Help Oxalic Acid.

[Daveoneflowers]

Hi to you all. I am new to forums and its my first full year of beekeeping so please be gentle. I would like to vaporise oxalic acid to treat for mites. I think it is more of a commercial approach but makes sense in cold wet windy weather. I have seen various home made gadgets that work in a fashion but there are always better ideas out there. Does anyone have a reasonably priced method. I thank you for any help, and may I also say congratulations on your forum.

[prakel]

I'm going to leave answering your vaporization question to others who know what they're talking about, and they will answer that's for sure.

In the meantime, Hello, it's nice to see a new poster here; but one thing for sure, "...so please be gentle" is definitely an unnecessary plea on this friendly forum.

[Daveoneflowers]

Hi there, I was on one forum and they where always the same people and the shot you down in flames. This one has the best review and is informative and interesting. It's less active but not used for sarcastic banter. Thank you for taking time, that was nice.

[Rosie]

Hello Daveoneflowers. I can't help you with your vaporising kit because I never use it but I have been trickling for about 7 years and have never had a problem with it. You will probably get someone to advise you on vaporising equipment but these days the vast majority seem to prefer the trickling method as it's cheap, effective and relatively safe for both you and the bees. As for the weather I think cold is good although I would avoid wet and windy. I wanted to trickle mine this week but it's too warm for my liking.

Good luck whichever method you go for.

[Daveoneflowers]

Thank you for taking the time to reply, the only reason I want to use a vaporiser is to avoid opening the hive and others seem to have good results. I should probably just get on with it and not think too deep.

[beejazz]

Hi, I'll be trickling again this year, don't like to do it, but the alternative of not using oxalic could be worse, I've done it 3 times now, always get a good drop of dead mites, and can't see that it disturbs the bees that much. It doesn't take long, a minute or two, and i don't do it in very cold weather, I choose a mildish, dry, still day. The thing with vaporising is the equipment can be expensive, and for me at this point not worth it; my hives, also, are not near enough to car/house; but the cruncher is, if not done correctly its not just the bees that may die!

[Daveoneflowers]

Thank you, I know you have to be careful. Any advise is appreciated.

[Blackcavebees]

Hey Dave, welcome to the forum

I used Oxalic by trickle for the first time last winter. Easy to do and if you have only a few hives a much cheaper solution. There are "home made" vaporizers made using a 12v batt and a glow plug from a diesel engine which work but the stuff (oxalic) is nasty stuff and could do you a lot of harm without proper safety equipment. So for me I'll be dribbling again this winter. Your local doctors or chemist should give you a syringe if you ask politely (they often ask what for and it's a lead in for me to sell some local honey!)

Not sure if everyone does this, but I dribbled with warm syrup so not to totally chill the cluster. Obviously not too warm but I used one of those cup warmer cover things to keep it warm before pulling some out with syringe. Also, the commercial vaporizers are slim enough at end to fit through entrance block whereas some homebrew efforts I've seen need entrance block removed - just a thought if you are thinking of making one.

[fatshark]

Hi Daveoneflowers … if you open the colony on a cold, calm (and dry!) day the colony will be disturbed very little. I use one of those £1 dispensing bottles that Thornes sell - a reservoir with an inbuilt 5ml measuring chamber. I prepare and pre-warm the oxalic acid in a Thermos flask (clearly labelled and NOT used for anything else) and use this to refill the Thornes bottle as I go round the colonies. It's very quick. In fairness I've not used a vaporiser, but am perfectly happy treating using OA in this way.

I'm near you (Midlands) and - like Rosie - think it's too warm at the moment. I'll wait until we have a protracted cold period so I can be as sure as possible that the colony is brood less.

There's a recent suggestion that colonies should be treated earlier than this (i.e. mid-winter, after a prolonged cold snap) and that the colony should be checked for sealed brood (and any found should be destroyed). Until I see some evidence that this does more good than harm I'll be sticking with the 'conventional' trickling approach.

[prakel]

the only reason I want to use a vaporiser is to avoid opening the hive and others seem to have good results. I should probably just get on with it and not think too deep.

Nothing wrong with thinking!

On the subject of opening hives in cold weather, my own experience (even though a lot of you might not think that the Jurassic Coast qualifies as cold), has been that it really doesn't appear to do any harm: I've a couple of posts on this forum about intervention last Jan/Feb that not only probably saved one nuc but also revealed -to me- some interesting queen rearing behaviour which I might not have accepted without seeing it for myself. There's always talk that it may cause the balling of the queen but I don't know how much that's speculation rather than actual experience; put another way, how many people who say that it's awful practice that'll lead to disaster have actually taken combs out during the deep winter months? I believe that the late Bernhard Mobus did a lot of research on winter brood rearing -which must have required opening hives through the cold Aberdeen winter, maybe 'Poly-hive Pete' will present some more detailed information on that, in the meantime, Karin Alton from LASI in Sussex has recently advocated removing and destroying sealed brood at the time of trickling:

“it’s a fallacy that you can’t very quickly check for brood, we have opened hundreds of hives (very quickly- talking here couple of seconds) without any probs, even in cold, snowy January.”

“if you want to use oxalic acid, you MUST destroy brood before, as varroa hide in sealed brood, so waste of time and money putting OA on”

“Between 10th dec to 24th [in the UK] is the time with least likely/fewest sealed brood. uncap brood 48 hours before application, you would not need to pull out every frame, in fact you can tell by shifting the frames slightly if there is any, should be very few. if you use dribble method, you dont pull frames out anyway.”

Food for thought there.


edits:

Cross posted with fatshark.

Karin Alton does go on to say (on the London Beekeepers facebook page) that sublimation is more efficient than trickling.