Varrox Eddy Review – How This Oxalic Acid Vaporiser Kills Varroa Fast

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to review the Varroa Eddy by Andermatt UK. So Andermatt UK have kindly provided me with this product on a loan basis, so I'm going to keep this for a week or so, I'm going to run it around a few colonies, and I'm going to give you my honest review of the product. They've not paid me for the review, and unfortunately I don't get to keep this product either because it is quite an expensive product, so I'll be sending it to Andemat after I've done my review, and I'm going to give you my honest feedback and recommendations for this product. So the Varrox Eddy is a new development in the sublimation of oxalic acid products market. So oxalic acid is used to combat varroa mites. You can use it by spraying it onto the bees, you can use it by trickling it onto the bees at the seams, or you can use it by sublimation, which is turning it from a solid powder into a gaseous form. That's what the Varrox Eddi does. Now, the Varrox Eddi looks to improve on the previous incarnation of that product, which is the Varrox. So if you haven't seen it, I'll put up a couple of pictures now just showing you what the Varrox is. It's really the first device that came to the market in which you could sublimate oxalic acid into a gaseous form to help kill varroa mites. Now, there's loads of products on the market now that you can use for this. There's the Varox, there's the Sublimox, there's the ProVap, there's the GasVap, loads and loads of different types of Oxalix sublimation product. The Varox though seeks to go for a bit of a niche area of that market, and that's what I'm going to focus on in this video. So we'll run through all of the different bits of the device, I'll show you how they work, I'll talk to you about the bits that I like, I'll talk to you about the bits that I don't like, I'll focus in on where I really do think that there's a real advantage to using this product, and I'll give you my general advice and recommendations at the end. So as I said, Andamat, they haven't paid me to do this. All of the views within this video are my own, and it's not a free product either. I've just got this for a loan for a couple of weeks, see how well it performs, and to give you my honest feedback and review. So it comes in a lovely little carry case like that, and as always with all other oxalic sublimation products, you have your case and then all of the other ancillary products that you need. So maybe your tub of Api-Bioxyl or your generator if you're using a Sublimox or a big car battery. What they have done, the Varox Eddy, that is all you need to take out with you when you go to do your sublimation of oxalic acid. So straight off the bat, that is a huge, huge advantage to be able to go out to do your sublimation Just with a small case like that and everything you need to sublimate the bees contained within that case, that is so easy. It's really light, it's really small, you can keep it in the car for whenever you need it. You can do it to swarms because that's a great time to get in there and get a really good varroa drop. I haven't got to carry big chunky car batteries, I haven't got to carry generators, I haven't got to go and get fuel, I don't have cables running around. That's The idea behind this design is that it's small, compact, really easy to use. So let's have a look what's inside the box. So you open it up and you get a couple of instruction leaflets. These are really handy because it gives you indications to the lights, which I'll talk about later. And then it's a really simple product. You basically get a wand that comes like that, and you get a battery power pack, and they just clip together. That's it. That's the assembly done. So you've got a yellow battery there, and then you've got this oxalic sublimation wand. So that is the product there. Now what you need to do is you need to charge up the battery. So the battery is good for between ten and up to fifteen vapes of the hive. So I think that's a really good charging capacity. You can buy additional batteries from Andermat UK as well. So if you if you like this product and you want to go out and buy it. You can buy the wand or buy the kit, and then you can buy separate batteries. So you could come out with 3 or 4 different batteries to go and do, say, 60 hives at once. Otherwise, you're going to have to stop, take a break, go and recharge that battery, and then come back out and do it again. I think most people though who keep kind of 10 to 15 hives in the back, in your back garden, not spread out across numerous apiaries, this device could work really well. It does cut out a lot of the faff with cables. It's a nice neat solution. So within the pack you get a charger, just a standard charger. I'm not sure what the connection is, and then that just plugs directly into the device there, and it takes a couple of hours to get it up to full charge. Then there's