A Disastrous Day In The Bee Yard 

You have the most beautiful sky to work under. Take a minute to look up once in a while. Best of luck rebounding from this little set back.

Oh sorry you had such a rough day. But, thank you for showing the good the bad and the ugly.

For my feeders I get a pool noodle + a bread knife & slice of a bunch of slices of it as floaties. Works well.

Take a breath, bud. You are doing the best you can in the time you are given. Thanks for sharing tough times! You are not alone!

Hi again, I heard from a Maine Bk who does the ox/acid shop towels that the most important thing in making it is to not let the glycerin get above 150 degrees. He said for every degree above 150 you loose a % of effectiveness. The crystals will dissolve easily at temps below 150. Good luck.

Pro Vap or the vaporizer from Lorabees. Buy a cheap inverter from harbor freight and convert your truck battery voltage to 120 volts. Easy peasy. I treat 20 or so at the time without pulling the battery down.

The provap 110 is a flawless unit. When I make my nucs I put a strip of apivar in so I don't have to come back 3 times to treat. Apivar is gentle and one of the best treatment out there. All treatments work best when bloodless. I don't use hay, I use two small 4" round pieces of softwood/firewood, floats and never sinks.

When it comes to the straw, I saw a vid where tge guy used noodles the swim noodles cut into and set them with quarter inch gap. Saves bees to

Long time watcher. I don’t comment much. I use a provap 110 and a small generator. I have two extra caps to keep moving fast. I think they only pull like 800W. I put little sticks in my feeders. A few drown, but no big deal. Good luck.

Rough day dude. Couldn't help but feel your pain

Hate to see ya experience such a distraughtful problem, glad to learn from it. Hopefully the rest of the week is enjoyable.

The hay may have absorbed the h2o out leaving a condensed mixture, but I feel your frustration! Thanks for sharing and the sky behind you is beautiful!!

I was going to suggest dribble, glad that's what you did. I'll be interested to see how it goes.

I know this was 6 months ago but man. So hard hearing your frustration.

Hi Brett, sorry for the rough day... Been there, done that. I live in Florida where we don't have straw, at least not where I am, and I use feeders similar to yours. I haven't tried this yet because fortunately I haven't had to feed yet, but I heard someone suggest using pine cones in the feeder. Bees can climb all over them w/o drowning, and should last a long time. When done, dump in woods... All organic. Could be a good alternative to straw. Good luck and thanks for the videos. I really enjoy them.

stop, breathe, focus on the task at ✋. stuff happens. the bugs will not overrun the hive right away. you will recover.

Buy a $49 Ryobi mini 3 stage blower, cut broken hand fan off as close as possible, purchase a section of schedule 40 rigid gray pvc conduit, use the flaired end to connect to blower, cut off to desired length to apply oxalic acid standing up approximately 28 to 30 inches , heat non flared end slowly with a propane torch till soft, insert stainless steel tube into pvc 3 to 4 inches let cool it will shrink tight. Heat pvc again about 8 inches up towards blower to place a bend in pvc for stand up horizontal applications. The number one setting is still slightly strong and cools on prolonged use, but a slight trigger pull works awesome.

Can you rig a smoker bellows to blow the OA vapor out of the unit? Sorry this happened to you. Thanks for sharing.

Man so sorry you are having a rough day and things aren't going as planned but i am super proud of the way you are handling it and for that reason i am subbing. I have watched some of your videos in the past and it was always fascinating but now i feel like you are sharing the real you in your videos and its in times like this when you see the real person inside and that's what i look for when i am looking for a teacher in anything. You have an awesome heart my friend that i for one wish you would show more often. Iggy piggy is awesome too :D Would Apava strips get your bees through until you can get a new delivery system for oxalic treatment? Also setting up patreon to fund equipment replacement. every little bit helps :)

I use the provap110. Paid about $450 for it. Works great for me with a small lightweight generator.

Your vaporizer mini has a bbq blower motor inside of it. You can pick up another one for $10 and replace it. Just cut the 4 spot welds on the handle side and it pulls right out.

Mite Away Quick Strips an option for this season at least until new equipment can be purchased?

At least you didn't see robbing. We had robbing because of the drought. This year has so many problems.

Brett we just bought the Mite-e-vape &150 and we love it! It’s light weight and reheats in like 30-45 seconds...there is a YT video also!! Get extra cups no matter what vap you get!

Did you read Randy Oliver's article on oxalic acid glycerin paper towels? Quite interesting Also I think I've heard of people using pine straw in their feeder boxes?? Should be lots of pine straw in the U.P.😉

Now I get it - you put straw and 1:1 syrup in the tote.. the tote has open sides.. the bee's come in and rest on the straw so that they don't drown. .. Is that correct?

Brett I use Randy Oliver's OA and Glycerin with the sponges. They work great for me. And they are not very expensive to make.

I use a 12 volt vaporizer from Amazon 30 to 50 bucks , if you put a extension piece of Romex 14 ga wire you could hook it to your truck battery and do all of your hives in that yard. Just cut the power off between putting new oxy on the pan, ive used this set up 4 years now.

Quickest way to buy time with a nuc is add a nuc body had one last year that I stacked 4 high Survived Montana winter in a 4 story nuc

Time for a ProVap, my friend. It’s worth the price of admission. If you use dribble, then use the gly method (not sugar syrup). Randy details it on his website. Not sure if you’ve considered or tried mid-winter OAV x3 @ 2g/deep. But that might allow you to get away with not using formic during the flow. You could cut some foam drawer liner (like what you’d find in a toolbox) to fit your plastic totes and it’ll float on top of the syrup. No straw necessary. Hope you get your work done. So it goes.

