It's been a few days now and things have had a little time to settle.

I'm still at a loss to conclude what I learned at Apimondia.  The field trip was
worth the buss ride just to see Babe's pallet arrangement for beehives outside
the Plant health facility on Vancouver Island.  I had read of it before, but
never seen it.  I consider the common supers to be an ingenious idea.  Basically
they run 8? hives on a pallet in a horizontal four queen hive arrangement.

My first reaction about Apimondia itself is that I learn more at an Alberta
Beekeepers Convention or ABF meeeting, but I know that isn't fair.  I guess I
expected to get more hard info like we do when practical beekeepers get
together.  At such times we get the scientists to show up and give us the latest
magic bullet without expressing their deepest thoughts and misgivings.

With the sort of mix we had at Apimondia, I think I came home with more
questions than answers.  Here is a random sampling to get things rolling...

* Varroa and the problems it poses was definitely the flavour of the year.

* I have in my possession some of the www.varroa.com mite strips given me by
Wang.  They don't even look like Apistan (R).  The literature says they contain
fluvalinate, but I didn't see 'fluvalinate-tau'.  Hmmm.

* I visited the Apistan booth and Max gave me a sample of the latest Vita
treatment.  It is 25% Thymol and works by the bees tracking through it.

* Marva Spivak gave a really top notch talk and ended by suggesting bee breeders
leave at least one yard untreated for any disease.  When queried about what to
do if the hives stated to 'go south', she seemed at a bit of a loss and we never
did get an answer that I could understand...

* There was a lot of talk about the mechanisms of resistance, but each speaker
seemed to have a slightly different idea of how it works.

* The consensus seemed to be that killing all the varroa -- or nearly all the
varroa -- in a hive is a bad idea.  Most solutions seemed to be aimed at
controlling the levels of mites, but I had a bit of trouble understanding how to
be sure that the levels are what they seem when one has hives scattered around
the country.

* The mite we think of as varroa jacobwhatever is not the one that gives us
grief over here in America.  There are 5 distinct species of mites that are
visably different and have different ranges.  If I got that right.

* Sherriff style veils have taken over the bee fashion scene, with a little
competition from a style that has a cloth coolie hat and tubular section that is
attached by a zipper.

* Pierco frames have a credible looking competitor from Nepal.

* My mead is better than any I tasted all week.  Aaron likes Guiness.

* The new Swinger looks great.

* The Billet hive loader is the answer for small to medium beekeepers who hate
hiring help.

* The Israeli hive platform thingy I dissed a year or so ago has some
interesting possibilities, but probably not quite as many as the originators
imagine.  I'd dearly love to have one to play with.  The cost is over $300
Canadian and it holds four hives.

* Larry sold a lot of books.

That's it for now.  I know it's not much, but maybe this will trigger some ideas
from others.

allen

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