I have been told this several times,  but it still makes no sense.  Repeating it does not explain it to my mind.   If you have a hive with say a 2% mite load and now suddenly its robbing a hive that had a 25% load....  well  Lets assume that only 25% of the hives out there are "mite bombs"  now you have 25% load devided by 3.  that still does not come up with the numbers reported.  and thats assuming that you took every mite from that collapsing hive.

In my yards and are very few hives "collapse" in the fall.  most are winter losses.  Not sure if that data is a regional issue,  or something else is in play.   
Assuming simple "drift"  most hives would actually just equalize.  some would  gain, others loose.... Now if your hives are mite free  then obviously a large population of neighbor hives that were loaded would be bad.  But lets take an area like mine,  where 95% of the hives in a given area are in fact mine... ..  if every wild hive in range collapsed and sent every mite out,  I would only see a small increase in mites. (5% spread over my 95%)  but thats not the claim. The numbers I see show double or more the number of mites




I apologize if I seen dense on this one,  I have been struggling with it for a while.  

Charles

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