?> These were either 48 or mostly 72 hour drops.  I checked the fishiness vs 
a powdered sugar "accelerated" drop immediately after taking the stickyboard 
counts.  There was a robust correlation with alcohol wash, so I dropped my 
incredulity.  And since that point  have put little faith in one-shot 
natural mite drops.

You are in good company in that regard, however let me turn this on its 
head.

We assume that what we learn from alcohol washes is meaningful in terms of 
providing us with information that can be predictive or assist us in 
management.  What they give is the number of adult varroa mites on bees in 
the hive.  We need more info to interpret that: time of year, amount of 
brood, etc. etc..  One could ask, what do they not tell us?  For one thing, 
they do not tell us the age of the varroa and whether they are young or old.

Natural drops on the other hand tell us whether mites are falling down 
through the hive, and how many. We can also see immatures and chewed mites 
and other interesting things.  Perhaps what we see on the board is more 
predictive of important future events than washes?

When two measurement methods do not agree, rather than an inconvenience, we 
have one of the great opportunities in science: an opportunity to reconcile 
two observations which disagree, but -- according to our understanding --  
should not.

From worrying about just such discrepancies, where others have simply 
ignored inconvenient data, come some of the greatest scientific discoveries.

             ***********************************************
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