Hi all Allen Dick wrote: How much mite reproduction do you get in the drone brood. Reply: Not very much. Don't even see varroa on exposed drone brood on bracecomb, from opened cells exposing pupae, when opening up hives any more, when splitting supers apart from the third top broodbox. They are clean now. Even when Kim was at the bees for article for Bee Culture, we didn't see much reproducing in the drone brood. We uncapped drone brood with him watching and camera ready. With Erik and others too later on. Maybe one or two. Allen Dick also wrote: When you speak of mites waves passing through, are you implying the mite waves are from outside the hives, or that they have waves of success in your hives when drones are being raised? Reply: There seems to be three interacting circles raising varroa that is going on. Well, maybe four if you think about it! There's the drones also the workers also phoretic mites mites from outside sources It depends up the time of the year what you see and each has a rhymthic pattern with up and down swings, coming and going, from minor honey flows and blooming to major ones. Allen also asked: How was the honey flow? Did you manage to extract a surplus? Reply: So far so, so, considering the year being a proclaimed 100 year drought and fires all around. Many were feeding their bees up into May this year because of it. Had over 110 days of 105F heat plus and drought only broke 9 Jul this past week. In many spots 50-70% of the trees never leafed out along with bushes. But all in all we have extracted, while many in the area did not, but refused to touch the third deeps just in case the rains didn't come. Everyone expects the bloom to be on by the end of July now with August thru Thanksgiving for a decent average crop year yet. The fourth deep super you saw when here, we were setting up for crop, now have 5-6 drawn combs on most all hives. Should be ready for El Nino on time as it comes in. Regards, Dee A, Lusby __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com