Recent content by Olbe

8 grams oxalic to a single brood colony has no noticeable bad effects on the colony here in NZ

The latest out of the USA is 4grams is better than 2

sounds a bit Jethro Tull to me

I use a decommissioned chest freezer fitted with a 40 watt cupboard heater and a 50c thermostat , warms honey, melts honey and also used in the manufacture of oxalic/glycerine strips , freezer is approx 520 x 520 mm square internal and is capable of holding 4 of the 20l square buckets

If there is space enough for the bees to get between the solid fibre (cardboard) strips and the comb face queens will lay under them and the brood survives , if the strips are too close to the frames that the bees cannot get access then any brood that is already there will die.

I have a range of colours of bee boxes , and in early spring ( August here in NZ ) I have a couple of times passed a laser thermometer over the sunny side of my home apiary and the pink boxes are always between 2 & 5 degrees C higher than the other boxes ,don't know whether the internal temp is...

Sublimation or trickle have no where near the efficacy of oxalic and glycerine used in the solid fibre board (as in Aluen CAP) the fibre board strips will give a treatment cycle from 4 to 8 weeks , depending on how fast the bees chew them up, one of the drawbacks of them is that you have to...

with 6 inches you don't have a foot to put a sock on, with 12 inches at least you'd have one foot to stand on

I too am saddened to hear this news, we here in New Zealand have also benefited from his excellent bee knowledge.

I find that shortly after summer solstice it starts getting harder and harder to get successful "takes" in queenright starters, maybe one of you in the northern half of the world could try grafting into a queenright stater as well as a queenless starter and see if there is a marked difference in...

I have used queenright starters for about 15 years and have success rates around 95% in the spring, but often only around 40% when doing autumn grafts. we graft 32 cells per colony and regularly harvest 30 good looking cells. love this method for spring cells.

If you want to use a heat gun you will want one with the digital control so you have some control of the temperature. I made a vaporising unit from a brass water meter housing , just removed the internal mechanism and used one of the little stainless steel cups you can get from a chefs supplies...