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Lithium chloride as miticide

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67K views 143 replies 56 participants last post by  Serge Bibi  
#1 ·
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#11 ·
Re: Lithium Chloride for Varroa

psm1212 said:
Lithium Chloride. Is that a particularly dangerous compound to be handling?
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Lithium is used therapeutically for treatment of psychiatric disorders such as bipolar. My mother was on it for years. It is given in very low doses and monitored closely because it is poisonous. Handling it for treatment of bees would not be particular dangerous unless you drank it or somehow created lots of inhalable dust for some reason. The mechanism of the most efficacious way to apply it to a bee colony hasn't been worked out yet so it isn't clear how a beekeeper would be handling it. It probably would not be dangerous though. But they do need to find a way to treat bees so that it doesn't end up in the honey. To me that would be the big issue.
 
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#10 ·
Re: Lithium Chloride for Varroa

EXPOSURE AND TOXICITY: weakness, prostration, vertigo, chromosomal breaks, gaps and satellite associations, anorexia, dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, tremor of the hands, faintness of musculature, thirst, leukocytosis, and concentration and memory disturbances (especially with older people), fasciculations, muscle contractions, hyperreflexia and hypertonia, drowsiness, confusion, sometimes epileptiform insults, hypotension, coma, collapse. Independent of the plasma level, changes can occur in the ECG and in the EEC, with symptoms such as polyuria and polydipsia, seldom nephrogenic diabetes insipidus, ulcers of the leg, enhancement of acne and psoriasis, transient hyperglycemia, pruritus, and a metal taste and tinnitus
 
J
#16 ·
Re: Lithium Chloride for Varroa

Kcnc1 said:
Can someone with a chemistry background solve the following for me ( from the article).

How much lithium chloride to how much sugar water to achieve : single application of only 10 μl of LiCl in a 25 mM solution.
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Until basic safety is addressed, it would be irresponsible to promote a dosage (which only requires basic high school chemistry). Let the science proceed with safety trials before dosing your hives.
 
#15 ·
Re: Lithium Chloride for Varroa

there is very nice converstation going on here yet we have strayed once again from the topic at hand (lithium chloride in this case) to debating the merits or lack thereof of treating vs. not treating for mites.

the discussion is good and it's nice to see it being done with civility and respect but i can see how it might be frustrating to a reader looking to read up on lithium chloride (or any myriad of topics in other threads) and finding the thread derailed by this age old debate.

so for the sake of keeping discussions true to the title and the opening post i am going to start a thread in the main bee forum created for the expressed purpose of debating treating vs. not treating.

let's get back to lithium chloride here please.
 
#19 ·
MichiganMike. Correct, it only kills phoretic mites because it works systemically. The bee must ingest the Li for it to work on the mites. Also note that chronic exposure results in bee mortality. The theraputic treatment of 25mM in a single application followed by plain syrup seemed to have no detrimental effects. I wouldn't be rushing out to buy a bag quite yet, but it sure does look promising.
 
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#20 ·
This looks very promising. The bee death was seen in continuous long-term exposure. I'm wondering if they have started running trials on intermittent treatment designed around the mite lifestyle. 2-3 doses, if dosing is not too labor intensive, would be worth it to save hives.
 
J
#23 ·
Lithium chloride or lithium citrate provide reason for cautious optimism. As I read the article, ingesting a sugar solution with very small quantities of the lithium chloride makes the consuming bee “poisonous” (my word, not said in article) to the varroa mite. The “treatment” would involve feeding medicated sugar solution to all of the bees under artificial swarm conditions (no stored honey for an alternate source of food) - the bees must become “poisonous” by ingesting the medicine. That said, the article says tThis article has reference to “caged bees”, “artificial swarms”, and possibly “packages”. I do not believe the article’s testing results involved any “cell” testing of larvae or pupae. Lots of testing will need to be done to make sure there is no adverse impact to the host bees, and millions of honey consumers!
 
#28 ·
The prospect of being able to target mites in the cells as opposed to just being able to target the phoretic mites would be a great accomplishment. And if the Li doesnt show up in honey / wax / propolis that would be another great aspect. It still sounds way too early for these potential issues to be addressed much less being properly flushed out and used by the masses. It sounds promising though, I'll give it that. The work on what the mite is actually feeding from within the honeybee is what I found most interesting.
 
W
#29 ·
For those who have been out of chemistry class for as long as I have-
A mole is the molecular weight expressed as grams.
A molar solution is a mole dissolved in a litre of solution.
The unit mM stands for milli mol or a thousandth of molar concentration.
The molecular weight of lithium chloride is 42.39. Lithium is 6.94 plus chlorine 35.45. Thus a mole of LiCl is 42.49 grams and a milli mole is .04239 grams or 42.39 mg. That in a litre of water would be 1mM solution. 173.56mg in a litre would be 4mM, and 1084.75mg or a bit more than a gram in a litre would be 25 mM solution.

Were it I, the next experiment I would like to see would investigate use of lithium as a component of winter feed. If it works one could expect to start the year with practically zero mites. Could be great starter feed for a package too.

Bill
 
J
#31 ·
My wife tells me the symbol in the formula stands for microliter which is considerably smaller quantity than a milliliter. Your formula may be correct, but one conversion table indicates 10 microliters equals 0.01 milliliters. The conversion table also indicated 10 microliters was the same as 0.00003381 fluid ounce — a really small quantity. I know nothing about chemistry, but something seems wrong with the numbers. Let the scientists do the formulations; I do not believe anyone should trust these numbers from anonymous people.
 
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