>In South Africa ..... extent that many commercial beekeepers quickly turned 
>to varroacide treatments to protect their colonies.


I talked with Mike Allsopp in Apimondia at Melbourne. He said that he 
recommends not to treat for varroa in Africa. When varroa comes there will 
be (and has been) losses, but the bees will recover. He did not state any 
numbers, but I understood that also commercial beekeepers are using now less 
chemical treatments.

We have to remember that beekeeping in Africa is different. Replacements are 
more often done by caching wild swarms than making splits from existing 
colonies. And they know how to catch the swarms. One beekeeper told me that 
he had cought more than 100 wild swarms in season from one single location 
with bait hives. We were told that big part of these would be swarms that 
are moving from one area to another because there is not enough food where 
they used to live.

Ari Seppälä
Finland

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