> >MAQS have been known to kill queens. I put my guess as to the guilty party > >on the MAQS. They were applied according to label with the correct > >temperature and location of the MAQS. When we broke down the dead hives > the > >MAQS were intact, they had not been removed from the hives, in fact looked > >untouched. > The only time I have noticed significant queen loss (~10%) with MAQS was when I was sold expired and/or temperature abused product - in this case the strips were more of cream colour and much wetter with a really strong formic smell. It was hard not to damage the paper when separating. Now when I order, my first question is what is the expiry date of the MAQS the supplier is stocking. I prefer to treat with two single strips 14 days apart, but if levels are high I will put on 2 strips at once. A couple of observations: 1) The effectiveness seems to vary quite a bit depending on temperature and the amount of brood - you always have to perform follow up mite checks 2) It is common here for colonies to be mid-supercedure in early August. Putting on MAQS when the colony is anywhere in the process of producing a new queen seems to result in a queen-less colony (I believe that more often that not, this is the queen loss commonly reported). The majority of the time I find that other than burning off most of the open brood it has little negative effect on the colony. At this point we don't have any other approved options for treatment with supers on. Adam Barrie, ON *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html