Excellent and thorough video. This is exactly the information I came to the internet for today, and more. I will be using oxalic acid soon for the first time, hoping to find a video in your library showing how you do that. Thank you for the content!
My goodness that is a head scratcher! Really makes you think about sampling procedures and actual mite levels in these hives. Thank you for the deep dive into this mite nightmare.
Randy Oliver’s tested a few different mite wash solutions and settled on clear dawn dish soap. I tried it last year,. It really worked well. I didn’t do multiple washes like you did so… but maybe it’s supposed to work just fine with just one rinse through. I’ll have to try at least double wash and see myself. Thanks for the follow ups!
I was to do that test I would wash the same batch of bees with both solutions; wash first with dawn and then with alcohol, and vice versa, to see which left more mites for the other solution to find.
Take away, professional beekeepers take mite counts seriously and place a lot of rigger on tracking infections. Count your mites, track your treatments
Hi Phil, three things you could improve, or at least I would do them differently... ;-) First, use 70% isopropyl alcohol so it stays clear and the mites are very heavy in alcohol then they sediment faster and you can count them better. (we did bad with all other products...) Secondly, to define the number of bees, you could pour 1/2 inch of isopropyl in your bee aspirator, so they will die from the vapors after that you can estimate them by volume 300 bees/ 1/2 cup. Third, i would build a mite-washer like Randy Oliver did...., since we started using these machines, we do thousands of washes per season, that improved our queen selection by far! All other washing application don`t do a good job! double jars, Varroa easy check its never that accurate, they never give a safe number! Mite counts are our life insurance!!! That would be a nice Arduino or Raspberry Pi project for your son!!! :-) did you check the nebulizers??? Pat 😵💫
Thanks for sharing the research, I am sure that took you alot of time before posting. One question if I may. You mark on your chart OAV, so I am I correct that you vaporize your Oxalic acid and not applying it in the dribble form?
Phil, very interesting. I agree with the comments below that you were probably vacuuming dead mites from the floor but it still means that there is more mites in the Hopguard compared to the others. My take away from your video: 1). A tall skinny bottle is not good to do a shake in. I would test an Easy Check with the tumbler against your jars. Maybe the small jars would work if you only sampled a hundred bees at a time. 2). This is winter and your bees probably don't have much brood so the mites are all on the bees. When bees have sheets of brood 80% of the mites would be under the cappings. The reduction of 80% would give a mite wash of 2% on the 3 treatments and a 7% mites on the Hopguard. Not bad actually considering you were vacuuming some dead mites off the floor. 3). I am surprised that the OAV performed that well. When and how many times did you use OA as your treatment? If you get a warm day in the shed and the bees start to beard up on the outside of the hive, that maybe a good time to take samples avoiding vacuuming up dead mites. Thanks for the video. I plan to use 1 Tablespoon of Dawn Ultra/gal of water and with my Easy Check run the sample twice to see if I 'm missing mites also.
You had to have gotten a lot of those mite off the bottom board. There is no way your bees should be alive with that mite infestation. You vacuumed up a lot of wax cappings and I think dead mites came up with them. It was a cool test, but I am waiting who comes out alive in the spring. You should sample one of your normal hive and see what that sample has with your bee sucker. I have a hypotheses that you are having a sampling error, not that your bees are misrepresenting but that your getting dead mites of the bottom board. That made me sick watching you count all those mites, you are a much better beekeeper than that and those treatments should have beat the mites back better. Am I wrong and the mites are concentrating down on the bees left in the winter? 36% should have killed the bees long ago, but you did say those hive were weaker I think.
Yes. I’m open to the idea that the samples are biased. Either because I’m picking up dead mites or that’s where the mites hang out. I’ll try to figure out a stricter test protocol.
I also wonder if you are getting some dead mites off the bottom board in with your sample. I wonder if it would be possible to slide in a tray or piece of cardboard over your bottom board to make sure you are getting a clean sample from the bottom of your frames.
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Excellent and thorough video. This is exactly the information I came to the internet for today, and more. I will be using oxalic acid soon for the first time, hoping to find a video in your library showing how you do that. Thank you for the content!
I've mostly played with oxalic vapour. I have great intentions of trying oxalic in a gel, but nothing done to date.
I'd be interested in seeing what the chances of actually getting the 6 percent affected bees in a random bee rub..
My goodness that is a head scratcher! Really makes you think about sampling procedures and actual mite levels in these hives. Thank you for the deep dive into this mite nightmare.
I’m learning a lot too. Doing these videos helps me ask myself the right questions.
