Randy Oliver OA sponges

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When I definitely didn't do it, if I had, I'd have bought the Swedish sponges Randy Oliver uses and just made up a big batch with veg glycerine, with a thermometer in to prevent it turning into formic acid, and then just heat and stir until it's a clear liquid and pour into a bucket with the RO approved number of sponges. I've heard you get a lot of powder left though as it's a super-saturated solution you're going for - I'd just rub a little of the excess on the less absorbed sponges. All hypothetical of course
Thanks, well I've used the towel version for several years and found it effective, though it's probably more effective at some times of the year than others and depends on the colony; some colonies chew them up quickly but not others.
 
the UK in particular seems very happy to be controlled and told how to think and act by a whole raft of incompetent goverernace.
the UK inflict it on themselves, I remember back in the days of people clutching their pearls over EU rules affecting UK fisheries etc, when in most examples it was the UK gold plating regulations and adding layers of enforcement/bureaucracy not required by Brussels. There were more fisheries inspectors/enforcement officers in Newlyn (Ten times as many as what was required of the whole of Spain) than what was required for the whole of the UK.
 
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And if the fire retardant or one of those chemicals contributes in any way to the effectiveness of the sponge strip?
They say that it’s carcinogenic and might end up in the honey.
Swedish dish cloths are safe but extended release has been banned countrywide anyway
They can use only 1g of Oxalic to vape so that’s no good as an alternative
 
I, likewise, wouldn't dream of doing it, but magically know it's effective as of this season - must've just dreamed it ;-p
I had a dream of using sponges after hearing Randy Oliver lecture last year about sponges. Initially I thought "dream on" but last spring my dream came true and I sponged some approved product from a friend with effective results. Dreams can become reality.
 
I am just the messenger I don't have an opinion either way.
I wasn't saying this for you, but because sometimes we forget, for someone who must review an authorization, that we are completely sure that there is no doubt. I just pointed out the first question that arose when reading the publication in the forum.
 
I wasn't saying this for you, but because sometimes we forget, for someone who must review an authorization, that we are completely sure that there is no doubt. I just pointed out the first question that arose when reading the publication in the forum.

You are right, but I also think that it is imperative that all the information is available even if we don't like it. It is not approved, just like in Canada more than 2G OAV, Apivar out after 8 weeks, or honey on hives with treatments other than Formic, and HopGaurd. Do beekeepers follow that, no way, just know your facts and take your chances well informed.

I will add the US is a very litigious society and it only takes one nut job to make life miserable.
 
For what its worth, I followed Randy's recipe to the letter and tried it over quite a few hives in Summer 2020. The results were disastrous, with extreme varroa damage. Randy thought that humidity in the UK might have caused the ineffectiveness. I'm still dealing with the hangover of rusted wires in frames (vertically wired frames...horizontal ones would be fine) and a rusty reminder on queen excluders of where the swedish towels were! Its a shame it didn't work...could have been a silver bullet. Whoever finds a reliable method of killing varroa effectively with no contamination of supers in place will be a popular chap/chapess.
Good luck with your experiments. I tried little or no treatment on new colonies between 2018 and 2020, relying on visual clues (ie couldn't see any varroa on bees) which is not a reliable way of assessing load (Mite wash is), so by the time I tried Randy's method, the hives were probably pretty well infested, although not showing clues that were obvious to me at the time. With hindsight, I would say that brood patterns had deteriorated, but I had got used to seeing sub-standard patterns so believed all to be normal. New colonies generally cope for a couple of years, after which deterioration of brood pattern, yield, colony size etc gradually becomes worse, with the optimistic beekeeper maybe putting these changes down to other causes, or choosing not to see what he/she doesn't want to see. It is the third season where the chickens really come home to roost in any that have survived. Lesson learned here. If you are going to experiment, try various methods on a few hives and be consistent about mite washes, otherwise you'll have no really idea on how effective any treatment is....until varroa population explodes.
 
Strips hung on frames by the side of the brood nest come into direct contact with far more bees than a sponge over the frames, especially if the strips are made of a friable material such as cardboard which the bees set about chewing and removing.
A much much more logical delivery approach unless you have a few thousand hives and don't want to spend the time targeting the strips tailored to each nest for optimum placement.
 
Strips hung on frames by the side of the brood nest come into direct contact with far more bees than a sponge over the frames, especially if the strips are made of a friable material such as cardboard which the bees set about chewing and removing.
A much much more logical delivery approach unless you have a few thousand hives and don't want to spend the time targeting the strips tailored to each nest for optimum placement.
Yes. Randy never did try that did he?
 
It's my understanding the the OA sponges are to be used in conjunction with other treatments. If you have a heavy mite load you should use a stand method such as Formic acid or whatever your choice is. Then you follow up with the sponges to keep the mite load down. Kamon Reynolds explains it here.
 
Take home message: it is effective.
I'm not sure how effectively it translates over here based on how the colonies are doing 3wks or so in. I think I saw someone say they'd spoken to Randy after trying it in the UK to no effect and he suggested our humidity wasn't the correct amount for his method/dosage. I try to only run single broods over winter so my experiment on my non-production colonies and nucs meant the sponges were mostly just on the top bars at the top of the hive, whereas Randy recommends having them between double brood boxes. I was discouraged to find high varroa load in 3 of my trial hives and have decided that sacrificing a part-full super to nadir for the sponges to sit atop is the best I can replicate - though as I'm not sure of the OA/glycerin's modality, I've no idea whether inserting the droppings board to effectively make a solid floor would be beneficial in raising the quantity of fumes given off or if it works solely by bees walking it around the hive, allogrooming it amongst each other and removing it (only a couple of sponges had a few nibbles at, the rest were good as new, though they're somewhat stiff despite following Randy's method to the letter, so I'm not sure if next time more glycerin is needed to keep them moist and prevent the OA dihydrate powder and dry sponges I seem to have a lot of. My production colonies treated with apivar are certainly absent of any kind of threshold level of varroa I'd be concerned about, and they're commensurately better for stores too - though the complete outlier is the single hive out of circa 100 that I forgot to give any treatment too and who look to be my strongest - entirely anecdotal, but the OA sponge hives DO seem to have a markedly poorer brood pattern of BIAS of different ages where you'd normally expect them to be of uniform age. Interested to hear of other's 'hypothetical' dabblings, cheers.
 
I've hypothetically got (A LOT OF) the sponges in a honeybucket for the purpose but I wonder if I poured a little more glycerin in if it'd make them more effective again, and also I'm not sotirng them frozen or anything - just in the shade under a stand outside, so I wonder if the sponges have a significantly short half-life and if this might be overcome by freezing. The late Pete Little utterly abhorred OMF's and he wasn't short of knowledge, perhaps a solid floor of sorts concentrates it as I guessed at ignorantly above
 

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