I get BEE-L in digest form, so I'll add 8 cents worth here (2 cents
worth on four questions).
 
Favorite smoker material: cedar wood chips!  A bag at the local feed
store runs $10 and lasts an entire season.  It's an unnecessary expense,
but they work well and smell wonderful!  Creosote in the smoker can be
burned off by leaving the top open and pumping the bellows.
 
> (World price average for Apistan)...
>
> A new mean of $25.2.
> I stick though to my original assumption that this is "too high"
> since I can buy a bottle of Mavrik (same ingredient) of 250ml 100%
> (??) fluvalinate for around $12 and make approximately 2500ml of 10%
> mixture in which I can soak tons of porous material in it.
> Anybody know why the price is so high?
>
 
Because the producer has a monopoly on the only approved treatment (in
the States) for a scourge in the industry and consumers will pay the
price!  As noted many times in this list, although queries to the
contrary persist, misuse of Apistan and Mavrik IS DEFINITELY, BEYOND
A SHADOW OF A DOUBT, leading to fluvalinate resistant strains of varroa!
Yes, Apistan is expensive.  I personally dislike dealing with monopolies,
but I am glad to have a product that works against varroa and I feel
obligated to my fellow beekeepers to use the product as directed, even
if it means trudging out to my hives in four foot snowdrifts to remove
the strips at the proper time.  Leaving strips in all winter will result
in fluvalinate being absorbed into the comb and low concentrations of
fluvalinate will be present after the strips are removed.  It is this
low concentration that leads to the fluvalinate resistance build up in
mites.  The fact that we read the postings on this list attests to the
fact that we are able to read the instructions on the strips' packaging.
As the Nike commercial says, Just do it!
 
                   >--  End of Soapbox Tirade  --<
 
> Subject: Re: Queen excluder..."honey excluder" ?
 
As are most things in life, it's a trade off.  Using queen excluders
guarantees that the queen will not be in your honey supers.  This is
very convenient at harvest time.  The trade off is that you may not
realize as large a harvest as you may have with no excluder.  As a
hobbiest with more honey than I can use, the convenience far outweighs
the lesser crop concerns.  If I were in this for the money/honey, I may
feel differently.
 
This discussion would not be complete if it did not compare and contrast
the different queen excluders on the market.  Plastic excluders are
cheap, usually get gummed up with propolis, get glued onto the top of
the brood chamber frames, and are a general PITA.  Wood bound wire
excluders are superior to the plastic excluder, as they won't be glued
to the top of the brood chamber.  But due to the extra space created by
the wooden frame around the wire excluder, they tend to promote
excessive burr comb between the brood and honey super, and when it
comes time to remove them, there is a real mess to clean up both on top
of the brood chamber and on the bottom of the honey super.  Metal bound
excluders offer the best of both plastic and wood bound excluders.  They
are rigid, so they don't lie directly on the tops of the brood frames.
They preserve the bee space between the brood box and honey super, so
burr comb is of minimal impact.  They also hold up to heat, making
cleanup quick and easy by putting them inside a solar wax melter on a
sunny day.  If one trades in honey production for the convenience of
queen excluders, I'd recommend the metal bound excluders.  I use them on
all my hives.
>
                   >-----------------------------<
>
> Date:    Mon, 3 Apr 1995 10:44:58 -0600
> From:    Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Why do bees cap Varroa?
>
 
I don't have references in my office, so I'm doing this one from memory,
which has been known to fail me.  I believe the life cycle of varroa is
such that the adults lay eggs in bee cells while the cells are capped.
The adult mites are attached to the emerging bee, so when the queen lays
an egg in the vacant cell there are no mites in there, only varroa eggs.
The development time for the bee and varroa coincide such that when the
cell is capped the varroa is at a juvenile stage and may not be
noticeable to the bees capping the cell.  It is during the bee's capped
pupal phase that the varroa reaches its mature reproductive stage,
leaving behind its progeny to prey on the next generation of bee.  Exact
timing details are missing, but this is the jist of it.  A shorter
capping period would not be as accommodating to the varroa life cycle
because the varroa would not have as much of an opportunity to mature
and reproduce before the bee emerges.  Hopefully breeders will make
progress towards this goal while conscientious beekeepers are using
chemical controls in the proper manner to keep the mites at bay.
 
Aaron Morris - I think, therefore I bee!
Actually I threw in more than 8 cents worth, but you should always give
the customer more than they ask for ;)