Will you be trickle feeding Oxalic Acid over the 2010/11 Winter period?

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Will you be trickle feeding Oxalic Acid over the 2010/11 Winter period?

  • Yes

    Votes: 113 57.4%
  • No

    Votes: 59 29.9%
  • Maybe

    Votes: 25 12.7%

  • Total voters
    197
I don't need "to answer my case", 40 years of beekeeping has taught me that I at least don't know or pretend to know everything,unlike yourself.The very fact that you find it necessary to nit pick and criticize other peoples postings seems to me that you are a self declared "expert" and don't give credence to others knowledge and experience.You should think carefully before you expound your own philosophies.All you succeed in doing is to confuse genuine beginners who are struggling to sort out what they need to do to get their bees safaly thro the winter.You even try to point experienced beekeepers like "Finman" towards your own beliefs.He's probably forgotten more about bees,beekeeping and bee diseases than you will ever know.
 
unlike yourself

And where Have I ever said that? At least I use my brain and think things through.

You should think carefully before you expound your own philosophies

I do and so should you, too.

You even try to point experienced beekeepers like "Finman" towards your own beliefs.

I am sure Finman is old enough, big enough and experienced enough to stand up for himself. There are alternatives.

I just so happen to not use oxalic acid unless I need to, (as do others). You use it automatically, whether needed or not.
It is as simple as that.

Long live freedom of choice. I will argue my case in a logical manner; you don't have to agree with me. But, if/when you disagree, try to give your reasons, because without any good reasoning your posts fail to impress. 40 years or not.
 
This is my first winter with bees I had only from September.

I am using OA because although the varroa drop reduced with Apigard, the numbers remained high and I'd like to hit as many as I can for my first season.

If in the future (assuming I have one as a beek), I will determine whether I need to treat or not. But without consistently very, very low counts, I will treat while exploring other strategies.
 
Oliver, how do you determine, whether treatment with OA is needed or not?
Sorry, what does mean "RAB"?
 
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Alternatives?

Question was do you use oa-tricking and RAB tells 20 alternatives more, just to teach me...hmm.

This time of year there is only one method and it is oxalic.

5 years ago trickling was unknown in UK and other methods was used.

If some one want to save his few mites, of course you do it. Very seldom beeks do how it was advised.
 
psafloyd,

I will treat while exploring other strategies.

Good. A convert. A thinking beek. As I said in a previous post, if you don't know what your situation is (ie lack of experience), that is the way to go. Simply exploring the other strategies at least leaves a chance that you may consider about the alternatives, which can be just as effective, and ensures you know a little more of the problems and choices available.

Regards, RAB
--------=----------=-
rix,

Oliver, how do you determine, whether treatment with OA is needed or not?

I observe carefully throughout the season. I check mite levels in drone brood, look for phoretic mites, do mite-fall checks. I also practise IPM (integrated pest management) so that at every opportunity I can reduce the mite loading. Treating for mites with swarms, artificial swarms, shook swarms (and noting the drops from these, for future reference). I also watch for deformed bees in the hive (very few and far between, if mite levels are kept in check).

If at all high, I might drone cull, or queen trap.

There is a whole armoury of IPM techniques, each helping to keep the mites severely in check. I do not rely on 'hive cleansers' as these seem more like 'snake oil', so I do rely on effective observation and timely treatment of the colony.

At the end of the season the bees will be treated with thymol - carefully, to ensure good efficacy with minimal disturbance to the colony (some is unavoidable for high efficacy).

This is before the winter bees are in the making, so that damage by mites to the winter bees is minimal, not relying on oxalic acid to sort the mites after the winter bees are present as some appear to suggest.

I doubt most follow the regime of a once-only treatment per year for varroa, but it is often the impression given to new beeks that oxalic acid treatment is all that is necessary. People talk about 'untreated' colonies being at risk. I do actually treat mine, just differntly and not often with oxalic acid.

If my varroa drops/checks are satisfactory all summer, they will go through the winter perfectly well. This year some may well be treated with oxalic, as a precautionary measure, as not all checks have been carried out meticulously this last season.

I know full well that they will commence the new season with more varroa than if treated with oxalic acid trickling in midwinter. That will be a fact of life and the IPM will take care of that from early next spring. But, on the other side, there is a bank of building evidence that oxalic acid, although very effective against mites, can also affect the queen or the colony. I am therefore prudent not to take those other possible risks, if I do not need to.

For instance oxalic trickling is only recommended to be carried out once per year on a colony. Think about that carefully. Ask yourself a question. Why is that? There is only one bee in the colony that would be likely to get multiple doses - the queen.

She may be a breeding queen which I would like to keep into a second or third year (I have not managed a fourth year yet), so I, for one, do not wish to multiple-dose my queens.

Of course, beeks who change their queens annually would not be troubled by that scenario. Re-queen in the autumn, oxalic acid in the winter, queen gone before a second oxalic acid treatment (re-queened again). So you can understand why those beeks automatically do the treatment. Most hobby beeks likely don't religiously change queens every year - I certainly don't.

So the answer to your question is 'experience'.

RAB

My initials. The oliver 90 is a 1940s tractor.

Regards, RAB

-----------------

johna.

Get off your soapbox RAB.


Think about your beekeeping and the advice you hand out.
 
