> I am going to trap mites this year too but not every hive since I will not be able to keep up with pulling the frames in a timely manner.

I worked on several experimental trials of freezing drone combs to reduce mites. I thought at the time that it was too much work for commercial beekeepers but not all that much of a bother for sideliners. I never did it with my own bees because I was focused on getting resistant bees. I figured that the ideal bee would just hold mites down, and wouldn't require special frames, bottom boards, etc. 

However, mite resistant bees seem to succumb to mites pretty regularly when moved into my township. I assume this is due the high density of hives here. There are hundreds of hives within a couple of mile radius of me. So, I am going to focus on drone trapping this season. One thing that should be emphasized is that initially you do not have to remove the frames. If sampling indicates low mite levels, you can just leave the drone combs in place for the first month or two. 

I know what you are thinking, too many drones. But following the work on the effect of unlimited drone production on the reduction of swarming, having all those drones may provide a benefit. There may be some reduction in honey production but if you end up with a low mite count, you will have healthier bees. A ten percent reduction in honey per colony, say, would not be a very high price to pay for a healthy colony. 

Around here July would be the time to really start getting those drone combs out and killing the mites. We found that the bees stopped raising  drones in early August if the honey flow slacked off. At this point it would probably really help to feed a slow dribble of sirup to keep the colony at work raising drones. With no drone brood present, the mites pretty much have to move into the worker brood, and the real damage begins

PLB

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm