Last season I had 50 hives and 6 of them had two drone trap frames in the 
top box. I made sure the brood frames did not have a lot of drone cells 
before putting in the traps. I had planned to cut out the comb to get rid of 
it but when our season was so poor I did not want the bees drawing more wax 
so I froze them instead. In September my mite treatment was either ApiGuard 
or Mite Away II and all my hives got Fumagilin B. I lost 75% of my hives 
through the winter. The 6 hives that had drone traps are all alive. Fluke 
may be or having that slight degree of mite control throughout the season 
helped. Two hives that I have checked this spring for natural mite drop that 
had drone comb last season and have screen bottom boards have not dropped a 
mite this spring, they are probably lurking in there some where but none had 
dropped last time I looked at the sticky board. I do not have screen bottom 
boards on all my hives but do have some in each bee yard to check natural 
mite drop. It was a very small trial on drone trapping but last year it may 
have helped by keeping the mites in check on a monthly basis. I had screen 
bottom boards on a mix of hives and when I did mite treatments less mites 
did drop from the drone frame hives, may be 25% less.

I would put drone frames a labor under saving devices since I had to keep a 
good schedule on getting the frames out and move supers to do it but it may 
have saved those hives.

I found I lost equally the ApiGuard treated hives to the Mite Away II hives. 
I did loose two hives with in three days of applying the Mite Away, one hive 
all the bees left and the other they all died. I went in to the winter with 
42 hives after combing weak hives. I knew it was going to be a tough winter 
because the season was so bad. Whether the amount of propolis my bees where 
making was because of trying to fight viruses or because they where sealing 
all cracks because the coming winter was going to be cold, which it was, 
propolis was every where in every hive.

I am going to trap mites this year too but not every hive since I will not 
be able to keep up with pulling the frames in a timely manner. Interestingly 
when cleaning the dead outs one hive had a brood frame that was solid drone 
cells on one side and worker cells on the other, I never have had a frame 
like that. That frame is three years old and not going back in a hive.

Karen T-K
Maine 

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