OK.  What are the thresholds are we discussing here?  Can we put numbers to 
them or just speak very generally?  I understand that the threshold depends 
somewhat on location and time of year as well as other factors, but I'm more 
comfortable if writers at least attempt to use metrics.  Where they don't, I 
have less confidence in what is being written.

I was working as a bee inspector in New York in the fall of 2006, when this story broke. I was doing ether rolls on a regular basis. In some of the commercial operations, I was finding 50 to 100 mites in a sample of about 300 bees. These hives looked like crap. They were the norm, not the exception. 

But the symptoms were not the same as reported. These bees had all the usual signs of varroa: deformed wings, sick and dead brood, low populations, plenty of honey, etc. 

Talking to New York state beekeepers over the next couple of years, I found beekeepers whose losses exactly mirrored Hackenburgs. Sudden depopulation, lack of robbing, etc. Experienced beekeepers were reporting something they had not seen before. Something that appeared to be highly contagious, knocking off hives like toppling a row of dominoes. 

PLB

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