Charles wrote:


>Since 1996??  I must have missed something.  They had to of at least requeened themselves.   

>The question I have is what are their mite levels??  Are they managing mites or surviving them???


Sorry Charles, should have said 'have not required re-queening by the beekeeper', i.e. no queen failure in those two colonies in 18 years.  My oldest one is five years and counting.  I’d say they are both managing and surviving the mites.   We are able to find the occasional mite under capped drone brood, but don’t routinely measure levels.  I did find a nearly 100% infestation by alcohol wash in a severely dwindled colony once and there was a ton of mite frass on the brood comb with that one.  My losses have averaged under 15% these past four winters and most of those were from the queen failing before spring,  i sometimes find a little frass in those and sometimes not.

Randy has asked me to monitor mite levels vs. brood volume on a monthly basis and I think that would be very interesting and useful but it will have to wait until I can retire from the day job.   I’m hoping the folks in Baton Rouge might be able to provide that and other metrics from the samples we send them.

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