>A number of beekeepers have reported to me that treatment with Taktic

>  sets colonies back a bit.
>>
> >Do they know what the dose in question is?
>

Doses are all over the place.  I prefer not to post mixing instructions for
illegal applications.  But they ramped up at least 16-fold over the years,
suggesting that we will soon be dealing with serious amitraz resistance.
The label of Apivar brings it to our attention that the active ingredient
is "highly susceptible" to the development of resistance.

A dose currently used by a large commercial guy whom I greatly respect
works out to 0.38 g of a.i. per treatment for a strong colony.  Eischen
used a 0.77% amitraz grease patty (http://apivar.net/research-results/) but
I don't know how many grams the patty contained.

I did a quick calculation for Apivar (15 g per strip @ 3.33% a.i., and
Medhat's finding that nearly all the a.i. diffuses out) to come up with the
result that each strip dispenses roughly 0.5 g of a.i. (anyone please
correct me if I'm mistaken).  So at the application rate of 1 strip per 5
frames of bees, Apivar is dispensing far more active ingredient than used
by my commercial friend.

As far as my 5-frame nucs are concerned, they got a good, strong dose when
I gave each one a single strip.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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