In the August issue of Bee Culture we read: Our current agricultural system is so broken and bankrupt that, without the subsidies it receives from the world's governments, it would collapse astonishingly fast. These subsidies are both direct agricultural subsidies and indirect subsidies that artificially deflate the cost of diesel fuel, farm chemicals, and artificial fertilizers among other things. Thankfully in the world of beekeeping numerous alternatives to the toxic pesticides Apivar, Apistan, and Checkmite are readily available and affordable. This year, rather than use a toxic miticide strip in your hives, I invite you to consider using one of the highly effective essential oil-based products: Api Life VAR or ApiGuard; or the formic acid based Mite Away Quick Strip (MAQS), and give our pollinators, our great grand children , and your bees a break! Ross Conrad, writing in Bee Culture Comment: These latter chemicals are hardly benign. Thymol is the chief constituent in the fumigants Apilife Var (tablets) and Apiguard (gel) Essential oil-based varroacides were exempted from extensive testing for EPA registration because they are common food additives and “generally recognized as safe” for human consumption (Quarles, 1996). However, monoterpenoids such as thymol andmenthol may not necessarily be safe for honey bees, since these compounds play a role in plants as broad spectrum pesticides (Isman, 2006). Indeed, thymol and menthol were found to be among the most toxic of all terpenoids tested when applied to honey bees as a fumigant (Ellis and Baxendale, 1997). These monoterpenoids likely kill Varroa by binding to octopamine (Enan, 2001) or GABA receptors (Priestley et al., 2003). Despite being naturally derived, these compounds may harm honey bees: thymol treatment can induce brood removal (Marchetti and Barbattini, 1984; Floris et al., 2004) and may result in increased queen mortality (Whittington et al., 2000). Formic acid can harm honey bees by reducing worker longevity (Underwood and Currie, 2003) and harming brood survival (Fries, 1991). Repeated treatment of colonies with oxalic acid can result in higher queenmortality and a reduction in the amount of sealed brood (Higes et al., 1999). The midguts of honey bees fed oxalic acid in sugar water exhibited an elevated level of cell death (Gregorc and Smodisskerl, 2007), though in field conditions bees will generally avoid consuming syrup with oxalic acid (Aliano and Ellis, 2008). Pesticides and honey bee toxicity – USA* Reed M. Johnson, Marion D. Ellis, Christopher A. Mullin, Maryann Frazier Apidologie 41 (2010) 312–331 Available online *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html