>
> Sorry Pete!  Re your comment: Several investigators have suggested that
> keeping bees in apiaries encourages mite invasion, but this work seems to
> invalidate that suggestion. On the other hand, isolated colonies may be
> less prone to being robbed than colonies in apiaries, or marauding bees may
> preferentially seek larger groups of hives]


This last fall, as I was monitoring colony mite levels every month, I found
what appeared to be huge mite immigration into *some* colonies (in
different apiaries), despite the fact that all of the hives in those
apiaries had their mite levels well under control, and zero colonies in
those yards had collapsed or been robbed.  Since there are not a large
number of other beekeepers of whom I'm aware near by those apiaries,
suspect that that mite immigration came from collapsing escaped swarms or
ferals.

Thus, although I don't doubt for a second that having colonies collapse
within an apiary will spread a lot of mites, mites can apparently be spread
from outside the apiary.


-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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