Home made vapouriser

[tawny]

I have been having a play with a 12v element for boiling water in a cup which had been listed on an auction site. The version I had was 200w (£6) and am now waiting for a 120w version (£3). For the bowl I used a copper compression fitting blanking cap. This is the type that screws inside a fitting rather than on the outside. Fortunately I had one on my copper tubing style vapouriser. This screwed inside the coiled element. My son had then wired this to a switch and all was cable tied to a bit of angle iron to create a long length for putting inside the hive. The bowl holds more than enough OA for a hive. A test outisde of the hive showed from flicking the swictch on to all of the OA being vapourised as gone in 60 seconds. What I have learnt is that the element melted part of the fitting, proabably through not having any liquid around the element to slow down the heating. Just think what happens to a kettle that is empty.. The heating up times seem in line with commercial vapourisers. The switch could be used to turn on and off over that time to prevent melting of the plactic, but that is what we will look at next with the 120 w version. The battery used was a small 12v around a bike sized battery. My local battery manufacturer Sheild Batteries do them for around £12. Part of the angle iron is being ground down to enable it to fit in the entrance. That said I reckon you could use this under the OMF as the vapour rises.

 

[SixFooter]

Search online for "Sublimox". Radically different operation to a Varrox.

I did. Found nothing at all!

However, I have seen a number of videos of people treating hives with oxalic acid using much more expensive equipment than the varrox and the time taken is way more than 25 seconds per hive. That is, if you include all the set up and preambles that precede actually pumping the vapour in.

If you were to arrive at an apiary with 20 hives, you would not be able to treat them all in 20 * 25 = 500 seconds = 8.3 minutes no matter what equipment you use.

It probably takes more than 25 seconds per hive to even count the number of hives in an apiary!

 

[Hivemaker.]

It probably takes more than 25 seconds per hive to even count the number of hives in an apiary!

I agree, you need to take other things into consideration, the apiary might be a ten mile drive from home, so this has to be taken into account as well, but if it is your hobby it does not really matter how long it takes you, time is no object.

If you were to arrive at an apiary with 20 hives, you would not be able to treat them all in 20 * 25 = 500 seconds = 8.3 minutes no matter what equipment you use.

Of course not, and no one said you would be able to.

But once the thing is plugged in it takes only 25 seconds per hive...you then have to walk to the next hive of course, i would allow 18 to 20 minutes for 20 hives, 60 in just under an hour.

I did. Found nothing at all!

http://translate.google.co.uk/trans...o-apiculture.com/fr/sublimox.html&prev=search

 

[Nige.Coll]

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...ml&prev=search

+ Better delivery system, faster, easier.

- You need a generator or extension lead.

 

[Heather]

It is the blocking in of each colony that takes the time up. Still pretty quick though, and hive not cracked open which is a bonus. You don't allow for that Hivemaker?? Don't you bother?
I used a small battery 'borrowed' from an electric fence.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

I managed to test my vaporiser today with a digital infra-red thermometer. After it had been heated and cooled a few times I found that it warmed up to above 160 degrees in about 2min 30 secs. The hottest temperature I got to was 180 degrees after 4 minutes. It did not heat the handle and the temperature under the heater was about 30 degrees when the dish was at its hottest - this is good because it means I can put the vaporiser above the monitoring board, below the OMF and it won't melt the plastic monitoring board.

I'll need to do some tests to see how long it takes to vaporise 2.5 grammes of OA after which I can write down clear timings for the whole process - warming up, vaporising, cooling down. I know the first is 2 1/2 minutes and I'd better allow 5 minutes for the last so the whole process could be 10 minutes, which would not be very good in a professional apiary but it's ok for an apiary with only a small number of hives needing treatment.

I'll report back when I know the accurate timing for vaporising 2.5 grammes of OA.

As to using a jubilee clip, WessexMario, to hold the thing together, I think it would look naff and would also conduct heat away from the OA pan, making the process longer.

