For those of you interested in HopGuard, I just received notification from Mann Lake Ltd. that Section 18 approvals have been issued in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Arkansas and Mississippi are supposed to be next.
HopGuard is a naturally occurring food-grade alternative to chemical pesticides. It has been found safe to use even in queen-breeding operations because it has no negative effect on egg laying.
For more information (and opinions) on HopGuard, please see HopGuard: the new Varroa pesticide and HopGuard: update.
For the record, I have no financial interest in either HopGuard or Mann Lake Ltd.
Rusty
Are you going to use it?
I have been doing really well controlling mites using a mix of IPM protocols. But I feel like it would be nice to have something “waiting in the wings” for that overwhelming mite population that explodes out of nowhere. Of all the “natural products” I have researched so far, this one seems to be the most truly natural.
Several years ago I had an outbreak of both deformed wing virus and chronic bee paralysis in one hive (both carried by mites) and it would have been nice to have something on hand that would kill the mites but not contaminate everything else. So, yes, I think I will try it–not across the board but as an experiment–and to have on hand “in case.”
I have a question about HopGuard 2. I lost my last hive mid-February 2020. When I took the hive apart to look there was a lot of capped honey. I am guessing from this the bees did not die of starvation, but varroa. I treated with HopGuard 2 early fall. I don’t normally harvest honey, but leave it on the hive so I don’t think much about human consumption and honey contamination by miticides. This was a lot of honey tho. I read a lot about HG2 and it being food grade. The question is, can I harvest this honey some of which was in the brood boxes and came into contact with HG2 strips. Or is this a bad idea?
Sharon,
There are no prohibitions about using HopGuard 2 or HopGuard 3 when collecting honey for human consumption, so you should be good to go. That’s one reason I’m a fan. From the EPA label, “HopGuard® III is safe to use during honey flow without any risk of disrupting nectar foraging or tainting the honey.”