for all the hives was up over 110% ... more than double. The curious thing is that one of the hives that got the second treatment did not stand out at all. It only went up 40%. The other one went up 440%. Go figure.

I think the lesson to learn here is that mite counts using drop rates to a sticky board cannot be trusted on a one day count. I would guess that sugar rolls or ether rolls would not be so influenced by the weather and more accurate on any given one day count.

 

Brent, you make accurate work.

Myself, I do not calculate them. I give one trickling and that is all. In summer I cut drone combs and feed them to birds.

To morrow we have +2C and snow one feet and it is time to give trickling.
.

 

Would any one care to comment on how to apply OA vapor to hives with SB, 4 hives to a pallet with 1" X 3/8" openings on landing boards with a Heilyser?
Walt

 

Hi Walt
If you can't close the SBB, I would take plastic 4 mil or more, maybe even a plastic tarp, and run it around the sides of the pallet, tape to the hive above entrance, with bottom of plastic draped to the ground. Then as you do each hive, drop the tarp so you can get the vaporizer in and stuff rags in the entrance around the vaporizer wires.

Of course you want to do it when they are not flying I think.

See what others say.

 

Walt,

If you look toward the bottom of this link
you will see a slanted piece that you can
slide under the hives just by tilting them
back. You could slide them over the SBB.

I am putting together a half dozen this
winter.

http://www.algonet.se/~beeman/research/oxalic/oxalic-1-nf.htm