?> ...the sugar shake works fine, but only gets about 70% of the mites to 
drop, so in order to compare to alcohol wash, multiply the mite count by 1.4 
to 1.5.  ...My problem with the sugar shake is that it takes much longer 
than an alcohol wash, is messier, and harder to count the mites

I haven't tried it myself, but have to wonder why it works for some and not 
others.  Must be temperature, material, or technique.  We shake bees in 
alcohol for one minute and often re-shake, so I can't see much difference. 
Again that is without having tried it myself.

For the programme I work in, samples need to be kept for the lab, so alcohol 
makes sense.  I'd like to try the sugar for my own purposes.  I can imagine 
the jar will quickly get ugly, though, and getting the bees to stay in the 
measuring cup and then the jar until the top is on may be a bit tricky. 
We'll see.

> I'm sure that Bob and Allen would agree that in any kind of monitoring, 
> the more samples, and the more often taken the better.  So to me, if the 
> sampling method is in any way difficult or time consuming, it simply 
> doesn't get done.

True, but killing 300 bees stops many people from testing, especially in 
nucs.

> Medhat's double bottle is the best thing that I've found (note its 
> similarity to the photo of the bottle that I developed a few years ago--
http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58 
 ).

I notice you detail the sugar method there.  For some reason, though, many 
of the pictures do not appear for me.

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