At 03:34 PM 4/8/02 +0200, you wrote:
>Tom Barrett wrote:
> > But Danish, Dutch and German beekeepers seem to be handling varroa without
> > fluvalinate, flumethrin and coumaphos.
>
>It was not before last year that more beekeepers moved to formic acid.
>Recently oxalic acid is considered to be the silver bullet.

We just had a talk given by a professor from Virginia and the inventor of
Honey B Healthy gave a talk on a method of using formic acid to kill mites
that only takes 12-24 hours and doesn't have the problem of loosing
queens like the gel packs do.  From their work and demonstration it looks
promising.

Joe Latshaw from Ohio Queen Breeders also gave a talk on his work.
They have developed a queen (rather two strains of queen) that are 100%
SMR (no mites survive after 145 days I think it was after introducing their
SMR queen).  They have also selected them for gentleness (they don't use
protective gear), and production.  One strain is selected for overwintering
and the other is selected for brood production all the time.

The good thing is that the SMR trait is retained at about 50% with open
breeding unlike the hygienic traits of the Russian bees.  This level is
often high enough that treatment is not needed.  If the number of SMR
queens in an area grows (and hence the SMR carrying drone population
grows) this percentage will accumulate or grow.  His work looks very
promising.  Unfortunately his instrumentally inseminated queens are $500
so I'll have to settle for an open breed queen when I try them.

Incidentally, while they make no effort to select for resistance to
tracheal mites, their SMR queens seem very resistant to them as well,
with levels of mites nearly non-existent compared to normal queens.

-Tim