Survival results: 4x4 winter oxalic trial

Added: 2026-06-07

[00:00:00]Hey folks, Phil the Bman here. I'm finally getting around to working out uh the results of our 4x4 test of that was set up initially to look at what the different heat signatures were for uh in in the wintering barn on different treatments of oxylic. So, we did no treatment but the cardboard strip. We did a sham, that was a sham. We did glycerin only. We did glycerin plus oxylic. And we did oxylic vapor.

[00:00:42]And I'm way slow in getting these results because we are quite honestly uh those hives were on the tops of the stacks and uh they went throughout the bey yards and so I had to watch for these playing cards that marked the hives and one has never turned up. It must I don't know if it blew off um got knocked off. So that pinges our results a bit, but I do have results for you. So let me walk you through it. Uh and so I'll take you through the hives we found. Uh and you can draw your own conclusions. So this hive is glisterin and oxalic and it has gone queenless and it's pretty weak.

[00:01:39]That's about half the bees in the hive.

[00:01:41]So that you know that's interesting. This one is uh vaporized oxalic and it looks pretty good.

[00:01:55]I mean, it's not going to win a prize at the fair, but that's a that's more than a nuke. I s I That'll make me a crop, that's for sure.

[00:02:06]Okay. Okay. Here we have two hives.

[00:02:11]Both treated glycerin only, both dead.

[00:02:19]And these hives are scattered around the bey yard. Remember, they were the tops of various stacks. So they I'm just finding them in the bey yard as we go.

[00:02:26]Here's two more.

[00:02:29]Glycerin only.

[00:02:32]Looked pretty nice. R we rated it as an eight.

[00:02:38]Even that might be a little bit conservative. Nice hive.

[00:02:46]I find it interesting that the strips are not particularly I thought all we were going to find was the very tops of them. This one is sham so no treatment also an eight and the strips relatively I mean they're a little bit more chewed on but not terrible. These two is a sham rated as a four.

[00:03:15]A OAV. So that's another vaporized rated as a six.

[00:03:22]Let's have a look at that.

[00:03:27]I can live with that. You want to see the bottom?

[00:03:34]It's a little bit pushed towards the front, but I think this is right for that.

[00:03:47]And we got two more at this site.

[00:03:56]So, this one is Sham. It's kind of weak at a two.

[00:04:03]This one is glycerin only. It's a three.

[00:04:08]Okay, I found two more of our indoor trial. We remember we were looking at the thermal signatures and survivability.

[00:04:18]And so we've got uh two more hives. This one is the glycerin plus oxalic and it's alive.

[00:04:29]So that's the regular treatment. There's there is I don't know if there's a queen. They're clearly shunning the strips and they are uh clustered up against the wall. There might be half a frame of bees there. This is the indoor oxylic vapor.

[00:04:46]Beautiful looking hive.

[00:04:51]That is I mean if every hive looked like that be a very fat.

[00:04:58]So, uh, we'll add that to the mix for the rest of, uh, and I, and I'm going, what I'm going to do is I'll take these cards.

[00:05:17]And I'll make a note of their strength.

[00:05:20]This hive with the oxalic was a seven before.

[00:05:26]This one's hard to read.

[00:05:30]They should be able to figure it out from the video. Go back and check the original video. I think that's a five.

[00:05:40]Uh, and now this one is the two of hearts is a I'd call it a zero plus or a 0.02 or something. And this one's a solid six.

[00:05:53]Okay. So, here's all the cards laid out.

[00:05:56]Each column is one of the trials. Four for most.

[00:06:02]A three for the vape with the missing spot for the one that never turned up.

[00:06:09]I know it's not dead because we pulled all the I went through all the cards and every tag for every hive that came in dead. So, it's out there somewhere doing fine, but it's lost its tag. And then we have uh the shams. That was the cardboard strip with nothing on it. And then the glycerin only, which is another sort of sham, right? It doesn't have the active ingredient. But inquiring minds wanted to know how the glycerin itself affected the results.

[00:06:40]So, when we go through it very quickly, cuz you saw some of these live, uh, the two of hearts, basic barely survive, no queen, hardly any bees.

[00:06:54]Four of hearts, outright dead. Three of hearts, outright dead. Uh, glycerin plus uh, ace so weak hardly to be measured.

[00:07:07]the OAV uh seven stayed at seven or that was a three of clubs. Two of clubs was a 7.5 went up to an eight.

[00:07:22]Four of clubs was a seven went down to a six.

[00:07:27]Uh two of hearts was a 7.5. This is the shams now down to a two.

[00:07:35]Three of spades was a six went up to an eight.

[00:07:41]Five of uh or a two of spades was a five went down to a four. Four of spades.

[00:07:48]Well, it was a beauty. It was a 10 frames of bees in the shed. Came out dead.

[00:07:57]And the glycerin only dead. Dead.

[00:08:02]Eight down to three.

[00:08:05]eight down to five.

[00:08:09]Okay, so back of the envelope calculations. Here we are on the back.

[00:08:14]What I did was I added up the frames of of bees before and after. So the shams went uh basically from 28 1/2 to 14. So down by half.

[00:08:29]the glycerin from 29 frames of bees to 11. So down by nearly a 2/3 uh glycerin plus oxalic, that's the actual treatment. Yikes.

[00:08:49]Went from 29 frames of bees on four hives to one.

[00:08:57]And now this is interesting. The vaping, which is a scary thing to do inside a beehed in the winter. But look at that.

[00:09:08]Basically no effect on the bees. Now we have a missing hive. If that one's dead, that would still screw up our results.

[00:09:18]Even if we had a 10 go down to zero, it would still be our best treatment.

[00:09:27]But on the three highs we got, we basically had no change. Isn't that interesting?