>>> I used Apiguard and it did its job, but the lingering smell.....

> Oddly, that's not something that we notice.

I treated my hive with Thymovar for 5 weeks last Fall, and I found
the smell quite upsetting.  Usually when I sit on the deck, a few
feet from the hive, I detect a wax/honey/propolis kind of scent
that's quite pleasant and comforting.  With Thymovar in there, the
smell of the hive was just plain wrong!  Yes, I know that this is
an emotional reaction more than anything, but I'm surprised that
the bees don't pack up and leave just to get away from that smell.  :-/

I don't think the smell lingered, though.  A couple of weeks after
the end of treatment, I took the hive down from two brood boxes to
one in preparation for overwintering, and ended up taking the extra
box indoors for a while in order to decide which old combs needed
to be rotated out.  So that box of frames actually sat in my kitchen
for a significant time; I would have noticed a lingering thymol smell.

> Perhaps due to our different
> climate.  I'm curious as to the mechanism of how the thymol got into your
> combs.  Thymol evaporates very slowly.  Since Apiguard is applied in a pan
> or on a card, the granules must be carried by the bees for removal from the
> hive.  I'll see whether I can track its distribution this summer, using a
> fluorescent tracer.

If that smell from two Thymovar wafers is due to slow evaporation, I
shudder to think what fast evaporation would be like!


Anne, backyard beekeeper, Montreal.

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