It might not be something you have time to do right now. But i learned a tip from a guy in the UP on a MI bee group. Here drills holes in the back of his hive or in the bottom board. And has pieces of bent copper pipe with the end bent or sealed that he loads oxcylic acid in sticks the end in a hole and uses a torch on it. I decided to make boards to cover the entrance drilled a hole for the pipe. That way i can close the entrance. I made 3 up and plan on making a few more. It works good and while your heating them up the fist cool off and so on. Then you repack them and go at it again. Its a cheap easy was off doing it. I hope your day gets better.

hang in there...

I hate to see a fellow beekeeper in trouble, but I must say: at this time of year, bees should not need feeding. If there is not sufficient food sources available to them, they're being kept in an unsuitable locality. I have never treated my bees for Varroa. I nearly got wiped out in the years when it first appeared, but I bred from the stocks that survived and it is now no longer an issue. I make sure my bees have , at all times, a full super of honey above the brood box which is never robbed. I never treat and I never feed. Works for me.

I prefer the shop towel

You can replace the hand crank blower with a Dewalt cordless blower. There is a RU-vid video on how to do it and salvage your vaporizer

Why do hives need to be built up to do apivar? I thought this was ideal because it was gentle on the queens with the main downside being that it's not honeysafe and may not provide as complete of a mite kill as OA or Formic

Pine straw works pretty good

I made one out of copper pipe and a torch, works well for me but I only have 18 hives.

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. I use one of the pro vap knock offs, a set of jumper cables, a 1500 watt power inverter and an extension cord. Running vehicle provides the power source and you're off to the races. I do my 25 colonies in short order....Best wishes to you.

Days like this piss me off.

Thanks for the great video. Sounds like it was a rough day. You know what you're doing - you're just having some bad luck. So sorry to hear about it. I have the 12 volt car battery powered one - and it works just fine. I have seen a torch powered unit from the uk - its basically a copper pipe to hold the oxalyic - with a tube to reach into the hive.. There is a copper yoke to hold a propane torch to heat the tube... but they are back ordered - but it would be easy to make one. I'm downstate - but if you really needed to treat - I could make a road trip. (You could maybe get one in if they're in stock). Take care and keep at it.

feeel your pain I'm a one armed bee keeper but i feel like i have no arms trying to keep up and with the crazy weather patterns everything is on a 6-8 week delay

What are you going to be doing in your spare time. Lol . Working

You could just use the dribble method in a pinch. Another way (the main way) I do it is simple put oxalic acid in a copper tube then heat the end up...easy. Oh wow... you mentioned the dribble method (I swear I typed it before I saw you say that).

Check out the EasyVap Oxalic Acid Vaporizing Torch !!!

Aw that sucks man! Had one of those too this week, first queen rearing didn't go to well. From the 30, 10 made it due to stupid mistakes and 4 died cuz I was too late giving them a drop of honey. Im making more now to see if I learned something from last time. Personally I don't like the oxalic drip, i do it in winter but never saw a large drop in mites unlike with formic acid. However formic acid I only do after pulling honey.

Iv throw a bunch of money into oxalix applicators I used a dribble method this spring Way simpler Mixed up sugar syrup and oxalix Applied between frames with a syringe Something 50 cc Per box so a very experienced beekeeper shared his thoughts with me he's got like 4000 colony's he hypothesized that the bees actually consumed some of the oxalix and the varroa ingest some from feeding on the bees 4 grams of oxalix is 1 teaspoon try the syringe give it a go Thanks for posting

Yo...wish I was there to help. Just curious why you need to feed your bees this time of year??

Lorobbees has a nice one that runs off 120 v . It’s like $260 . Just get you a small portable generator to carry with you .

So I think maybe the reason your sugar feed congealed was not the amount of hay you put in. Hay would be a good source of nitrogen for bacteria whereas straw would not be. This along with the warm temperatures encouraged the proliferation of bacteria that caused the sugar syrup to congeal.

I have heard of folks using mosquito forgers in a pinch

Is it safe to vaporize your bees with supers on them?

Hi Brett, I'm sorry your day isn't going as well as you hoped especially with your extra workload. So far so good we are blessed not to have Varroa mites in Australia .....YET . It's only a matter of time somebody will be careless and introduce it here .

Would love to see Randy Oliver's blue shop towel demo, because I am planning to do it myself very soon and it would also be for the 1st time. But be careful maybe it's not a good idea because I'm not sure if it's legal or not.

😉Wow I thought I had a bad day! You win!!😁Looking forward to your vid on OA however you do it✅👍🏴‍☠️

Check out the Provap 110. It’s around $500 I think

For a vaporizer…pick one with the least moving parts.

You might have to go to the handheld gun

I bought the gasvap & it works great! Only 150.00 when i got it

Lorbees [sp] vaporizer might work for you

OA in a weed sprayer

Nice

I take it apart and try to fix it. Couldn't hurt.

1-1/4" pvc gray pipe

Hey Brett….that is exactly what my VM Mini Vaporizer did about two years ago…sorry….it definitely sucks

Dogs make bad days better😉

Look up Johnos easy vap. Great guy and great device

Make yourself a pro vap

Get a Gas Vap check it out on you tube cheap as chips and they work

Buy a cheaper vaporizer, i.e. ProVap 110

Johno’s easy vap

DeWalt cordless blower. Hooked into your pipe.

You look stressed out