Hi All,

In my own bee operation, we soured on sugar dusting as a means of varroa
management since it took too damn much work, and simply didn't exhibit the
efficacy that we needed if brood was present.

However, there are still some hobby beekeepers who are willing to dust at
weekly intervals, or even a few times a week, at which level, dusting does
indeed have an effect upon the mite population.  I was recently approached
by one of those beekeepers (Amanda Millar from Sussex), who asked me to
create simulations of the effect of weekly dustings.  So I spent the
morning creating an interactive Excel spreadsheet to do so.

I've posted the file to my website, so that you can play with it yourself
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/Sugar-dusting-effect.xlsx

I've set it up with what I consider realistic constants for mite
reproduction rate and efficacy of drop, but you can change the variables.
The initial set up pretty accurately reflects my actual field data.

Have fun!

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

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html