> i am willing to provide access to my bees or any information that would
be useful, and i am sure that my supplier would be willing to as well.

Thanks Kevin!  I'm not sure that any researcher will follow up, but you and
your supplier can certainly collect meaningful data, which I can later
publish.  What we could use would be monthly mite wash counts (from 300
bees from the broodnest) for a few colonies.  From that data we could graph
the mite population dynamics in your colonies, to compare to those of
colonies that die without treatment.  I would also like a sample of frozen
bees at two time points, around Sept 1 (when mite levels are typically
highest) and from February (when acute virus levels are typically highest).

The taking of such samples takes about 5 minutes per month per hive, but if
done rigorously, would give us some useful information as to how your bees
are able to survive despite the mites and viruses.

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

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