not really much else that's in the box. It's quite empty and it's quite a simple device. So you get 2 oxalic sublimation pans, and all these pans do is they slot into that little slot there, and that's it. The product is ready to go. So So the assembly to get yourself ready to go and sublimate your hives is as simple as that. It really is very simple. I'm set up now to go and sublimate my beehives. Now, also included is a little dosing stick, gives you the right amount to dose a full national colony, but you really struggle to overdose colonies in terms of sublimation as long as you're using the correct product. So if you're doing any vaping in the UK, that's ApiBioxyl. As long as you're using the recommended amounts on the packet, which is around 1 gram per colony, then you should be fine. But it's really difficult to overdose. So if you need to put a little bit more in, it's not the end of the world. And then all you do with this product is you just hold the power button to turn it on. So that's the product turned on now. You just hold the power button down for 1 second and all of the lights turn on and go green. Now before I move any further in this video, I'm just going to go and get my respirator. I'm going to go and put some gloves on. Before you start dealing with oxalic acid products, you need to be so careful. So this is my warning to you. Please get a full-face respirator. Please use gloves. Don't get it on your skin. Don't inhale it. It's horrible, horrible stuff. Great at killing varroa mites, but it's also not nice for humans. So please do protect yourself. Right, so I've got my glasses on and I've got my gloves on. I've got my full-face respirator down there. So as soon as I start sublimation, I'm going to put that on just to protect myself. Right, so what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to show you how this works. I'm just going to do a really basic demonstration. We'll put some apibioxal in this container here, and I'll show you how well it vaporizes, and I'll show you roughly how long it takes as well. And then I'm going to go to a colony, and I'm going to show you how to do it to a colony as well. So how to vape a colony using the Varrox Eddy. Right, so as we said before, the only legal product to use in the UK is apibioxal. Make sure you're using a legal product when you're doing any vaping. Pure oxalic acid works fine and is even better, but you can't use it in the UK unfortunately. You have to use Api-Bioxal as that's approved by the VMD. So then what you want to do is take your, your measured portion of Api-Bioxal and place it into the tin. At this point, I'm just going to get my respirator ready, so I'm just going to place that on top of my head like this. Just so I'm ready to go as soon as it starts to sublimate. Now, to get the Varox Eddi going, once you've turned it on with a long 1-second push, you just push it one more time and the light will go orange. And that has started it off now, so I'm going to put my respirator on. So as you can see there, that is the treatment complete now. So it cycles through various different colors as it's going through it. When you turn it on, you get a green light which says we're ready to go. Once you press the button once, you You get an orange solid light and the main light flashes green. That means the product is in operation and you can stand back. And then at the end, you get a purple solid light with a blue flashing light, and that means you're in the cooldown phase. And then when all of the lights turn blue at the end, that means it's cool enough for you to go in there and remove the pan. Now luckily, they give you a second pan, so in the meantime, you can be filling this one up and you can just pop them out Turn it off, turn it back on again, and then it's good to go straight away. Right, so before I give you a bit of a review and recommendation, you've seen how that product works. That's ready to go again now. I'm going to go over there and I'm going to vape some bees. I'm going to get a clear crown board so you can see how much sublimate you get within the colony by using this product. One thing that needs to be said though, this Varrox Eddy will only work with floors that have a 15mm minimum entrance. So for example, a standard wooden national will work. My underfloor entrances unfortunately don't work with it, so it needs to be just a standard wooden national entrance. Make sure you've got something underneath in terms of blocking it off. You want a nice sealed void. You need to put whatever correct inspection board in, or if you're using a solid floor, that will work as well. Just make sure you're keeping as much of that sublima inside the hive and it's not leaking out anywhere. So I'm going to get this colony here set up and ready for vaping using the Varrox Eddie. I'm only doing this with the super on top just to give you a demonstration of how well that oxalic acid sublimate permeates throughout the hive. You don't need to do