CVB

I have not had the chance to test how long my vaporiser takes to deal with 2.5gm of OA - domestic emergencies involving oil leaks in central heating boiler and need to fit and test a replacement radio/satnav in my car precluded much bee work this week - but I did have time to remove the monitoring board under one of my hives. After five days I had ONE mite drop which is good news and bad news - good news is there aren't many Varroa in the hive; bad news is I'm not justified in using my newly constructed vaporiser!

On the 5-day monitoring board were the rows of chewed cappings as expected but mixed in with this was a lot of liquid that at first I assumed was condensation and it was concentrated with the cappings in rows between the frames. I couldn't figure out why condensation would accumulate there. I tasted the liquid and found it was SWEET. At this time of year, it's unlikely to be nectar and it was not concentrated enough to be honey, so what was it? Do bees water down honey stores (probably ivy) for consumption and if so, why are they so clumsy when it comes to dropping food on the floor? Anybody else noticed this phenomenon?

CVB

 

[Nige.Coll]

Bee are clustered atm.
Where are varroa going to be? As close to the brood area as possible they like to be warm.
A drop of 1 is well optimistic to say the least.

Passive methods like varrox do not penetrate the cluster.
Varroa don't hang out on bees on the outside of the cluster.
4c if you really must 10 c minimum. better still do the treatment in autumn/spring.
Varroa aren't stupid they know how to tell the difference between nurse bees and foragers and want to keep warm.
Everyone wants to blast the varroa while there are no brood so they have nowhere to hide but it's just too bloody cold atm for it to work.

Vapourisation fills the hive with OA mist and then it forms crystals, in this cold weather that takes seconds.
What percentage of the bees are exposed to the mist cloud ? 10% maybe

yes they need water to use the stores especially if it was ivy or another type that crystallizes easily. Adding water to stores makes it expand , maybe it dripped out while they were working it and they cannot retrieve it below the omf.

 

[pargyle]

A drop of 1 is well optimistic to say the least.

It may be right ... I count the drop in my hives on an (almost) daily basis and I see very little natural drop at present .. one hive is nil drop at all although it is a big colony.


Vapourisation fills the hive with OA mist and then it forms crystals, in this cold weather that takes seconds.
What percentage of the bees are exposed to the mist cloud ? 10% maybe

It's not the mist cloud that affects the varroa - it's the crystallized deposits everywhere after it has sublimated that does the damage - although the bees do need to be mobile (to some extent) for the stuff to take effect. I tend to agree with you that treatment when they are not going to be tightly clustered is probably going to be more effective - although in insulated/poly hives my observations are that the bees are only really clustered when it is very cold.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Everyone wants to blast the varroa while there are no brood so they have nowhere to hide but it's just too bloody cold atm for it to work.

True, warmer weather and loose cluster is much more effective.

Of course there are also a lot of people around with resistant bees, that never suffer any varroa problems, many of them are fakes, dangerous people to listen to, especially for new beekeepers.

 

[Nige.Coll]

A drop of 1 is well optimistic to say the least.

It may be right ... I count the drop in my hives on an (almost) daily basis and I see very little natural drop at present .. one hive is nil drop at all although it is a big colony.


Vapourisation fills the hive with OA mist and then it forms crystals, in this cold weather that takes seconds.
What percentage of the bees are exposed to the mist cloud ? 10% maybe

It's not the mist cloud that affects the varroa - it's the crystallized deposits everywhere after it has sublimated that does the damage - although the bees do need to be mobile (to some extent) for the stuff to take effect. I tend to agree with you that treatment when they are not going to be tightly clustered is probably going to be more effective - although in insulated/poly hives my observations are that the bees are only really clustered when it is very cold.

Everything I have read says the same thing. If the bees are clustered it doesn't work. Only the outer bees are exposed to the vapour and crystals.
I agree the crystals form on the bees and frames and hive but the bees aren't moving around so they are not exposed and not performing their normal hive cleaning duties either so varroa aren't exposed like normally.

