> I wish we could get them to take this site more seriously.
> The bee industry is in need of innovations to dovetail with
> recent shortfalls of honeybees for pollination and strong
> world demand for pure honey. I challenge our group to
> seriously address the problem at hand.

Seriously, the accepted gold-standard test is the "24-hour
drop test" on an entire hive, traditionally performed using
a strip of some sort (Apistan or CheckMite in the USA).  Another
"gold standard" is the "natural fall" over some consistent period
of time (a day, 3 days, whatever).

The ether and sugar "rolls" are good "cheap and dirty" screening
tools, but cannot be expected to ever be as accurate as a test
of an entire hive.  False negatives can result from any test of
only a small faction of the hive population.  A sample collected
in a jar by a beekeeper is a non-random sample by definition,
given that the bees are collected in a non-random manner.

I can't imagine anyone betting the farm on a hit-and-miss
methodology like a "roll".

And, of course, one must test early and often to have a trendline
to be able to make a decision on treatment.  Prudent decisions
in regard to variable hive populations across large numbers of
hives are best made only in response to an upward trend on a graph
tracking each "sentinel" hive's varroa drop.

I'll say it again:

   The price of honey is eternal vigilance.

Seriously.


                jim

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