Tag Archives: vaporisation

Get dribbling

There has been a prolonged spell of cold weather in Eastern Scotland. Temperatures have rarely risen above 5°C, with hard frosts overnight. However, a warm front moved in on Tuesday night and the last few days have been significantly warmer†. The lack of activity at the hive entrances and a quick peek under the insulation through the perspex crownboards (where fitted) indicated the bees were all tightly clustered during the cold spell. Furthermore, the absence of debris on the removable Varroa monitoring trays fitted to many of the open mesh floors, suggested that little or no brood was being reared.

Ridiculous to the sublime

Ridiculous to the sublime

Varroa counts

Varroa trays ...

Varroa trays …

There was another clue that the colonies are likely broodless. I had been recording the natural Varroa drop of a few colonies over the last month. I did this by simply counting Varroa at each visit, calculated on a mites/day basis. Although generally low (and very low in a few colonies), it had been steadily increasing. This is a good indication there were more phoretic mites in the colony … again, presumably due to the absence of suitable brood for them to parasitise.

It’s worth noting that the natural mite drop is a notoriously unreliable method of accurately determining mite levels in a colony. For example, it’s dependent upon the amount of sealed brood in the colony. With no sealed brood all mites must be phoretic. In contrast, with limitless sealed brood 80-90% of the mites are within cells. However, although estimates from mite drop are not hugely accurate, they are a lot better than doing nothing. The National Bee Unit has published a Varroa calculator. This allows you to use a combination of the mite drop per day, the time of year, length of season and level of drone brood to predict the total numbers of mites in the colony. For some inexplicable reason this asks for the level of drone brood in December … with 0% not being an available option  🙁

Time to treat

With little or no brood in the colonies, now is a perfect time to treat with an oxalic acid-containing preparation to hammer down the remaining mite population. I’ve previously discussed the importance of this midwinter treatment (see Two treatments … a double whammy). In many ways it’s preparation for the season ahead, rather than for the protection of the bees already present in the colony. The lower the mite levels are at the beginning of the season, the longer it will take for the mite population to reach dangerously high levels.

BEEHAVE ...

BEEHAVE …

You can model these events using BEEHAVE. This is an interesting in silico model of a beehive. With mite numbers of ~10 at the beginning of the year, maximum levels reached are low to mid-hundreds by late summer, reducing to a couple of hundred the following winter. This assumes no intervening treatment and runs the model using all the default settings. In contrast, using the same parameters but starting the year with ~100 mites, levels peak at between 3000 and 4000 mites, returning to about 1800 in December.

Remember that the National Bee Unit recommends mite levels should not exceed 1000 or there is a risk of “significant adverse effects on the colony”. Therefore, the midwinter treatment is an important preparation for the year ahead, delaying the point at which these dangerously high mite levels are achieved.

Have your hives got less than 100 mites in them now?

Remember also that, with no sealed brood, midwinter is also the ideal time to expose as many mites as possible to the treatment. With the exception of prolonged treatment with hard chemicals like Apistan or Apivar, it’s probably the only time you’ll achieve greater than 95% reduction in mite numbers. With little or no brood present there’s nowhere for the mites to hide.

Dribbling or vaporisation?

An oxalic acid-containing treatment is recommended in midwinter. This can be delivered by dribbling or sublimation (vaporisation). Under optimal conditions, efficacy of the two methods is broadly similar (90%+) though there is some evidence that dribbled oxalic acid is slightly detrimental to colonies (when compared with sublimation, but not when compared to doing nothing).

Sublimox in use

Sublimox in use …

Api-Bioxal is the VMD-approved oxalic acid-containing treatment. If used for dribbling be aware that the suggested concentration on the side of the packet is higher than conventionally used in the UK. It’s also worth noting that it’s not available pre-mixed so has to be made up from powder. In this regard it’s a less useful product than the pre-mixed oxalic acid solution that Thorne’s (and possibly other suppliers) sold each winter. The one- or two-hive beekeeper needs to weigh out very small amounts accurately, or get together with others to make a large batch. Hardly what I’d call progress. Furthermore, the inclusion of glucose and powdered silica (as an anti-caking agent) in Api-Bioxal means it leaves a caramelised mess if used for vaporisation. Although a scouring pad and elbow grease will get rid of this mess, it’s another example of how the “approved” commercial product is actually less good – and no more effective – than the oxalic acid dihydrate that beekeepers have been using for 20 years or more.

