Hi Bee-L list,

I'd like to thank all contributors who share their thoughts and experience
on the forum. My purpose is writing is to elicit others experience with formic.

We are trying out formic for the first time. We have tried many things over
the years to keep our bees healthy and have been quite successful the last
few years. We do ship bees from Michigan to Florida and California every
year, so we consider ourselves lucky(knock on wood here)to put that stress
on our bees and still have healthy bees. 

Back to formic. I am trying meat pads that I picked up from Paper-pac
Industries.
www.paperpakindustries.com

I am using the chicken pads that are supposed to hold 90+ grams of juice,
but I find that they hold about 60+ grams well. (65% formic) I am putting
116 of this particular pads in a 5 gallon bucket and adding 2 gallons of 65%
formic. 

I am also going to try another product they carry, a pad with a poly like
covering with perforations on one side. One of the larger pads of this type
will hold about 40+ grams and I will try two of these per treatment. This
pad may release slower. 

I put a pad on a double deep last friday and found about 80 mites on monday
morning. I cleaned the tray and regreased it on monday and checked it
tuesday morning(24 hours later) and found about 20 more adults. Btw, it's in
the 60's here now. 

I was happy with the results on laying the pad directly on the top bars. The
knockdown was after a test hard miticide treatment two weeks ago. 

I don't know exactly what to make of the results so far and will just guess
that formic is killing mites that were resistant to chemical. I like what I
see. 

Our guys didn't complain about handling the formic under the cool conditions
outdoors. I didn't mind diluting the 90% formic and preparing buckets of pads. 
I don't want to build thousands of riser rims and spend a pile of money on
expensive application pads if I don't have to. 

Btw, we're using thymol spring and fall. We mix our own in powdered sugar
and crisco and apply it on the back of the hive on the top bars. The bees
eventually remove most of it. We also use a bit of tea tree and eucalyptus
oil too in the mix. 

I am intrigued by the suggestion to tincture propolis and add it to feed. I
also have mixed in some thymol in feed to preserve it as Randy has pointed
out. We have always added something to our feed to preserve it, generally
bleach. Thanks for your contributions, Randy.

I like Bob's promotion of new combs in the hives. We are doing that too.
It's nice to have the money now with the price of honey up. 

I like James F's .role of devil's advocate. Just kidding you, James.

Any idea's or thought's would be encouraged.

Kirk www.sleepingbearfarms.com

****************************************************
* General Information About BEE-L is available at: *
* http://www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/default.htm   *
****************************************************