> Don't you fear, Juanse, that, with open screened bottoms, the evaporation of
> thymol and oxalic crystals is less effective against the mites?

I do. I did my three-treatment regimen of OA vaporization, and then took mite washes on 4 out of every 6 hives. I found I was still bumping my threshold of about 4 mites per 100 bees. I'm just completing the second regimen of 3 treatments and hope for better results this time, but we'll see.

A few details:

All my hives have screen bottom boards. Some have boards fit pretty snug, while others take a little more padding of towels and bedsheets to really block them up. Pretty confident I get a reasonably tight seal on each hive. I do my treatments 8 days apart and I'm tempted to do a forth one for good measure. The first round of treatments, I used the recommended 1g of OA per deep body... this time, I'm using 2g per body. I leave the wand in for a minute or two so all crystals are gone and clean the cup with a wire brush each time. I get the full dose in. I leave the hive blocked up for 10 minutes of exposure... and randomly leave the board in the bottom 24 hours just to find/see any mite drop.

I'm not convinced on this method just yet.... but hoping maybe I get more intentional results soon.

Jason
 		 	   		  
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