> Your brother has given you good advise regarding the use of oils for the
> treatment of mites.  I have been performing research with mineral oil
> with excellent results for the last 17 months.  I have posted several
> files to this list about my work with Food Grade Mineral Oil...
 
Hello Dr. Pedro and everyone...
 
Two items: Your recent post to BEE-L, and questions on the currrent
progress of your mite studies...
 
I had a look at the attached files and see you've got some new
simpler methods of using the oil.  The 3 files attached to your
recent post appeared to be PDF files for Acrobat, so I imagine some
readers of this list are unable to read them.  Although the Acrobat reader
is available as a free download from the Adobe site, it is about 4 megs in
size and may not be able to be installed on all systems.  It appeared that
two of the files were the same, so I ended up with two unique files from
the 3 posted.
 
Seems to me that maybe BB has some of your info on his web site -- but
again maybe everyone can't reach that, so I'm going to offer the two files
I got here by email in *GIF*  format which is more universally readable
than PDF and almost equally compact: 58 and 12 kb.  The quality is not
quite as good as PDF though I think the GIFs should be readable on any
decent monitor.
 
Anyone who wants these two files by email should send a message to
[log in to unmask] saying 'SEND MO' in the SUBJECT line.  My robot is not
too discerning, so if you write back to comment or thank me with Re: SEND
MO as a subject you will get another copy :)-  ... And of course if you
decide to post to BEE-L with the trigger words in the subject line, my
robot will try to send one to BEE-L too, and the whole idea here is not to
load the BEE-L logs with binaries.  Therefore I'll try hard to screen the
outgoing messages since it seems that someone just has to do something like
that every time and we've had a couple of loops :(  For that reason, this
offer is also limited to a week or so at which time I will remove the
robot.
 
Anyhow back to the research:  I notice that the methods of application have
changed fairly drastically and realize that we on BEE-L are getting out of
touch with your current work.
 
I imagine we'd all appreciate an update on how your l procedures have
evolved, your current thinking and whether any large scale field trials
outside your own apiary are currently underway or planned.  I'd also like
to know if you are working with any other controls or strictly with MO.
 
I am also curious how tests for both tracheal and varroa mites currently
turn out in your apiaries and also in your locality  -- in your neighbours'
non-treated hives.  I recall that in the early stages there were control
hives and that they perished.  I am wondering if controls have been
re-instututed to compare treated with untreated hives?
 
I' m hoping you can find time to bring us all up to date, and perhaps give
us an idea on where you expect to go from here.  Perhaps you need some
volunteers to try your methods on a larger scale and in different
localities.  In that case there are many different participants here and
perhaps some may volunteer to do some tets in their own locality under your
advisement.
 
Best Regards
Allen