Taktic

[swarm_trapper]

just wondering Ted, but how is or was amitraz harming your bees?

[Ted Kretschmann]

where you keeping bees back during the days of the mitacure strip? If you were, then you would know all about the damage illformulated products can cause. Killed alot of bees including mine. Soaking taktic on cotton balls, paper shop towels or paper plates is a recipe for disaster. This is an old chem that there is NO tolerance for if found in honey. TED

[Skinner Apiaries]

There's alot, and I mean ALOT, of commercials that would disagree. I can conservatively sat I know 20 grand run with traz. I dont use it but I do have experience with it, and that's because I'm trying to pretend low chem residuals lengthens queen life, and thanks to a nice lot of traz/fluvatine resistant mites. Yay for breeding super mites.

[Ted Kretschmann]

Sorry Skinner, I have NO desire to go back to my squirting Tac Tik on cotton ball days. TED

[camero7]

From Eric Mussen's Newsletter:
Chris Mullin and his cooperators at
Penn State University (ABJ Abstract #20)
have been reverse-engineering some pesti-
cide formulations and testing some of the
common “inert ingredi-ents” for honey bee
toxicity. N-methylpyr-rolidone (NMP) was
the first to be empha-sized. The researchers
found that NMP is toxic to honey bees,
especially so for brood. With a bit of NMP
in the commercial form-ulations, Bravo®
was four times as toxic to brood as the
active ingredient chlorothalonil is by itself.
Tactik®also was four times as toxic to
brood as was straight Amitraz. As I
mentioned earlier, it is going to be very
difficult to try to regulate pesticides based
on potential danger to bees when so many
inert ingredients and adjuvants are compli-
cating the picture.

[Barry]

Joe Traynor's newsletter in 1996 had this:

"TAKTIK (aka Amitraz)
Evidence is coming in that Taktik (or Amitraz) is of little or no help in controlling trachael. If you're using this material you may be kidding yourself."

[sqkcrk]

Anything more current relating to Varroa destructor?

[Barry]

I'm sure, but this is "heads up" for Frazzled

[sqkcrk]

Frazzled has t.mites? Are others using Taktik for varroa control fooling themselves too?

[Barry]

You're (your, Jor) probably right Mark. I'm thinking tracheal and most everyone else is thinking varroa. My mistake. I've been out of the treatment routine to long.

[Skinner Apiaries]

Traz is a nice treatment for VMite obviously, but with the lethal duality of thymol and formic, i.e. kills both mites, it's merely a calculated risk/cost saving move. Then again, I've NEVER had an abscond from traz. Can't say that for formic. Win some lose some. Either way I'm killin mites.

[frazzledfozzle]

where you keeping bees back during the days of the mitacure strip? If you were, then you would know all about the damage illformulated products can cause. Killed alot of bees including mine. Soaking taktic on cotton balls, paper shop towels or paper plates is a recipe for disaster. This is an old chem that there is NO tolerance for if found in honey. TED

Ted things have come a long way since the mitacure strip Amitraz as the active ingredient in Apivar strips has been used extensively in Beehives around the world with no ill effects. You can't compare using Tactic soaked cotton balls to Apivar strips they are not the same thing

[BEES4U]

FYI:
Varroa has deveoped reisitance to Taktic at the sodium recepter level!

[megank]

Lethal Dose to kill 50% (LD50) - Rats: 523-800mg/kg (oral); >1600mg/kg (dermal)

hmmm....Seems Alcohol is more deadly to rats than Amitraz....

[megank]

"Tactik®also was four times as toxic to
brood as was straight Amitraz."

That's because of the solvent used...Straight chain hydrocarbon solvents are a real killer

[Ted Kretschmann]

Apivar is just our old mitacure strip come back to haunt us. The strip is the same, little hole up top, huh, for a nail to stick through it so you can hang it. Yep, just package it up in a nice looking package and give it a new name. I doubt you see that product back in use in the USA after what happened with it the first time around. Frazzled, have fun with Apivar-(mitacure) It took three years, then the conumdrum hit.....Did the strip kill the bees or did the strip not kill the mites, which then killed the bees? TED

[BEES4U]

Anything more current relating to Varroa destructor?

http://www.cheshire-bka.co.uk/News/VarroaResearch.php ( Date?)
Varroa Research

Two recent pieces of research throw more light on the question of the long term co-existence of Apis mellifera and Varroa destructor.

Dr Stephen Martin of Sheffield University spoke at the BIBBA meeting at Stoneleigh in April on the topic of Varroa tolerance and resistance.

It is now commonly accepted that it is the viruses for which Varroa is a vector which kill colonies. Viruses can exist in bees without causing problems—a condition named “inapparent infection”. If they were ingested, it would take about 100,000,000,000 virus particles to kill a bee. When transferred directly into the bee’s haemolymph by a Varroa mite, only 100 particles are required to cause disease. Infected bees often die away from the hive, leaving it empty, apart from the queen and a tiny number of attendants. Dr Martin then went on to speak of mite resistance to pyrethroids. There are three ways in which resistance could have developed:
1.by growing a thicker cuticle.
2.by producing a detoxifying enzyme in the blood to counteract the pyrethroid.
3.by making changes to the sodium channel in the cell walls, so that the pesticide cannot enter the cells.

Recent research suggests the third method is the route by which resistance has occurred, and that this happened in Sicily in just one mite, and all resistant mites are descended from this single mite. This logically means that Beekeepers are not responsible for the spread of resistant mites because of their misuse of chemicals, but because of their misuse of bees! Resistant mites have been spread around by beekeepers importing bees, in the same way as Varroa first reached these shores. All Varroa mites are virtually clones of one-another, since brother-sister mating means that they are genetically identical to one another. Thus, once having developed resistance by the sodium channel route, Varroa will never lose it. Bayvarol and Apistan will never work again, once resistance becomes established in an area.

Thanks to Jim Ryan of the “Irish Beekeeper” for that report — via BEES.

[frazzledfozzle]

Well Ted I will let you know next year if all our bees die as that will be our third year treating with Apivar.

[Kieck]

FYI:
Varroa has deveoped reisitance to Taktic at the sodium recepter level! -BEES4U

Dr Martin then went on to speak of mite resistance to pyrethroids. There are three ways in which resistance could have developed:
1.by growing a thicker cuticle.
2.by producing a detoxifying enzyme in the blood to counteract the pyrethroid.
3.by making changes to the sodium channel in the cell walls, so that the pesticide cannot enter the cells. -BEES4U

Just to be clear here, amitraz is not a pyrethroid. Amitraz is an amidine, a derivative of an oxoacid. Both Apistan and Bayvarol contain synthetic pyrethroids. Resistance to synthetic pyrethroids will not necessarily provide cross resistance to amidines.

[BEES4U]

Bump