In article <[log in to unmask]>, Peter Amschel
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>The bees can't get rid of the mites because the bees are all
>artificially separated off from one another in millions of Langstroth
>frames. The space between the frames does not allow enough room for
>the bees to work together and interact shoulder to shoulder en masse
>throughout the hive. The bees can't even properly ball up for winter
>because they are prevented from doing so by the faux spaces in
>these nazi Langstroth frames. If the bees are in non-Langstroth
>hives, they can begin to dominate the mites as they can  easily pick
>these mites off one another. Bees are one organism, world wide, like
>a gigantic aspen grove and we have to liberate them from these
>Langstroth prisons. Just as fleas would proliferate on monkeys if the
>monkeys were artificially separated from one another so that when
>they want to visit and interact with one another they  have to burrow
>through an artificial wall or go all the way down and around one or
>more maze-like artificial walls the mites are getting the upper hand
>(prendre le dessus).
Dear Peter,
 
I cannot quite understand what you are getting at here.
 
These mites occur in all of our colonies, whether Langstroth or not. The
bee space provided in these hive types varies a little, but there is no
difference in their being affected by mites.
 
I can only think of solid plastic combs that might give you any kind of
isolation difficulty, because, in our experience they chew communication
holes through the combs (normally at bottom corners but also often in
other parts of the comb).
 
In feral colonies the bee space between the faces of the combs is no
larger than in a standard Langstroth. That is the way the bees build it,
so it must be the way they want it. Remember, these hives were designed
based on natures model, not imposing a new completely alien regime on
the bees. Feral colonies are just as likely to be infested with tracheal
mites as managed colonies.
 
We sometimes have to remove feral colonies for various reasons, usually
from roof spaces when building work needs to be done, and in certain
circumstances the combs they draw make langstroth frames look tiny. We
took a colony out of a sloping roof one time which had a series of
continuous combs occupying one rafter space. This space was about 20
feet long by 20 inches wide by about 8 inches deep, lying at an angle
about 40 degrees to the horizontal. The longest combs were the middle
ones, all were worker except one which was all drone, and they ran the
full 20 feet of the space with nice regular spacing. The outer combs
were a more disjointed bunch. Even this spring past we undertook the
disposal of the equipment of a beekeeping friend of ours who had died,
and came across a colony which had been a swarm and had occupied a stack
of his empty boxes piled up outside (no frames, just empty supers). We
had to cut this colony out just to be able to remove it from where it
was sitting, and removed several huge combs of over 5 feet (1.5 metres
in length, occupying the full width of the empty hives. Again the comb
spacing was very similar to what we normally use, and they had very few
communication holes.
 
Therefore just from our own observation we cannot see that your
assertion is valid, as the environment we provide for the bees is not
all that different from what they themselves will construct in nature.
 
Murray
--
Murray McGregor