I do not believe that Marla means, in the quote above, "treat all hives in
spite of your monitoring results"
]
I haven't seen Marla's take on this, but it appears that Randy, Marla, and
Dennis as well as some others are in the same playbook on this topic.
Frankly listening to Dennis this weekend was both delightful and terrifying.
It was great to hear him speak when given the actually time to explain his
thoughts in depth. In the past I have heard him in 1 hour presentations,
and he always struck me as an alarmist. Throwing out numbers with little
back-story. In this case he was allowed about 3 hours to flesh out his
thinking.
In that the story presented is perfectly clear, our mite treatment system
is failing, and fast. It may not be so much that the system is failing to
kill mites, but that threashold levels before damage are getting lower and
lower. Whereas 5 years ago anything about 5 was bad, now its 3. I am
not clear yet as to why, if it's the virus levels are worse, or maybe just
our perception of damage is getting better. Matters little in the
suggestions as to what is threshold levels.
The clear talking points are that hobby typo beekeepers are not helping the
issue. The reference to that is not intended to imply that small beekeepers
are worse that big, but that those who are not engaged enough to even know
the mite levels are spreading the problems. Despite any best intentions
the HONEST truth is, the majority of hobby beekeepers have no clue what the
mite level in the hive is, or a plan to address it. That's not a slam on
them, in fact in my thought process that's a bit on us. We should be
teaching better.
I thought I was getting good. I check and treat mites, Decent plan, Now
Dennis and Randy both come along and inform me my plan is crap. I was
looking for mites above 5 in sept. now I am being told I need to know in
July, and if I find more than 1 per 2 hives (at a 300 sample size) I have
a problem......YIKES... the implications of this lecture are simple, for
good bees I need to be doing a real mite sample 2-3 times a year, and
treating accordingly.
Dennis Actually recommended 3 treatments a year, Thymol in the spring,
Formic in summer, and OA in fall. And there is no doubt about his
statement.
So there it is, Me and most of my friends are also part of the problem,
still creating mite bombs because that occasional hive gets missed or
exceeds a thereashold..... Kind of a slap in the face really. Still
digesting it today.
Dennis did say one thing that I think is patently ridiculous. I think it was
an offhand comment that needed more eplination. The scary part was how many
parroted it afterwards. Maybe someone her can explain why I am wrong.
His comment "mite treatments that kill a high percentage of mites, lead to
the mites building up restiance faster than a treatments that kills a
smaller percentage."
Now doing a bit of math and logic, this seems just wrong. Mathematically
it is. No doubt. If I kill 99% of something then only 1 is "restraint"
and if I kill 80% of something then I have 20 resistant. 20 will breed up
faster than 1. No way about it.
What he seemed to be implying is that resistance is something in the mites
control, and that killing most of them would make them work harder at
surviving. The logic makes no sense to me as restiance to a treatment is
way beyond the mites control.
Charles
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