Hello Bee-L
I work for Stan Sandler.  Stan has asked me to post this because he is having difficulty with internet access in the Philippines.  I will forward any replies to him.  Thank you!

"Here in the Philippines beekeeping is not in a very good state.  I have looked at a few hundred colonies in quite a few places now and have yet to see anything that would completely fill a box.  .Some beekeepers have given up on mellifera and are beekeeping with cerana, or are keeping trigona.  Not only does trigona honey sell at a higher price, the bees themselves can be sold to Japan as pollinating units.  I am looking forward to an assignment with the honey hunters of dorsata on a small island, because they tell me that they harvest sustainably (using smoke in the daytime, not burning the bees at night).

You can imagine the difficulty of inputs for beekeeping where  the average annual income is less than $1000, and is probably considerably less for the rural people.  Formic acid is available only in Manila, and people look at me with astonishment when I talk about a respirator and they ask what one costs.  Remarkably though, in any small town you can get a little packet (about 25 grams) of oxalic acid in the market for 2 pesos (less than five cents).   It is used as a stain remover when doing laundry by hand.   I hope to do some analysis that might assure me that it is pure (there is no label, nothing, just a little plastic bag of crystals that look identical to the oxalic acid I brought).  The chemistry lab here at the tiny agricultural college has just about nothing, but maybe I can compare something.  I will also take samples home.

But the usefullness of oxalic is limited in a place with no broodless period.  I have thought of some management techniques that could be used in conjunction, but have a specific question for the list:   What is the damage done by oxalic acid so that it is only supposed to be used once a year?  With no access to other treatments I have seen colonies where people just removed all the brood.  It does seem to have taken care of the mites, but it sure weakened the hives.  They could have put all the brood together and then treated that colony several times with oxalic.  Whatever damage resulted might be better than losing it all.

Some more information on oxalic acid damage to bees and brood would be much appreciated."

Regards 
Stan

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Access BEE-L directly at:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L