How to Apply Varromed - Oxalic and Formic Acid Varroa Treatment Step by Step
Laurence Edwards shows how to apply Varomed, a UK varroa treatment combining formic and oxalic acid. Dose 5 ml per full seam of bees during broodless periods, using an automatic syringe for accuracy rather than the bottle's built-in dosing. At £35 for roughly 20 hives, it matches the effectiveness of other oxalic or formic products when timed right.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you how to use Varomed to help fight varroa. So in this video, we're going to talk a little bit about this product, how it's formulated, and how you use it to treat your bees. So Varomed is a formulation of formic acid and oxalic acid. In each milliliter of this product, you have 5 milligrams of formic acid and 44 milligrams of oxalic acid. Now, this is the only product on the market that's registered to combine these 2 products. So oxalic acid is a well-known treatment for varroa. When you're using oxalic acid in the UK, the, the registered product under the VMD is ApiBioxyl, but the active ingredient is just plain old oxalic acid. And then formic acid is the acid that's used in Max, So M-A-Q-S, MiteAway Quick Strips. This product here seeks to combine the 2 products together into a form that's used for trickling over your bees during the winter months. Now you can use this treatment in spring, you can use this treatment in the summer as well, and in the information leaflet it does give you the instructions to show you how to do the repeat dosing that's required when there is brood in the colony. What I'm going to do today though is show you how to apply this product in the winter. And if you're doing it in the winter, it's a straightforward trickle over the bees, trying to time it when you've got a broodless period. And if you can get it when they're broodless, you only need one treatment. So here's the safety disclaimer: if you're using this product, make sure you use adequate safety equipment. As an absolute minimum, eyewear and gloves. If you want to use a respirator as well, you can. Not really that required due to the low formulation of formic acid in this product. Definitely though, don't get it in your eyes, don't get it on your skin, make sure you're wearing gloves as well. So as soon as we open this product up, I'll get my PPE on. So this product, it has measurements all the way down the outside of the bottle here, and the reason that they have those measurements is for accurate dosing. So the idea with this product is you literally take off the lid and you can just squirt it down by the seams. That's the method that I'm going to use in today's video, but I have to say, having already used this product before, I would much prefer to use either a separate syringe, or even better than that, the automatic syringe that I reviewed in a previous video. I find the automatic syringe perfectly gets it, 5 milliliters per seam, or whatever the dosage is for the product that you're using. You can calibrate it. I think this method here is a little bit more difficult to get an accurate measurement, but there's no denying it, it's a very easy and simple system because all you need is this bottle and you can go out and you can treat your colonies. So that's the reason that I'm going to use this method in the video today to show you how quick and simple it is to use this method. Now the instruction leaflet is slightly different to some of the other products, which is done on a seam-by-seam basis. This version gives you a number of bees and then it gives you a total amount of product to apply to the colony. So you need to do a little bit of maths behind it, and I'll help you with the maths in this video. So the recommendation on the product label and doing a little bit of research into it, it does say that it is 5 milliliters per seam. So it's very similar to all of the other products It's just a little bit more difficult to kind of dose that out. So what it does give you on here is dosage down to 15 milliliters, and then it reverses that when you turn it around. So I'm going to do my best. I'm probably going to err on the side of caution. I don't want to overdose the guys on this due to the formic acid. Don't want to do any damage to the queen. But I'll just give you a rough indication as to how much of this product you need to use to get an accurate dosing for your colony. So just remember, you're looking at around 5 milliliters. milliliters per seam. So do not think that you've got 10 seams in your hive if you've got 10 frames. A seam is a seam of bees. So if you've got a seam of bees that is only over half a frame, you need to use 2.5 milliliters of the product. You're using 5 milliliters for a full seam of bees, 2.5 milliliters for a half seam of bees, and so on and so on. So if you don't have any bees in that seam, You can just eliminate that part of the product. Don't think you've got 10 frames, so that's 10 seams, so 50 milliliters of product per hive. Definitely doesn't work like that. It's done on a seam-by-seam basis. Right, so let's open a colony up then, and I'll show you how to apply the Varomed. Remember, eye protection and gloves, absolute minimum. Right, so the first thing you want to do, give that bottle a really good shake, and you want to heat this up to about 25 degrees. So you don't want it going in cold, You can put it in a water bath, just get it up to temperature. I've just left it in a warm room of the house overnight. It's really nice and warm. You don't want it cold because it can shock the bees. Make sure you give it a really good shake though, and it should be a kind of dirty brown color with no sediment at the bottom. Really good shake. Then you want to open up the colony that you're going to treat, give it one last final shake. The reason I've chosen this colony is because it's not a full-size colony. It's only covering about half of the frames. So I'm just going to show you how much to apply to each seam. Remember, it's 5 milliliters per seam, or an exact proportion of that. So if it's only half a seam, it's 2.5 milliliters. So all you're doing is just trickling that directly over the bees. So once you're finished, you just put your crown board back on. Got some Honeybee Pro on this colony as well. So it is a really simple product to administer. I would say though, I do find it a little bit difficult to get the accurate dosing, and I find myself on every colony that I do it in that method I'm a bit scared of putting too much in. I would highly recommend an automatic syringe if you're going to be doing this year in, year out. These syringes are great. I'll pop up a link to the video review that I did of this one, but it gives you such superb accurate dosing, and it means you're getting it down to maybe 2 or 3%, as opposed to that one where I'm scared of putting too much in. So I'll do a little bit of mic drop monitoring on that one. I'll maybe do a follow-up video to show you how effective the product is. I find though most of these products, oxalic acid trickling with apibioxal or Oxivar, or the Varomed, or the sublimation, if you hit them at the right time of the year when they're broodless and you're getting all of those phoretic mites, they're all pretty similar I think in terms of effectiveness. And it's, you can choose which one you want to suit your situation and to suit your budget. This product though I think is a really good product. The bottle treats about 20 hives, and it costs around £35. I bought this product with my own money from Thorns, but it's available across loads of different manufacturers within the UK, and it's approved for use to combat varroa mites by the VMD. So I hope you've enjoyed this video. I hope you found it useful. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.
