> What I'm curious about is whether beekeepers noticed whether it was
> common for the best honey producers to dwindle more in late summer
> than the moderate honey producers... I'm curious as to how much it
> has to do with varroa.
I assume that you are checking for brood? The heaviest hives in a yard
are sometimes those which went queenless for a while just before or
during the flow. Assuming you did and and to answer your question
directly, though, I don't recall that effect at all, before varroa.
For that matter, though, _I don't see that now_, except in the year that
I lost all my hives to something that I assume was spread with the help
of varroa. Varroa I checked in that yard that fall was at levels that
should not have been lethal to more than a percentage of hives according
to what we are told by the "experts", and well below levels seen before
in my outfit [2004] and which did not kill hives.
http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/2004/diary110104.htm
The year I lost them all, the best hives rolled over first and and
dwindled to nothing my first indication something was wrong was what
looked like EFB and a sudden crossness in the first big hive to go. Two
weeks or so later (maybe a month) all there was left was a handful of
young bees, a queen and some sealed brood. If we had CCD here in
Canada, I would have called it CCD, but we don't and there is no
compensation, so I don't, even if it was.
Otherwise, I am not seeing what you describe, and when I was doing fall
inspection of beekeepers throughout Alberta in two different years, I
did not see that either. All the beekeepers were using Apivar with good
success and maybe a little formic for tracheal (most not), plus
fumagillin. The worst yard I saw had about 20 mites in a wash (with a
few individual washes around 30).
I wonder if treatments you are and others around you are using might be
a factor. Right now, up here, with Apivar working presently, beekeeping
is much like before varroa IMO, at least.
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