I apply one Oxalic Acid treatment per week for six consecutive weeks (two Brood cycles) that will suppose to give me a 97% kill rate that Randy Oliver has found in his experiments (ABJ Feb 2018), doing a total of five Oxalic Acid treatments every four days apart will give you a quick knockdown of your mite load with a 91% kill rate that Randy Oliver has found in his experiments (ABJ Feb 2018), but Randy found that the mites will rebound after the treatment which drops the treatments efficacy. Dr Sammy Ramsey advises that you should treat in July through August to knock down the majority of Varroa mite load in the hive and then treat again for Varroa in mid September thru October to kill the Varroa that were missed on the first round of treatments. I also use a pro vamp 110 vaporizer. Jason, I am posting this information for the benefit of all the Beekeepers on your RU-vid channel, and I appreciate all the work you do in making the bee videos.
@Charles Thomas Thank you very much for sharing with all my followers and me. I am curious do you use a invertor, generator or are your hives close to an outlet you can just plug in your ProVap? I am using a small generator.
2nd year beekeeper here...I did OA vapor every weekend in August. Is there anything wrong with continuing every weekend in September also? I'm in the Pacific Northwest
@@JCsBees I am using a inverter hooked up to my pickup battery, but I find that it make the Pro Vap slow to heat back up after a treatment compared to when it is plug in a electrical outlet. Been thinking seriously the last couple of days about buying a Honda 2200 inverter generator to power it. Do you find that using a generator is faster? I use two grams of Oxalic Acid in a treatment and it takes about one minute 20 seconds for it to complete the treatment when I see the digital number display going up in temperature. Some of my friends have wrap the heat bowl with muffler insulation to keep it hotter, but that affects the cooking of the Oxalic Acid turning it into a gas that might hurt the bees I have read in the past before the Pro Vap came out. I am treating 30 five frame Nucs and 8 ten frame honey production hives, basically doing the same thing you are doing selling Honey, Nucs, and this year raising my on queens .
The generator works but it cumbersome to carry around. I have recently resorted to pulling it around in my little atv wagon, that works but still not super easy. Seems like it takes forever to just get prepared to treat by the time you gather everything and load it on the wagon. lol I wonder does having your truck running change anything with the performance of the provap? Does it heat quicker than the truck not running? Sounds like your doing well with your bees. Nice job!
Jason Chrisman running the truck will raise the input voltage to the inverter but not the output voltage(120V). If you have a 12V device the 14.5V of the running vehicle would probably make heat quicker.
I treated but didn’t do a mite wash first. I am a first year keeper and horrible at spotting the queen. Knowing my luck she would be in the wash. I don’t get any lecturing impressions from you. I get a man speaking from experience and sharing his knowledge.
I dont mean to be so off topic but does someone know a method to log back into an Instagram account?? I stupidly forgot the password. I appreciate any help you can offer me
@Johnathan Jedidiah thanks so much for your reply. I got to the site on google and Im waiting for the hacking stuff now. I see it takes a while so I will get back to you later with my results.
Timely video even though you made it 4 years ago. Getting mite washes of 1 mite each for the last 2 months. Still I am going to treat this weekend with HopGuard3. Even though things look good like you said, can't take a chance to get them through winter without a treatment. No one is mite free. Great advice. Thank you!
I'm guilty! Last year I did not test for mites, I only treated them. Very excited to see the results of the sumac berries! I have used them in the past to dye foothold traps, so if this works maybe I won't grumble so much about the amount of them I have on my property! Thanks for sharing J.C!
I test for mites every now and then. I generally treat without testing or doing a mite count. In my years of bee keeping I generally count between 1-10 mites per 100 bees. Since mites always seem to be present, I believe it is quite fine to treat w/o counting or checking for an exact count. When it comes to making new queens I select from strong colonies and those that survived the MN winter.
Hi JC I enjoy listening to your videos they are very accurate descriptions. Talking about varroa mites I have invented a varroa defender which treats the bees every time they go in or out from the hive yes I said bees , it works like dog flea treatment and coats the bees back and infects the varroa mites which fall off the bee thorax it also protects the bees thorax when visiting flowers stopping the mites etc from attaching themselves back on the part of the bee it can't. Reach ie its back , I will send you a video and show you how it works etc if your interested. Regards Paul Hewitt UK bee keeper.
Great video and great points. I have recently been thinking about preemptively treating without counting mites but i think I’m gonna continue counting mites for the economic benefits of treating less. I run russian bees which can have good hygienic behavior so I definitely monitor for that. I think its ok for beekeepers to treat without counting so long as they are not breeding, that’s definitely better than not treating at all. Dr Sam Ramsey said it best, “you don’t wait until you see fleas on your dog to treat it for fleas”.
