The November 8th article in the Natures Nectar blog shows the benefit of a late fall oxalic vapor treatment. Make me think I should treat my hives once more and I've already treated them 3 times. Follow this link to the article.
http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/
Beekeepers Gerard and Jack applied oxalic acid this past week (week of Nov. 7th) after reading the above article. Both sent in pictures of horrendous mite drops. Their hives had all been previously treated in August.
Jack's mite drop
Gerard's mite drop
I treated mine with MAQS in early August and with oxalic acid vapor this week because of this extended warm period, except for 3 hives with too narrow of an opening for the vaporizer pan. I was going to leave them as a "control group" until I checked out the linked article. Now I'm going to treat them with an oxalic acid dribble. Hate to break the seals between the boxes, but hate to lose the colonies due to mites more.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to share with you what I encountered since you ran the article on late season mites.
ReplyDeleteOn October 13, I once again did a oxalic vaporization of all the hives except one. The one that I chose to not treat showed no mites on the removable tray. After your article on the late season mites I did a check on the hives and to my surprise, the hive that I had not treated had more than what I would consider a safe number to go into winter with.
November 9th I treated all the hives once again and of course the hive that I had not treated the last time. Yesterday the 11th I checked the tray on that hive and have included the pictures of the tray.
Thanks so much for your timely article.