How To Kill Varroa Mites With Oxalic Acid Treatment

I have tried every single method when it comes to treating honeybees with oxalic acid. I've tried a trickle, I've tried a gas vap, I've tried the Sublimox, I've tried Oxivar. I have tried literally every single one, but the one I'm going to show you today stands head and shoulders above the rest of them, and that device is called the Instant Vap. So I'm going to show you how to get this set up now and ready for use. A few words of caution first. Obviously, we've discussed PPE. Make sure you've got your PPE. Second one is once you put the battery in, give yourself a nice clean safe heatproof surface. The metal on the outside does get very, very hot and it will melt through this poly. The battery is okay, but I've just got a brick here just to rest that on like that. And then you can see here that everything's pretty safe and it's not going to get completely obliterated by the outside melting things. So I've got this one pre-warmed and ready to go, but as I said, what you would do is you just plug the battery in, And then you're just gonna flick that switch there. So that is off and that is on. So when you buy the Instant Vap in the UK, it is all preset up. You don't need to make any adjustments whatsoever. You do have the ability to make some adjustments on the screen. My recommendation, and the manufacturer and distributor's recommendation, is don't make any adjustments. So it's preset down there. You've got 230 at the bottom, 230 at the top. That's the temperature it's shooting for at the bottom, the green. and then the red is the temperature that it is. So when the 2 match, when they both hit 230 Celsius, obviously gonna be different if you're using it as Fahrenheit, then you are ready to go. Now, the way that the Instant Vap works is super, super simple. All it is is it is a heating device with a heating pan here powered by the battery that fires oxalic acid out that way. It's as simple as that. These 2 devices that I've got in my hand here, you get one when you buy the Instant Vap. I've bought 2. And all these are are dosing units. Fully stainless steel, plunger at the top-hand side up there, dosing unit at the bottom side down there. And you should be able to see here, you've got the gram measurements on the side. So 1, 2, 3, 4. And all you do is you just twist that end up there, and that will move the dosage to the correct amount for you. So in this container here, I've poured out all of my apibioxal. Couple of old packets there, so it's clumping together, but ideally you want to get brand new apibioxal to make sure that it is completely dry. So you can see there, all I did was just dunk it in straight away and it gives you your dose. And then you'll see there, if you push it out, pushes out the dose. Really simple mechanism. It's good to get 2, especially if you've got 2 of you working, makes it loads quicker. Really, really simple. So if you want your 1 gram dose or your 4 gram dose, you can see it just picks it up really, really quickly. Right, so everything's set up now. I've got my dispensers with the ApiBioxalin, my Instant Vaps at the correct temperature, correct voltage as showing on the top there, sitting at 18.4 on the voltage now. Temperature at the back is going for 230°C. It's reached 230°C. We can start to load the Instant Vap with oxalic acid. So I'll do a couple of demonstrations before we go into the beehive and actually zap some bees. But as I said, I will double down. Please don't get bored. Good PPE, good eye protection, really good gas mask, 3M with organic vapours, new filters every single time I use this, and obviously gloves goes without saying. So you can see that was really simple to do. I'll give another demonstration now. You're just popping it in. Simple as that. One push and watch it come out. So each and every time you push that plunger down, you'll see the target temperature remains the same at 230, and then the actual temperature drops a little bit as that oxalic acid is sublimated. You only need to wait maybe like 5 or 10 seconds in between each vape for that temperature to get back up to 230, and then you can just put some more oxalic acid or apivioxal in. What this means is that going through the apiary, it is incredibly quick. Like, it is just a breath of fresh air— excuse the pun, definitely not a breath of fresh air. But once you're set up, once you've got your bee suit on, once you've set your colonies up, the actual application into the colony is incredibly quick. You can do each colony in literally 20 or 30 seconds, move on to the next one. I can do a whole apiary in like 10 or 15 minutes. So there we go, I've managed to vape every single colony in this apiary, and there are— let me just count them up— 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12 colonies in this apiary here, and it took me no longer than 15 minutes. About 15 to 30 seconds in between each hive or nuc to let it build back up to 230°C, and then you just go straight in with your plunger and put in another gram of apibioxal. Or if you're in the US or another country, you can go the full 4 grams of oxalic acid. By far and away my most