So you see.................
the precautionary principle and the Hollistic approach and oxalic acid all in one neat bundle!
 
Every year to date I have treated with OA.
But I keep hearing experienced beeks say that it affects the queen if treated twice so I am going to think long and hard.

At the moment I am going towards not treating this winter or I may treat all queens under 12 months old and see how it goes regards the untreated hives with 2 year old queens.
 
Every year to date I have treated with OA.
But I keep hearing experienced beeks say that it affects the queen if treated twice so I am going to think long and hard.

At the moment I am going towards not treating this winter or I may treat all queens under 12 months old and see how it goes regards the untreated hives with 2 year old queens.

Admin? Are you not an experienced beek then? You should trust your judgement. I was told there were many ways of keeping bees, it's finding the one that works for you. If you've never noticed any effects then why fix it if it isn't broken? lol
 
Every year to date I have treated with OA.
But I keep hearing experienced beeks say that it affects the queen if treated twice so I am going to think long and hard.

At the moment I am going towards not treating this winter or I may treat all queens under 12 months old and see how it goes regards the untreated hives with 2 year old queens.

it does not go that way. it is not the queen wich suffers on that.
A Finnish varroa group member Korpela has handled his hives twice a year during 3 years. One is October and second is March after cleansing flight before brooding starts.

Perhaps the queen is more tolerant to the oxalic acid because queen metaboly is huge a day.
Bees body turns the acid to carbon diokside = the body breaks down the stuff. When acid carbon has been marked the radio activity has emerged into respiration air's co2. I don't know I have not heard queen losses in OA handling.

I asked from our society menthor, what happends if I treat twice my hives.
- not else but your clusters will bee smaller in spring. It adds a little bit dead rate after one handling too.

There has been some tolerancy researches where it was given douple handling during a short time. In spring no queen losses were found or problems with laying.
 
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I phoned to Seppo Korpela about that repeated handling with OA trickling. He has executed many years carefull researches about douple handling. He said that if you give douple handling in autumn, it is harmfull to beecluster. But when he gives a second handling after cleansing flight after winter, there is no difference between control group.
 
Does no one use sublimation for applying OA, I've been using it for 2 yeas and quite like the knockdown effect. am I missing something
 
Just started following this website so apologies for silly question. Just ploughed through 10 pages and found some fellow travellers still gassing their bees (themselves) with OA, I wouldn't claim to have enough consistent hives to give good comparisons, but I've been treating in September before feeding, then again in December. I've had the odd drone layer but no complete loss over the few years of trial. I dont have much faith in counting natural drop as so many changes in the hive seem to affect this.
 
Some comments to add.

1) If you are trickling and have some of the 5ml left at the end of a row - do not go back and put more on the bees. The only time I have killed bees was when I overdosed! Which does rather make the case for only doing it once a year.

2) I believe that last years hard winter killed a lot of varroa. I monitored through the summer, but only began to get drops over 5/day in August. The little sods took a long time to recover but recover they did

3) I took the honey off in early August and treated with Apiguard and was pleasantly surprised to get "good" drops ( ie 2-300/hive) However, I was still getting drops of 1/day and will treat with Oxalic syrup next month.

4) AFAIK Oxalic is an irritant that is better tolerated by bees than by mites (or beekeepers?). Hard to justify, but mites seem to have less tough cuticles (they cannot deal with dry conditions as well as insects). So I suspect that oxalic works by irritating the bees into grooming a lot and weakens the mites so they are not so good at dodging.

5) If is working in this rather rough and ready fashion comparisons with antibiotic resistance become a bit meaningless. Also, we can only consider it as one part of a integrated pest management programme.

6) I do drone brood culling, use a varroa floor, Apiguard when I feel I have to and even icing sugar ( I like to see the little sods struggling on the varroa floor covered in sugar dust even if I suspect it is not an effective method of controling them) Anyway the bees like the treatment!

Great debate, lets have more light and less heat!
 
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Hard winter does not kill varroa. I had long periods -20C / -30C temps during last winter and it has no practical meaning on varroa. Varroa has arrived to Europe via Siberia and it is not afraid of winter.

Even if you have clean hive in Spring. The colony gets mites mites in natural way from environment, like mite spreads. Drone drifting is one way. In Finlad varroa spreaded 50 km a year from east to west 20 years ago.
 
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Hard winter does not kill varroa.

Hi Finman,

Unwise to be too categorical about anything in biology.

I live in Yorkshire, Northern England. We are obviously not as cold as Finland, but we have a combination of damp and cold that can be a serious problem to bees and quite possibly also to a mite that evolved to infest an East Asian bee (assuming that Indonesia was where it really originated)

A lot of us noticed that the varroa infestations were very slow to get started this last spring and summer but had become a serious problem by August. I think this was probably because the number of varroa successfully overwintering had been massively reduced and they took longer than in previous years to build up from a smaller population.

The result was a dangerous state of complacency that meant that I, and a number of others, had to do a lot of treatment later than we expected and are now worried about the health of our winter bees.

And yes, I did treat with Oxalic last winter and will do so this one as well.

I do not think that it is possible to eradicate varroa, but healthy bees and a competent beekeeper can keep the threat under control. A good winter kill is just a bonus.
 
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