From the discussion in the Martin paper Randy recommended regarding how mites distribute in brood combs:

Previous studies have shown that the distribution of
cell infestation is significantly different from that predicted
by the Poisson distribution (Fuchs, 1988;
Moosbeckhofer eta/., 1988). However, Fuchs (1988)
suspected that fluctuations in the infestation rate may
account for the observed non-Poisson distribution.
He demonstrated this by combining 10 Poisson distributions
that had randomly chosen means and the
resulting distribution was similar to that of the
observed data. The present study was able to present
the mites with uniform areas of brood which were
sealed at a similar time (2-36 h), so reducing the possibility
that fluctuations in infestation rates could
occur. When this influence was removed it was
revealed that the mites entered cells on a fairly random
basis that can be described by the Poisson distribution.
This was found to occur irrespective of the
level of infestation so long as it remained constant.
However, the infestation level was found to fluctuate
enough even during a 36-h period to affect the result
(see fig. 1). The overdispersed distribution of the
mites found in other studies (Moosbeckhofer eta/.,
1988; Fuchs, 1988) is likely to be the result of combining
data sets that have varying infestation levels.
Mites entered and attempted to breed in cells containing
larvae which subsequently died due to
sacbrood or chalkbrood (personal observation),
which suggests the mites are unable to distinguish
diseased from healthy larvae during cell entry.

Comments???

Christina


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