Hi Bob and all:

> Three years in Missouri. Both fluvaliante and coumaphos are worthless
> against varroa in most areas and despite what some say trying to return to
> those products has not worked even after years. I have a friend which 
> tried
> to return to Apistan after a researcher in Georgia said you could return 
> to
> apistan after three years. Lost his whole operation.

This may not *always* be the case.  I had some apistan resistance starting
and stopped using it for three years.  After high losses due to mites last 
fall
I used homemade formic pads this spring.  I must not have done a good job
making them (or the quality of the drum of acid was poor, I was diluting
85% to 65% but the bees did not seem as bothered by the pads as other
times), but anyway, after two weeks the pads had almost no vapour and
there were still some mites.  So I put one apistan strip in each hive to 
clean
up and had very good success.

I also thought the hives jumped ahead after the pads were on MORE than
could be explained by the mite treatment.  I wondered if the formic also
had some effect on nosema (as James Plaisted also wondered in a post
on Nov 21).

FWIW,  Stan

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