Oxalic Acid Safari 2007/8 Report

The Lancaster and District Beekeepers Oxalic Acid Safari took place during early January - Oxalic acid is a one shot treatment and only kills the varroa mite on the bees, not in the sealed brood. Therefore to make it as effective as possible we needed to wait until the colonies are broodless.

The mild weather that we experienced this Winter meant that most of our colonies probably still had brood in them and the queen may have been still laying a small number of eggs. We had to postpone the safari until the colonies are as near broodless as possible, which in reality meant early January.

The safari treated 66 colonies of bees in 24 different apiaries throughout our area. We used a 3.5% oxalic acid solution, at a dosage rate of 5 mls per seam of bees to a maximum of 40 mls per colony.

In our travels we are delighted to report that most colonies have survived the winter so far and the majority had stores of honey above the bees heads.