>> >As you say, maybe the mites would have all died off anyhow.
>Glad to see you open to discussion Allen!
That's what I'm here for and I learn best when I am proven wrong.
> FWIW, I never said that *all* the mites would have died off.
Language is ambiguous. I meant all the mites which I figure I killed would
have died naturally, then speculated that there may be some tougher ones
which overwinter.
>When I look at your "average" chart, I see a baseline mite drop level
>typically between 10 and 20 mites per day, punctuated by spikes after you
>treat. But my point is, if your oxalic treatments were effective, I'd
>expect to see the baseline drop permanently after each treatment, and to
>near zero after four treatments! That doesn't appear to be the case.
The presence of brood until Nov 24 complicates things (and I'm assuming that
any significant amount of mite rearing in brood is over for now due to lack of
any evidence of immatures or callow mites in the drops). The last 18 days or
so have been broodless (I'm assuming, but will not see evidence of brood
with mites for 12+ days after).
As I say , the matter is complex and I am not likely to cover all aspects here.
I reserve that for my diary.
>I'm not concluding whether the treatments worked or not. I'm just saying
>that your data does not support the hypothesis that they did.
Not yet, anyhow. And, as you say, maybe the mites would have gone down
to very low levels naturally. I have not seen any data on that, other than the
links I posted in my recent reply. Those data were under artificial conditions
and may not apply to wintering bees in Alberta. As you say, controls would
have been very interesting.
Too bad I stumbled into this project, rather than designing an experiment in
advance.
> Any plot of natural mite drop over time shows a decrease in winter. See Fig 3 at
>http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fighting-varroa-reconnaissance-mite-sampling/
Very interesting. Thanks for that. I had looked on your site previously, but not
found that info. It is what I have been looking for and does challenge my
conclusions.
It seems that fully indexing a site is an almost impossible task. I can't reliably
find anything on my own site, either, but the search on honeybeeworld does
work fairly well.
I am not totally convinced, but I see I have some thinking to do about what
is really happening and what others in Alberta have reported in regard to
using oxalic this way.
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