>There's a small margin of safety with oxalic.  It's easy to overdose your bees.

Well, I'd like to report that after doing mite washes yesterday (this after a 2nd regimen of 3 more OA vaporizations) that my mite levels are unchanged in a several hives. The first regimen was three treatments 8 days apart using 1 gram of OA per hive body.

Mite washes revealed more mites than I'd like... so I went into a second round of three more treatments, again 8 days apart, but using 2 grams per hive body. I read somewhere that the bees can tolerate pretty high amounts of OA... at least 6 times the recommended 1 gram per hive body... so I felt comfortable using 2 grams this time.

However, again, after my washes yesterday, I am coming up with 3-4 mites per 100 bees and that is the same I found in these hives after the first round of treatments. As of now, I'm planning to throw in some Apivar strips to the higher hives, and overall, I'm disappointed with the results after the amount of work this took. 

Maybe I'll save the OA for new swarms, cut-outs or packages. I'm remaining open-minded, but skeptical. In the spring, I'll do washes again, and if I need to intervene, I think I will try a round of treatments using 1 gram per hive body, but perhaps 4 treatments every 4-5 days. Somehow, some way, I am not knocking the mite levels down and I'm sure I have sealed the hives properly, and left them closed up for 10 minutes. Is there anything else I could be missing? Thanks.

Jason
SE Indiana
 		 	   		  
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