Formic Acid is the treatment of choice at least in Germany. I have several official brochures from this year that explain the treatment steps. They also heavily promote drone cell cutting and destruction. Concentration that is recommended is 60%.
Hi Glen, They both do well except that formic acid is just more of a hassle because you need to open the hive boxes several times over the course of a month. Each treatment lasts 4-5 days and I have 4 hives so I needed to do the application about 20 times. Oxalic acid is much, much easier as long as you take care to stay away from the vapour. You also need to apply it just once after most/all your brood is hatched out. For me, that's around October or November.
Thanks for the info. Formic acid actually illegal in liquid form in the US, but not in Canada/elsewhere. The treatment decision is based on the beekeeper's desire to be chemical-free or not. Drone frames and powdered sugar dusting are the two most highly used chemical-free methods, and I would guess that chemical strips are the preferred chemical method. Direct application of oxalic acid and formic acid aren't commonly used because they take more time, but they're a lot cheaper.
FA is legal in Canada. I don't think it's been approved in the US in liquid form for personal use, but you can buy it in packaged form like Mite Away. You can look it up on Amazon.com and buy a quart bottle for $20
Not bad. The bees had trouble getting through the plastic, compared to just the paper towel, which they tore apart. I switched to oxalic acid though. Much simpler.
What is your mite count post FA treatment. Where are you getting your instructions that call for a 65% FA soln? A 1:1 FA will yield a 47% soln. What is the concentration of your original FA soln?
88% original. Here's the 65% source, search on "formic" and it's about halfway down the article. www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/food/inspection/bees/2014-treatment.htm
Well I received my two packages 5 weeks ago and one of my Bee club members came over a week ago to do the mite treatment with the strips and within one day lots of bees were dead so I threw the stripes out. I think they were too week yet to do this treatment
You could have easily put in too much acid for a package. What's the population in a package? Couple thousand bees? Those strips are for a thriving hive in at least a full box and probably 2+ with tens of thousands of bees. So I agree your population wasn't large enough for treatment.
I have lately wondered if vapor treatments like thymol and formic acid would be more effective if they were administered in between boxes and not on top of the top box. Any thoughts?
I'm sure they would, but in this hive you can see there are so many workers that I'm sure that the air circulates the acid all over. Having said that, if you put it in the middle, it would be that much better.
Formic acid is legal in the EU, the thing is that different countries have different rules. Formic acid is one of the building blocks to make some designer drugs so it is on a list i think they call it a precursor. anyway I ordered a liter of it and just got it in yesterday. I know for sure it is legal in Belgium and The Netherlands can't speak for any other EU country but chances are it is allowed everywhere. You should NOT use it if you are planning to harvest honey with the next 4 weeks though. I will not use it untill after harvest in a couple weeks.
Also, beekeepers should only be treating their hives after the nectar flow and when capped brood is negligible. In N. America this is late fall (to knock back mites that built up over summer) and again in early spring before the queens starts building up the colony (to knock back mites that built up over winter.)
Unfortunately i started with a TBH and switching next year to a Langstroth hive. I just wasted so much time on the TBH which I think is harder to take care of specially getting Honey out and using treatments for mites.
Yeah I was approached by a beekeeper in my Area, Arlington, VA that had and made TBHs. I read up on them, that they are cheaper to keep up with low maintenance. wrong. In the end I spent more in the last two years to keep bees than I would have otherwise. But it is not about the money rather about the experience. We all have to pay our dues as we learn in live. Some pay more some pay less. Well, live and learn. I just want to get my two hives over the winter and then move them into Langstroth hives, which I am building at the moment. I am sure that is going to be a pain in the neck to do. I thought I could do it all alone with no support or mentor. I was wrong. Now I belong to a Bee Association and met a beekeeper that is willing to help me. It just won't get in my thick head that there is no other solution to get rid off the mites. Have you heard about the Bee Gym?
New beekeepers have a lot to learn, for sure. I haven't heard of the Bee Gym so I looked it up. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260388
It depends where you live. In the US you can get it online from chemical companies and in places like Canada you can buy it at a specialty chemical company.
Are you sure that you did this legally? I was under the impression that formic acid needs to be delivered in a specific way and I don't see you following the rules of the game. Any comments? I see some strange things on youtube. You basically saved an expensive step of purchasing the acid in pad form from suppliers. Is the formic acid expensive? Is it easy to obtain? Thanks
Thanks I did order online. I ordered the 95%. Did not know that the Mite away stripes are the same. Or do you like this method better? I am a new bee keeper and not so familiar how things are handled in the US.