Notwithstanding these negative comments, Api-Bioxal works well and is less expensive (per treatment) than most of the other VMD-approved Varroa treatments.

Don’t delay, get out and get dribbling …

The forecast for the next 7-10 days is for significantly warmer temperatures. This means that the queen – if she was having a break from egg-laying – will start laying again. There will be open brood by this weekend and sealed brood in your colonies by about the 15th of December‡. Dribbled oxalic acid is detrimental to – and may kill – open brood so if this is your preferred method of treatment then don’t delay. If you sublimate you’ve got a few days leeway, but don’t delay any longer than that.

Here are a couple of old videos showing trickling (dribbling) oxalic acid onto a large and small colony in the middle of winter. The Trickle bottle from Thorne’s makes administering the treatment very quick and easy.

Of course, sublimation using an active vaporiser like a Sublimox is even faster and doesn’t involve opening the colony. Here’s an example showing treatment of a recently hived swarm in midsummer … I could have removed the Sublimox after about 30 seconds.

The Daily Mail may be predicting the coldest winter since the last ice age (so perhaps there will be another broodless period§) but I wouldn’t rely on them to influence something as important as the midwinter treatment for reducing Varroa levels.

† Here’s a perfect example of the problems encountered by the ‘topical blogger’. I wanted to write about midwinter Varroa treatment in the middle of winter, at a time when others – particular new beekeepers – should be treating their own colonies. Typically these treatments are made in late December or early January. However, the long-range (10 day) forecast in late November suggested the second week of December might be suitable. Some of this was therefore written in very late November, the Varroa drop comments added once I’d completed counting around the 4th to the 6th, and the post finished off the following day once I’d treated my own colonies.

‡ This assumes that the queen started laying on the 7th, the first full day with elevated temperatures.

§ I didn’t open any colonies to confirm they were broodless. I was happy enough to take the clues from the increased mite drop on the Varroa trays and the absence of debris indicating uncapping of brood cells. However, I was told by friends that other colonies they opened on the 7th were broodless.

 

Oxalic acid and LSD

Api-Bioxal has recently been approved by the UK Veterinary Medicines Directorate and is available from the usual suspects. At a price.

Oxalic acid ...

Oxalic acid …

OA crystals on bee ...

OA crystals on bee …

Many beekeepers use oxalic acid (OA) to control Varroa numbers, by trickling a low percentage (w/v) solution over colonies in winter, or by vaporisation/sublimation. Oxalic acid dihydrate (a white crystalline powder) has been sold by most of the large beekeeping suppliers for years, and the BBKA have provided instructions on its use as a ‘cleanser’. Until recently OA has not been licensed by the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) for use as a Varroa control (hence use of the term ‘cleanser’ by the BBKA) but was available under the EU Cascade Scheme as the product Api-Bioxal from Italy, where it was licensed. Api-Bioxal was licensed by the UK VMD in September 2015.

LSD*

Librae, solidi, denarii … pounds, shillings and pence

Sublimox vaporiser

Sublimox vaporiser

Assuming the largest quantity available is the most economic way to purchase OA (which may or may not be correct) then Api-Bioxal currently costs about £0.21/g from E.M. Thorne. The same supplier are selling generic OA crystals for £0.016/g. The recommended dose for Api-Bioxal vaporisation is 2.3g/colony (stated on the product label), though the size of the colony isn’t indicated. Aside from the problem of weighing out 2.3g in the apiary, this makes single treatments with Api-Bioxal cost about 50p a shot. My Sublimox vaporiser was provided with a small scoop which dollops out 1.5g at a time of OA (confirmed on a laboratory balance), which is about all that can be conveniently loaded into the white plastic thingy (my poor translation from the original Italian … see the photo right) from which it drops into the heating pan. That’s the amount I use for one treatment of a single brood National hive. Thomas Radetzki has looked at the efficacy of 1.4g and 2.8g doses – most conveniently found in this graph from Randy Oliver’s Scientific Beekeeping website – which are effectively indistinguishable, so I choose to use the lesser amount. Therefore, using generic OA supplied by E.M. Thorne makes treatments cost less than 2.5p each. Quite a difference.

