I was told by a friend that Oxalic Acid is all the rage for mite treatment- and having just discovered- well into December- that 5 of my hives seem to still be suffering, though treated in August, I thought I'd give it a try. There are a number of places that sell $100 setups, but also plenty of information on how to do it one's self. Always willing to spend inordinate amounts of time to save a few bucks, I jumped in.
However, I could not find a design I liked, so I came up with yet another design, which I think is an improvement over the ones I saw, and takes very few materials, or tools, and works great. I have tested it- and it turns 2 oz of crystals into gas in 1 minute and 20 seconds. Which is fast. It seems solid, and should work forever. It needs a 12V battery- I use my truck battery, which I take out, but I think a jump-start battery would work great.
Drawings for this are downloadable at the right.
I use a common Autolite VW glow plug as the base. Its a 1104, its what other people are using, and I did not investigate to find a narrower one . It limits the tool to a 3/4" opening on your hive- which is what most of mine have- but a smaller glow plug might be better. About 10 or 12 bucks.
Below are the parts, partly assembled for my design:
- A nice piece of wood about 2 feet long, and 1/2" a 1 1/4" wide. I cut an 1/8th inch kerf down one side to push the wires into, but stop short on one end so you don't see the kerf (you can do this on a table saw easy). Wood seemed safer than making a metal handle that has 12 volt wires attached to it.
- Two 48" pieces of stranded #12 wire. I read that #14 warms up too much. I don't know. I bought a small roll for 7 bucks or so (15 feet). I have lots of wire around, but only solid house wire in that size. It needs to be flexible.
- Two small battery clamps- about 4 or 5 bucks. I soldered my cables to this.
- A 1/2 "ell" of 1/8" aluminum, 2" x 4", with 1/8" holes drilled for screws, and wires. However, most important thing is for the glow plug head. It is critical that it be a tight fit. Undersized a little- the hole is less than 0.375". I had to hammer my glow plug into place. Lightly- but tight. Everything is mechanically connected. The threads on a glowplug are weird sized- metric at a wierd pitch, for which I have no tap- so I didn't do that. A good idea though, if I could have.
- Two small commectors to solder to the wire.I took crimpable ones, as below, and cut off the plastic. Then soldered. Worked great.
- a 1 1/2" long #6 (or #8) screw with a single nut, and two locking nuts. plus washers.
- A piece of 1/4" copper pipe about 3 inches long (above shows a long piece, its what I cut if from). This gets pounded flat as can be on one end, and kept round at the other. It wants a tight fit on the glowplug. Check it for fit. My fit OK- then I hammered it down a little tighter. Seems to stay, and easy to re-hammer if it gets loose. I thought heating it up would loosen it, but it didn't seem to.
- A 1" copper end cap, cut to only 1/2" tall. It has to be tall enough to put stuff in, but not too short where it will boil out. Cane be tall as needed, as long as it doesn't get hung up.
- A copper rivet and washer. I drilled the bottom of the cap and the flat part of the tubing, and hammered them together. Solder was tempting, but it would have to not melt- and this gets pretty dang hot. This seemed to work great. I was worried it would leak.\
- A wedge, screwed to the top of the wood bar. Not shown yet. The wires are so stiff it wants to flip when you put it in a hive, so a wedge will fit it tight into the opening. It doesn't need a stop.
- An Autolite #1104 glow plug. Are there thinner ones? If so, it could maybe be made to fit into a 3/8" opening. Otherwise, I don't see how to get it to fit and it will only insert into openings greater than 3/4".
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| The bowl- riveted. |
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The end of the glow plug, and how I wired it. Hot line to the glow plug,
neutral bolts to the angle iron (cant see it here). I soldered clips on
the end of each wire (removed the plastic so it would not melt). |
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Neutral at right, hot on left. Ready to be inerted. Neutral is hooked onto #6 screw,
which then has another washer and nut that gets tighted. The wood has to be drilled
big for this to fit in, and the hot wire has to fit around it. |
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| Bottom of bowl. |
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Top of bowl. Not too precise. I winged it. I pounded it down with a hammer
so it is tight and flat as possible and won't leak when the crystals liquefy, |
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| Looking down on assembly before inserting it into the wood handle. |
Assembled end. Super simple and durable (he says, having only used it 5 times). Heated up in 1:20 with everything vaporized. Wires are hidden in wood bar, only one comes out at the end. It has
to skirt around the screw to the right, so you have to dig out the kerf there a little.
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| Ted, who watched the whole process. |
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