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Taktic

100K views 116 replies 42 participants last post by  Eduardo Gomes 
#1 ·
Anyone ever use or hear of TAKTIC to be used on bees for mite control?
 
#32 ·
So it is the same as commercial fishing. We either add the price for the government approved treatments in to sell our honey or keep our prices low and we might get by without a profit on our honey sales. Who checks the imported honey for chemicals?
Comparing it to commercial fishing and shrimping the imports are putting true blooded Americans out of business due to price. It is a shame that imports of shrimp, etc. are cheaper than some one in the STATES trying to make an honest living fishing and can not make it. Imported honey is in the same boat.
Pull together and raise the price to treat by government standards or do it as a hobby as I am. Just trying to keep my bees alive.
 
#33 ·
My proposed solution is simple. We should do as we have for all other food products....Manditory testing of all wholesale honey for any chemical that may be used as a medicinal treatment and poses a risk to human health. That applies to imports as well as domestics. Guess what...that strategy works as well: Every year thousands of pounds of tainted milk, meat, fish, poultry, fruit and vegetables from the states and abroad are withdrawn from the market and the producers fined. I don't like government regulation, but Adee's and others on this website have shown it to be necessary.
 
#34 ·
Interesting point, there, at the end of Aspera's post:

Do you (anyone, not just Aspera) believe that mandatory testing would have caught Adee Honey Farms?

The chemicals they were caught using illegally were fluvalinate (different formulation, but would likely leave the same residue in any honey as the legal form) and oxalic acid (which some proponents of OA claim is a chemical naturally found in honey anyway).
 
#35 ·
Hi Guys,

Seems like I remember a time when most American beekeepers were repeating the 'dirty offshore honey chant' in response to some cheap, tainted import honey that flooded the American market.

To differentiate America's 'pure honey' from the other stuff, some on the Honey Board suggested a quality assurance program for American honey. The results.....silence from the American beekeeping community. No quality assurance, ie testing for domestic honey, wanted here!

Wonder why not, if we produce the clean stuff? I don't because I've been around commercial beekeeping for more than 35 years.

Now, the offshore producers have cleaned up their act. Or maybe found ways to appear so. But I know we American beekeepers can do better.

I've know from personal experience that bees can thrive and still remain clean. The information is out there for anyone who desires to do the same.

Costs? Profit? Beekeepers are squeezed to the low economic end throughout the world, as are most primary agricultural producers. The difference some are willing to live in a muddy field with a leaky tent as their shelter. Others can't live without their new 4 wheel drive pickup.

How to survive? Produce a clean, niche market honey and value add to it. Think Whole Foods rather than Sam's Club. Or forget honey and pollinate almonds. The almond guys don't care whether the bees or honey are clean.

Some Thoughts
Dennis
 
#37 ·
I would divide my operation into organic honey production and pollination. On the honey end, lobby for higher standards. On the pollination end, use this operation as a sink for hives that must be treated. Unfortunately, I feel that the Chinese learned ALL of their dirty tricks from us. Chinese honey is cheap because Chinese labor is cheap and we haven't been able to automate much of beekeeping. They just took their cues from us that tainted honey is A.O.K. for everything that corn syrup can't do.
 
#38 ·
I don't know if by "organic" you mean "certified organic" or not. Here (not very far at all from the business headquarters of Adee Honey Farms) "certified organic" -- even if there was such a designation for honey -- would be a practical impossibility. Finding any location with a three-mile radius of "all organic" crops would be very, very difficult, compounded by looking for a roadless area (all roadways around here are sprayed with herbicides and some insecticides around here), compounded still further by seeking such sites for many, many hives.

Again, I say, concerning Adee's fines specifically and any proposed "higher standards," how would you distinguish "off-label fluvalinate" from "label fluvalinate?" How do you tell oxalic acid added to the honey through fogging/dribbling from oxalic acid that occurs naturally in honey?

And, how do you keep your bees from foraging in fields that might be sprayed with pesticides like Taktic?
 
#39 ·
I don't know if by "organic" you mean "certified organic" or not. .....be sprayed with pesticides like Taktic?
...of course, a hive saturated with an unlabled pesticide is much more likely to pollute honey than a hive in which foragers have come in contact with a pesticide.
 
#40 ·
Absolutely.

Two items, though:

1) "Certified organic," a USDA designation, means that livestock are only fed "certified organic" feed, too. In the case of a certified organic dairy farm, that means that the cows must be fed certified organic crops to produce certified organic milk.