favorite method of treating varroa. Okay, Apivar is very simple, simple amitraz-based miticide, but there is always the risk of resistance. Don't get the risk of resistance with oxalic acid because of the way that it actually kills the mites. In terms of the Instant Vap though, brilliant, super well-built, practical because you can use it with a wide range of batteries. I'll just show a little bit here at the beginning in terms of cleaning it out. This was my biggest hate with the Sublimox, and I mentioned I'd talk to you a little bit about these other ones that I hate. Now, the Sublimox, when you came to clean it like that, turning it upside down and trying to put water into it to force a steam jet through to clean it, it was impossible to do with the Sublimox. And I used to find myself just doing it again and again and again and again, and all that would happen is that the cap would pop off and the nozzle would remain blocked. But I've shown you the method to do it here with the Instant Vap. You just take one of the silicone cups that I recommend you get as well, fill it up halfway with water, let the machine die down to less than 200 degrees Celsius, invert the Instant Vap, put the cap on underneath, flip it back up, but at the same time apply a really good amount of pressure so it doesn't pop the cap off, and you get this huge jet of steam running through the brass nozzle, completely cleans it out. And then all you do is you just switch it back on again, let it get up to full temperature, dry out, And it is as good as new. You never get this buildup because you can do regular maintenance to keep it nice and clean. I don't think there's any possible way that I could improve the Instant Vap. I just wish they'd built it a long time ago. The gas vap, I'm sorry, it's not for me anymore. Blocks up really easily. The blowtorches are just unreliable. If you want my advice, I would go for the bigger, better, okay, slightly more expensive Instant Vap, and it will pay you back in dividends in terms of the ease of use, and the benefit for your bees. So the things that I love about the Instant Vapour that the competition really can't keep up with, it's got a super robust construction, fully stainless steel with one exception of the brass nozzle, but that's deliberately designed to ensure that the vapour can travel through it properly without blocking up. They've used the best materials, but the best materials in the right places. The electronics inside it are so accurate and reliable, and it gets up to that 230-degree temperature really, really quickly, but that specific 230°C temperature is very, very important. The gas vap doesn't allow this, it just gets it hot and turns that oxalic acid into a vapor, whereas this one here turns it into the correct vapor at the correct temperature and doesn't risk the chance of overheating it. Which, if you didn't know, if you overheat oxalic acid, it can turn it into formic acid, and I definitely don't want to take a gulp of any formic acid. And it means that it's less effective on the bees as well. So that 230 degrees is good for the beekeeper, it's also really good for the bees. Not so good for the mites. So there's no leads, there's no generator, but for me, far more important than that is the speed in which I can go between each colony. So the Sublimox promised exactly the same thing, which is get the pan up to the temperature and all you're doing is plunking more oxalic acid in or apibioxal in, it fires it out and you move on to the next one. Now in theory, they are exactly the same because all you're doing is getting the pan up to temperature, putting more oxalic acid in and firing it out, and then you're just waiting for the pan to reheat each time. But in practice, the Sublimox doesn't work like that. You get maybe 3 or 4 in and then it blocks, and then you just think, oh, this is really annoying. You try to unblock it and you can't. Whereas with the Instant Vap, I promise you, I've just done a full run all the way across every single colony in this apiary, 12 in a row, didn't block once. Gave a full blast of oxalic acid without any blockages, and then I cleaned it at the end and it cleaned out perfectly the first time. So in terms of a comparison with other varroa treatments, it's obviously far, far cheaper. If you're outside the UK and you've not got to use apibioxal, then it becomes kind of like pretty expensive still anyway, but it is still cheaper than using, say, Apivar. And if you time it at the right time of the year when you get that broodless period and you just have to use it once, not only is it very, very effective, but it is very cheap at the same time. And then again, another one, if you're outside the UK, what's brilliant is it leaves no residue. You can even do it with your honey supers on. Hopefully at some point in the UK they'll do some testing and prove what all of the other countries seem to have proved already, that there is no risk of any residue in honey supers or that wax. And if they do that, we genuinely have an alternative to chemical treatments, an organic method to kill varroa mites to make sure that you have the healthiest bees you possibly can.