On 12 Oct 99, at 16:59, Hugo Thone wrote:

> These figures for natural fall seem extremely high to me.
> I have been monitoring natural mite fall this summer during
> approx. 2 months : I counted max. 5 mites/hive/week
> (I was not using sticky boards)                ^^^^
>
> When I treated my colonies at the end of August with Apistan,
> the mite drop increased to a few hundered mites the first two
> days and then decreased very fast.
> This corresponds with what I found on a danish website :
> natural mite drop x 100 = real varroa population in the colony.

I also question the numbers, but might I suggest that the lack of
sticky boards would skew the numbers. I've also found the bees will
carry mites out of the hive and drop them on the alighting board,
without sticky boards to catch and hold the mites numbers could be
all over the place.  It's quite remarkable how far these mites can
travel. I watched one in a tray we use for drop tests move (walk?) a
considerable distance, how far it could go I'm not sure as I gave up
at  2.75 inches.
        Incidently that same tray had live mites 4 days after the test,
without any food of any sort. Tough little devils to say the least.




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