2) Unlabeled or labeled, the active ingredient is the same, and detection methods would pick either/both up equally. Fluvalinate applied as an unlabeled formulation or fluvalinate applied as "Apistan" or fluvalinate encountered by foragers in the field: they're all the same active ingredient. The concentrations in honey might differ, but the ingredient would not.

So, where do we set the standards for pesticides in honey? Zero? Then very few, if any, of us would be able to legally sell honey. Limited to certain concentrations of labeled pesticides and lower concentrations of pesticides that might be encountered by the foraging bees? Then we're still left with the problem of detecting unlabeled formulations of pesticides that also have labeled formulations as miticides in bee hives (i. e. fluvalinate).
 
#41 ·
A bunch of posts back, Mike said:

> Coumaphos...of course...killed all the queen cells. What I found
> interesting was that Fluvalinate and the controls were statistically identical.
> There was no effect on queen cells, virgins, ability to mate, or viability of
> semen.

That's not surprising at all - Coumaphos is an organophosphate.
The rest of agriculture is moving away from the use of organophosphate
pesticides due to the cumulative neurological damage that results from
the cumulative impact of minuscule levels of exposure. Beekeeping may
be the last segment of agriculture to still be using an organophosphate.

Fluvalinate is a much more simple pesticide.
Not a "nerve agent" at all.
 
#43 ·
Interesting note here, while we're on the topic of coumaphos.

Coumaphos, sold as CheckMite+, is under "Section 18" approval from the EPA, not a registered chemical, but an emergency treatment. My understanding of this, both from people who help oversee chemical registration and from chemical industry administrators, is that Section 18s are passed because of pressure from the users, not the chemical industries. Each year, Section 18 approval must be passed again. One of the experts mentioned to me, "It's had a Section 18 for more than a year or two? Those beekeepers must have some strong leverage!"
 
#44 ·
Kieck, you are confusing residue testing with usage law. Residue testing is only concerned with residues, not how they ended up in the product. And yes, by organic, I mean "certified organic". Frankly, I think that its a little self-serving to ask people for what they would do and then claim that all responders propose thet impossible.
 
#45 ·
Aspera,

I'm probably not making myself clear on this one.

"Residue testing" is one matter. I understand that. What comes out of this, though, is the expectation -- from this thread, if you go back and read it again -- that incidents such as Adee's use of unlabeled pesticide will be detected and "deterred" by residue testing.

So, here's what we're up against ("self-serving" or not): in this country, all honey is likely to have pesticide residues. For cryin' out loud, virtually all drinking water in this country has pesticide residues. So, we have to expect that. The question, then, is where we set the limits. Where do we set them?

See, I assume that since beekeepers are using fluvalinate (Apistan) in hives, the concentrations of fluvalinate detected by residue testing will be higher than, say, the concentrations of other pesticides. Right? So, either we have to permit greater concentrations of pesticides approved for use in bee hives, or we have to (for all practical purposes, anyway) no longer have approved pesticides for use in bee hives.

Then, if those concentration standards are higher, how could we possibly determine "on-label" versus "off-label" use of the same active ingredients?

Residue testing, as I see it, doesn't eliminate the problem of off-label pesticides being used in bee hives. At best, it would hopefully reduce the amount of contaminated honey reaching the market.
 
#46 ·
Taktic 12.5 % and 5.0%

ALTERNATIVE DISEASE TREATMENTS--RISKS INVOLVED
Dr.Eric Mussen in From the UC Apiaries, University of California, Davis says so-called "alternative" (unregistered and illegal) treatments make little sense to beekeepers. It all boils down to formulation of the product, he says, something companies must spend huge amounts of money developing, testing and registering.

Administration and Dosage :
Taktic to be used as spray or dip
Animal Taktic 12.5%/ L of water for ticks Taktic 12.5%/ L of water for mites (mange), lice and keds
Cattle/Camel 2.0 ml 2.0 ml
Sheep/Goat 4.0 ml 4.0 ml
Pigs 4.0 ml 4.0 ml


Taktic® 5%
Broad spectrum ectoparasiticide against ticks, mites, lice and keds.
________________________________________
Composition :
Each ml contains : Amitraz B.P (Vet) 50 mg
Indication :
Mites, Lice and Keds
Taktic kills tick and ectoparasites resistant to organochlorine, organophosphate and synthetic pyrethroid compounds
Administration and Dosage :
Taktic to be used as spray or dip
Parasite Mixing Rate / L of water
Ticks 6.0 ml
Lice 6.0 ml
Mites 10.0 ml

Regards,
Ernie
Lucas Apiaries
 
This post has been deleted
#50 ·
Hi Guys,

Taktic, not again!

