![]() Oxalic acid in not new to the varroa mite wars. One such flash treatment available is oxalic acid, distributed by Véto-pharma as Api-bioxal. However, winter, or times when there is no, or little brood in the hive, provides beekeepers with an opportunity to make a flash treatment more effective. Likewise, one of the drawbacks of what we call “flash” varroa treatments, miticide formulations that only act for a very short period of time, often only for a few days, is that they do not effectively control mites within capped cells. ![]() Most of the registered miticides will not kill varroa within the cells, instead depending upon longer treatment periods, over 42 days, to dispatch the mites contained within the cells after they emerge. This complicates the methods that beekeepers use to control them. ![]() As much as 80% of a colony’s varroa mites will, during periods of high honey bee and brood production, be contained within the cells of worker and drone cells. ![]() Varroa mites reproduce in honey bee brood, and most of their early life is spent there. But the short days of winter can have an advantage for killing varroa, due to the absence, or scarcity, of brood in the hive. It is late fall now, winter is near, and we do not typically think about treating our colonies for varroa as temperatures cool and snow beckons.
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