Hi all

Jim has pointed out to me two very significant things, to which I confess I had not given much thought. The first, infestation of hives during dearth. This very neatly explains what we see in my area (Upstate NY). Hives have very low mite levels until August, and then they skyrocket. Last year I religiously cut drone comb from my hives, the levels stayed low until August and then half of the hives collapsed in fall. 

Second, the high rate of supersedure we see may be connected in some way to chromosome damage in drones. This could logically be caused by the use of acaricides in commercial queen rearing enterprises. Dave Tarpy was unable to find any significant flaws in queens from a variety of sources, in terms of biometrics. Somebody needs to look at the drones used to mate commercially sold queens.

Pete

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