Milt, the label tells you that Apistan must not be in the hive when extracting supers are on.  You certainly don't want to offer that honey for sale since it is liable to be contaminated to some extent.

Apistan works by being picked up by the bees' legs when they walk over the strips and then spread through the hive to the other bees. The active ingredient then kills those varroa mites which are, at that point in time, on the adult bees as distinguished from those which are in the capped cells.   If the miticide killed both mites and the bees, it would never have been offered for sale.

It it was my fireweed honey, I would eat it anyway.  There is a world of difference between the level of miticide which can be detected in sophisticated tests and that which will actually hurt you.  The hive bees don't pack the incoming nectar into the cells with their legs so the amount actually in the honey is infinitesimal.

Since the wax absorbs a measurable amount if the miticide, the party line is not to resuse that comb for exracting honey in the future.  But I have been watching very carefully for years for a scientist to report tests showing that honey actually extracted miticide from the "contaminated" combs and have never seen a single one.  Since wax is such an absorbant, my intuition tells me it is more likely to clean contaminants from honey than to be cleaned by the honey.  Dan




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