Bob Harrison wrote:
> When tracheal mites first marched through my yards when first arrived I sent
> samples off to get an idea of TM infestation. 9% was the level and the
> USDA-ARS considered over 5% back then needing treatment.
>
> 10-20% in summer bees would need a  late summer treatment before the brood
> for
> winter is raised to even survive in Missouri.
>
> High infestation of TM (in late stage) looks exactly like the CCD
> observation of a queen and a few bees.
>
>   
One other nasty fact about TM, which I did not know, is after colony 
collapse the remaining bees will test free of TM even if TM was what did 
them in. That is because all the infected bees died elsewhere or were 
disposed of by hive bees. Even my winter dead out will test free of TM 
even thought that is what did it in.

Something else I learned is the mite (either one) does not need to be 
the virus vector. Once the virus is in the colony, bees can pass it from 
one to another without any help from the mites.Capped brood have shown 
virus symptoms with no mites present in the cells.

The major problem with TM is it is totally invisible to the beekeeper 
and even more so with  the "fact" that all our bees are TM free since 
they only die from Varroa. Most beekeepers I know do not worry about TM 
at all.

In my informal survey at the Annual Meeting, those who used Formic Acid 
pads came through the winter just fine with minimal losses. The Thymol 
treatments were second best. The idiots like me, who has TM resistant 
bees and did not treat for TM, lost colonies even if they used oxalic 
acid drip. It would be interesting to see what happened to bees with the 
OA vaporizers, but my guess is they did fine since it is a vapor and TM 
were probably also killed or controlled.

I wonder how many CCD colonies there are in the US?

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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