laurence edwardsOwner at Black Mountain Honey

Optimal Timing for Oxalic Acid Treatment in Beekeeping

30 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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In this segment, Laurence Edwards explains that the most effective time to apply a single oxalic acid treatment to honey bee colonies is in late November, when the colonies are truly broodless. He contrasts this with the more common recommendation of treating around Christmas or early in the new year, arguing that those periods may not provide a fully broodless state and therefore result in less effective pest knockdown. Edwards emphasizes the importance of personally checking colonies to confirm broodlessness before treatment, asserting that this timing yields the best knockdown of pests.

And it goes to show a lot of the advice that you see nowadays is kind of go in around Christmas time, maybe early in the new year, and that's your broodless period. And it's only through actually like going through my colonies like this and doing these checks very occasionally just to kind of verify what my thoughts are. And I do think back end of November is the time you want to be going in, doing your single blast of oxalic acid, because a single blast of oxalic acid on a colony— No.
Oxalic acid on a colony.
Hey, you know the rules, you know the rules. But what I was saying, yeah, single blast of oxalic acid at this point in the year when they are genuinely broodless like this, that is the time you want to do it, and that is when you're going to get the best knockdown.