>
> >I thought I made my understanding of crystals forming on the surfaces of
> the hive clear with my next question about putting bees into an already
> treated nuc box.


I didn't address your question about that since I have no specific data
from which to derive an answer.  However, I can share some data from a
recent experiment in which I tracked mite drop and alcohol wash counts in
four test hives, full of brood, in late spring.  Two hives were vaporized
(one with a Varrox, one with Provape 110), and two dribbled with OA in
solution (one with 1:1 water:sugar, the other with 1:1 water: glycerin).  I
then reapplied the vaporizations (but not the dribbles) at days 10 and 19.

The glycerin dribble caused by far the greatest initial increase in mite
drop--the other three were about the same.  The two dribbles resulted in
the best mite reduction initially, but by Day 26, all four colonies
exhibited roughly 50% reductions in their alcohol wash counts from
baseline--after a single dribble, compared to three vaporizations at
roughly 10-day intervals.  Keep in mind, that there was an n of only one
for each treatment, so don't run too far with this data.

The above results suggest that the added humectants increased the efficacy
of the OA greatly--initially as well as over time, and indicate that the
effect of the crystals from vaporization is very short term (this is
supported by Saskia Schneider's findings).  Also keep in mind that mites do
very little walking over comb surfaces.  You can draw your own tentative
speculations as to whether fogging a super prior to installing bees would
have much effect on mites.

These sorts of experiments are not difficult to run--why don't you set one
up with a few nucs (comb-treated and untreated controls) and test your
hypothesis?  Then let us know the results.


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

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