Hello All,


> To help bees, we too should do absolutely nothing.

Hard to believe we still have got a few beekeepers of the above mindset. A
few existed when the mites first arrived but after total outfits were wiped
out Yoon is the first I have seen present the above viewpoint in many years.

I guess we will have to
"agree to disagree"


>  Left alone, the ferals may have now learned to coexist with mites,

There is no proof of this. Only hypothesis. No way to document ferals so
statements like the above are put forward. I have taken many ferals from
buildings trying to find a survivor and in the end they all succumbed to
mites
when left alone over a time span. Many of these experiments are in the BEE-L
archives. In a couple of the cases the home owners said the bees had been in
the building for around five years continually. Once home I found one of my
marked queens in each.

Swarming away from mites/problems is also a bee survival mode.
When the hive swarms at height of brood production only a small percentage
of mites go with the swarm as most mites are in the cells or on nurse bees
or in the area of brood production trying to enter cells.

bob





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