Bob Harrison wrote ''Queenlessness has in my opinion became a larger problem
in the U.S. than at
any time in U.S. beekeeping history. Comments?''
Roger White wrote:
Yes, in a single word, coumaphos

You have traced queenlessness after swarming  back to coumaphos use Roger?

When you say coumaphos do you mean an approved bee strip such as we use in
the U.S. made by Bayer or another method of application?

All kinds of problems have been traced back to illegal use of coumaphos by
the Beltsville bee lab.

Reported by the bee lab with as per label checkmite use.

Queen breeders have have trouble raising and mating queens while the
Checkmite strip has been in the hive and even one use of the strip puts a
small amount of coumaphos in brood comb.

The swarming and then not requeening  problem I speak of goes back to even
before varroa was detected in the U.S.. Researchers say the problem would
stop if queen breeders selected for the trait.

The Russian /Nwc queens I spoke of are on comb which has been treated before
with checkmite but I quit using checkmite a couple years ago.

I will be talking tomorrow with Dr. Mark Feldlaufer of the bee lab so I
might get an update  on what is going on in the U.S. with coumaphos
problems.

Bob

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