this in real life, obviously, just close it up at the top, put it in underneath, you don't need to really see what's going on. So you can see there, got a really nice cluster of bees over about 6 or 7 frames. That's really average size for us this year, that's That's perfectly acceptable if your bees are looking like this back end of December. Really nice looking colony. So I'm going to be as quick as I can. Don't want to get them too cold. I'm going to show you how to vape them now. So if you were doing this at home, you can just put the crown board directly on top like that. Because I want you to see how well that oxalic is going through, I'm just going to place an empty super on and the crown board as well. So this is a very strange setup, this hive. It's one of the flaws that I adopted from someone else. It's a terrible design, but it's the only floor that I've got that's actually going to work with the Varox Eddi. So all you need to do is just open up the floor, put the Varox Eddi in. Turn it on and then one press, and that's working now. It's a really quick, simple operation. That's working. I'm going to get my respirator on. So there you go, that's the Varrox Eddie. Wanted to get that hive packed up, it's a little bit cold here today. Whenever you're doing any oxalic treatments, be it dribbling or sublimation, you want to do it as quick as you possibly can. Don't leave the hives open if you don't need to. It's a bit chilly here today, but perfectly fine to be doing that. It's about 7 or 8 degrees here today, that's the kind of temperature that you're looking for when you're doing any sort of sublimation. You don't want it too cold because then the bees cluster together really, really tight and the oxalic acid sublimate doesn't get all around all of the bees. You don't want it too warm or they're out flying and you're not hitting all of the phoretic mites that are potentially on the bees. 7 or 8 degrees around early to mid-December, trying to get that broodless period, that's the sweet spot for oxalic acid sublimation. So I don't know what you thought of that. I personally thought it's a really nice product. A lot of care has gone into the design of this. There's no getting away from it though, this is a very expensive product. It's around £350 to £400, and that's just with a single battery. If I was going to use this, I'd definitely want to go down the route of getting an additional battery, or maybe even 2. The time that it takes to sublimate the product is quite lengthy. It's probably a good couple of minutes because you need to heat the pan up from scratch each time, whereas with the Sublimox you're maintaining that temperature within the pan and dropping the oxalic acid in, and then it fires it out. And you can only use it on a certain type of floor. So there, in my view, there are a few quibbles and negatives with the product. However, there is nothing else like this on the market. There's nothing else that I can package up into a little box like this It's fully charged and I can just take it straight away and go and vape my bees. There's a bigger reason though why I like this product, and I'm just going to tidy away now because it's raining. I don't want to get the product wet, and I'll let you know what that is in a sec. One of the real big reasons that I like this product though is that you can plug it into your hives, you can press the button, and you can go and stand 30 or 40 meters away. It completely eliminates all of your exposure to oxalic acid sublimate. And there's nothing like that on the market. So in summary then, there's a few things I like about the product, a few things I'm not so keen on. The things that I'm not so keen on are the fact that it's quite expensive, you need to buy additional batteries I think to make it work as a usable tool, not compatible with all types of floor, and it's a little bit slow in terms of actually doing the sublimation. The things I really like is the small compact factor of the, of the unit as a whole, I love the fact that it's a rechargeable battery. You're not lumping around a big car battery or a generator, so it's really lightweight. Nothing else on the market is like that apart from the Gasvap, but that's using a completely different technology. But my number one differentiator with this product is the fact that you can walk away from the hive while you're doing the sublimation, and it eliminates any risk associated with inhaling that product. And I think for that reason only, it's a really good product and definitely worth a look. So you can buy this product direct from Andermatt UK on their eBay store, on their Amazon store. I'll chuck up a couple of links if you're interested. I'd say it's a worthwhile product depending on what you need for your oxalic acid sublimation requirements. So I hope you've enjoyed the video. It's absolutely bucketing it down now here in North Wales. I'm going to call it a day. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time.