I am from western Oregon. I am setting up my equipment and have ordered a nuc of bees. I also have a swarm trap and hope to find one this year. Got started too late last year and couldn't get bees or a swarm. I'm starting with lanstroth equipment, but hope to transition to foundationless. I'd like to remain as natural as possible, but know it's necessary to keep mites under control. I am intregued by the vaporizing of oxalic acid to control mites .
Hey joecool911, welcome to the forum from southern Colorado.
Welcome
welcome
here we have ebooks , and videos
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Welcome to the forum. :smile:
I suggest looking for a local bee club to attend as a lot of local knowledge can be had there. Also many clubs now have a mentoring program where one experienced beek will over look your growth (Not do the work but in many cases stand by your side while you work your hives.) Ask us whatever you like as most of us will tell you what we do or have done and what has or has not worked for us. I for one will strive never to tell you what you must do but I will warn you of my failures if I have tried what you are asking about. -Mike
Any of ya had success with OAV? Hearing conflicting reports about how "organic" it is. I'm a career landscaper, so I'm well aware of how crummy going down the non pesticides road can be disappointing. I can understand why large bee operations would not go down the OAV road. Too labor intensive and not approved in the USA. But small keepers main objective is to keep the hives healthy and prosperous. Multiple applications not a problem. Looks to me like the big mite problem is after the heavy honey flow. And that treatment is critical late summer/early fall when population is naturally falling anyway. I've got a screen bottom to monitor mites with little disruption. Ok, so the treatment is not effective to capped brood. But if we hit em multiple times we should be able to catch each phase of the bees. These are my thoughts anyway.
Its like forcing a square peg into a triangular hole
they take the bees in the day between 9-5 half the girls are still out then move them across country on very long trips
hit them with chemicals steal the honey
the commercial push them real good comes to mind
any wonder they complain of CCD besides there is money in CCD tax write offs
and the most favorite of every American, oh woo is me!
Welcome, I've only had bees for two summers. The first summer I had one package, last summer I ended up with 18. I use the OAV method each year and I haven't lost any to mites. I have had to combine a couple because of bad queens.
Look at anything Randy Oliver (scientific beekeeping) has written on his website about oxalic acid. i think he's a big advocate, but I'm pretty sure he uses dribble. There are some plans online for making a simple vaporizer, but just look at JB600 Vaporizer (Google it) and you can see how simple it is. I don't see any sense in the ones that require a car battery to vaporize. There sre some YouTube videos on vaporizing that are interesting. You should go into your profile and put in your location, since a lot of answers to our questions are location-specific. Good luck with beekeeping.