Great info Jason, I'm 2 weeks into my Mite treatments with your bees they're doing great oh, it's a 4 box Colony now, it's nice to walk the property these days and see honey bees almost any flower, have a side box a hundred feet from The Hive with sugar water and Ultra B while I'm doing the Mite treatment then I'll go back to into box feeding for winter bees, and start squeezing of bees back into a 2 Box brood chamber so they can backfill, here's has high hopes for the spring looking forward.
Treating without a count would be vastly better than NOT treating without a count. But doing a PROPER count (high %abv alcohol wash) does let you not-treat if the count is low enough and that's a good thing. In time, varroa WILL become resistant to things like oxalic acid and constantly treating them without the need is a major factor in increasing this. In addition, such treatments ruin the sperm-count of drones, and there are lingering effects in the comb itself too. There is currently a problem with poor-quality queens, and the issue is mostly with the lack of good drones.
Jason, You said one cup holds about 300 bees. I've been taught and told by many beekeepers it's one half cup holds about 300 bees. Thanks for the Sumac experiment. I'll wait for the results
Yes. I made a slip up, it is in deed 1/2 a cup. My bad! If your read some of the other comments you'll see this has been pointed out many times now. lol
Just did my mite counts today. Early in the summer I used Apivar on my new packages to knock down the mites that arrived. In July I checked the counts and they didn't change. I have 1-3 mites per 100. Then I used Apiguard in late July and August. I checked my counts today and they're higher than July. I can't get a product to work anymore. I'm planning on buying a vaporizer and do an oxalic acid treatment regiment for 24 days while treating every four to five days. Suggestions?
Thanks for great video as usual! OK. Here is an additional method, or a variant of the oxalic treatment. I make a acid solution (oxalic acid/water/sugar) in ratio 7,5:100:100 grams and drip between the frames directly on the bees. About 25 ml per row. This is done when temperature is between 0-5 degrees C or 32-40? F and when there are no brood left in the hive. The effect is very good and it is harmless to the bees.
@@JCsBees Dibble? OK thanks! Works perfectly. Vapor is no options for me because I need to carry all my stuff quite a distance from my truck to the hives...
I thought the recommended treatment interval for oxalic acid fogging is every 3-4 days for 21 days. This is because the gestation period for mites inside capped brood is 3.5 days. When you fog once, you kill the mites that are outside the capped brood, but the fog can’t enter capped brood, so the mites inside are protected. So then you have to fog again 3-4 days later to kill the newly emerged mites.
alphaxanon Hello Alpha. From everything I have heard in regards to the treatment cycle, it would be every 7 days for a total of three treatments (21 days). The reasoning behind the 7 days is maintaining a good Queen pheromone within the hive. I have never tested this on one of my hives but have really never needed to either.
My bees have mites. I treat. I also throw a short frame in the brood box they build drone comb on the bottom and I cut that comb off and check the drone larvae. My version of a mite wash.
Interesting mite count approach! I have looked into this and there doesn't seem to be any studies done that specify a set number of mites per drone brood to know rather you should treat or not. That said, what number do you go by? With a mite wash, I usually treat anything over 4 mites per 100 bees.
Spinach, Swiss Chard and Rhubarb to mention a few of the plants we consume but not the Rhubarb leaves just the stalks. I have heard that some beekeepers will gather the Rhubarb leaves, dry them and then use them in the smoker as mild treatment. Just FYI I learned that the mites jumped from the Asian honeybee and that is why we have them along with the SHB coming from Africa.
@Thomas Kmet I could think of any of the foods we eat at the time but knew there was some. Thanks for sharing them. You are right about how we got mite here in the US , not sure about the beetles though.
I do believe that the oxalic acid content in the rhubarb leaves/stems are far too low to have any effect on the mites. Worth trying for sure but I think better stick the more tested, validated treatments.
If you buy apigard in the bucket it cost 100$ for the bucket of apigard. It will treat 60 hives that's under 2$ a hive to treat. The only downside to apigard is that you cant get into your hive for 2 weeks but it gives you a break after a long summer of beekeeping lol. Applying the treatment it self is simple. Thanks for the video
@Cornbread & Bees Great info! I am sure that will be helpful to some people. You sound like me as far as enjoying the break. I look forward to winter so I can concentrate on other tasks. lol
1/2 cup of bees, or 1/3, corresponds to 300 and 200. A bit easier with the right tool. Also, using the Veto-Pharma Varroa EasyCheck, which I own, the mites migrate back up into the basket as you swirl, I have no confidence in it if the mites don't remain in the bottom. At the bottom of Randy Oliver not quite perfect alcohol wash, Steve Gomez's modification gives a tool in which the mites which come down, stay down. I made it, I used it and recommend it. Just for grins, you might want to count a few of your samples to get a handle on the number you're scooping, it could be surprising.
