> I don't think you should be so hard on Dean (deknow). The community needs a few naysayers. While I don't agree with the "no treatment" approach as a subject to be taught, I tend that way.

So do I. In 2009 I did one "treatment" with thymol and in 2010, nothing at all. But I monitor the mite counts and inspect often for brood disease. I don't wrap the hives but they are in a very sheltered spot. 

You may recall, I wrote a series of articles on "keeping bees without chemicals" for the ABJ several years ago and gave talks on the subject. I don't lecture on that topic any more, because I was unable to make it work myself. Others may, I couldn't. 

By the way, I have been at the forefront of publicizing the bald fact that the majority of the hives tested are saturated with miticides. This alone could have negative effects on brood development and queen longevity. 

So far as being hard on anyone, I work in a research lab at a major university and if you can't defend your work, it's DOA. I do it every day. 

However, at issue is cause and effect. Some folks blithely point to high levels of miticides and say "there's your problem" --neglecting the fact that without controlling mites, the hives would probably have died. New work confirms this:

>  The ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor in concert with certain pathogenic bee viruses played a major role in the observed colony collapses. One of the viruses heavily implicated in colony losses is Deformed wing virus (DWV). The clinical importance of DWV infection in bees’ heads was also substantiated by a study that demonstrated that injecting DWV into forager bees resulted in learning deficits. Such learning deficits can affect the performance of individual bees and can add to the damage inflicted upon honeybee colonies by mites.

> In this context it is noteworthy that colonies that harboured detectable numbers of healthy looking bees that tested positive for DWV in total RNA extracted from head had a significantly lower chance of surviving the winter season than colonies without such overtly infected adult bees (Genersch et al., 2010).

-- Horizontal transmission of deformed wing virus: pathological consequences in adult bees (Apis mellifera) depend on the transmission route.  Journal of General Virology (2011), 92, 370–377 DOI 10.1099/vir.0.025940-0

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