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Hi
I hope you are doing well amid the current situation. It is true that I have conducted some research here at the University of Florida that has shown the legal 1 g dose of OA per brood chamber to be completely ineffective. I conducted a follow up study to find the effective dose. We again confirmed that 1 g OA is totally useless and found that 2 g OA was better than no treatment, but not significantly better than 1 g. Treating colonies with 4 g did not appear to have negative effects on the health of honey bees, but it was not significantly better than treatment with 2 g. Thus, we can’t outright say that 4 g is better than 2 g, so the true best treatment is probably somewhere between 2-4 g. We have submitted this article for publication, but it has not yet been reviewed by other researchers.
All this said, I’ve been very careful not to make any recommendations of OA treatment, because telling beekeepers to quadruple their dose and that everything is going to be OK is not necessarily true. However, I do intend to take both articles (once the dose paper is published) to the EPA to advocate for a label change. I want OA vaporization to be effective for beekeepers because I feel that there are many positives to the treatment and the current dose does not appear to have any effect on the mites. However, until the label is changed I must only recommend that the label is the law.
Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.
Best,
Cameron
Cameron Jack, Ph.D.
Lecturer and Distance Education Coordinator
Good morning
I don’t mind you sharing our conversation on a bee forum. I would say that the current legal limit of vaporizing 1 g is totally worthless. I don’t necessarily mean that OA vaporization is a bust, because you start see some control at 2 g and a slightly better effect at 4 g. To be clear though, even after three rounds of treatment at 4 g once per week, we still had average mite loads of about 2 mites/100 bees. We started with high loads, so it did knock it down significantly, but we didn’t see the efficacy you would expect from something like amitraz. However, with resistance issues cropping up with amitraz, it is important to have a few more weapons in our arsenal. All that said, I am not recommending anything, just telling you our research findings. As I said earlier, we do plan to take our research to the EPA to advocate for a label change.
At this time, we are probably still getting our best control with amitraz, though we are starting to have some resistance issues ourselves. Thus, we use OA via trickle and vaporization during the winter and early spring. In Florida we don’t have much of a spring and jump quickly into summer, so if we still need a treatment in the spring before the nectar flows, we use thymol.
We really do try to practice what we preach and we use alcohol washes to sample our apiaries at least every other month to monitor Varroa populations. I feel strongly that frequent monitoring is a critical practice these days, especially after treatment, so you know if what you’ve applied is even working for you.
Best,
Cameron
Cameron Jack, Ph.D.
Lecturer and Distance Education Coordinato
Hi
I hope you are doing well amid the current situation. It is true that I have conducted some research here at the University of Florida that has shown the legal 1 g dose of OA per brood chamber to be completely ineffective. I conducted a follow up study to find the effective dose. We again confirmed that 1 g OA is totally useless and found that 2 g OA was better than no treatment, but not significantly better than 1 g. Treating colonies with 4 g did not appear to have negative effects on the health of honey bees, but it was not significantly better than treatment with 2 g. Thus, we can’t outright say that 4 g is better than 2 g, so the true best treatment is probably somewhere between 2-4 g. We have submitted this article for publication, but it has not yet been reviewed by other researchers.
All this said, I’ve been very careful not to make any recommendations of OA treatment, because telling beekeepers to quadruple their dose and that everything is going to be OK is not necessarily true. However, I do intend to take both articles (once the dose paper is published) to the EPA to advocate for a label change. I want OA vaporization to be effective for beekeepers because I feel that there are many positives to the treatment and the current dose does not appear to have any effect on the mites. However, until the label is changed I must only recommend that the label is the law.
Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.
Best,
Cameron
Cameron Jack, Ph.D.
Lecturer and Distance Education Coordinator
Good morning
I don’t mind you sharing our conversation on a bee forum. I would say that the current legal limit of vaporizing 1 g is totally worthless. I don’t necessarily mean that OA vaporization is a bust, because you start see some control at 2 g and a slightly better effect at 4 g. To be clear though, even after three rounds of treatment at 4 g once per week, we still had average mite loads of about 2 mites/100 bees. We started with high loads, so it did knock it down significantly, but we didn’t see the efficacy you would expect from something like amitraz. However, with resistance issues cropping up with amitraz, it is important to have a few more weapons in our arsenal. All that said, I am not recommending anything, just telling you our research findings. As I said earlier, we do plan to take our research to the EPA to advocate for a label change.
At this time, we are probably still getting our best control with amitraz, though we are starting to have some resistance issues ourselves. Thus, we use OA via trickle and vaporization during the winter and early spring. In Florida we don’t have much of a spring and jump quickly into summer, so if we still need a treatment in the spring before the nectar flows, we use thymol.
We really do try to practice what we preach and we use alcohol washes to sample our apiaries at least every other month to monitor Varroa populations. I feel strongly that frequent monitoring is a critical practice these days, especially after treatment, so you know if what you’ve applied is even working for you.
Best,
Cameron
Cameron Jack, Ph.D.
Lecturer and Distance Education Coordinato
