I've got the first mite drop results from a rough experiment I've been
running since about late March. As soon as my hives started raising drones
I put a drone frame in each of my test hives. Before the drones hatched
(with one or two failures on my part) I would remove the frame and
immediately replace it with a spare frame. The drone were eliminated and
the frames were frozen before returning. The drone trapping ended when my
hives basically stopped raising drones about the second week of July. My
results are as follows, expressed in terms of per 24 hour natural fall (my
48 hour count divided by 2):
for the eleven control hives:
127.5, 117, 16, 12.5, 9.5, 10, 7.5, 68.5, 44, 21, 1
for the ten drone trapping hives:
31.5, 5.5, 11.5, 15.5, 6, 4.5, 4.5, 4.5, 4.5, 5.5
Of course, there are a lot more details that I could share, but I don't
have time to present everything now.
Eric
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