Bill wrote:
"Moisture in the hive also plays a role in the duration since I think it is the prime ingredient for the breakdown of the OA in the hive and its reduced efficiency"

My ponit of view is that water works with OA like the humid atmosphere for sulfur dioxide to become sulfuric acid.

OA gas disociates in contact with some moisture into the beehive such as sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere. Will this occur in the mouth of varroa? Maybe

In the other hand I accept that my pHmeter works in water solutions but I introduced the pHmeter into a mix of OA and Glycerol and the equipment gave me around pH 4. When I put an aliquot of this mixture into water pH fall to 0 inmediately.

For this reason I realy think water plays a very important role to kill varroa with OA and the success of a glycerol mix is because it is more easy For OA to move to water from a Glycerol solution. Solubility of OA crystals in water is very low (9,5g/100ml?) and it is necessary too much water by each crystal to hit varroa.

Best regards
Fernando
Cordoba - Argentina
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