How many staples?

[John B]

Checked my oxalic acid test hive again today. It's three weeks since the last check and bee numbers are about half what they were with deformed wing everywhere and varroa are visible on bees. Alcohol wash gave 140 mites per 400 bees.
I put the strips in seven weeks ago and then replaced after one month. Today I pulled the plug on the experiment as I considered it no longer ethical to leave the hive in this state.
I was using cardboard strips and these were produced using the recommended recipe that came with them, from memory I think is a 60\40 mix.
I think the strips had some beneficial effect but nowhere near enough to keep the hive alive even at this time of year and certainly not going into winter. I have used some pretty ineffective organic treatments in the past but this would be the worst. I will start again in the spring and see if I can work out some way of making them work but for now they go into my snake oil category.
Formic acid is the only organic treatment I have used that showed any promise of living up to its promises but it was very hard on the bees and also potentially very dangerous to use.
I know some very good beekeepers who have had good results with oxalic acid strips and I don't know why mine didn't work but anybody who is using them at the moment and depending on them would be well advised to check if they are working.

 

[tristan]

Checked my oxalic acid test hive again today. It's three weeks since the last check and bee numbers are about half what they were with deformed wing everywhere and varroa are visible on bees. Alcohol wash gave 140 mites per 400 bees.
I put the strips in seven weeks ago and then replaced after one month. Today I pulled the plug on the experiment as I considered it no longer ethical to leave the hive in this state.
I was using cardboard strips and these were produced using the recommended recipe that came with them, from memory I think is a 60\40 mix.
I think the strips had some beneficial effect but nowhere near enough to keep the hive alive even at this time of year and certainly not going into winter. I have used some pretty ineffective organic treatments in the past but this would be the worst. I will start again in the spring and see if I can work out some way of making them work but for now they go into my snake oil category.
Formic acid is the only organic treatment I have used that showed any promise of living up to its promises but it was very hard on the bees and also potentially very dangerous to use.
I know some very good beekeepers who have had good results with oxalic acid strips and I don't know why mine didn't work but anybody who is using them at the moment and depending on them would be well advised to check if they are working.

i'm actually surprised they had that many mites.
by mem i think the worse one i had at the test site was 40 something (and that hive was crashing), anything around 14 had pms.
tho we did have good results with thymol, when used correctly, but its has side effects.
it will be interesting to see why it seams to be a different result from others.

 

[NatureAlley]

That is such a pity, John. I find it difficult to comment without having all the ins and outs. I can only say with oxalic acid strips/staples it is important to keep an eye on things. It is but a weak poison so circumstances need to be optimised especially for them to sit over the brood area. That changes with time... the queen doesn't seem too keen to lay eggs in emptied cells covered by the strips, so it is sometimes required to move the strips. I have always been wondering about the effect of the bee space being cut roughly in half by the strips, but don't know if and how that matters or what to do about it. It is the same for other strips. Would it be good to keep frames a bit further apart when strips hang over them? I have not tried.
The bees in one of my hives chewed through all the strips I had introduced (4/brood box) within 10 days - 2wks. So fresh ones were introduced and the mite numbers dropping on the sticky board went up dramatically. I check every day and collect the data, also note how much strip debris there is on the sticky board. If there is a lot for a while and then gets less... time to put fresh strips in. I should have put double ones in or perhaps even triple layer ones. Oh well, there is always the next inspection. But in 3 years of OA/GLY strip treatments the bees seem to be ferociously chewing in the first weeks after introduction of the treatment.
Another concern: the bees are good at pulling (single layer) strips off the frames. For that reason I put a half-length popsicle stick through slits in the strips (perpendicular, at the point where they sit over the frames). With the wood part exposed under the strip pressed into a bit of the ever present beeswax patches, that will them in place.

Added later: The less dense the population of bees is, the less the bees are exposed to the strips as there is more room to maneuvre inside. So keeping the number of boxes to the minimum required is not a bad idea.

I hope you can still save the hive. Good luck!