Hi fellow Beekeepers,
    As requested I am sending this email I  wrote to a beekeeper asking
how I treated for V-mites, below is the 20 second treatment. As
mentioned in an earlier post this process did stand up to comparison
test with Apistan.
 
I broke the top of the sprayer I used last year, but it was a gallon
sprayer
that you can purchase at any garden shop for around $20. I since bought
a new
one at Walmart (I hate to send any body to that over sized flee market)
for $7,
it is a 2.5 pint sprayer with a pump on top for pumping pressure into
it.
Basically one of those 1 pint finger trigger pump bottles will work also
and
only cost $1.  But if you got a lot of colonies as I do you can not
waste any
time. All I did was use 3 cups water to 3cups sugar, you can put the dry
sugar
right in the sprayer for mixing if you want, and add 4 oz of mineral
oil. That
is it sounds to simple doesn't it. The trick though is to shake the
mixture very
hard for at least 2 minutes, you need the mineral oil to get suspended
with the
sugar water.  I shake it for a few seconds after a couple of treatments.
 
You can not spray mineral oil out of a spray bottle in a mist you must
dilute it
down, and it won't mix with straight water I even tried in a blender for
5
minutes.
 
All you have to do is walk up to the front of the colony once a week,
best in
the morning just as the scout bees are out,  spray the front of the
colony and
floor and watch what happens. The bees are all just chomping at the bit
to get
foraging, they crawl out and eat all this syrup in a few minutes. Now
that doesn't
sound like it would even work, but as Dr Pedro has said only a trace has
to come
in contact with the mites to kill them. Since you had suspended the oil
into the
sugar water before spraying that is all it takes. Now remmember these
bees have
probably spent a lot of time curing yesturdays nectar flow, and I'll bet
the
first food supply to enter the colony each day gets consumed by the
larvae. Well
guess who could very well be having a good time sucking the life out of
those
larvae, there is no safe place for those mites once you get oil into the
food
chain. I know some people are not sure if the mineral oil could damage
the wax
later or get into the honey.  If you think of the very small amount that
gets
into the colony and only once a week, I don't think they could find a
trace of
it.
 
Please don't take this as the gospel truth, treat your colonies with
apistan
this spring, then do an ether roll see how many mites are left. Then buy
the the
$1 spray bottle and try it on 1 colony for a month then do another ether
roll,
if you try it and see the results you will never treat with apistan
again.
 
This will seem like it is not working for the first two weeks, but don't
stop
must follow through. Treat once a week for at least 1 month before
results can
be seen. If you want to see real fast results then tear the colony down
spraying
all combs and bees with the mixture, I think it should be warm though,
the bees
will clean them selves free of mite immedately  because you just sprayed
sugar
water with oil on them. This kills all mites on contact, because they
breathe
through their outer layer. This plugs up the pores and suffacates the
poor
things.
 
Until you get the hang of doing this I would not do the later, too much
mineral
oil on you bees will kill them. I would hate to see that happen and you
report
on the list that this treatment just wiped out a colony.
 
Well thats it have fun
 
Elroy
P. s. I didn't mention when you get the mixture shaken enough it will
turn
cloudy, and it will separate in minutes after shaking. So you must keep
shaking
other wise mineral oil will be at the top and come out last and kill
some bees
when your spray bottle starts to empty out. Put some mineral oil on a
couple of
bees so you can see what they look like when this happens, they look wet
and
dance around alot.