OA is available from other suppliers as well, and is also widely available as a boat deck cleanser … and if you’ve got a large enough yacht you can probably justify buying 25 kg of the stuff for less than £70. Or a lot of hives … at that price it works out at less than 0.5p/treatment 🙂

Time to stock up?

This is why we treat ...

This is why we treat …

The licensing of Api-Bioxal as the first approved OA miticide in the UK is to be welcomed if it encourages beekeepers to reduce mite levels in their colonies. It is, after all, the viral payload the mite transfers between bees, that causes significant levels of overwintering colony losses for beekeepers. I’ve no doubt that the licensing (and the associated testing needed for getting this approval), the packaging and the marketing have added significantly to the costs of the oxalic acid dihydrate. However, at about 20 times the price of the generic powder from the same beekeeping suppliers, there are some who will consider this profiteering.

Over the next few months and years it will be interesting to see whether generic OA disappears from beekeeping suppliers because their customers have all switched to using Api-Bioxal, which they meticulously record in their hive notes under ‘medicines’ … or whether Api-Bioxal fails to succeed because beekeepers continue using the same stuff, admittedly unapproved and unlicensed, they been using for many years without any problems.

* and you thought MAQS was expensive?

Sublime sublimation

Sublimox vaporiser

Sublimox vaporiser …

Sublimation is the conversion of a substance in the solid phase into the gas phase without going via the intermediate liquid phase. With suitable heating oxalic acid (OA) powder can be converted into a vapour which, when spread through the hive, provides a quick and effective way to reduce the mite levels … hence it’s often referred to as oxalic acid vaporisation (or vaporization … if you search the web on this topic you’ll find at least four variant spellings). With too much heating OA decomposes to formic acid and carbon monoxide, so the temperature of the vaporiser is critical to generate the optimal cloud of OA vapour (or vapor!). I’ve been using a Sublimox vaporiser this season with good results and provide a description of the machine and its use here.

Vaporisation vs dribbling

Most beekeepers are familiar with midwinter treatment with 3.2% OA solution (in syrup), applied by ‘dribbling‘ 5ml per seam across the clustered colony. Under these conditions the colony needs to be broodless as a) it’s not effective against mites in capped cells and b) the OA dissolved in syrup is toxic to brood. It’s also reported that the ingested OA may be suppress subsequent brood rearing, at precisely the time the colony should be getting started for the upcoming season. Vaporisation or sublimation avoids this toxicity … the OA is introduced to the hive as a gas which permeates the entire colony, recrystallising as tiny crystals on all surfaces – bees, comb, internal walls etc. Studies of OA vaporisation has shown it is ~95% effective in reducing phoretic mite numbers. I recommend you read the extensive coverage by Randy Oliver @ Scientific Beekeeping who covers efficacy, mode of action and toxicity (though I’ll return to this last bit later).

Sublimox vaporiser

This is an active vaporiser which blows a jet of vaporised OA through a small (8mm) nozzle. The machine consists of a handle, a box of electrickery (which I’ve not opened) and a heating pan surrounded with a safety guard. The machine is rated at 230V AC and 300W so you need either a car battery and inverter or a suitable generator (which is what I use). The vaporiser is simplicity itself to use. One gram of OA powder is placed into a small plastic ‘cup’, the preheated vaporiser is inverted and the ‘cup’ engaged with the heating pan. The nozzle is pushed through a hole in the hive body and the vaporiser is inverted again (so it’s now the correct way up – see the top photo on this page). The OA drops into the heating cup, immediately vaporises and is blown through the nozzle into the hive. It takes 40-50 seconds to use all the OA, at which point you can move on to the next hive.

This video shows the effect of dropping a few millilitres of water into the heating pan … it’s almost exactly the same when using OA, but less likely to cover my camera with a fine dusting of OA crystals 😉

Preparing the hive

Entrance block

Entrance block …

To fill the hive with vaporised OA it’s important that as little as possible leaks out during the short period of treatment. I use a Correx Varroa tray underneath the open mesh floor. In addition, the kewl floors I use are easy to block using a simple L-shaped piece of softwood (I use these when transporting hives; when screwed onto the front of the floor there’s no danger of bees escaping). Part of the beauty of OA vaporisation is that the hive does not even need to be opened. I’ve drilled 9mm holes just above the open mesh floor level, through either the side or back of my floors. This is a better location to insert the nozzle of the Sublimox as there’s space under the frames to allow the gas to spread evenly and quickly throughout the hive. This is easier than the alternatives of using an eke with a suitable hole in it, or drilling through the side wall of the brood box (this is too close to the frames and you get poor spread of the gas – I’ve tried this on hives with a perspex crown board and it’s very obvious).

