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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
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Tue, 19 May 2015 06:00:04 -0700
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"Can you tell us your mite sampling technique(s), thresholds, and treatment techniques?"

Counts on monitoring board, or powdered sugar shake.

Going to try oxalic acid vapor method tomorrow for a 4 deep hive struggling with a consistent mite load, 40-50 range per day on monitoring board for at least the past two weeks. This is the second year this hive has had some mites every time we checked it.

Oxalic Acid, which is naturally found in honey, it is the tart taste in rhubarb and spinach, a naturally occurring substance that in higher doses can be dangerous even to humans. Oxalic Acid has very few if any residual or sublethal effects and after 72 hours has dissapated by 80%.  

Studies show the initial after treatment mite count could decrease in the 90+% range.  It is 70x more toxic to mites than to bees. 

After reading the links below and a few other studies, we decided to use the vapor application method @ 1g per box (higher dose doesn't show significant mite drop).  

We think it will be fairly gentle on the bees and have a high level of success.  We are going with vapor rather than dribble.  Dribble is probably fine too.  Vapor should permeate 100% of the hive, perhaps give a higher level of colony saturation, work on tracheal mites, maybe better for the bee not to ingested it, although when ingested, there is the added benefit of bee's hemolymph being toxic to mites.  When ingested, trace amounts are found up to approximately 25 days.

We ordered the vapor tool and the Oxalic Acid last week and they both arrived yesterday.

So we have decided to go through the hive first and remove the rest of the drone brood the bees have been removing for the last three weeks, then treat.


Study using Oxalic Acid
http://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2006/01/M6010.pdf

Oxalic Acid - Relevant Randy Comments
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/oxalic-acid-questions-answers-and-more-questions-part-1-of-2-parts/

Vaporizer
https://oxavap.com/products/

Oxalic Acid
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007HUR0EK/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1CYP7JMGPN5MJ
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