> The patent was licensed to 
> Betterbee, Inc., of Greenwich, N.Y.  
> in 1998 but the product was a disaster. 

Bob Stevens was a good and honest man, and should be fondly remembered for
having the guts to try and bring the product to market on his own dime.

The only problem with the Formic Acid product was... chemistry and the laws
of physics themselves. It is very difficult (no, its actually impossible) to
keep formic acid from permeating plastic.  Even the current "plastic pail"
used by NOD for Mite-Away does not keep all the formic acid vapors inside,
not even when still "factory sealed".  

Now Bob had tried far less robust packaging than the current pails used by
NOD, so he had formic acid leaking onto warehouse shelves and floors, not a
pretty sight.  Sort of like the scene from the "Alien" movies, where the
Alien's blood melts through metal of the spaceship decks for 17 levels.

But funny how no one in the USA has attempted to "do it better" than Bob did
in the 16 years since.  The bottom line is that we live in a nanny state,
and formic acid is just too "corrosive" to be treated fairly by the
pencil-necked paper-pushers that force impossible requirements on companies.

That's why we buy our formic acid from Canadians.  Somehow, they accept that
formic acid will outgas from any container they could afford to put it in,
and somehow, the USA allows Canadian imports of items too toxic/nasty for
USA production.  (Hey suddenly, I understand Celine Dion and Justin Bieber!)

Fun beekeeper trivia.  There once was an acid that was very hard to handle -
hydrofluoric acid.  It easily dissolves glass and ceramics, and will do a
number on metals.  So, how did chemists store the stuff in the days before
engineered plastics?  What they did was to melt some pure beeswax, pour it
down into a glass flask, heat the flask, and swish around the wax until they
had a good coating all over the inside.  Then they could pour in the
hydrofluoric acid, which would not react with the beeswax.  

But don't try this at home.  If you spill any of the stuff, it kills tissues
on contact, and if you were to spill enough to cover the palm of your hand,
it will mess with your calcium metabolization enough to give you a nasty
heart attack.  The only good news is that it kills tissues quickly enough
that the "spill" is painless, but the bad news is that might not even notice
that you splashed some on yourself until you noticed the absence of a pinky
finger.   Ain't science fun?

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