Cam makes an excellent point about testing your vaporizer before using it. The friend I mentioned yesterday, who torched his hive, also told me that the pan of his vaporizer melted in the process. He thought that his equipment was defective, but I suspected that he had left it hooked up to his battery and in the hive much too long. This caused both his pan to melt and his hive to catch fire.

So, last year, I tested my new Varrocleaner vaporizer before using it for the first time. I did this outside, on a breezy day standing upwind, so the fumes would blow away from me quickly. With this piece of equipment and 1/4 tsp. of OA (approximately one gram), it took about one minute for the OA to begin vaporizing and almost exactly two minutes for it to completely boil away. This result seemed consistent with the instructions to leave the vaporizer connected to the battery for 2 1/2 minutes. I have subsequently used more OA in larger hives, at a rate or 1/4 tsp. per single deep hive body equivalent, and 2 1/2 minutes has always been enough time to vaporize the entire amount.

One other finding from my test, however, was that it takes longer than I expected for the vaporizer head to cool fully before the next use. In my test, the head of my vaporizer was not cool to the touch until at least 9 minutes after disconnecting the battery. I did not want to try to cool the head with water, for fear of warping the head, so the treatment time per hive with air cooling only approaches 15 minutes.

John

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html