Musing about varroa

[Karol]

Talking of beeswax got me thinking. Does anyone have experience of adding thymol to melted beeswax when making foundation? Is this something that has already been tried? Thymol is soluble in melted beeswax so it got me thinking it might treat/inhibit/deter varroa in the nymph stage especially varroa protonymphs?

 

[Ian123]

The very smell of thymol is enough to drive bees out the hive, i suggest thymol impregnated foundation would be poorly received!

 

[pargyle]

https://bibliotecadigital.ipb.pt/bitstream/10198/5680/3/CI_19.pdf
Just the extract of the paper ...

https://bibliotecadigital.ipb.pt/handle/10198/5680
I can't find the actual paper but the extract does not look as though the trial was particularly successful ... let's face it - if it had worked someone would be selling it ....mind you, thinking about it ... there's another Argyle Enterprises opportunity ....

 

[Karol]

https://bibliotecadigital.ipb.pt/bitstream/10198/5680/3/CI_19.pdf
Just the extract of the paper ...

https://bibliotecadigital.ipb.pt/handle/10198/5680
I can't find the actual paper but the extract does not look as though the trial was particularly successful ... let's face it - if it had worked someone would be selling it ....mind you, thinking about it ... there's another Argyle Enterprises opportunity ....

Thank you for the link. I may be miss reading the abstract but it states that there was a 3 to 10 times increase in mite drop once the impregnated foundation was inserted and that a 2 x 9g insertion 10 days apart was more effective than a 1 x 18g insertion.

Personally I think the study used the wrong metric as its end point. Whilst mite drop of phoretic mites is of interest, I would suggest that longer term mite population metrics would be a better measure of effectiveness because of the masked action of the impregnated thymol on nymphs hidden in capped cells.

 

[Blunt Spike]

When beekeepers make up winter feed and add Thymol to sugar syrup, doesn't that then get put into the comb by the bees? What effect has been documented for that being an effective treatment for varroa (not nosema)? Before any of you bite my head off Im asking for a friend.

 

[Blunt Spike]

Personally I think the study used the wrong metric as its end point. Whilst mite drop of phoretic mites is of interest, I would suggest that longer term mite population metrics would be a better measure of effectiveness because of the masked action of the impregnated thymol on nymphs hidden in capped cells.

Do you also keep termites then?