> Bill, by "the wand," do you mean the Varrox vaporizer?
>

yes, but it comes in different flavors hence "the wand". I have a variant I
got from Mann lakes who seem to have dropped it for the Varrox. Mine has a
nice feature which was a strip of foam/aluminum which would fit into the
hive opening to block some of the escaping gas. I switched that with a  3/4
pine strip the same shape as a entrance reducer but with a looser fit so it
slides in and out easy but keeps the entrance closed and the tool level so
it does not come in contact with either the frames or floor of the hive.And
does a great job of sealing in the gas. Because my hives are hand made and
commercial I have a nice spectrum of hive opening widths, so I trimmed the
pine to fit the smallest and stapled a piece of cloth to the end to fill
gaps. Engineers love this sort of stuff.


> FWIW, someone on the List used to often say that "all beekeeping is
> local."  I'd be careful about extrapolating *your *successful mite control
> methods for your long-winter, largely isolated apiary to other regions :)


Yes, I know him and keep reminding him of that. Wonderful guy. I have known
him for what seems forever.

I was going to mention the problem of different locations and conditions in
my post but I have no idea if different conditions in different areas have
that much of an effect on the vaporizer. I suspect there is but it is used
in many different areas and seemingly successful. My concern in that area
is that there is a wide variation in treatments from 3 times 5 days apart
to up to nearly 30 days at varying intervals. That also biases the outcome.
Which is why I usually always say exactly what I do, not that others
results will be the same, but so there is a baseline.

Bottom line is that here in Maine there are two of us mentoring many (over
30) beekeepers and are successful with just OAV. I test everything out
there just so I know what works and what does not. OAV with the wand works.

As an aside, a commercial beekeeper in Maine who overwinters in the south
has run trials on OAV and has had the same results- it works.

I think another interesting study would be on virus infested hives which,
when treated with OAV, clear up and return to health. I and two other
beekeepers, one was commercial, have seen that- a hive that would normally
have died, saved.

Interesting stuff, this OAV.

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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