New research shows Varroa mites are made up of Oxalic Acid Vapor
Honestly, that's all I can figure. I've done 7 treatments of OAV, every 5 days since Sept 13. I'm counting the mite drops every day, and after every treatment the counts get higher and higher. I've tallied the 5 day mite counts between each treatment, and it has increased with every treatment. Today was 2 days after the 7th treatment and I had 721 dead mites on the bottom board. That's the second highest count on this hive since I started treating, and exceeds the previous second highest count of 552 which happened yesterday! I've now killed over 8600 mites on this one hive. The more I pump oxalic acid vapor into the hive, the more mites I get. I conclude, therefore, that mites are spontaneously generated, and are made from Oxalic Acid Vapor.
Comments
Charles Linder> I read that post, somethings not right with this guys methods! 8600 mites in one hive?? Me thinks his math is a bit funny!
Hossein Yeganehrad> The number is very high you should have other plan before you lose your hive. You may have to feed some supplument to prevent immunity issue true blood deficiency and virus attach. Call me if you need more information
Allen Dick> 8600 is only about 20℅ of 49,000 bees and that is about the population we'd expect on September or October. Obviously that is a high infestation, but not unheard of. Moreover at this time of year the brood area is reducing, forcing a larger percentage of mites to be on adult bees and not in brood so counts will go up until they are all out. The vapor is effective for about a week before the effect wears off, do keep on treating and at some point no to far away, the numbers will drop off steeply.
Charles Linder> Not sure where your at, but 49k in september is a pretty high number, ours are more like 20k tops and 20% infestation is so high I doubt you could ever achieve 49K
Allen Dick> Central Alberta. I shook packages from our production hives at the end of October one year and the average weight per hive was ten pounds as I recall.
Charles Linder> well 3lbs would be 12k so your definitely up there! by that time of the year hear that many bees are going to starve by spring, how much feed you leaving them?
Allen Dick> Oh. I see. That was supposed be 40,000 . Damn phone. My minimum weight going into winter was 55 kilos not including floor and lid. Often had too much feed left over in the spring
Charles Linder> wow! our target is around 15 kilos of feed, trying to keep smaller hives winterbound......but we are also doing almonds so huge hives are a bit of a problem.
Jean-Marc Le Dorze> Ours are going into winter at about 68-70 kg's excluding pallet and lid. I have been following the thread on BS. after 5 treatments of 5 days apart his numbers are still pretty high. Should come down soon, but it has not, for one reason or another.
Charles Linder> Hes got to be doing something wrong..... not enough vapor or too hot.....
Jean-Marc Le Dorze> Perhaps, he claimed bees had/have 4 frames of brood as of 10 days ago. I would think the same but we have not seen that sudden drop in mite numbers, yet he claims he is killing 1500 plus mites every 5 days. I would have said dead hive walking, but apparently it is still going.
Allen Dick> I don't think he is doing anything wrong. He is getting good drops. It takes a while to get ahead of the mites when they are this bad. Odds for colony survival are not great with such high loads, but some bees can stand high loads. Some can't.
Charles Linder> by the third round he should have had most if not all phoretics and stopped new ones from forming. First round gets phoretics usually around 95% and from that point all you should be seeing are new hatch mites, catch them before they get in a cell and you should be good in 16 days. if hes virus free they will survive, if they have a virus, its too late for winter bees to be healthy
Jean-Marc Le Dorze> Yes but, here we are 25 days into it, so new hatch had plenty of varroa
still... for whatever reason. Numbers should finally start dropping but
stranger things have happened before.
Allen Dick> Well, if facts and logic do not fit theory, it is time to examine the assumptions. Also if Apivar and Apistan take 42 days to achieve their expected kill in hives with brood, why do we think that oxalic should take less? Looking at the assumptions, people assume that the effect of each blast is persistent for a week or so after each blast since the increased drop lasts that long, but maybe all the effect takes place on the day of the fumigation and the continued drop is merely the result of varroa weakening and dying slowly over the ensuing week. If so, then there are days between blasts on which emerging mites can reenter cells without damage, extending the number of treatments required and period of time required to achieve control when brood is present since the killing effect is episodic and not continuous as it is with the strips. A profile of the kill I observed in 2011 can be seen at
Charles Linder> excellent thought Allen, we do pretty well know the effect of OA vapors is short lived, but mites exposed take a 36-48 hours to die. your point about renetry is correct but its assumed that mites stay phoretic for 2-3 days so in THEORY a 5 day window is good. we do know that 7 is too long. In this case what seems odd is the huge numbers that seemingly survived the blast and got back into the cells before the next blast. I don't think we can compare it to apistan or apivar, since those are contact killers and we are useing 42 days to ensure they all get exposed.
Allen Dick> I suppose we have to consider the possibility of re-infestation from outside the hive especially if there are other hives in the region and there is good flying weather.