Home made Apiguard

[Galaxy55]

Going to try this found it on Blackburn Bee Keepers site, opinions please.

HOME MADE APIGUARD​

100 grams Thymol crystals (handle with care - avoid skin contact) 200 grams PURA or other pure vegetable fat (no additives, preservatives or emulsifiers) 700 grams Castor Sugar (sufficient for about 12 colonies) INSTRUCTIONS Melt the PURA in a saucepan and allow it to cool until warm to the touch. Put the castorsugar into a plastic container and thoroughly mix in the Thymol crystals until all lumps are broken down. Add the sugar/Thymol mixture to the melted Pura and mix thoroughly until the mixture is the consistency of a paste. If well sealed the mixture may be stored in the bottom of a refrigerator for up to 12 months. USAGE On a piece of grease-proof paper about 10cm x 15cm spread the mixture so that it is about 5mm thick and place on top of the brood frames. The Crownboard should allow a bee space above the paste. All ventilation should be closed except a 10cm wide entrance. Refresh the mixture every two weeks until the drop falls below 2-3 mites per week. The ambient temperature needs to be above about 15c In the event of low temperatures (i.e. less than 10c to 15c) increase the area by spreading the mixture more thinly. This stuff is very temperature dependent, too low and it is slow in working - too high and it could interfere with the workings of the hive. Note: Do not apply the Thymol treatment when supers are still on. It is also advisable to remove excess winter stores in the spring before the bees transfer it into the supers.

Thanks

Mark

 

[wessexmario]

what's the rational between buying the authorised medicinal product and homemade?

cost? efficacy? ...?

 

[TryingToLetThemBee]

what's the rational between buying the authorised medicinal product and homemade?



cost? efficacy? ...?

Legality.

 

[midnight sun]

probably is cheaper, but a nice to 'know how to' in any case.
Always interested in things like this just out of curiosity if nothing else.
Thanks for that Galaxy55.

 

[wessexmario]

Legality.

you raise an interesting point.

According to the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 a "veterinary medicinal product" is defined as:

2. (1) In these Regulations “veterinary medicinal product” means—
(a)any substance or combination of substances presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease in animals; or
(b)any substance or combination of substances that may be used in, or administered to, animals with a view either to restoring, correcting or modifying physiological functions by exerting a pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action, or to making a medical diagnosis.


If the honey is for human consumption, then the bees become a "food producing animal" and that could open up a whole can of worms with having authorised manufacturing status for a veterinary medicine.

 

[wessexmario]

you could argue that the medicine isn't for the bees, it's for the varroa mite.

 

[Amari]

Apols, stupid suggestion so deleted

 

[Erichalfbee]

HOME MADE APIGUARD​

100 grams Thymol crystals (handle with care - avoid skin contact) 200 grams PURA or other pure vegetable fat (no additives, preservatives or emulsifiers) 700 grams Castor Sugar (sufficient for about 12 colonies) INSTRUCTIONS Melt the PURA in a saucepan and allow it to cool until warm to the touch. Put the castorsugar into a plastic container and thoroughly mix in the Thymol crystals until all lumps are broken down. Add the sugar/Thymol mixture to the melted Pura and mix thoroughly until the mixture is the consistency of a paste. If well sealed the mixture may be stored in the bottom of a refrigerator for up to 12 months. USAGE On a piece of grease-proof paper about 10cm x 15cm spread the mixture so that it is about 5mm thick and place on top of the brood frames. The Crownboard should allow a bee space above the paste. All ventilation should be closed except a 10cm wide entrance. Refresh the mixture every two weeks until the drop falls below 2-3 mites per week. The ambient temperature needs to be above about 15c In the event of low temperatures (i.e. less than 10c to 15c) increase the area by spreading the mixture more thinly. This stuff is very temperature dependent, too low and it is slow in working - too high and it could interfere with the workings of the hive. Note: Do not apply the Thymol treatment when supers are still on. It is also advisable to remove excess winter stores in the spring before the bees transfer it into the supers.

Thanks

Mark

Blimey....Hivemaker's recipe on a bit of paper towel/oasis/teabag and even tampon is much easier if you're going to go home made.

 

[Galaxy55]

Very easy to make and chose to try it because how cost effective it is, interesting points made though.

