Thanks Allen and Pete for your answers!  (Which allowed me to avoid
responding to the troll).
Let us not forget the adage that, “A smart man learns from his own
mistakes; a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”

Stan asked me an excellent question: So why have you resisted trying
amitraz until now?  My understanding is
that it has a lower level of comb contamination than either fluvalinate or
coumaphos.  In some countries it has been used for many years without
resistance developing.

In answer Stan, there are a few reasons:

1.  Once bitten, twice shy.  I saw many get hit hard when fluvalinate
failed, and then again when mites rapidly developed resistance to
coumaphos.  Then there had been a published report of resistance to amitraz
shortly after varroa arrived, which was a red flag to me.  Then I heard
(starting a few years ago) from a number of commercial beekeepers that they
found it necessary to ramp up their doses of Taktic to maintain efficacy.
Dr. Frank Eischen recently documented that mites in Texas have become quite
resistant to amitraz.  Seeing the above, I suspected that amitraz would
soon fail completely.

I questioned the chemist for the company that manufactures Apivar about
this.  He assured me that despite 15 years of use in Europe, that Apivar
was still effective.  This really surprises me, since it seems contrary to
the normal course of varroa quickly developing resistance to synthetic
miticides.

This brings us back to learning from the failures of others.  I didn't want
to come to depend upon a treatment that I suspected was doomed to failure.
(I am not saying that Apivar will soon fail; only that a wise man would
keep that likelihood in mind).

2.  The active ingredient (amitraz) makes California's Prop 65 list of
"“chemicals known to the State to cause reproductive toxicity.,” and EPA
classifies it as "Class C possible human carcinogen."  I personally choose
to avoid exposure to chemicals with known health hazards, and also feel a
responsibility for keeping them out of the honey and beeswax that I sell
(its degradation product is commonly found in hive products).

3.  I sell a large number of nucs to California beekeepers who wish to
avoid any sort of synthetic chemical exposure.  So there is a financial
sales benefit to me for maintaining combs free of synthetic miticides.  The
added value that I can charge for nucs more than pays for the cost of using
alternative mite treatments.

4.  Perhaps most importantly, I personally enjoy the challenge of trying to
be ahead of the curve in learning how to keep bees without resorting to
synthetic miticides.

5.  And lastly, it's wise to keep a backup plan in reserve.  If it ever
came down to me facing a serious financial loss due to my inability to
control varroa by other methods, I could always fall back on amitraz.  Due
to the apparent current efficacy of amitraz upon the population of varroa
in California (as evidenced by the experience of local commercial buddies),
I have long kept a can of Taktic on the shelf "just in case."  And in the
current trial that I am setting up, the use of a single Apivar strip on the
5-frame nucs was attractive, since treatment of these small colonies with
formic or thymol in hot weather can be problematic.

So in answer to your question Stan, you might say that I am an idealist who
runs a successful commercial bee operation based upon realism.


Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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