Good information, thanks! I do things slightly different than most when washing off mites. First I do the first wash which kills the bees and mites. I then remove the mites I see and drain alcohol. Then refill with water and shake again. I do this a couple times and I fell it makes a huge difference.
@@JCsBees after watching your video, I did a little reading on the subject and you are correct. It may very well cause a bad odor in the hive and cause the bees to start a grooming frenzy, which in turn just causes the live mites to loosen from the bees and fall. Nobody seems to find it actually kills mites. This should be interesting. I'm eager to see what happens.
Thanks, Jason. I was a "treatment free" believer. 4 years. Stubborn. You can guess what my outcome was. I treated yesterday with formic pro. I'm experiencing normal losses on the ground, and I was prepared to see it. I know my girls have a better chance at over wintering. VERY interested to see your findings with the sumac. I have TONS. Please include the toxicity to human factor, differences- as poison sumac is not a great idea to burn.
@Karianngardenguru I wouldn't call it stubborn, your just avoiding the use of chemicals around your bees and that is a great thing. But in the case of mites and winter your wayyyy better to treat with an approved method than to not. It's not worth losing your investment. I hope to include as much information on the sumac as possible but check the toxicity is one thing I don't have the know how on. I am hoping someone with the right equipment will assist in this part. Time will tell. I should have mentioned I am using Staghorn Sumac and not the poisonous stuff.
@@JCsBees When I kept 50 beehives in the early 1980s, honey sold for only $.85 per pound. Now beekeepers can get upto $10 per pound. What Varroa has to do with this I leave to your own judgement.
By the time I needed to think about mites I had gathered many swarms and did removals plus was caring for a lazy beeks bees. Had around 25 colonies to work with so I dug in and did mite-counts. All colonies were first-year from packages, swarms, and removals. 25/25 were at or above the treatment threshold. Right away I decided to treat everything and quit counting. All honeybees in North America have varroa mites.
First I tried the oxyvap. It works but treating dozens of colonies with it takes too long. Bought a provap110 from Betterbee and am thrilled with it. The one thing I have trouble with it the nozzle clogging. Carry a short piece of bailing wire to unclog or it will pop the cap off. Provap110 is the way to go if you've got more that 10 or 15 colonies.
I am working today to fine tune my homemade provap. The goal temp is 446F, the issues is after heating element kicks off at 446 the cook pot still reaches up to 476 or so before starting to drop. There is so many different thing to adjust so it's kind of a pain in the butt to get it right where I want. I have also noticed the clogging and like you am using a piece of wire after each use to clean out tubing.
@@JCsBees mine is set to 230. Have to assume thats Celsius. If you want to see the directions sheet for dosing instructions I could share that. Once I had a provap110 in my hand I was kicking myself because to make one is simple. The controls will be a bit jumpy but if you're patient the controller "learns" what it's doing.
@@JCsBees the temp jumps around a little on a ProVap110 too. Used mine yesterday and saw temps as high as 254 °C. Recommended treatment is between 5-7 days, not 7-10.
To the best of my knowledge bees are capped after about 6 days, so you have to treat every 5 days. If you left it 7 to 10 like you say there is a very big chance that mites can come out of a cell as adults and enter the next one thats about to be capped between treetments. Apparently the mites do not enter the cell till the last moments before being capped as the bees will detect them(some bee strains)and kill the larvae and empty the cell to get at them. Maybe worth a video to do a comparison, every 5 days or every 7 - 10. Also i am part way through my provap build, your video was a great help.
What you say about treating every 5 days sounds right. Last fall was my first and only attempt up till now to use OAV and I couldn't remember the exact days. Guess I should have researched that a little more before speaking about it. I was almost positive it was 7-10 days though. lol I'm been working to fine tune my provap settings. I think my k type thermocouple is bad so I ordered another. Hope that fixes it. Good luck with your build!