I tried it myself last year, I do that lol. I'll read up and try things to see if I get the same results.( tell me the sun is shining and I'll look out the window to check )
I got a tiny drop from a hive but a few weeks later it was in the hundreds so I proved to myself OA vapourisation is crap when the bees are clustered or it is too cold.


damn i'm like a dog with a bone on this subject lmao.

 

[Nige.Coll]

True, warmer weather and loose cluster is much more effective.

Of course there are also a lot of people around with resistant bees, that never suffer any varroa problems, many of them are fakes, dangerous people to listen to, especially for new beekeepers.

My bees seem quite idiot resistant lol.

 

[Hivemaker.]

My bees seem quite idiot resistant lol.

Your doing fine, Nige, i really hope you can get those migraines sorted asap.

 

[Nige.Coll]

Your doing fine, Nige, i really hope you can get those migraines sorted asap.

Thanks.
Me too it's hard to inspect a hive when you can't see lmao.

 

[pargyle]

damn i'm like a dog with a bone on this subject lmao.

No ... it's the biggest single issue in beekeeping today ... whilst I haven't needed to treat, so far, I spend a lot of my beekeeping time monitoring for varroa and I'm under no illusion that the day will come when they need some assistance.

I don't think there are either resistant bees or so called hygienic bees developed to the point of reliability and (even if there were) being able to exclude such stock from cross breeding in the normal scheme of things would be nigh impossible. What I do think is that there are hive conditions that are conducive to discouraging varroa from breeding - temperature and humidity related - and I know a number of beekeepers with heavily insulated hives that are finding low levels of varroa but there seems to be little or no research going in this direction. No money in it ?

In the meantime, OA Sublimation seems to me to be the kindest and most effective way to treat bees and the more we know about it the better ...

 

[REDWOOD]

I don't think there are either resistant bees or so called hygienic bees developed to the point of reliability

Bees have evolved very little over 100 million years and have very few genes dedicated to immunity so I can't see them changing over the next few years

 

[mbc]

My bees seem quite idiot resistant lol.

Lol.

Your doing fine, Nige, i really hope you can get those migraines sorted asap.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

My bees seem quite idiot resistant lol.

Let's hope, for their own sake, the beginners on here are too

 

[drex]

Getting back to the origin of the thread, the Heath Robinson vapouriser works but is too slow. I am changing the PTC heater for a 100W 230C one. Am going to use CVB's idea of heat resistant silicone glue and wrap it all (except the pan) in insulating mat. Will let you know how it works when the new heater arrives.

 

[charlievictorbravo]

Getting back to the origin of the thread, the Heath Robinson vapouriser works but is too slow. I am changing the PTC heater for a 100W 230C one. Am going to use CVB's idea of heat resistant silicone glue and wrap it all (except the pan) in insulating mat. Will let you know how it works when the new heater arrives.

My PTC does not heat up very quickly but I found (b++++y obvious really) that the time taken to reach the Vaporising temperature (160°C±) is dependent on the initial temperature - see attached heating graph. Equally, the time taken to cool down depends on the target temperature at which you could say the pan is cool enough to add more OA. The PTC is not water-proof, so cannot be plunged into cold water to cool it.

If I were to let it cool to 80°C - taking 4 minutes ± - recharged it with OA and put it in the next hive, it would take less than 2 minutes to reach the Vaporising temperature. Each hive would take 8 - 10 minutes so my two hives would be vapped in about twenty minutes.

Incidentally Drex, the adhesive I used to stick my Vaporiser together was JB Weld epoxy adhesive - not a silicone-based material - and I only had an insulation material under the heater in order to keep the heat away from the handle. The overall thickness of the completed bit that goes under the hive is about 22mm and it will easily go under the OMF from the rear of my underfloor entrance. The insulation also stops the lightweight plastic monitoring board from getting so hot as to melt when the Vaporiser rests on it.

CVB

 

[drex]

I am much happier with new arrangement. Takes 5mins for treatment. All the OA is sublimated, whereas in previous version there was always a little left on sides of pan..