On Fri, 19 Apr 1996, Frank Humphrey wrote:
 
> Remember when you were in grade school and they gave you shots to make you
> immune to various deseased.  Those shots were actually the virus itself in a
> weakende state so that your body could develope a resistence to the desease.
>
> Understanding that this works in humans, don't you think that it would also work
> on bugs?  Most agree that Apistan starts to deteriorate from day one and after
> approximately 45 days, it is starting to get weak enough to allow the mites to
> develop resistance to it.
 
I'm not up on exactly why Apistan cannot be administered after the strips
have been used.  I always thought that resistance build-up in most
agricultural pests was the result of heavy pesticide use, and that
efforts such integrated pest management were designed to reduce pesticide
use.  I mean if Apistan can knock down something like 99% of the mites in
the hive, then shouldn't there be intense selective pressure for a mite
with enzymes to detoxify fluvalinate to multiply ? I took a
course on pesticide toxicology this spring, and I asked the instructor why he
thought used Apistan strips might induce resistance.  He said that by
hitting the mites with such a heavy dose would kill both resistant and
non-resistant mites in the population.  I think Frank may have been
barking up the wrong tree in saying that mites are born unresistant and
then become resistant with added fluvalinate pressure.  Most documented
cases of insecticide resistance in insects are the result of there being
a few mutants at low-levels in the population and there being
preferential selection for those mutants to reproduce under an
insecticidal environment that kills off all the other non-mutant
individuals in the population.  The mutant is the resistant strain.
These mutants typically resist the effects of the insecticide by
producing enzymes that break the insecticide down before it gets to its
target in the insect's body.  They produce the enzymes not because their
bodies have been stimulated to produce the enzyme because of the presence
of the insecticide (although I do not discount that Frank, although I
think insects and mites probably respond differently to xenobiotic
pressures).
 
Having said all that, the thing that just doesn't yet fit in my mind is
the following :
 
1) didn't resistance in Italy result from beekeepers there using
insanely-high doseages of fluvalinate.  If so, why is Apistan also not
selecting for resistance in the same way.
 
2) if the current levels fluvalinate present in an Apistan strip are able
to kill resistant mutants in the population (because it goes in at such a
high dose - assuming that this way of thinking is correct), than won't
resistant individuals selected by using used-old strips be knocked back
down when a fresh strip is used again ?
 
Although I haven't been keeping-up with the censorship debate, I read
John Calderia's post, and I must say that agree with him.  No harm in
discussing these things.  It is obvious that a certain amount of
discussion and organization must take place before the appropriate
research can occur.  I just got chewed-out by a beekeeper yesterday
because he thought I was doing useless research that won't help
beekeepers (i'm doing work on essential oils as antibiotics and miticides).
While that may or may not be true, I think by checking my mail every day I get
a better idea of what needs to be done ($ 0.02 opinion).
 
Cheers,
Adony
 
****************************************
*** Adony Melathopoulos ****************
***** Center for Pest Management *******
******** Simon Fraser University *******
*********** Burnaby, British Coumbia ***
************** CANADA ******************
****************************************
 
'All bees are looking for bargins in nature's supermarket'
- Bernd Heinrich
 
e-mail : [log in to unmask]
tel : (604) 29 14 16 3
 
 
 
>
> I have been using Apistan according to directions for quite sometime and to my
> knowlege I have not lost any bees to voroa mites.  I have however lost some to
> treachea mites.
>
> I test reguraly during the honey flow and have on occasion removed a colony from
> production to treat them.  This has worked well for me in the past and I expect
> it will do so for some time to come.
>
> Frank Humphrey
>