Medhat said:
I was at Rutgers University. The beekeeper who reported queen failure
problem, used checkmite strips for four years. He used the strips as
instructed in the label.

The big problem the U.S.D.A. has had working through both the coumaphos &
fluvalinate problem has been the use of illegal miticides.

The problem was discussed in great detail at the Apiary inspectors of
America meeting I attended in Savannah in 2002.

The fine for use of correl miticide is $10,000 U.S.

 Proving illegal use is hard as strips are not involved usually.

The USDA only sees the end result. Slip a Checkmite strip in and call the
USDA and report a problem.

ADMIT ILLEGAL USE AND YOU CAN EXPECT A 10,000 fine!

Many beekeepers have confessed to other beekeepers (myself included) use of
illegal miticides. Millions of brood frames have been changed over the last
few years in commercial operations.

Medhat said:
When I worked on his bees, I found the regular
CheckMite strips, NOT the OTHER GENERIC Strips.

I don't know what generic strips you are talking about. please explain?

Medhat said:
By the way, after the four years of using CheckMite, Varroa mites in his
operation developed resistance to Coumaphos. The efficacy of CheckMite was
19%.

After four years of using coumaphos in the Midwest by most beekeepers we
have yet to see resistance and checked ALL hives in many yards.

Medhat said:
We tested Apistan in his operation, we got 75% Varroa kill. Therefore, he
had to  stop using the checkMite strips and started using Apistan in 2002.

 U.S. bee inspectors tried Apistan on coumaphos resitant mites in Florida
and did not get any control at all.

We tried to rotate back to Apistan in experimental yards after three years
in the midwest and got very little  control .

We got fluvalinate resistant varroa in 1998 in our area. I found my
fluvalinate resitant mites though testing (as documented at the time (
spring 1998)in the BEE-L archives) while many other beekeepers in our area
found thiers two years later (spring 2000) when 80-90% of the their hives
died over the winter and the rest were too varroa infested  to treat.

Interesting the different behavior of varroa when resistance starts. I
appreciate Medhat taking his time to explain his observations!

I have been told by J.Pettis, L. Couts and D. Westervelt that resistant
varroa created by the illegal use of corral are super mites and neither
coumaphos, amatraz or fluvalinate will control those varroa.

Medhat said:
When he stopped using CheckMite, he did not report unusual queen failure as
in previous years.

Seems to me he would need to replace brood comb to solve the problem *if* he
was the beekeeper with the high coumaphos contaminated brood comb.

Medhat said:
High levels of Coumaphos in the brood chamber have caused some visual change
in bee behaviour towards the queen. More research needs to be done to look
at cause and effect.

Maybe the bees object to the white powder of coumaphos on her all the time!
Kidding!

Thanks again to Medhat for his post. I get many direct emails from high
profile USDA people which all read BEE-L but do not post . Many pass on
information to me because they know I will not tell the source of the
information received.

 If you are one of those people please send me the latest info on the
subject! Thanks in advance!

Bob

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