The mite strips are definitely, overwhelmingly easier. But I'm cheap! Welcome to the world of beekeeping, it's a great hobby. You probably know when to do mite treatments, but we typically do one as the honey supers come off in the fall and then another in the spring. The early spring one is vital because the mite population grows quickly when the bees are stuck in the hive all winter. If you don't do an early spring (like Feb) treatment you run the risk of the mites overtaking and killing off the hive. I switched to using an oxalic acid vaporizer by the way. It's way easier, faster, has immediate results and over the long run it's the cheapest. I have a video on that too. Good luck.
Thanks for answering. yes the packages have 3000 bees in them and I guess I should not have treated them. It is really confusing because there are so many treatments. I cannot believe that scientist haven't found a way to kill the mites differently and not leaving it up to the beekeepers themselves. Of course there is a big industry out there which sells all those treatments. but looking from an agricultural side. If we need the bees that bad, why hasn't anyone from the government departments put money towards finding a cure against the mites?
There are basically two approaches: Beekeepers help the bees with chemicals or beekeepers breed mite-resistant hives. The selection comes down to philosophy and time. If you want to be completely natural and have the time and patience, take a couple years to split your hives and build up a strong hive count that you can leave untreated. Then do that one year and see what happens--Hopefully you're left with a couple of surviving colonies that are potentially mite resistant. Then repeat for a couple of years and you've probably got a good mite resistant population. Most of us don't have time and patience, and many of us lose hives as well and need to start over. A lot of people sprinkle powdered sugar on the bees and go that route, but if you've got more than 1-2 hives it's a chore. The vast majority of beekeepers use miticides that are readily available and the strips work well. I'm just cheap so I went with oxalic acid vaporization that takes just minutes and is super easy. I used formic the first year with excellent results, but it was getting to be a hassle lifting up the boxes and pouring in the acid.
Formic Acid is the treatment of choice at least in Germany. I have several official brochures from this year that explain the treatment steps. They also heavily promote drone cell cutting and destruction. Concentration that is recommended is 60%.
Can you turn the volume up?
Hi, can you tell me the amount of formic acid and the amount of water mixed for one hive
Thank you
Hi Glen,
They both do well except that formic acid is just more of a hassle because you need to open the hive boxes several times over the course of a month. Each treatment lasts 4-5 days and I have 4 hives so I needed to do the application about 20 times.
Oxalic acid is much, much easier as long as you take care to stay away from the vapour. You also need to apply it just once after most/all your brood is hatched out. For me, that's around October or November.
Thanks for the info. Formic acid actually illegal in liquid form in the US, but not in Canada/elsewhere. The treatment decision is based on the beekeeper's desire to be chemical-free or not. Drone frames and powdered sugar dusting are the two most highly used chemical-free methods, and I would guess that chemical strips are the preferred chemical method. Direct application of oxalic acid and formic acid aren't commonly used because they take more time, but they're a lot cheaper.
FA is legal in Canada. I don't think it's been approved in the US in liquid form for personal use, but you can buy it in packaged form like Mite Away.
You can look it up on Amazon.com and buy a quart bottle for $20
Not bad. The bees had trouble getting through the plastic, compared to just the paper towel, which they tore apart. I switched to oxalic acid though. Much simpler.
What is your mite count post FA treatment. Where are you getting your instructions that call for a 65% FA soln? A 1:1 FA will yield a 47% soln. What is the concentration of your original FA soln?
88% original. Here's the 65% source, search on "formic" and it's about halfway down the article.
www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/food/inspection/bees/2014-treatment.htm
good video. how'd the plastic and papertowl work out?
how much die off of healthy bees do you have when you use this acid?
Kimberley Murphy I didn't see any unusual bee die off that was related to FA.
Well I received my two packages 5 weeks ago and one of my Bee club members came over a week ago to do the mite treatment with the strips and within one day lots of bees were dead so I threw the stripes out. I think they were too week yet to do this treatment
You could have easily put in too much acid for a package. What's the population in a package? Couple thousand bees? Those strips are for a thriving hive in at least a full box and probably 2+ with tens of thousands of bees. So I agree your population wasn't large enough for treatment.
Hi Doug,
I see you have used both Formic acid and Oxalic acid vapour.
Which method do you prefer? Which one worked better at killing the mites?
Glen
Did you have any queen losses ..
Never, no problem
I have lately wondered if vapor treatments like thymol and formic acid would be more effective if they were administered in between boxes and not on top of the top box. Any thoughts?
I'm sure they would, but in this hive you can see there are so many workers that I'm sure that the air circulates the acid all over. Having said that, if you put it in the middle, it would be that much better.
