Hi All,

Anyone still folowing this thread can only imagine my delight at checking my 
email this morning, and not finding that I've been blasted by Jim again!

That said, I want to express my respect for Jim, and for his incredible 
intelligence, not to mention how dang fast he can type.  He may be 
combative, but he's often right.  (If you read my posts carefully, you may 
detect that sometimes I feel that he may also be slightly off base).

Anyway, Jim's points are well taken!  As with any purported mite management 
technique, we want to see hard supportive data.  This has been the main bone 
of contention with Dee's claim that small cell will control mites.  I don't 
know if anyone doubts that Dee is keeping healthy bees, but they just want 
to see a controlled test of the method.  Until then, Dee's claim is merely 
anecdotal--for all we know, it could be the odor of her hand lotion on the 
frames that is controlling the mites.  That's why I'm running a controlled 
trial of small cell this year.

I've published an article about using drone trapping and sugar dusting for 
mite management, and posted it to my website with photos and updates.  There 
is plenty of published hard data to support the drone trapping.  Not so for 
sugar dusting.  Jim has every right to ask for hard numbers.  Since I have a 
chance to catch my breath before Jim's next salvo, let me tell you what I'm 
planning to do to correct that lack of data.  Be aware that I don't spend my 
days sitting at coffee, looking for cyberbattles.  I'm in the beeyard trying 
to make a living.  During the spring, there aren't enough hours in the day, 
and researching and writing my articles steals more than a week from every 
month.  Add to that the fact that every time I take a colony out of 
production for an experiment, or let mite buildup run wild in a control 
colony, that's a colony that I lose $150 minimum in almonds.  Even a simple 
experiment to collect good data can cost me thousands of dollars in lost 
revenue and labor.

Due to being overwhelmed by bee work this spring, I didn't get most of my 
drone trap frames in.  I wasn't really concerned, because I actually wanted 
to let mite levels rise enough to put dusting to the test later in the 
season.  We had a dry spring, and mite counts have been low for everyone in 
the county (we get huge year-to-year variation in mite buildup here).

I'm just finishing this week at getting screened bottoms under every colony 
in the operation.  We've got the dusting technique down--my two sons and I 
can blow through a yard of 36 in less than 15 minutes.  I just bought 500 
lbs of powdered sugar, and hired a technician.  Got 200 stickies washed 
yesterday.  Getting ready to roll!

Here are the experiments I hope to do:

1.  Plot the post-dusting mite drop curve for 24 hrs:  Take a dozen 
colonies, dust, and remove stickies at 5 min, 15, 30, and every hour 
thereafter for 24 hrs.  Plot mite drop.  Use this to determine optimal wait 
period to get indicative sample.

2.  Correlate the above sample to infestation level: open a number of 
colonies, take a 300-bee broodnest sample with minimal disturbance, then 
dust and take sticky count at time indicated from Exp. 1.  Compare 
alcohol-wash infestation level to sticky count and determine r squared 
correlation coefficient.  I want to see if a say, sticky count for 10 
minutes post dusting accurately indicates the actual infestation rate.

3.  I want ot compare the drop of menthol-infused p. sugar to plain sugar. 
But first need to run a test to see how it affects open brood.

4.  I've got a few yards of fairly uniform colonies.  I want to plot the 
effect of weekly dusting vs. undusted controls on either natural mite drop 
or alcohol wash.  I'm thinking of cracking every colony every week and 
vacuuming a 300-bee sample from between the brood boxes.  Then dust the test 
colonies.  Compare mite infestation levels between test and control.  I'm 
open to helpful suggestions!

Feedback from hobbyists employing the methods has been incredible, from all 
over the country!  Weekly dusting clearly decimates mites.  Those doing 
monthly dusting and drone removal are very happy with mite drops so far. 
But these reports are "anecdotal."  The hard thing is to get good data 
collection from hobbyists, and the fact that mite buildup is so variable 
seasonably.  Locally, this was a poor year for the test, since mite levels 
were naturally low (hard to believe that I actually had to encourage mite 
buildup in my own operation!).

Back to my operation.  In early August I'm going to do what every damn queen 
breeder should do--test every single colony for mite level.  We can now do 
quickly with screened bottoms and a dusting.  I want to do a triage.  High 
mite levels, mark and treat as needed.  Low mite levels, let ride. 
Extremely low mite levels, check to see if they are strong and productive, 
and mark them as potential breeders.

I also have some supplemental feeding experiments, and syrup preservation 
experiments running.

How's that for transparency?  I really feel that my time is better spent at 
collecting meaningful data than responding to posts of questionable motive. 
If anyone would like to join by running tests in your yards, I'll help by 
sharing a protocol, so we can compare data.  This isn't about egos, this is 
about trying to find sustainable methods for managing varroa, so that we can 
be productive beekeepers.

Randy Oliver

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