With a standard floor you could use a simple entrance block with a suitable hole in it. The nozzle gets hot … keep it away from poly hives or nucs! I treat my Everynuc poly nucs directly through the (cavernous) front entrance which I block using a thick piece of wood with a 9mm hole through the middle.

Preparing the beekeeper

OA vapour is pretty unpleasant and causes significant irritation to the eyes and lungs if exposed. Take care. You will need suitable eye protection and a mask of some sort. I use standard (and very inexpensive) safety goggles and a 3M dust/mist mask. You should also wear gloves when handling OA. It’s also wise to stand upwind of colonies being treated and to take care not to breath in any OA vapour that leaks out of gaps in the hive.

In use

I’ve treated four swarms this year using OA vaporisation. Three had very low mite levels, but the small churchyard swarm dropped several hundred mites in the 2-3 days following treatment. I don’t routinely count the mite drop on each day post treatment (I have a life) but have noticed it can increase over the first 2-3 days and then tails off over the following week or so. In large scale studies in Europe 95% efficacy was reported with mite drop continuing for up to a fortnight. There are a number of useful references on the Scientific Beekeeping site if you want to follow this up further.

I’ve also used OA vaporisation on almost all my colonies this autumn, instead of Apiguard treatment. If the colony has sealed brood the usual estimate is that at least 80% of the mites are occupying capped cells. These mites are unaffected by OA vaporisation (until they emerge) and it is therefore necessary to perform repeat treatments. Taking account of the life cycle of the mite and empirical measurements made by Hivemaker reported on the Beekeeping Forum, three treatments at five day intervals are required to have the maximum effect. Ideally this should be on a day or at a time when most of the colony is ‘at home’ … though the crystallised OA continues to be effective for several days after initial treatment. Fortunately, OA vaporisation has little or no effect on the queen, unlike many other mite treatments. The colony gets mildly agitated during treatment but calms down again within minutes and resumes foraging. In the colonies I’ve looked at after treatment there appears to be no gap in egg laying (I’ve also treated casts with virgin queens that have gone on to mate successfully). This is ideal for the autumn treatment when you want the colony to raise as many bees for overwintering as possible. In contrast, Apiguard regularly stops the queen from laying.

And finally …

There are other OA vaporisers made, and instructions on the web for a variety of DIY items – some looking more dangerous (to the operator, not the mite) than others. The majority of these are passive vaporisers, in which the OA is placed in a cool heating pan which is then placed on the floor of the colony and heated up. I’ve not used this type. They have the advantage of being less expensive and only require a 12V supply. However, they are slower to use as the pan takes longer to heat up and then needs to be cooled in a bucket of water between applications. They are also incompatible with the kewl floors I use and I presume – depending on how hot they get – with poly hives and nucs. I think the efficacy of the two types is supposed to be broadly similar.

I listened to Bob Smith talk at the MSWCC conference last week on shook swarms. I sat there thinking that a shook swarm followed shortly afterwards by a single shot of OA vapour would give a colony a really good opportunity to build up well, free of pathogens that have accumulated in the comb and free of the majority of phoretic mites and their viral payload.

Economics

The Sublimox vaporiser is not inexpensive. It costs about €380 from Icko Apiculture. This is a lot, but is about the same as three 3kg tubs of Apiguard (C. Wynn Jones list this at £87 a tub at the time of writing) which is enough to treat 90 colonies with two treatments per colony. In contrast, OA dihydrate powder in bulk (not from Thorne’s) is about £20 for 5kg … enough for 1250 colonies (assuming 4 treatments per colony – 3 doses in the autumn and one midwinter). For beekeeping associations, particularly those with large shared apiaries when treatments could and should – see a later post – be coordinated, it might be a very good investment.