Peter, Dennis, Bob and others here:
When varroa first arrived, they thrived in the colonies
with small cells, reaching levels of 50% or 30,000 mites in
a large colony.Hundreds of thousands of colonies died.

Reply:
I want to clarify here so when you read posts I have done
or am doing you will understand where I am going! Think
back to when Small Cell was first on the market and then I
blew my top! also I think if one goes back to archives on
list here and also BioBee and Beesource.com,you will find
same top blowing! Here in USA and with USDA I was
handmaking the foundation by hand for first years until it
came on market and our bees were living with varroa but
secondaries were eating our bees alive. Small cell
foundation was new on the market, but I and Ed (husband now
deceased) were picky and looked at things close. One of the
things was the fudging with the stretching of the
foundations and the fact that the small cell being sold did
not match what I was personally making by hand for use in
the field, and so I/we got into a measurement thingie as to
how things were done. I/we ended up going smaller to 4.9mm
and out front we stated and wrote about which was printed
how what we were looking for and doing wasn't being made at
all, to rhomboid old style measurements but to a more
modern measurement that was actually larger then that
quoted by square decimeter. So small cell was actually
bigger then the feral in usage and what we wanted to do in
usage and we/I split the sheet and went smaller......

This would have bearing on the results quoted here for the
S. African experiments done with Small Cell bought
originally made and IMPOV would account for the bigger mite
load seen, that nowadays most tend to forget and/or put
aside as water under the bridge.......I think Dennis will
remember here, and Bob having been in tete with me, and a
few others early on. Articles can still be pulled up in ABJ
and perhaps Bee Culture also on the sizing disparity. So I
can see the above paragraph I replying to being accurate,
but not for SC as seen and bought today which is now 4.9mm
sizing and not the original small cell first put on the
market.

That said, with recent posts I stand..now having clarified
perhaps something many have forgotten but still in
archives.

will now stop rambling,,


Dee A. Lusby


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