>
> >Presumably many feral colonies and unaware beekeeper colonies were
> collapsing in big numbers.


In California, shortly after we got our mites under control with
fluvalinate, our hives got flooded by mites from the collapsing feral
population.  Poor Eric Mussen had to explain to angry beekeepers what had
happened.

>See Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 for suggestions that varroa may have moved from
Italian to Russian colonies in "co-mingled" apiaries, but not in apiaries
with only one type.

My interpretation of that data is that drift follows diffusion.  Thus it
wasn't so much that there were two "types" of bees kept, but rather a
high-mite group and a low-mite group, and that mites drifted from the high
mite colonies to the low-mite colonies at a greater rate than vice versa,
as would be expected by diffusion.

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

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