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Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:24:05 -0600 |
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In experiments measuring the growth of mite populations in colonies
started with equal number of mites, it is not uncommon to find many-
fold differences between colonies tested at the end of two to three
months of good conditions (with no robbing and little drift?). The
assumption is that these differences are primarily from ways in which
the bees or brood allow mites to survive or reproduce. I remember an
experiment in which we were looking at colonies derived from survivor
queens. During a period of about two months, colonies started from
packages made out of the same large mix of bees, receiving the various
queens, differed in as much as ten times in the number of final mites.
Anecdotal experience with random untreated splits given highly
selected resistant bees vs. splits given unselected commercial queens
shows that the first can end up with hardly any mites detectable,
while the latter get to destructive mite levels by the end of the
summer. As some have pointed out, this is not a realistic situation
in that not everybody has access to pure highly resistant bees and
cannot afford to reconstitute them if queens are superseded, but the
observation is still real.
So regardless of how mites are distributed and influxes that do not
represent what a colony developed or did not develop, the factories
that produce these mites are the primary source of the problem.
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