Did Oxalic Dribble on Hives Today

[sarafina]

I made up 2 cups of 1:1 syrup since I only have 2 hives and added 18 g. oxalic crystals to the jar and shook it real good until it was dissolved.  I used a turkey baster that I marked 5 ml on the side to dribble it. 

Went pretty smooth I guess.  I added oil to my trays under my screened bottom boards so I will report back a mite count once I pull them.

We never really go "broodless" here but now is the time of year with the smallest brood nest so I once it warmed up (was in the 60's today and sunny) I decided to do it.  Hopefully, it will knock my mite population down significantly going into this season and then maybe I can get by with the powdered sugar treatments after the main nectar flow.

[Finski]

One way is to take all brood away if they are few.

Another way is to make false swarm, and tirickle it.

When all bees from brood part have emerged, then trickle thane and join parts.

[sarafina]

Well, I must say it worked very well because I have a lot of dead varroa in my trays of oil.  I can only do the dribble treatment once, so hopefully it knocked down enough to make it through the honey flow coming up and then I can sugar dust them again.

I have a question - how do you count the mites?  Do you count 1/4 of the tray and multiply by 4?  It would be very tedious to count the whole tray.  I would like to get a count and put the trays back to see if more drop off.

[David LaFerney]

I start by counting in a quarter or half of the tray and if it is going to be more than a 100 total I chalk it up as "too many"   When it is only 25 or 30 it's a lot easier to get a count.  I suspect with experience you can just look at it and guess and get pretty close.      When I hear people say that a hive has 50,000 bees I always wonder what they base that on. 

Sounds like you did good with the drip treatment.  I did vapor treatments last fall, and while it greatly reduced the number of mites I've never had a mite free 24 hour count.  Keep us updated - I for one am still trying to determine the best way to go.

[Finski]

Mites will drop next 4 weeks. The biggest count will be after several days.
Personally I have never count them. I just look that they are many.

Finnish beekeeping specialist Ari Seppälä calculated from Finnish
varroa trickling research  following lag time :

After
cure ---- rate of all falled
1 week ---- 54 %
2 week ---- 20 %
3 week -----13 %
4 week ------8 %
5 week ------5 %

A finnish researcher Seppo Korpela has calculated during many years mites' drop

year 2000  altogether 34468 falled mites

1-2 weeks 96%
3-4. weeks 2,4 %
 
v. 2004 ... 10730 mites:

1-2 weeks 98 %
3-4 weeks 2 %

Y  2005....  12270 mites

1-2 weeks 96 %
3-4 weeks 4 %

[sarafina]

I start by counting in a quarter or half of the tray and if it is going to be more than a 100 total I chalk it up as "too many"   When it is only 25 or 30 it's a lot easier to get a count.  I suspect with experience you can just look at it and guess and get pretty close.      When I hear people say that a hive has 50,000 bees I always wonder what they base that on. 

Sounds like you did good with the drip treatment.  I did vapor treatments last fall, and while it greatly reduced the number of mites I've never had a mite free 24 hour count.  Keep us updated - I for one am still trying to determine the best way to go.

Ok, well definitely "too many"!

I cleaned the trays up and added more oil and reinstalled them today.  Will check them next weekend to see what the count it.

[sarafina]

Well, I am definitely pleased with the dribble results so far.  I pulled the trays after another week and found only a couple of mites.

The weather was sunny and 62 today so I decided to check on the girls.  Both hives had a small group of bees in the top box covering a small section of capped brood.  Honey stores about gone but our winter is pretty much over here - we'll have azaleas blooming all over our neighborhood in a couple of weeks and some redbud also.  I put some regular 1:1 sugar solution on both hives to help get them started as I suspect they will start gearing up with the brood rearing soon.  I feel real good about my mite situation going into brood rearing season this year.

I bought a large syringe that you use to inject poultry marinade that had ml marked on it for next year.  I used a turkey baster and it was too messy - dripped too bad out of the end.

[David LaFerney]

Sounds like the OA dribble worked fine or you then.  I took a look at my sticky boards a few days ago, and they had less than 10 each for a whole weeks worth of accumulation since the last time I checked.  So I can't complain about the results of the vapor treatment either.  So far so good!

[sarafina]

Glad to hear your vapor treatments are working also.  One of the disadvantages of the dribble is you can only do it once.  I hope it remains an effective means of combating the nasty mites long-term.

[bee-nuts]

I keep hearing this once thing for oxalic dribble.  However if you do it in fall and in spring you should have different bees.  Is the once mean in a short period of time or per year?  Ive read about treating with dribble in fall and in spring again or the other way around if your mite count is to high at either time.

[sarafina]

I only planned on it once a year because of the recommendation in the study I read (linked on this thread http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,25445.0.html) that said the losses were much greater.  I suppose if you were in danger of losing the hive to mites it would be worth the risk.  I checked my trays last weekend and didn't see any mites but I just pulled them out and put them back in - didn't pull them completely for a close inspection under a good light but it is obvious the treatment worked very well.  The chemical is cheap and readily available online and with only 2 hives I have enough for several years for around $10 and another $3 for the large syringe.  Plus it is easy to apply.  I only treated my top boxes so I didn't even have to unstack since the bottom boxes didn't have any bees.

As for your question of treating spring and fall - in my climate we still have a lot of brood in the fall because our fall has mild temps and we still have lots blooming around here.  As you can see, I did mine in mid-January when the temps were in the 60's and there was only a small patch of brood.  The treatment is most effective with the smallest amount of brood because it doesn't treat the mites under the capped brood.  I also wonder what effect it would have on the queen if treated twice a year since she doesn't die out like the workers.  I plan on supplementing with the powdered sugar dusting after I pull the supers this summer and hopefully that will get them through to Jan again for another treatment.  I also run screened bottom boards with oil trays - trying to do all I can w/o using chemicals they can become resistant to.