Oxalic Acid treatment for my bees

The temperature was ok today (10degC) and no rain, so being the right time of the year to treat the bees for varroa using oxalic acid it had to be done.

It's the right time of year because there should be no brood (bees in the making) in the hive and so all the varroa mites will be in the colony taking a ride on the backs of the bees where the oxalic acid will have the maximum effect.

It's always a bit unnerving trying something new, so read up on the treatment and got everything all ready and to hand.

Each seam of bees needs 5ml of the acid, so first up needed to count how many full seams of bees there were in the hive, fortunately the bees were near the top of the hive so quickly counted 8 seams, by my maths that's 40ml that I needed to but into the syringe. Just a case of evenly dribbling the acid along the seams.

Actually it was all pretty straight forward and very quickly done, so crown board and roof back on and theory has it that's all I should need to do with the colony until March and the approach of Spring!