BeeGym

[GRIZZLY]

Anyone got any experience of this piece of "apparatus".

[Neils]

I'd never heard of it until now. Their website is: http://www.beegym.co.uk/index.html.

I'm not convinced yet, and £12 a go is a bit steep.

[Jon]

Gavin showed us videos of Bee Gym when he spoke at our association meeting.
Must be on commission.

[The Drone Ranger]

There was a video on here posted by Gavin

[janeoh]

If I thought it would help bees to remove varroa, I would be willing to pay that. I only have two hive so not too much to invest. I would be interested to hear people's experience of them.

[fatshark]

1. Website seems to stress that it's not fully tested and most, if not all, of the case studies appear uncontrolled.
2. £12 buys a lot of oxalic acid.
3. There's a nice study published in PLoS One recently (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0150362.PDF) by Tom Seeley that (indirectly) shows the benefit of in-season brood breaks for Varroa control. Randy Oliver (ScientificBeekeeping.com) is a strong advocate of splits to "knock the snot out of mite levels" (his words).

I'd save my £24 and use it to buy the nuc box/spare equipment to use a method with more evidence of the benefits for mite control.

Or I'd just buy a few kilograms of OA ...

[gavin]

I doubt that even Stuart, the inventor, is making much out of this.

It was (and is) a neat idea and there is some striking footage of bees using it to scrape things off themselves. However I think that the jury remains out on whether it makes much difference. I wonder whether anyone has tried it alongside Hive Clean which is supposed to promote grooming?

Two years ago, Steven, one of our members, tried it and we had Stuart of Bee Gym fame discussing it here with him:

http://www.sbai.org.uk/sbai_forum/showthread.php?1541-Bee-gym

Steven was a really keen beekeeper but withdrew due to allergy. Wonder if he's nearly through his treatment now?

[Mellifera Crofter]

The bees I see in that clip seem to be scratching their tummies. I think they're enjoying they gym in the same way a cow might like to rub itself against a fence post. Perhaps the fin should be pointing down so that they can scratch their backs where the varroa are.

Kitta

[The Drone Ranger]

The bee gym might work though hard to say for sure
I'm not sure how you could tell

I have some Hiveclean Gavin which I bought a while back
Its thymol based and reminds me of the Exomite Apis which I tried out some years ago (didn't get licensed)
The exomite went in a tray at the hive entrance the bees walked it into the hive
It stirred them up quite a bit and killed off brood near the bottom of the combs (mostly drones)

The Hiveclean I was using to try and kill the spores forming on chalkbrood larva ejected by the bees
That was making a floor with slotted QX and putting that above the solid floor
Then putting Hiveclean on the solid floor so the CB larva fell into it

The entrance was moved to the top of the hive to keep bees away from floor and they were requeened
Still didnt fix the CB so I used the Cedar oil (not cheap) which a forum poster (cant remember who) attached some research about
That didnt fix it so they were shook off and the combs were burned as usual

The old ways are the best :)