> the current product version appears to have eliminated the off gassing "flash"

Exactly what I am talking about. I have a lot of experience with formic going back to field trials beginning in 1999. I made pads using gallons of formic and homasote boards. We put these on after the flow in September, and left them in place for 6 weeks. Needless to say, this was too late to do any good. 

When the U of West Virginia came up with the flash formic treatment [Amrine, J. W., & Noel, R. (2006). Formic acid fumigator for controlling varroa mites in honey bee hives. International Journal of Acarology], I thought—this is it. This is what we need. When NOD came up with the MAQs I found that one application in August worked for me.

Over time, the company found that the strips lost strength too quickly and started making the formic pro, which has a much much longer shelf life. I don't think it's as effective. I started treating twice with MAQs and finally, nowadays I do a followup with Apivar [amitraz] in autumn, which is very expensive. To me what is important is taking care of the bees.

By the way, I don't believe I have ever had a queen loss that I could be sure was caused by MAQs. Occasionally hives come up queenless, that's just the way of it. I have seen where half the bees came out onto the front of the hive. Seen that at other times, like during hot weather, it doesn't hurt anything as far as I can tell.

PLB

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