Hello All,
Fluvalinate was truly a blessing for U.S. beekeepers when first released. Of
course those beekeepers which were informed ( varroa handbook by Larry
Conner) knew fluvalinate was shown by research to be the number one choice
for varroa control.

The amazing point about fluvalinate was the fast knock down power. A single
strip could fill a white sticky board in 24 hours with *dead* varroa.

I always like to look back when doing a post about the efficacy today and
when introduced.

A commercial beekeeper in my area attended a meeting in Kansas and the
presenter from Georgia said flat out that you could rotate back to apistan
after three years.

Did not work at all. He lost a large percentage of his hives.
Testing showed the Apistan strips only dropped less than 200 varroa in 24
hours and many were not dead but squirming on the sticky board. The
beekeeper was furious with the presenter as he had purchased a large number
of Apistan strips.

This same presenter had done an article in a bee magazine only two years
before and said his testing of apistan on resistant to fluvalinate bees
shown that apistan was only 2 % effective and varroa load actually increased
during the test period.

I was not at the presentation but others which were said the presenter gave
the 3 year time period as long enough.

Our recent testing shows fluvalinate will drop varroa but how many are from
natural fall? Our guess was about half last time we tested. It was fall
before last the last time I tested and I would guess maybe a 20-30% efficacy
in my bees. However the kill is quick with no squirming bees.

Other than test I have not used apistan since 1998 as a production hive
varroa control and the above observations were after 9 years of no use and
on comb which no fluvalinate or coumaphos had ever been used.

I would be interested in if others on the list have tested a return to
fluvalinate and their results and the percent of efficacy Kirk found when he
cycled back AND the number of years between the stop & start.

bob

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