To Randy and All,
Randy Oliver wrote:<But Bob, I haven't seen a 
case of what I'd call PMS in quite a few years.  Curlywing collapse, 
yes, but not full-blown PMS.  Are you others seeing it?>

It has been our experience the last three to five years that the severity of PMS has been in a gradual decrease in intensity but PMS, I feel,  still persists.  No specific numbers to go to press with, just my own opinion.  The last two years, I made the determination to treat only 30-40% of our colonies, immediately after honey pull in August when temps allow to treat with Apilife Var.   Did follow up with Formic around Thanksgiving.   I wish I had kept better records and could give exact numbers but it has been way under half of the colonies which would be experiencing mite drops of 15-40 per day.   You can tell very quickly which hives tend to be "dragging or lagging" and a simple sticky board test for a few days will either confirm the need for immediate treatment or tell you to look at other problems such as the queen, comb, disease, etc.  I have found it best if the D&L hives are isolated to our infirmary yard or Intensive Care Unit here at home base.  If they crash is !
 Sept. or Oct. and get robbed out, where do all the mites go.  Hey, you don't let sick calves continue to eat with healthy ones, do you?  If you wait till a broodless time to treat with Oxalic you can save your time as they won't be worth treating.  Having treated thousands of cattle with Ivomec guns I can tell you that dispensing 30 - 50 ML can be irratic and difficult to maintain much level of accuracy, let alone 5 ML.   Stick with a good sprayer (not a 19.00 Walmart Garden special) and monitor the time for dribble per simple calibrations as Randy mentioned.
 To quote your article Randy, which was excellent I might add, from page 1036, "Mind you, this is only a transitional approach as we, and the mite apply selective pressure upon the bees to do the job themselves."  I haven't seen alot of educated discussions on this very important issue of Selective Pressure and the role it plays in the general theory of the Survival of the Fittest in regard to Varroa.  
I had been asking myself several questions this year and will now ask all:
Do we have the same mites overall that completely decimated complete yards in '97 and '98 in my area?  Or have the mites that have survived been the less insidious ones that drain the hive of its energy to be a good honey producer or pollinator, but bees and mites still manage to survive?
Doesn't selective pressure apply to the predator species as well?
Do we have the same Viruses that wiped out complete yards in 2000   through '02?   Do we have the same genetic equivalent of bee stock that we had in previous years or are the survivors leaning to adapt due to selective pressure?
Have we actually been a deterrent in this selective process by our overuse of chemcials?

Been reading with much interest the very informative discussions recently on the use of Oxalic and having been in the exterminating business for 18 years simply cringe at the thought of thousands of beekeepers Vaporizing Oxalic using whatever methods they can dream up to do so.  Not good for beekeepers or the honey industry.

I have spent the last three years turning over all of our old comb.  It has all been worth it.   My only regret is that I have not used any alternative cell size foundation to do some experimentation as Bob is going to do.  Will be interested to see what he comes up with as we are both pretty close geographically.   I do intend to do some in the coming years.   I do feel every one should be on a comb rotation program of between three and five years,  especially if you have ever used Coumophos or even worse concoctions of personal design.   Only combined eight hives down to four this year.  Smallest number in years.  Yes, it could be better queen stock, better fall honey flow ( fed less than a barrel of Corn Syrup as opposed to 9 barrels last fall ) could be the weather, but I still feel the comb rotation is a large part.  We are now beginning to discover that the most contaminated invirons to live in today is our home, probably the same for the bees.   Just my personal opini!
 on.

Pray for our young people in perilous places,
Tim Tucker

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