Hello Aaron & All,
I am certainly no expert on OA treatments but have attended 5 or 6
presentations on the subject mostly from Marion E. or one of his students.

>But I asked VOLUME, not concentration!

sorry! I am trying to do several projects at once and thought you asked the
recipe.


> Fall treatment if 50ml per established hive.

Actually you never want to use the 50ml amount ( Marion E.) other than a
general rule  and then I doubt very useful when dealing with a strong hive
solid in a couple boxes. Those in my opinion need more than 50 ml. I would
stick to the 5 ml. per seam rule. One rule I have found is to not use OA on
a hive with three frames of bees or less. Can really knock those bees back
or maybe they were headed south anyway. My OA use has been mostly in
experiment yards.

Others which use OA regularly may have a different view.

I always dose blow bees out of Nebraska with OA or sucrecide. To get those
bees *for those wondering*:
Hundreds of hives are sitting in a holding yard waiting to be depopulated.
The beek has deemed those hives are not worth the cost of transportation to
Texas and he needs the equipment for splits made in March/April.Being a
businessman I can usually talk the beek out of the bees at no charge as he
was going to blow out on the ground any way but many beeks charge for *blow
bees*.

We travel to Nebraska with a one ton load of empty package boxes and the
aluminum package filler package bee sellers use. A crew starts taking frame
after frame and shaking the bees into packages. The bees are broodless and
the queen is impossible to found as she has shrunk down to worker size. We
never fill a package over 4 pounds full but because the weather is cool we
can fill a 3 pound box with an extra pound. We start at sun up and finish
at dark. No breaks usually. Even then at times the beek starts depopulating
bees in another part of the holding yard as he sees we will not get all
done. Then return to the motel and let the bees settle. Return the next day
to Missouri. drench with either sucrecide or OA to remove varroa and
install.

>Surely a package would warrant a lesser volume, no?

The idea is to cover all bees. We work out of five gallon pails with a
sprinkler or spray with a sprayer ( not used for insecticide!). We have
never measured volume and in my opinion you do need to as the excess goes
through the bees.

bob

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