> >Flores, J. M., Gil, S., & Padilla, F. (2015). Reliability of the main
> field diagnostic methods of Varroa in honey bee colonies. Archivos de
> zootecnia, 64(246), 161-166.
>

This study is open access.  I'd be cautious about making too much of the
results.

The seven colonies were sampled on only one date in November, but the
colonies had brood present.
Only two adult bee samples, of about 200 bees (~1/3 cup) each were taken
from each hive--one from a honey super, one from the broodnest.

Of practical application is that mite wash comparison of those samples
reflected my previous results--that the bees on honey combs carry about 80%
as many mites as do those from brood combs.

I was surprised by their low recovery by the sugar shake.  Marla Spivak
claims over 90%.  When I've tested, I got about 70%.  These researchers got
about half the mites off with sugar.

But I must question their "alcohol wash", which was performed with only 1/5
cup of alcohol, followed by a water stream.

As far as sticky boards being an indicator, a key point is that they
measured the drop over 4 days, which helps to even out the variation in
day-to-day natural mite fall.

Their strong correlation coefficient for the 4-day natural drop and the
estimated total mite load falls apart if one excludes one extreme data
point.

And I must also question their estimation of the total mite load, which was
determined by the total number of mites that dropped during amitraz
treatment over the next 42 days (nearly 3 varroa reproductive cycles).  I
cannot draw conclusions unless I see their raw data of the counts taken
every 4 days during that period of time.



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

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