Part 2.  The St. Petersburg varroa mite symposium.

    Prof. Ingemar Fries of the University of Uppsala in Sweden, chaired
the varroa mite symposium and wrote that I, as lead speaker, could have
extra time during the varroa symposium.  It was quite a lively
symposium, with Dr. Fries serving as "devil's advocate" about presumed
"solutions" to the varroa mite problem.

    Last week I gave much the same varroa talk ("Feral Bee Colonies and
Varroa Resistance")  at the California Beekeepers Convention in South
Lake Tahoe.  You can find an abstract of that talk at:

http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/varroaabstract.htm

    Scandinavian beekeepers are not allowed to use any chemicals in
their colonies .  Recent articles in the American Bee Journal provide
some information about the "Elgon" bees that some of them use.  Prior
to the Congress, Marianne and Sven Ohlsson of Finland sent me the
following:

http://home.agrolink.net/so.ohlsson/

    After opening that URL, you can click on the video link and see a
mite grasped with a forceps and placed on the entrance board.  Elgon
bees then make short work of the mite.  Some strains of Elgon bees also
have a pronounced bad odor that may repel mites — also covered in an
American Bee Journal article.

                                                                                        Adrian

Adrian M. Wenner                (805) 963-8508 (home office phone)
967 Garcia Road                 [log in to unmask]
Santa Barbara, CA  93103        www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm

*******************************************************************
* "...the intensity of the conviction that a hypothesis is true has
*   no bearing on whether it is true or not."
*
*                                       Peter Medawar (1979)
*******************************************************************

-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and  other info ---