Dear Lloyd,

I would like to correct one thing in your statement about recommendations
for use of formic acid and Apistan:

I always advocated spring treatment with FORMIC ACID and fall treatment with
APISTAN. In the spring, formic will kill something like 85%-95% of mites.
As temperature gets higher in the spring, formic acid works better. In the
fall, I found that bees tend to add propolis and wax to the perforated bags
and seal the holes. When you also feed bees in the fall, bees will produce
more wax and add this wax to the bags. Recently, I found that in New Jersey,
honey bees have higher tendency to add produce a lots of propolis. God,
those New Jersey girls are so good in producing propolis!!!!! Therefor, I am
working on a different bag that can work even better in cold spring and
fall. I hope that those bees will not be able to add much of propolis to the
bags. In spring treatment formic acid fumes will spread in the cluster and
kill mites. Any single female mite killed in the spring will result in
reducing the mite population in the fall by about 1500 mites.
Fall treatment of Apistan when resistance is absent, Apistan will kill 99.8%
of Varroa. I support the Apistan fall treatment because you need to leave
the strips in the hives for 6-8 weeks. During this long period, the bee
colonies are protected from any invasion of varroa mites and mites coming
with robing bees. If you use formic acid in the fall, treatment time will be
21 days (3 weeks). Bees can be reinfested with varroa mites after
treatments. CheckMite can be used for replacing Apistan in areas where
Apistan resistant varroa mites are found.

I hope this will clarify this issue and answers the question.

Have a Honey of a Year

Med

Medhat Nasr, Ph. D.
Blueberry and Cranberry Research Center
Rutgers University,
Chatsworth, New Jersey 08019, USA
Ph. 609-726-1590 Ex 25
Fax. 609-726-1593