Thanks

 

[masterBK]

I tried out this recipe five years ago. I would suggest adding and mixing in the thymol to the melted fat outside the house otherwise it will stink the place out. Wise to wear disposible gloves as well. The bees did not move / spread the stuff around the hive like they do with Apiguard and it was not nearly as effective either as it left more surviving mites behind. After two years of doing this decided it wasn't worth the trouble for the money saved.

 

[McNulty]

That's interesting masterbk. I have used apiguard this year as its my first full season. How do you go about measuring the efficacy of each product on a home hive? How can you count the % of mites a product kills?

 

[Dishmop]

Try Vics

 

[Dishmop]

That's interesting masterbk. I have used apiguard this year as its my first full season. How do you go about measuring the efficacy of each product on a home hive? How can you count the % of mites a product kills?

You cant....

 

[McNulty]

That was my thinking dishmop but maybe there are techniques we aren't aware of. I have six hives with large variations in the mite drop between them. One hive created from an artificial swarm mid summer dropped over 3000 in the first two weeks! How can you ever create controls, there are just too many variables regarding each hive to only count dead mites (I think).

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

How do you go about measuring the efficacy of each product on a home hive?

Shake out all the bees on to a weighing scale - before and after treatment, weigh one individual mite divide the total weight difference of the before and after bees,that will give you a ballpark figure of how many mites you've killed

 

[itma]

That's interesting masterbk. I have used apiguard this year as its my first full season. How do you go about measuring the efficacy of each product on a home hive? How can you count the % of mites a product kills?

You can (with plural hives to compare), but it is a bit of a faff and involves killing bees.
The simpler indication of efficacy is the extent of the varroa problem remaining after the end of treatment.

Frankly, for around £5 per colony ± you need to have a lot of colonies (or a lot of spare time) to save anything worthwhile. And then there is the question of whether any such saving is worth the risk of a less-effective treatment.


// ADDED and buying Apiguard in a 3kg tub brings the cost/colony down to about £3.30/colony.

 

[alanf]

... found it on Blackburn Bee Keepers site, opinions please..

Principle problem in use is that the recipe is not very precise.

We start with weight but apply in volume which adds another uncertainty. 700 g of sugar, 100 g of thymol, 200 g of fat, total 1000 g. Hard to say the volume without trying it, but the largest ingredient, sugar/sucrose, is 1.6 g/cm³, a guess would be 700 to 750 cm³ of "paste".

"About" 10x15cm and "about" 5mm gives an approximation that's going to vary somewhat. If the block were 10*15*0.5 that's 75 cm³. Ten doses then, applied "every two weeks". Could be 2, or 3 or 4? at 10 g thymol per dose, Apiguard trays are 12.5 g of thymol, Apilife Var tablets are 8 g but twice the frequency. If I were trying it, I'd be weighing 100 g onto cards, similar to the Apiguard tub method. I suspect it's hard to get the accuracy by eye and there could be a tendency to under dose. Thymol treatments have variable results at best, the temperature and state of the colony seem to be big factors. Adding in the uncertainties of dosing, I wouldn't suggest it as first choice treatment.

 

[McNulty]

I might give that a go jenkins. I think you would need to do that mid afternoon. My mites like to sit down for dinner together around six o'clock and a single feed has been known to increase their body weight by up to 17% which could massively distort your total mite figure.

 

[masterBK]

One of the ways of monitoring effectiveness of treatment is to estimate the initial Mite load by sampling 300 bees, dusting them with icing sugar, sieving the sample and counting the phoretic mites that fall off. Apply the treatment to the colony and then repeating the 300 bee sugar dusting sampling after a set period of time eg 3 weeks later to estimate the number of mites still present and then express it as a % of the initial count. It is a rough and ready approach but does give you a reasonable idea of things allowing you to compare the effectiveness of different treatments.

Detergent water or alcohol washes remove a higher % mites in a sample than icing sugar but using the icing sugar doesn't kill the bees and still manages to remove about 85% of the mites on the bees in the sample.

Obviously for the purists you would need double blind trials with placebo treatments, all other variables controlled, dozens of colonies, operate with 95% confidence limits and choosing the most appropriate statistical tests etc which isn't feasible for most of us.

 

[MuswellMetro]

i went to the recent Saturday workshop on Oxalic sublimation and hygienic bees by Prof Ratnieks 0f LASI University of Sussex

He was most scathing of the Thymol paste products and Thymol based strips saying that in the UK the kill of mites is lower than the models predict due to our temeprate climate and late application by beekeepers