Wow! What a revealing discussion and thanks to all. I also have only gained access to the abstract but from Randy's and other's report I don't think I would learn anything that would be useful to me in my management practices. 

They began with colonies in dire straits. They demonstrated a lack of understanding of brood break timing and of OAV efficacy both in timing and dosing. They also don't demonstrate a knowledge of varroa growth or virus dynamics. We on this list have had multi-year discussion of a wide variety of OAV methods and have posted a tremendous amount of empirical evidence (please check the archives) that is of great value to a beekeeper wishing to be successful with OAV.  Several on the list have intentionally greatly overdosed and observed no ill effect. We have pretty well agreed that 3X is not effective for a fall clean-up due to the fact that the effective duration of the crystals seems to be 2-3 days and in order to cover a complete brood cycle of 24 days (drone) one needs several more. I have arrived at 6 at 4 days for a high degree of bringing counts below 1% with no observed ill effect on colony health. The dispersal of the vapor seems to vary and we need further study of this. Other climatic conditions may play a roll. We may not even have a good understanding of the chemistry. 

From the abstract and this discussion I would classify the study as elementary. In a ten minute conversation, I (an admitted dummy) could have pointed out the obvious flaws. So what was the intent? To drink from the fountain of funding? Or to increase our collective knowledge of varroa control? If it was to point out the defisits in label laws they succeeded. The sad truth is that some will read the report and think that they have learned something. I for one think we could spend our money more wisely.

Paul Hosticka
Dayton WA

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