Hello everybody.

I recently read about a beekeeper who had made up his own three year cyclic varroa treatment method: In addition to removing drone brood in the spring, he alternates with formic acid one year, lactic acid the next year and a one week treament with Apistan strips in the fall the third year.

The one week Apistan treatment worries me. The instructions on the package clearly advice 6-8 weeks of treatment after honey harvest in the fall.

One would assume that first of all, the one week treatment is not efficient enough. But isn't it also right to assume this is the kind of conduct that gives us fluvalinate resistant varroa mites?

I have no clue why he treats only one week, Maybe he thinks the strips are expensive and now gets treatment for six colonies for the price of one. Maybe he wants to expose his bees to fluvalinate as little as possible. The problem is that he's probably an authority in his region and now there's an article written about this in the beekeepers magazine over here. Anything written in that magazine tends to be looked upon as the truth.

Can someone please comment on this. Should we be concerned? Can you give me som verbal ammo and facts to try to correct this?

/Mats Andersson, Stockholm Sweden

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