>
> >That math works.....  It’s the guys who claim that suddenly the mites
> doubled or tripled because of the neighbors hives that’s not working.......
>

It is human nature to blame others for one's shortcomings, and (purportedly
human) beekeepers are no exception.  We've been through the unsubstantiated
blaming of bee problems on neonics, GMOs, cell phones, wind towers, and
alien abduction.  But there is good supportive evidence for assigning some
of the blame for mite or AFB problems to your neighbors if they do not
control those parasitoids (both AFB and varroa act as parasitoids, since
they eventually kill their hosts).

Charlie, I've actually spend MANY hours going over the math since you and I
discussed this some time ago face to face, and have incorporated it into my
mite model.  So I just ran some simulations in order to test your claim,
using MEASURED rates of mite immigration into colonies from collapsing
hives in the area.

Results: The simulations indicate that immigration from other collapsing
hives can easily triple one's mite counts after a successful late-summer
treatment.

However, as you've pointed out, it depends upon the ratio of low-mite hives
to high-mite hives within flight range.  I strongly suggest that you
carefully read the discussion in the freely-downloadable paper by Frey and
Rosenkranz, "Autumn Invasion Rates of Varroa destructor (Mesostigmata:
Varroidae) Into Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies and the Resulting
Increase in Mite Populations."

In their study, there was little reason to suspect the presence of
collapsing colonies in the vicinity, yet mite pops skyrocketed in colonies
in the high-density area after effective treatment completed on July 26th.

As the authors out, it is not only the *number* of mites that immigrate,
but one must also factor in the fact that after immigration, they start to
reproduce.  And this reproduction is what my model accounts for, thus
giving results very close to Frey's field measurements.

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

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html