Bob said (re acetic): I would not want to not handle properly myself
but what other
>  choice does the larger beekeeper have?

Bob, I'd seriously consider renting a commercial ozone generator--the
kind used to sterilize houses with mold damage.  If you have an
airtight fumigation room, should be safer, quicker, and cheaper than
acetic.  Limited data suggest that it will work, but I have not yet
tested.


>  CCD (whatever CCD is?) has turned up many problems in our bees. I suggest
> beekeepers forget about waiting for the single cause and start working on
> solving the problems the CCD team has already found wrong in our bees. I am!

Seconded!  Bob, this is something that we all admire about you--that
you are of survivor mentality.  You face problems head on, make a
decision, and go with it.  You don't paralyze yourself  worrying if
you are completely correct.

IMHO, this is what makes successful beekeepers successful--you accept
that we don't know all the answers, and just use your good sense to
make management decisions.  As long as you don't contaminate your
equipment (or hurt anyone), you can always change your mind later.  I
don't know of any successful beekeeper who doesn't learn and change
each year.

I've made dumb mistakes, and made decisions that seemed poor in
retrospect, hundreds of times.  My feeling is that as long as I learn
from them, and don't make the same mistake twice (OK, not more than
three times), that I'm doing OK.

If everyone on this List did things exactly the same, no one would
learn much.  The best thing is for us all to educate ourselves as best
possible with what *is* known (e.g., my literature reviews), and try
various solutions.  Then share what we learn.

The next few years are going to be a learning experience for us all,
what with N ceranae, new pesticides, mite resistance to miticides, and
viral mutations.  As Bob points out, we can no longer turn to "the
books" for the answers.

These are truly "interesting" and challenging times in beekeeping.

Randy Oliver

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