The fact that this topic keeps cropping up shows just how endemic this approach is. It's what puts the PU in the PUre honey produced by a lot of American beekeepers.

To use this approach a beekeeper must be good at the lie. It must be applied in the purchase, use, and during the sell. It's good to practice saying, "on strawberries", "on sheep, cow and pigs", "natural", "healthful", "healing", "better than sugar", and do it without blushing or flinching.

One must also be clever and handle stress without loosing any sleep. For, who knows what's been left behind, or who has seen what while looking in the shop or into a hive.

And a beekeeper, using this approach must be very optimistic, thinking that the long term negative effects, historically experienced, are the result of an inadequate application. A little bit more of the stuff, applied more often, will result in success.

A beekeeper using this approach must suppress any sense of wonder. Never wonder what it might be doing to the bees. Never wonder what it might be doing to the honey. Never wonder what it might be doing to his family. Never wonder what it might be doing to his health. Or such a beekeeper might take some safety precautions. He might actually wear some protective equipment which would give himself and his methods away. Just keep repeating, "it nucs the mites but it won't harm a fly", especially while mixing it in a bucket with a wood stick behind the shop.

Finally, a beekeeper must really appreciate saving money. Just think of all the pesticide one can buy and spread around for such a small amount of money.

If a migratory pollinator wants to dump that junk in his hives and subject himself and family by such methods. Although illegal, it's his business and his risk. But I don't have any sympathy for him when he experiences the inevitable results. I would feel sorry for his family. And I don't buy used beekeeping equipment.

If that beekeeper looses control of those chems and they fall off the truck or end up in the environment, risking public health, he should be held liable.

And if that beekeeper sells any contaminated products from those hives, a stiff enough penalty should be applied so it won't happen again.

Come on guys, if your bees are resistant to fluvalinate, they are resistant to amitraz. Research conducted while approving checkmite documented this. I won't use the chemical name here as I think anyone using a homemade checkmite substitute should face some hard prison time.

Beekeeping has come a long way since these approaches were developed over 20 years ago. There are methods, that are so much better for mite control, for product safety, for the beekeepers health and for the environment. Why accept anything else.

Regards
Dennis
 
#51 · (Edited by Moderator)
Amitraz. The recommended dosage for use on honey bee colonies is

ISSN 1814-1137
AGRICULTURAL
AND FOOD
ENGINEERING
AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD ENGINEERING TECHNICAL REPORT TECHNICAL REPORT
Honey bee diseases and pests:
a practical guide
4 4
TC/D/A0849E/1/11.06/550
It is obvious that apicultural industries play an important role
in generating employment opportunities and increasing family
income in the rural areas of the world. Control of diseases and
pests of honey bees is one of most challenging tasks in
improving quality of honey and honey bee by-products,
especially for the beekeepers in developing countries.
This publication describes common diseases and pests of
honey bees and their importance and provides a practical
guide to the basic technology available to beekeepers for
their control and prevention.
The publication is further evidence of the continuing
endeavours of FAO to promote beekeeping in developing
countries, as a low-cost means of improving local diets,
elevating purchasing power and diversifying rural activities.
Honey bee diseases and pests:
a practical guide


Here is some data that i got from a web search: Use with extream caustion.
Amitraz
Taktic and Mitac are trade names of products containing amitraz at different concentrations.

The recommended dosage for use on honey bee colonies is

sprayed lightly on bees, the comb surface of brood frames and hive walls.

The amount of the solution to be sprayed at each application depends on the size of the colony, but
is usually within the range of

Amitraz can also be used as a hive fumigant.

Strips of filter paper 2.5 x 9 cm are soaked in a

Note that amitraz can kill bees.

A major disadvantage of amitraz is that it has an ovicidal effect: when used
as a hive spray it will kill eggs.

It must therefore not be sprayed directly on frames containing a considerable
number of eggs or newly-hatched larvae.

Regards,
Ernie
Lucas Apiaries
 
#52 ·
It is time that the industry spread the truth about amitraz.

