Adony
>No but seriously, I just finished the Canadian Beekeeper Pest Management survey and less than 8% of respondents answered they 'monitor for varroa and treat when necessary'. Everyone else is treating on a calender. Monitoring has clearly been slow in being adopted as a management tool by beekeepers and it is good to be asking, 'why is this so'?


Like I said, you cannot have an IPM approach if you don't have a handle on what levels are acceptable, and to my knowledge, no one has given figures for these levels that can be universally applied and for good reason. It is not clearly understood what causes rapid buildup of mites in some areas and not others.

In order to establish harmful levels, one would have to sample the bees on a *regular* basis (using 250 bees per sample) and forego treatment on a certain number of colonies to see what mite counts translate into fatality. If 5 (2%) in the spring permits a hive to go all summer, make a crop, and not die in September before one can treat, then 2%  is an acceptable number. If 50 (20%) turns into full blown varroa infestation by August, one cannot skip treatment of some type on this hive. This is not a job for statisticians, its a trial and error process.

If less than 8% are doing samples of their own hives it could indicate they are hoping someone else will do this work for them, and I submit that each beekeeper should determine levels and build up rates for their own area. Skipping treatment will give you a sense of when and if you need to treat. This is IPM.