I was talking with Donald Aiken about the mite counts in a hive which he
had been monitoring--I asked if I could share one of his observations:

>The hive I treated and recorded the resulting mite drops was very strong
and produced over 200 lbs of honey. It actually continued to bring in honey
after all the flowers were gone from my immediate neighbourhood. I
conjectured at the time that they were sucking it out of the fence posts,
but in retrospect they must have been robbing out weak hives that were
infested with varroa.

That gave me an idea for quantifying the correlation between robbing and
immigration of mites into the robbing hives.  In an area such as mine,
where there is no natural colony weight gain late in the season, set up a
bunch of hives on scales, and take weekly alcohol wash counts from the
hives.  Then look for a correlation between late-season weight gain and the
increase in varroa counts.  This could explain why only some colonies
exhibit late-season spikes in mites.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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