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From:
Peter L Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 6 Dec 2011 10:39:06 -0500
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Find the flaw in this one

In April 2007, we established 15 full-size, Langstroth colonies (one deep brood box and one medium food super) for both treatments (30 total colonies). All colonies started with a sister queen and a 1 kg package of bees on new foundation. We grafted sister queens from a single queen residing in a standard colony with varroa present. We used new foundation in order to eliminate the need to standardize varroa levels that may have been present in existing brood. 

Small cell colonies received packaged bees prepared from existing small cell colonies, while standard colonies received packaged bees prepared from existing standard colonies. All bees were mixed race European. We dusted all packages with powdered sugar in order to produce lower, more uniform varroa numbers. Dusting pack- aged bees with powdered sugar has been shown to dislodge a large percentage of the mite population from the adult bees.

To summarize our results, we found that small cell foundation did not affect cm2 total brood, total mites per colony, mites per brood cell, or mites per adult bee significantly. For every sampling month, we found statistically similar average values for each of these variables across both foundation types, in many cases the average values being nearly identical.

We started our colonies with as few mites as possible so that we could monitor mite population growth over time. We found that population growth rates were similar for both small cell and standard foundations. Both groups exceeded published economic thresholds (*3,000 mites per colony (Delaplane and Hood 1999) by the end of the yearlong study. In an IPM scheme, one function of a non-chemical control is to slow the pest’s reproduction rate to delay reaching the economic threshold. Not only did small cell foundation not slow the growth of varroa populations, but small cell colonies reached the threshold at the same time as standard colonies.

A. M. Ellis - G. W. Hayes - J. D. Ellis

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