Hello Jason. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge and videos. After 2 years of non treatments and disastrous results we have finally educated ourselves somewhat on the treatment of mites. We still haven't been able to do a mite count. Not for lack of trying but because we can never se to find the queen. Last thing we want is to have her end up in our wash jar😩😩. Lack of experience I'm sure has a lot to do with it but the fear is always there. Not sure if there's any advice you can give but doing a "simple" mite count is not that simple for newer bee keepers. Any words would be appreciate. Thank you again
Have you considered having your next queens marked so they are easier to see? If you know the queen is on a frame then you could easily place that frame in another box with you do mite counts. Best of luck.
I do my mite wash and mite treatment all at the same time. I fix a couple gallons of soapy water in a pan and manually scrub all my bees with a little sponge in the end of a match stick. When I get all the bees washed thoroughly, I strain the bath water and count the mites. I do that a couple times a week on 500 hives and I have been mite free for over a week.
@Brent Pot has to be legal for recreational use where you live to come up with the replies I get from you. I can't lie though I always look forward to see what you got to say. 😂🙂😂😉
@@JCsBees Lol, never touch the stuff, I don't even drink but I think MO did make pot legal in the last election. Creativity is the spice of life brother, lol.
I look at drone brood if I can. Very easy to tell if you have lots of mites. Pull out a few dozen larva. Sometimes you will see 5 or more mites a larva.
That's a great way to see how bad the mite population is but....There is not research saying "X" number of mites per drone larva means your population is high and you should treat. What number means you need to treat? With the wash I treat anything with over 4 mites per 100.
@@JCsBees Yeah going to treat for sure asap. I googled and tried to find something but couldnt find any thresholds. Would be nice if someone did some research on this.
Very important information, Jason. Bees are a part of the Agriculture spectrum, and if our livestock get attacked by viruses and the like that threatens their health, we treat them or have them treated. Same with our(God's) honey bees. We need to treat when they need our help. Thanks.
Hey Jason I recently did a Mite Treatment with Mite Away Quick Strips, when I did the treatment I had 6-8 frames of Brood, after the first night, there ere a lot of dead bees at the entrance. At the ends of the treatment I removed the strips and did a quick inspection to discover that all the brood was gone and most was replaced with nectar as we are in a heavy golden rod flow. There has been more larvae in the hive, but also have a queen cup forming.
@Bryan Kelley Glad to hear your treating. I would say the dead bees and missing brood is due to mites. The dead bees would have already been weak from mite diseases and the brood contain mites so it was removed. I know it sucks to have lost all the brood but know going forward your bees are healthier. The queen cup is a concern though, Did you see the queen? Was she laying? Sometime MAQS will kill weak queens. If you don't see her I would look for a mated replacement ASAP. You don't have time to wait for a queen to be reared and mated. Good luck!
@@JCsBees I have not yet mastered finding the queen, I opened the hive the other day and did see some larvae and brood, hoping she is still there, but it is also a concern of mine with the queen cup forming, I only have two choices, get a mated queen or wait and see if the queen cup is closed in.
Good news inspected hive again, the queen cup is gone and saw more larvae and brood. Actually saw two bees springing forth, which was a first for me. Hopefully she does some have laying the next week or two.
Yeah some people swear by these berries and killing mites. On the down side it's not an approved method but I guess if it works why not. lol If it does work, I'd guess it's not approved because it's free.
Say you treat and count the drop on a sticky board post treatment. This would also give you an indication of your bees mite resistance correct? What kind of number would you be looking for post treatment? I know this will be a lot of counting but it should be very accurate I would believe.
To be honest, I don't know about sticky board counts, never done one. I prefer mite washes. I am sure somewhere on Google you can find the answer though. Sorry!
VERY , VERY Well Said Jason, you said Everything Exactly as it should be said.My father n law perfect example ,"I don't see any mites" well , you probably won't,if u do they are infested... can't wait for Sumac Video!
@@JCsBees yeah,bout like the TF bs.How come mine get pms if I do nothing? We have a well-known Dr. (Foreigner) down the road that catches Feral swarms an supposedly don't treat or ever feed sugar but I catch the same bees and if they can't abscond from mites they die lol
Awesome! But so you know these are not the poisonous sumacs, you can actually make kool-aid with these berries. I haven't done it but the neighbor does all the time.
Not "poison sumac", "ornamental sumac". Poison Sumac: rounded (lobular) leaves with smooth edges and odd number of leaves per stem, white berries, prefers damp swampy shady habitat. Safe Sumac: long narrow pointed leaves with serrated edges and even number of leaves per stem, red fuzzy berries (a culinary spice and craft dye) in cone (Christmas tree) clusters, prefers dry well drained full sun habitat. Poison Sumac is very bad stuff. It produces more "urushiol" than "poison ivy". Ol' Jason wouldn't be handling poison sumac like that. If he's not allergic it's a good bet a member of his family is.
