If you have a zero tolerance for fluvalinate in honey disregard this response.
   
  Samples of honey  collected by the New York State Dept. of Ag and MKts over the last 5 years have shown levels of fluvalinate present at levels greatly lower than those considered  "acceptible" by the USDA. The same is true for chumophaus.
   
  Therefore I would install nucs in the equipment that you have and go on from here.
   
  With your present experience you may want to try beekeeping withoout chemical treatment, period. Make your splits or buy nucs with varroa "resistant" queens. Save your chemical treatment money and buy queens to put into the splits that you make to replace your "winter" loss. I put winter in quotes because perhaps, like mine, your bees were already dying before winter. And you just didn't know it until now.
   
  Keep on beekeeping, Mark Berninghausen
   
  DWV? What's that? DW Virus?

Richard A Cartwright <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
  Hello All,
After harvesting honey last Fall, and acknowledging that I had a bad case 
of varroa (and associated DWV), I treated my hives with Apistan 
(fluvalinate) as per the directions. Over the Winter I lost 3 of my 4 
hives. 
		
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