> But putting the bees back down to sizings used prior to upsizing, now that
is the big holdup from a failed experiment. 

The whole notion that the size of bees was changed at some point by human
tinkering is YOUR pet theory. You should treat it as such until there is
some credible verification. I have pet theories, too, but I don't truck them
out and proclaim them as final solutions to everybody's problems everywhere. 

Dave de Jong described the essential difference between northern and
southern beekeeping: the much longer days we experience in the spring and
summer. This causes a much more rapid expansion of bee population in the
spring followed by a severe cutback in late summer. 

This steep rise and fall in bee population produces an echo in the varroa
population such that they peak as the bees are starting to cut back, causing
the colony to "crash". 

This simply doesn't happen in southern states because the population has a
much more gradual rise and fall and the varroa don't overwhelm them. So what
you experience in the south may simply not translate to northern beekeeping.
I had to forget most of what I learned in California and replace that with
the real experience of trying keep bees alive in the north.

pb

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