Fall Mite control

[Charlie]

Allen,
in today's blog Thursday September 10th, 2015
you wrote

I went out and made up some formic pads

.

Please bear with me because the whole Varroa Mite control I find just a wee bit confusing as to what to use when as I understand that there are three main treatments for mites.
Formic & Oxalic Acids & Apivar
1- Apivar Dead easy... Put the strips in as directions say and leave for the recommended time no fuss no muss for a few dollars per box. viewtopic.php?t=1671 Why Beekeepers Need to Consider Plan B for Varroa Control.

2- From http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/2000 ... htm#Formic

Treatments: For varroa, a minimum of 5 treatments at 5 to 10 day intervals is the minimum

Not only does formic acid sound dangerous to use it looks like it's vary labor-intensive. All in all not overly appealing. However ignoring the temperature sensitivity it does have the added bonus of being able to kill mites in the sealed cells.

3- Oxalic Acid Can be used as a drip method when mixed with a sugar syrup. Oxalic Acid http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/arti ... c_drip.htm Various Oxalic Acid vaporizers have been developed as well as you can make cardboard pads. Oxalic Acid Seems be a whole lot safer than formic acid although it seems to have the same type of temperature constraints at least on the low end. It also needs repeated applications roughly a week apart from my understanding and does not have the added advantage of killing mites sealed cells. However when you read various posts Oxalic Acid seems to hold a lot of promise. However from viewtopic.php?t=1671 You state

OA works, but is not as uniform in results as Apivar. The hive geometry and the idiosyncrasies of clusters and amount of brood at the time affect the results.

I know I haven't mentioned some of the other methods because these seem to be the biggest methods at least in Canada. Can you or anyone in the forum explain what the use when and why would you choose one method over another method because it seems like they all worked to various degrees. Because none of them are 100% effective doesn't matter if one is 90% effective and another one is 95% effective if you have to make repeated treatments.

I believe I read somewhere that Oxalic Acid and Formic Acid does not actually killed the mites but it does make them fall, so would not the screen bottom board be better to use when using one of the acids?

[Vance G]

I tried to beat that ole ipm horse to death and when that wasn't flying I started treating with Apiguard by putting a dose of it on the lower hive body topbars and setting the upper box back down. Some way I missed the part that said treat again in ten days and I never did but the treatment killed enough mites I wasn't losing colonies to mites. Then when I first tried Apivar by putting it on in early spring when the brood cluster was just starting, one strip made my mites disappear. Now I plan to rotate treatment between those two chemicals. Both are relatively inexpensive especially when you figure what mites cost.

My homemade bottom boards do not give me room to put in an oxalic vaporizer and the one time I did try it, I got a whiff and decided I needed no more of that. If you use Oxalic I would recommend a respirator of some kind.