I use it and love it. It is $20 and you can make something that would work much cheaper, but this is an all-in-one kit designed for the purpose.

I only use alcohol and have never tried powdered sugar. I would not thing powdered sugar would work very well in that unit.

It is one of those things that I bought on a whim, but now find irreplaceable.

 

So you do a check ...

Those kinds of checks won't tell you how many Varroa mites are presently tucked-up out of harms way in the cells of capped brood, and they won't tell you what your Varroa status will be in a week's time from now.

That's why I don't bother - never have - I just hit 'em with VOA. If there was a better/ cheaper/ more convenient way of keeping mites under control, then I'd be the first in line to use it.
LJ

 

I have no doubt that you have figured it all out for England. If we could only all live there.

 

Hey psm1212, It works for me in Virginia, ay any time I want to do a mite check all it takes is a treatment of OAV and check the sticky board 24 hours later. I used to try the mite checks with a 1/2 cup of bees from around open brood but lost hives through robbing frenzies started when I had to open the hives to get to the brood boxes in a yard of about 25 colonies so soon gave that up as a lost cause. Consider your alcohol wash you kill 300 bees to count a few dead mites, my check kills no bees and kills many many mites.

 

Anyone use these?

yes.

Seems most use alcohol?

yes.

Does it work as well with a sugar roll?

No.

Is it just another gimmick as compared to the pint jar and 1/8 screen lid for mite checking?

Does the same thing. But more convenient. Pint jars break. If I had less then 10 hives I probably wouldn't have bought one. I wouldn't call it a gimmick though it does what its supposed to do.

 

Johno: But doesn't little_john's statement apply exactly the same to your method? Your OAV will only drop phoretic mites, not those that are "tucked up in the cells of capped brood." So why monitor?

I took little_john's statement to mean that he does not check, he only treats. And he only treats with OAV. If that worked for me, I would do it in a minute. I have no doubt it works for little_john. But it does not work for me in the deep south with brood cycling all 12 months of the year. I suspect it will not work in Texas (home of the OP) either.

I just spent over $500 for Apivar strips to place into 50 hives. I promise you I didn't want to. But I have gone the "exclusive OAV" route from 2014 to 2017. It was not a horrible result. But it was not what I wanted it to be either. OAV works well for me through the spring until I get my supers on. But when my supers come off in July, the mite load is just too much, and my Italian queens are not slowing down enough for repetitive OAV treatments to catch up. And since they go right on brooding into the following spring, there is never an opportunity for OAV to do the job.

 

Psm1212, tell me how your alcohol mite washes tell you how many mites you have in your brood, all it is telling you is the amount of phoretic mites there are in a half cup of bees and rather hit or miss at that. One OAV treatment will tell you how many phoretic mites you have in the whole colony or around 90 to95% of phoretic mites in the colony I have been using only OAV on my 40 plus colonies for the last 7 years or so and state inspections in June come up with zero mites in an alcohol wash. I do not even start treating until after my honey comes off in late June or July but then treat often until no further mites fall then at least 2 treatments when all colonies should be broodless as result I do not have any problems in the spring. But at any time that I feel a colony needs to be checked that single OAV treatment in my opinion is far better than a mite wash to get an idea of mite infestation.

 

Psm1212, Johno's and Little John's methods work for me too. My apiary is maybe 50 some miles from Johno's. My state inspection alcohol washes also come up zero mites in the Spring. While it is true that we do have a broodless period, about four weeks worth, the mites are long dead before we get to mid Nov. The Thanksgiving and Christmas treatments are mostly insurance as almost zero mites fall. The last of my supers came off this past weekend and OAV treatments commence this weekend. The mite drop I see will tell me if I can wait until August before applying another treatment, or if I need to continue treating. Since I have seen some dead mites on the boards already, I suspect I will need to do a full round.

 

One of the best tools we have. Sure we could make a cheaper model but Laurel and I both use a varroa easy check. If it wasn't for our alcohol washes we would never had figured out how ineffective 5 rounds of OAV in 21 days is at reducing mites. OAV gave 70% reduction averages for us and that is way to labor intensive doing hundreds of hives. It has its place but I would never trust OAV or any treatment blindly.

Great Queens, Dead mites, and Good Nutrition gave me bee yards like this that in a poor year will still make 3 barrels. You control the mites or they control you.

 

It is a nifty tool, and when I do a wash, I use it. I generally use windshield washer fluid rather than alcohol, simply because it is in the garage.

All that said, I find the OAV test (described above) very convenient, and generally use it instead.

 

Being this far south we are pretty much have no real winter and the subdivisions around me always have things blooming. My bees may have been closed up in the hive with cold weather arround 12 days last year. Our northers are not much most of the time and if cold in the morning then 50 to 60 in the afternoons.

I usually put my suppers back on till fall so I worry about having to put a divider between the deeps and the supers but then you do not get the bees in the suppers treated.

I need to treat this week. I had very little eggs and larva but 5 and 8 frames of capped brood so they should hatch in the next few days and ready to treat with few capped cells.

 

Just to point out a definition....

Phoresis - Wikipedia
[Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoresis] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoresis
Phoresis or phoresy is a non-permanent, commensalistic interaction in which one organism (a phoront or phoretic) attaches itself to another (the host) solely for the purpose of travel. Phoresis has been observed directly in ticks and mites since the 1700s and indirectly in fossils 320 million years old, but is not restricted to arthropods or animals. .

Mites not under cappings are either phoretic (seeking to move to more prey) or more likely feeding on bees.

That being said, I am considering the point that an OAV treatment as soon as supers are pulled to see mite drop could be a worthy practice. Thanks for the information.

