Important Terms
Important terms
• drone and worker comb: wax comb built by bees for storing honey and pollen and for rearing drone (male) and worker (female) honey bees, respectively. The cells that make up drone comb are slightly larger than those that make up worker comb.• larva: the feeding stage of an immature insect.
• pupa: the quiescent stage of an immature insect during which time it undergoes dramatic physiological and morphological changes as undergoes the transition from the larval stage to the adult stage.
• brood: the immature stages of the honey bee, including the egg, larval and pupal stages. Immature workers and drones develop in worker and drone cells, respectively. Queens are reared in special queen cells, which are seasonal and relatively few in number.
• capped stage: the period when a cell containing an immature bee is capped with wax. A brood cell is capped from the late larval stage until the bee emerges from the cell as an adult.
• hemolymph: insect blood.
• pest density: the number of pests in a sample of known size. Mite density can be measured several ways. Some of these include the number of mites per adult bee, the number of mites per 300 adult bees, or the number of mites in a standard volume of adult bees.
• economic injury level (EIL): the lowest pest density that causes economic damage.
• economic threshold level (ETL): the pest density that triggers an action designed to prevent the pest population from reaching the economic injury level. The ETL is always less thanor equal to the EIL.
• pesticide: includes many kinds of ingredients used in products, such as insecticides, miticides, fungicides, rodenticides, insect repellants, weed killers, antimicrobials, and swimming pool chemicals, which are designed to prevent, destroy, repel, or reduce pests of any sort.
• pyrethroids: a class of synthetic pesticides with chemical structures similar to pyrethrum, a naturally-occurring substance in chrysanthemums with pesticidal activity. Generally, moderate to high doses of pyrethroids are necessary to cause acute toxicity in mammals. Apistan® (fluvalinate) is a pyrethroid used for controlling V. destructor.
• organophosphates (OP’s): a class of synthetic pesticides containing phosphorous. Generally, very low doses of OP’s can cause acute toxicity in mammals. OP’s can also cause cumulative, irreversible nerve damage at sub-lethal doses. CheckMite+® (coumaphos) is an OP registered for control of V. destructor in some states.
• organic acids: a group of carbon-bearing acids, including acetic, formic, lactic and oxalic acids. Organic acids can cause severe burns to the skin, eyes and respiratory system. Mite-Away II™ is a formulation of formic acid registered in the US for control of V. destructor.
• essential oil: the volatile and aromatic liquid or semi-solid obtained from a single botanical species, primarily through a distillation, expression or extraction process. Essential oils are blends of many compounds, the various compounds being natural products, many of which act as antibiotics and/or pesticides. One such compound, thymol, is derived from thyme oil and is the primary active ingredient in Api-Life VAR™, a product registered for control of V. destructor in some states.
• tolerance: the maximum residue limit, which is the amount of pesticide residue allowed to remain in or on a treated food commodity. If residues exceed the tolerance level, the commodity is subject to seizure and destruction. Some pesticides are exempt from tolerance (e.g. formic acid), while others have a time-limited exemption that must be periodically renewed (e.g. thymol, menthol and eucalyptus oil).
• off-label use: the use of any registered pesticide in a manner inconsistent with its label.
• Integrated Pest Management (IPM): a pest management program based on the coordinated use of multiple tactics (including biological, cultural, genetic, mechanical and chemical) and environmental data (pest densities, economic thresholds) and designed to maintain pest populations below the economic injury level with the least disruption to the environment.
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