Dr. Pedro P. Rodriguez wrote
> Dear Friends:
> It is saddening for me to see people making arguments (pro or contra)
> just about any subject for the sake of argumentation.  I agree, that
> everyone under the sun is entitled to his/her own opinion BUT to me it
> does not make sense to opine if one is bordering on the ridiculous.
> To opine against the use of mineral oil because one person does not
> like the idea of the possibility of mineral oil getting into ones
> beverage is as incomprehensible as the person who says that he/she will
> not fly airplanes because airplanes may crash.
 
We are losing it here. I sympathise with you and your defense of your
strongly held ideas, but, until they are proved, they have no more merit
than my saying that I ran tests for the past ten years using peach pits
as an anti-varroa technique. I would hope that there would be some
questioning of my  statements, including peach pit residue, until they
were backed up by independent testing.
When you consider how much time, effort and money any drug, pesticide or
food additive company has to invest to get somthing to the market, what
you have done to date is only a small first step on the road they have
to take.
And it is not an either you use oil or your hives will die proposition.
You may have had failures with Apistan, but I have not. I use it and
crisco patties and have done fine even last year, when many around me
lost most of their hives. Most who use Apistan and practice good
beekeeping have done well in this age of varroa and tracheal mites. And
drone trapping, brood interruption, and other non-chemical techniques
also work. I will continue to use Apistan because it is less labor
intensive than the mineral oil technique and I know it works.
And as far as mineral oil getting in the honey. With our trendy food
fads, do you want honey to be known as a fatty food and have to add fat
content (is mineral oil saturated or unsaturated?) to a honey lable?
Peace.
Bill Truesdell
Bath, ME