 

Trin: There was a lot of discussion about the term phoretic in the aftermath of Samuel Ramsey's research. But with decades of research papers inundated with the term, and it being a large part of beekeeping vernacular, I believe we are stuck with it.

 

Yes we use it to try and stay ahead of the little pests.

 

Varroa mites are phoretic. This is how they move from hive to hive. They are also phoretic inside the hive as they feed on more than one bee.

I appreciate Samuel Ramsey's work. I think he discovered very important behaviors and attributes of the varroa mites. Just pointing out that probably most of the mites not under cappings are feeding on and wrecking bees in the hive.
Sort of like how many of us travel to work and spend most of a day working, not traveling.

I was surprised at how fast they can move. I picked one up on my finger and it moved rather quickly given its size and short legs. Makes me think I might go back to vegetable oil trays under the screen board. At least those that fall off will be in trouble. Sure, it won't be a practical beekeeping tool when the number of hives in the apiary grow, but my goal now is to get as many hives as possible surviving year to year.

 

Kamon I do not know what your mite load was when you treated 5 times over 21 days and only reduced your mites by 70% but I take it that you then went to Apivar which then went on for 42 days, maybe if you took the Apivar out after 21 days you would still end up with 70% efficacy.

 

I did it on 48 colonies in 2018. Only did 1 last year for youtube purposes. The point I am making is that it was not as effective as we have often been told. It was definitely not what I was hoping to find but here in the south we need to use OAV WAY to much.
You are likely right. There probably wouldn't be a higher rate of kill on a hive with alot of brood and Apivar strips in 21 days. The fact remains I don't have time to hit my hives 18-22 times each a year.

 

A lot of varoa management will depend on whether you are treating your mites or someone elses. I am fairly well isolated so mostly treat my own and get by with 10 treatments in late summer through fall and then 2 treatments or possibly 3 over winter which has resulted in zero mites in random samples over the last 2 years by my States inspectors. The time taken is around 4 hours to treat more than 50 colonies in 3 yards multiplied by 12 or 13 times a year at a very reasonable cost. No time taken to do mite checks as you can do your mite check on the stickies the next morning, no opening up those 50 colonies to get to the brood for your 300 bee sample that you are going to kill with alcohol which I guess would take me about 6 hours. Then there would be the robbing frenzies started by opening so many hives, come to think about it much the same would happen if I was trying to insert Apivar strips

OAV has certainly worked for me.

 

The time taken is around 4 hours to treat more than 50 colonies in 3 yards multiplied by 12 or 13 times a year at a very reasonable cost

And therein lies the key metric, how much do you value your time? 4 hours a dozen times is 48 hours spent treating 50 colonies, so close enough to call it an hour per colony. So it depends now on how much you value your time. If your time has zero value, then it's a low cost. OTOH, if you place a value on your time, it becomes a very substantial cost, and if you are using hired help, then it becomes a very real cost.

Oxalic Acid Dihidrate is inexpensive to purchase, I've got a 1 kilo container on my desk that cost $15 or so a couple weeks ago, so at 2 grams a shot (that's what the label says to use when you buy it in Canada) that works out to 750 rounds out of that tub, which works out to 2 cents per application for material cost, ie, pocket change. For your 50 colonies it's a dollar per round for an oxalic treatment for the actual acid, you probably spend a lot more than that on gas going from yard to yard. And there in lies the issue, the costs folks do not account for.

Oxalic acid is an inexpensive mite treatment, but, it's very labor intensive to apply multiple times. My 1 kilo tub of OA will do your 50 colonies a dozen times with a bit left over. Minimum wage here is $14.60 an hour. At 48 hours that's a cost of $700 for labor by the time it's in the colonies vaporized, and I have not yet accounted for the costs of getting a 110v plug out to those yards to run the vaporizer. If you have to pay for labor, then in the end, oxalic acid is no less expensive than strips but you just pay it at the payroll instead of at the supply store. If you are not counting your time as a cost, then the value in doing a round of oxalic acid vaporizing is essentially 'sweat equity' in the beehives.

 

I had to learn the cyclic nature of Varroa infestations, especially horizontal spreading in the Fall, using OAV treatments and counting the Varroa Dead Drop on a sticky board ( plotted data). After a few cycles and improved OAV application cycles, I seem to have developed a schedule of events without testing. My hives are pretty clean after the "winter" treatment thus no treating is required until the Fall. But I try to sample capped drone brood occasionally and randomly to see if Varroa is an issue.

I do have a clue if this applies in your environment / brooding cycle. We do have low amounts of brood rearing in winter which enables the OAV process; maybe a shutdown or pause in December which is why I treat 2X in Jan. There always seems to be some brood around.

 

Hey Grozzie I see no mention of the time taken to install Apivar and to do mite checks on those colonies? Besides as a small beekeeper one would be checking those hives out frequently anyhow and the travelling would be part of visiting your hives. Also not many hobby beekeepers would get a decent return on their time spent most would definitely not make minimum wage.

 

I've used the easy check for the last couple of years now. I used to do a sugar roll with a screened shaker, but I found the alcohol wash more convenient and easier to perform on multiple colonies, and if I'm not mistaken it's supposed to be more accurate than the sugar as well. I've used both alcohol and washer fluid, and prior to the easy check I tried I number of homemade testers. The homemade jars worked, but after breaking the last one I decided I would give the easy check a go, and I wouldn't go back.

I'm on the smaller side of things with 15 colonies, and my goal is to be as chemical-treatment free as much as possible, so for me I test each of my colonies monthly and then I can track numbers and depending on where I am in the season I might requeen, split or otherwise force a brood break, and if necessary I will treat as well. It also gives me an idea which queens I want to graft from in future years. That strategy might not work for someone with a larger apiary or different goals, but for me, that's why I test.