Oh! boy, I stirred a whole hornet's nest with my comments on the
metric system. My thanks to all with sensible information, a
raspberry to the superior ones!
        Some days ago I wrote regarding my results with FGMO and essential
oils, more information is available which I think will explain some
of the mixed results reported by others.
        As some of you know we raise queens using baby nucs, small mini
hives with just a handful of bees, which at this time of year become
disposable. We wait till all the brood has emerged then shake the
bees into specially prepared hives capable of accepting more bees.
These babies are examined in great detail, firstly for stray queen
cells, then for virgins, and finally to check all the brood has
emerged. So, there is extensive manipulation of lots of these babies
over a period of 3 weeks.
        Early in the year we had to decide on a Varroa treatment, otherwise
these mini's would be over run by the end of the summer. The jury is
still out as to whether queens are damaged by Varroa, but we didn't
want to find out. It was decided to try essential oil in the feed and
FGMO oil as a treatment. The problem was how and when. At the wrong
time and the virgin could be damaged as they run all over the box
looking for rivals soon after emergence. We decided on a stream
across the top bars, same as the big hives, but just after
introducing the new cell, which allowed 48 hours for it to be spread
around before the queen emerges. Allowing for our timing this means
each baby got FGMO treatment every 14 days.
        We are now in the process of dismantling all the baby nucs and
here's the good news.*No Varroa.*  We have tried a number of
different tests and can't find one. We've even gone so far as to
examine the cell roofs of dozens of frames with a large binocular
magnifier looking for the feces of Varroa, nothing.
        I believe the results we have are an explanation of the variety of
results reported by other users of FGMO. The bigger the hive the more
the treatment is diluted by the sheer volume of bees. This is borne
out by our results, nothing in our baby nucs and steadily getting
more and more till the maximum Apistan drop was from a drone mother
hive.
         I am left with a simple conclusion, FGMO works, to produce good
results as the hive gets bigger, either increase the volume or
frequency of the treatment.
        Comments?

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The Bee Works, 9 Progress Drive, Unit 2,
Orillia, Ontario, Canada.L3V 6H1.
Phone (705)326 7171 Fax (705)325 3461
David Eyre,
e-mail<[log in to unmask]>
http://www.beeworks.com
This months special:-Vest/veil combination
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