>  What I am wondering is if in an open hive the fumes of thymol are enough
> to just screw up the olfactory sense of phoretic mites?
>

As you know, Charlie, I tend to question EVERYTHING.  And I'm now
questioning the mode(s) of action of thymol.

Application of a thymol treatment greatly increases natural mite drop.
However, I'm not clear as to whether those mites dropped due to being
killed, or whether they dropped due to irritation, and then died after they
got stuck to the stickyboards.

This would be easy test for the toxicity of thymol vapors in an incubator,
but I can't find such studies in my files--anyone else have any?

Of interest is that there does not appear to be any mortality of mites
under the cappings, despite the fact that thymol vapors apparently
penetrate the cappings enough to induce bees to remove pupae.

I clearly have more to learn about the exact mode of action of thymol.
Such information may be very useful.

--
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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