>
> >Anyone else had similar experiences?
>

Obviously, either the mites in Canada grip tighter, or Allen just doesn't
shake it like he used to.

I tried a number of times when the sugar shake first came out.  I recovered
about 70% of the mites by sugar, and the rest by alcohol.

When I recently watched Katie Lee demo the sugar shake, she shook the jar
so hard that I was surprised that any bees survived!

It is critical with sugar shake to agitate the bees so that they raise
their body temperature enough to force the mites to dislodge themselves.

With alcohol wash, if you do it firmly enough, you will always see
dislodged stingers.  You can easily check your efficacy by retaining the
washed bees, adding fresh alcohol, and shaking again.

I also found that you must shake the alcohol upward on the last shake, and
then jiggle the shaker jar from side to side while the alcohol and mites
filter down through the bees, or some get stuck in the bees.  Details at my
website.

I'm currently building a shaker table to standardize the sampling.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm