Randy writes:  “Although I admire the goals of the organic beekeepers, I 
doubt that
many commercial beekeepers would be eager to sustain heavy losses in
order to further "the cause."

     I’m not a small cell beekeeper yet, but I really have to stop and 
think about the above statement.  Isn’t it really like saying no one would 
want to sustain heavy losses in order to prevent heavy losses?  I mean here 
we are; large scale commercial beekeepers are suffering terrible losses 
right and left, many on the verge of going out of business and there’s this 
whole group of beekeepers saying we have the answer, we’ve been doing this 
for 25 years.  The Lusbys, by the way, think they are commercial 
beekeepers.  
     An outfit would not have to convert their whole operation all at 
once.  One could convert a percentage at a time.  If you didn’t do it 
exactly as prescribed, though, and it didn’t work you would not be able to 
say small cell doesn’t work.  
     Also Randy, while I’m on your case, if you do an experiment and you 
don’t measure certain parameters such as mite load and then both the 
experiment and the control crash what have you learned?  You would have to 
be looking very carefully to know if there were any colonies that had 
absolutely no mites and did not crash, but that would tend to support your 
hypotheses that the crashing was due to virus at low mite level.  Otherwise 
it is possible those viruses could be completely independent of Varroa 
mites, or that the crashes were due to some other cause.  Did you test for 
Tracheal mites?  Could the same be said about them, that they might carry 
lethal viruses even at low levels of infestation?  What other possible 
vectors for viruses might there be?
    Also, Randy, while I’m on your case, I understand the financial 
sacrifices you make for the love of beekeeping, but it can’t be all that 
bad.  At least you can afford a brand new microscope ;>)

Steve Noble   

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