That’s some great info, thanks for all you do to help other beekeepers
Thanks for your kind words.
Randy Oliver’s tested a few different mite wash solutions and settled on clear dawn dish soap. I tried it last year,. It really worked well. I didn’t do multiple washes like you did so… but maybe it’s supposed to work just fine with just one rinse through. I’ll have to try at least double wash and see myself. Thanks for the follow ups!
Check this video. He basically gets the same results as you did with the alcohol. ruclips.net/video/uxnwxnngoj4/видео.html
I was to do that test I would wash the same batch of bees with both solutions; wash first with dawn and then with alcohol, and vice versa, to see which left more mites for the other solution to find.
Enjoyed the video. I found that OAV and Apivar worked well for me so far this past year. Thanks for the information. Take care.
Take away, professional beekeepers take mite counts seriously and place a lot of rigger on tracking infections.
Count your mites, track your treatments
some of us use rigor too!
Lol rigour
and canadians use rigour.
Are those counts wide spread or isolated to your test hives ?
I’m looking into that now.
Hi Phil, three things you could improve, or at least I would do them differently... ;-)
First, use 70% isopropyl alcohol so it stays clear and the mites are very heavy in alcohol then they sediment faster and you can count them better. (we did bad with all other products...)
Secondly, to define the number of bees, you could pour 1/2 inch of isopropyl in your bee aspirator, so they will die from the vapors after that you can estimate them by volume 300 bees/ 1/2 cup.
Third, i would build a mite-washer like Randy Oliver did...., since we started using these machines, we do thousands of washes per season, that improved our queen selection by far! All other washing application don`t do a good job! double jars, Varroa easy check its never that accurate, they never give a safe number! Mite counts are our life insurance!!! That would be a nice Arduino or Raspberry Pi project for your son!!! :-) did you check the nebulizers???
Pat
😵💫
i'd be afraid that vacuuming alcohol would end up like this: ruclips.net/video/rknEVCKjLvc/видео.html
I'll look into the mite washer.
Thanks for sharing the research, I am sure that took you alot of time before posting. One question if I may. You mark on your chart OAV, so I am I correct that you vaporize your Oxalic acid and not applying it in the dribble form?
correct
Phil, very interesting. I agree with the comments below that you were probably vacuuming dead mites from the floor but it still means that there is more mites in the Hopguard compared to the others.
My take away from your video:
1). A tall skinny bottle is not good to do a shake in. I would test an Easy Check with the tumbler against your jars. Maybe the small jars would work if you only sampled a hundred bees at a time.
2). This is winter and your bees probably don't have much brood so the mites are all on the bees. When bees have sheets of brood 80% of the mites would be under the cappings. The reduction of 80% would give a mite wash of 2% on the 3 treatments and a 7% mites on the Hopguard. Not bad actually considering you were vacuuming some dead mites off the floor.
3). I am surprised that the OAV performed that well. When and how many times did you use OA as your treatment?
If you get a warm day in the shed and the bees start to beard up on the outside of the hive, that maybe a good time to take samples avoiding vacuuming up dead mites.
Thanks for the video. I plan to use 1 Tablespoon of Dawn Ultra/gal of water and with my Easy Check run the sample twice to see if I 'm missing mites also.
The wash jar you have is to small. Use a large peanut butter jar. It keeps the bees lose and helps the fall of mites.
Keep up the good work. 👍🏻👍🏻
Good idea. These jars are the ones we had kicking around. I can build a better wash jar.
How would you know, test the Apivar to find out if the chemicals were good and not another defective batch?
that's worth thinking about.
You had to have gotten a lot of those mite off the bottom board. There is no way your bees should be alive with that mite infestation. You vacuumed up a lot of wax cappings and I think dead mites came up with them. It was a cool test, but I am waiting who comes out alive in the spring. You should sample one of your normal hive and see what that sample has with your bee sucker. I have a hypotheses that you are having a sampling error, not that your bees are misrepresenting but that your getting dead mites of the bottom board.
That made me sick watching you count all those mites, you are a much better beekeeper than that and those treatments should have beat the mites back better. Am I wrong and the mites are concentrating down on the bees left in the winter? 36% should have killed the bees long ago, but you did say those hive were weaker I think.
Yes. I’m open to the idea that the samples are biased. Either because I’m picking up dead mites or that’s where the mites hang out. I’ll try to figure out a stricter test protocol.
I also wonder if you are getting some dead mites off the bottom board in with your sample. I wonder if it would be possible to slide in a tray or piece of cardboard over your bottom board to make sure you are getting a clean sample from the bottom of your frames.