Formic acid is legal in the EU, the thing is that different countries have different rules. Formic acid is one of the building blocks to make some designer drugs so it is on a list i think they call it a precursor. anyway I ordered a liter of it and just got it in yesterday. I know for sure it is legal in Belgium and The Netherlands can't speak for any other EU country but chances are it is allowed everywhere. You should NOT use it if you are planning to harvest honey with the next 4 weeks though. I will not use it untill after harvest in a couple weeks.
Also, beekeepers should only be treating their hives after the nectar flow and when capped brood is negligible. In N. America this is late fall (to knock back mites that built up over summer) and again in early spring before the queens starts building up the colony (to knock back mites that built up over winter.)
+Droidfoon I bought my formic acid in Belgium in Kortrijk
Unfortunately i started with a TBH and switching next year to a Langstroth hive. I just wasted so much time on the TBH which I think is harder to take care of specially getting Honey out and using treatments for mites.
Agreed on that. I've only seen video on TBHs and they look like a real pain in the ass.
Yeah I was approached by a beekeeper in my Area, Arlington, VA that had and made TBHs. I read up on them, that they are cheaper to keep up with low maintenance. wrong. In the end I spent more in the last two years to keep bees than I would have otherwise. But it is not about the money rather about the experience. We all have to pay our dues as we learn in live. Some pay more some pay less. Well, live and learn. I just want to get my two hives over the winter and then move them into Langstroth hives, which I am building at the moment. I am sure that is going to be a pain in the neck to do. I thought I could do it all alone with no support or mentor. I was wrong. Now I belong to a Bee Association and met a beekeeper that is willing to help me. It just won't get in my thick head that there is no other solution to get rid off the mites. Have you heard about the Bee Gym?
New beekeepers have a lot to learn, for sure. I haven't heard of the Bee Gym so I looked it up. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1260388
Where do you buy the formic acid please?
It depends where you live. In the US you can get it online from chemical companies and in places like Canada you can buy it at a specialty chemical company.
Are you sure that you did this legally? I was under the impression that formic acid needs to be delivered in a specific way and I don't see you following the rules of the game.
Any comments?
I see some strange things on youtube. You basically saved an expensive step of purchasing the acid in pad form from suppliers.
Is the formic acid expensive? Is it easy to obtain?
Thanks
Bee Bob when you buy liquid FA...at least in Canada...direction on the bottle say to do what he just did...minus adding water
Where does one buy Formic Acid? i am in Arlington, VA
I ordered online. The US has more stringent reg's than Canada I think.
Thanks I did order online. I ordered the 95%. Did not know that the Mite away stripes are the same. Or do you like this method better? I am a new bee keeper and not so familiar how things are handled in the US.
The mite strips are definitely, overwhelmingly easier. But I'm cheap! Welcome to the world of beekeeping, it's a great hobby. You probably know when to do mite treatments, but we typically do one as the honey supers come off in the fall and then another in the spring. The early spring one is vital because the mite population grows quickly when the bees are stuck in the hive all winter. If you don't do an early spring (like Feb) treatment you run the risk of the mites overtaking and killing off the hive.
I switched to using an oxalic acid vaporizer by the way. It's way easier, faster, has immediate results and over the long run it's the cheapest. I have a video on that too. Good luck.
Thanks for answering. yes the packages have 3000 bees in them and I guess I should not have treated them. It is really confusing because there are so many treatments. I cannot believe that scientist haven't found a way to kill the mites differently and not leaving it up to the beekeepers themselves. Of course there is a big industry out there which sells all those treatments. but looking from an agricultural side. If we need the bees that bad, why hasn't anyone from the government departments put money towards finding a cure against the mites?
There are basically two approaches: Beekeepers help the bees with chemicals or beekeepers breed mite-resistant hives. The selection comes down to philosophy and time. If you want to be completely natural and have the time and patience, take a couple years to split your hives and build up a strong hive count that you can leave untreated. Then do that one year and see what happens--Hopefully you're left with a couple of surviving colonies that are potentially mite resistant. Then repeat for a couple of years and you've probably got a good mite resistant population. Most of us don't have time and patience, and many of us lose hives as well and need to start over. A lot of people sprinkle powdered sugar on the bees and go that route, but if you've got more than 1-2 hives it's a chore. The vast majority of beekeepers use miticides that are readily available and the strips work well. I'm just cheap so I went with oxalic acid vaporization that takes just minutes and is super easy. I used formic the first year with excellent results, but it was getting to be a hassle lifting up the boxes and pouring in the acid.
I think formic acid is illegal in EU.
I. CAN'T. HEAR. YOU!
Acid...
Correct
I m Indian need job in abroad having experience more than 18 years of
Bee keeping know everything about bees please help someone !
Can't hear you wastof time