Pete L has the ratio he uses posted as a sticky on beekeepingforum.
30g of thymol crystals dissolved in 5ml of surgical spirit. This is mixed with 140 ml of boiling water with emulsifying agent (lechithin) and you put 5ml of the resulting mix in each gallon of 2:1 syrup, ie about 1g of thymol per gallon of sugar syrup.
Last edited by Jon; 27-09-2011 at 02:08 PM.
The recipie needs 1 teaspoon. I bought some Lechithin today from Holland and Barrett for about £5.* Will last for about 50 years. Although its also good for cholesterol levels, heart and liver function and brain function so maybe I'll take it myself.
Jon - you need some too "ie about 1g per gallon of thymol".
* I thought I'd use it on my varroa infested and robbed colony.
An owner of a teaching apiary nearby uses Fumidil B because of stress from regular hive inspections his bees have to endure.
Oops. 1g of Thymol per gallon of syrup. Poor brain function today. Lost control of the word order in the sentence.
I think you might have trouble fltering with fine mesh as it will be clogged up by the debris. If you want to know infestation rates you MUST use a standard amount of water per bee and then preferably use a haemocytometer. However Randy Oliver calibrated using a 'standard' drop of water ( using a disposable swizzle stick) and the field of view in his microscope and got a reasonably accurate co-relation.Originally Posted by Jimbo
One difficulty to be aware of is that Nosema spores are heavy. Unlike bacteria they settle out of solution very quickly so if you are trying to quantify spore density you need to agitate the solution immediately before sampling. I would imagine that even applying the suspension to the haemocytometer slide will give you problems with spores settling out. I still think that presence and (apparent) absence is enough - when they are there they are there in numbers.
I've been given a present of a mag 200 electronic mocroscope will this work for most needs or do I need to upgrade
Probably not good enough.
x400 for most pollen (you'll see them under x200 but not that well)
x1000 for Nosema spores
Gavin,
I do not think that you require X100 for Nosema detection, they show up well at X400.
For bacteria AFB and EFB X1000 is required.
Hi Ruary and Nemphlar
Nosema spores are about 1/5 to 1/10 the size of pollen grains so they are fairly small but yes, x400 should be enough. Once you know them you don't need to see them in any detail but until you have that experience you'll need to worry about Amoebae, yeast cells and fungal spores. Once you have an obvious strong positive it is really clear as the highly refractive grains are characteristic.
Gavin
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