I get such a bad reaction from sumac...like poison ivy. I worry about smoking myself. Still, I would love to see your video. I have also heard that rhubarb leaves give off OA if you lay them across the top of the frames and let the bees chew them.
This isn't poison sumac, it's staghorn sumac. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhus_typhina I don't know the relationship to why sumac may work. Maybe it does contain OA, maybe it's something else, maybe it's a bunch of BS. Time will tell I guess. lol
Jason hi im lee I got 2 packages from ga. May 5 2020 oxalic acid treeted asap 2 days oct 05 2020 acid wash and rinsed with water 2 times no mites found will check apr 2021 To see whats up
That would be a good experiment but I am not sure I will have time with everything else I have going right now. Maybe in the future I will try this and share the information.
I'm sold on the provap and mite counts but if I've got a week colony I'm not killing 300 bees I'm just treating. One question I have on the provap is how hot does that end get? I'm worried it may melt the plastic on my apimaye hives.
Hey Jason I have a question that I’ve never heard asked before. How far apart do you recommend keeping your hives on a stand , what’s to close? And do you think that would have any effect on mite transfer colony to colony? Thanks in advance
@Mikey D Not sure this would make much difference on mite load. I've seen hives touching with one having a low count and the other high. In the winter having them touching is ideal as they can share each others heat, in the summer air flow is good but touching won't harm anything.
@chris With oxalic acid you have to remember that it does NOT kill mites in capped cells. That said, I would suggest a treatment every 4 days for a month. If they were broodless then 3 treatment would be plenty.
I bought 4 nucs from a guy that has over 300 colonies. I asked what his last might count was, he said he didn't know. Then he said he just treats at the end of the year when his colonies are broodless and followed that with "I don't have a mite problem, I get them from my neighbors"..... coincidentally every nuc I got from him is struggling and one needed a new queen right away. I guess if you sell junk bees this year you'll get to sell junk bees next year too 😂
@Thomas Stone It's sad the bees I see being sold. You would think selling junk bees would catch up with the dealer but it doesn't seem to. This is mainly due to new beekeepers not knowing. I sure hope you can get your bees in the right direction soon. Best of luck!
Well I no we have to do mite wash but I don’t think there as accurate as they say I do mite wash don’t see mites do anouther one and I see 3 mites and so it’s not accurate I like to do mite wash but I still treat because I can’t trust mite wash
Off topic question. New beekeeper here. My bees re queened themselves about a month ago and the population isn’t that great yet but this queen is laying up a storm. They are now making cells again and filling them with jelly. Someone told me checking them weekly will make them swarm. Is that correct?
Checking too much can disturb them but I understand why you are. Could you maybe extend the period between inspection to every 10 days? If they are making cells again I would guess they are thinking about swarming. Maybe there is something about the hive they don't like, not sure. Ever heard of absconding? That's usually the result of bees being bothered too much but in this cases they just leave and don't leave queen cells. Also all the bees leave. Best of luck!
Jason Chrisman I am afraid it’s too late in the year in Ohio for bees to swarm and survive. Am I correct? If I knock the cells down they will probably just make more.
@Carl Nickell Not without a trained eye. Watch the video I linked called "I Did Not Treat My Bees, I Didn't See Any Mites". In this video, I show how small mites are.
Sometimes you can see one on the thorax or top of abdomen. The mites prefer the underside of abdomen however so if you are seeing them, there are prob hundreds you dont see...
Many people, particularly first year beekeepers, would have trouble killing bees. Even if it was justified for the colony’s survival. Being a first year bee keeper myself, I don’t understand why you can’t treat your bees with OAV without doing an alcohol wash and collect the dead mites as the result of the treatment with a sticky bottom board insert tray when they fall through the screened bottom board. Doesn’t this give you the same or better information that you will need to make future decisions? Statistically you are sampling all the bees in your colony and not a much smaller subset which may or may not represent all the bees in the hive. I may be missing something but I don’t think this has been considered.
What you suggest makes since but I don't know why it's not done that way. Maybe it's not an effective way to get a good count, not sure. Maybe next season I can do some testing on this. Running out of time this year.
I think the idea behind doing a wash is to get a somewhat controlled sample of how many mites per bee you have. If you were to count just the mites it doesn't give you a ratio of mites to bees as you don't know accurately how many bees are in a hive. In other words how many bees are actively carrying mites. As has been said you are always going to have some mites in the hive. Mite management is just a balancing act of treating to keep levels low without harming the bees in the process.
