I have nine hives in my yard and I have been reading about all the different methods for treating varroa. Now's the time when varroa are nearing their peak. Looking at all the angles and costs, I selected oxalic acid and vaporization as my method of choice. In the long run, I think it is the cheapest way to go with less side effects. Oxalic acid is very cheap and the only real short term cost is getting a vaporizer. I plan on having more hives in the coming year and buying strips gets costly with some side effects.
I thought about making a vaporizer, but really didn't want to fool around experimenting and coming up with something that might not do a very good job after spending time fabricating. I shopped around and got a Varrox vaporizer and am very happy with it. It's the heavy duty one. I am sold on it.
I did three treatments...five days apart...and just finished up this week. I did put blank white boards under my 3 screened larger hives to see if I had any real mite fall after the third treatment and things look really good. From what I have read, oxalic acid also kills the trachea mites, too.
I have some single hive bodies with the small entrance reducers on them. The Varrox worked fine by lifting up the hive body with a hive tool and placing the Varrox handle in the small entrance and lowering the hive body back down again.
After doing the first treatment and seeing how slow I was...I gave it some thought. I went to Walmart and bought four of the cheapie digital timers for about $4.50 apiece, (kitchen section). Using several timers at once...improved my efficiency greatly. One timer is kept set at around 3 minutes for the burnoff time, and the other three timers are set for around 10 minutes. Using these several timers, you can just bump along hive to hive, with the 10 minute timers alarming when they are done...as you move along down the line. The secret to being efficient time-wise is to keep the vaporizer smoking with little lag time between hives. You can be two or three hives ahead of the last 10 minute timer counting down if you are fast enough.
I have seen no effect with the bees in the hive after a treatment is done. It's business as usual 10 minutes after I have pulled away from the hive. I plan to do one treatment in late November when there is no brood in the hive.
Opinions, questions?
I thought about making a vaporizer, but really didn't want to fool around experimenting and coming up with something that might not do a very good job after spending time fabricating. I shopped around and got a Varrox vaporizer and am very happy with it. It's the heavy duty one. I am sold on it.
I did three treatments...five days apart...and just finished up this week. I did put blank white boards under my 3 screened larger hives to see if I had any real mite fall after the third treatment and things look really good. From what I have read, oxalic acid also kills the trachea mites, too.
I have some single hive bodies with the small entrance reducers on them. The Varrox worked fine by lifting up the hive body with a hive tool and placing the Varrox handle in the small entrance and lowering the hive body back down again.
After doing the first treatment and seeing how slow I was...I gave it some thought. I went to Walmart and bought four of the cheapie digital timers for about $4.50 apiece, (kitchen section). Using several timers at once...improved my efficiency greatly. One timer is kept set at around 3 minutes for the burnoff time, and the other three timers are set for around 10 minutes. Using these several timers, you can just bump along hive to hive, with the 10 minute timers alarming when they are done...as you move along down the line. The secret to being efficient time-wise is to keep the vaporizer smoking with little lag time between hives. You can be two or three hives ahead of the last 10 minute timer counting down if you are fast enough.
I have seen no effect with the bees in the hive after a treatment is done. It's business as usual 10 minutes after I have pulled away from the hive. I plan to do one treatment in late November when there is no brood in the hive.
Opinions, questions?