Eric Mussen
Entomology Extension
University of California
Davis, CA 95616

Discussions with beekeepers
lead me to believe that many of
them think that amitraz is an
effective chemical for controlling
tracheal mites. This idea may have
originated when another, no longer
available, plastic strip called
Miticur®, was registered for
tracheal mite control. The active
ingredient in that strip was
amitraz.
If you remember the history
of that strip, it was supposed to
knock back tracheal mite
infestations. However, one or more
large beekeeping operations lost
very large portions of their
operations when the strips failed
to control the mites. The
beekeepers sued the chemical
company for the losses and the
strips were removed from the
market.
A thorough reading of many
papers dealing with control of
tracheal mites with amitraz
(Ovasyn®, Mitac®, and Taktic®)
reveals that very few studies
resulted in good control, if the
amitraz was introduced as a
contact treatment. Many authors
had no luck reducing infestations,
unless the amitraz was used as an
aerosol spray or as a burning
“fume strip.”
Therefore, beekeepers who
have been relying on amitraz to
control their tracheal mite
infestations have not been getting
the results that they desire.
There was a time when amitraz did
control Varroa mites effectively,
but continued use of amitraz for
tracheal mite control (?) led to
selection for resistance to
amitraz in Varroa mites,
simultaneously to the selection
for resistance to fluvalinate.
So, this winter, it appears
that something prompted a resurgence
of tracheal mite outbreaks
in some beekeeping operations.
Treatments with amitraz made
little difference and the colonies
collapsed. It is time that the
industry spread the truth about
amitraz and tracheal mites:
contact applications of amitraz
(and its miniscule fumigant
action) do not control tracheal
mites.

Sincerely,
Eric Mussen
Entomology Extension
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: (530) 752-0472
FAX: (530) 752-1537
Email: ecmussen@ucdavis.edu
URL:entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mussen
 
#55 · (Edited by Moderator)
The recommended dosage for use on honey bee colonies is [edit], sprayed lightly on bees, the comb surface of brood frames and hive walls.

-BEES4U
Actually, no "recommended" rate exists. Amitraz is not labeled for use in bee hives.

In other words, using amitraz in bee hives is illegal.

Amitraz can also be used as a hive fumigant. -BEES4U
Not legally.

Whether or not it "works" is a different question, but it is not a legal treatment in bee hives. And it appears that amitraz does little to effectively control Varroa, or tracheal mites.
 
#56 ·
Hi LSPender,

I think the organic acids are the best bet. If I understand correctly, formic is approved. Oxalic isn't. They are effective, non-contaminating and cheap. The risk associated with them is in their proper application, where it should be.

Why oxalic acid remains in legal limbo is a mystery to me. I think it's been years since the EAS tossed it into the approval process. Where is it at? Seems like every six months or so, I hear the approval just around the corner.

Look at the time difference between Checkmite and Oxalic approval! Why should it be so hard to approve a replacement that's been proven, for decades, to be safe, effective, and non-contaminating? And look what it would be replacing - an organophosphate that the government has been trying to get out of circulation! I would think the government itself should be pushing the effort!

Now for what I've seen. Many commercial beekeepers can't wait for a slip of paper and an approved organic acid, in an approved bag, sold by an approved bee organization. They are using it now. How are they using it? Most are dribbling it.

And I hope they are doing it by the numbers. Sloppy application won't cut it with the organic acids. They've got to be applied in the right dosage, in the right way, at the right time. It's not bee experimentation. The information is out there and it's well researched. Their use is documented. And it's been approved just about everywhere else except the USA.

Anyone know what's happening in Canada with oxalic?

So, what happens when the acids are used appropriately? It allows a beekeeper to treat mites in a safe and effective way without contaminating comb. It's then possible to clean up a operation by rotating pesticide contaminated comb out. That results in a great improvement in colony health.

So, what happens when they are used wrong. The bees suffer. The queen's life is shortened or she's killed. And in very extreme cases, a beekeeper can be injured. But there's little long term effect to the equipment, the beekeeper or the environment.

I fear that the American beekeeper will just use the organic acids as another vehicle for experimentation thinking if organic acids are so good, they would be even better with the addition of pesticide A + pesticide B + some cyanide + a little arsenic and a little cesium and a dash of plutonium :>)))

And if it's a good treatment when applied properly, just image if it were applied continuously on shop towels or used in the smoker!!!!

Regards
Dennis
Thinking, if I had any political or economical clout, I'd be using my spurs on this one.
 
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