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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Peter Borst <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 16 Jul 2002 02:21:45 -0400
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Peter Borst posted:
 "Although reproduction of Varroa is affected by the space between the developing bee and cell wall, reducing cell sizes as a mite control method will probably fail to be effective since the bees are likely to respond by rearing correspondingly smaller bees" (from "Reproduction of Varroa destructor in South African honey bees: does cell space influence Varroa male survivorship?" by Stephen J. MARTIN, Per KRYGER)

Dee Lusby:
While reproduction of varroa is probably effected by the space to a lesser degree, the rest of the above statement is supposition. Further to give sound bites instead of trying to use a wholebee concept for looking at the whole picture for what is happening is in my mind wrong.

Reply:
 I have tried looking at "the whole picture". You say that your bees have low mite counts. (What are the counts?) You say that it is due to 1) small cells, 2) nutrition, 3) breeding. You don't explain what nutritional factors are involved. Some special pollen source? You refuse to allow that the bees you are breeding from may be heavily Africanized, which renders almost all your conclusions irrelevant, since most of the rest of us are not interested in owning African bees.

Read the whole paper. He documents the fact that *small bees* on *small comb* still have PLENTY of mites.

"Mite populations in AHB fluctuate during the year but their numbers rarely exceed several thousand (Medina and Martin, 1999; Vandame et al., 1999) while mite populations in both A. m. scutellata and A. m. capensis colonies have been reported to regularly exceed 10 000 (Allsopp, 1998; Allsopp et al., 1999; Allsopp, 2000)." (from "Reproduction of Varroa destructor in South African honey bees: does cell space influence Varroa male survivorship?" by Stephen J. MARTIN, Per KRYGER)

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