> >  have long wondered about what happens after the broodless period in winter
> > when only small patches of brood are started 

> ... I look inside the capped brood. I decapped both sides and took each 
> bee/larva out and none. I could see no varroa or signs of them 
> This is very interesting. All healthy larva/bees and no varroa signs.
> Looks like varroa waits for a warmer time and do not rush in the cells for
> the first rounds of brood.

Thanks for doing this.  I have suspected this to be the case, since hives routinely
survive winter with loads of up to 5,000 mites and at some point the mites are all 
phoretic.  

Shortly after, when brood rearing starts, there are only a few hundred
cells eligible for mite invasion, at most, and if all the mites invaded at the 
earliest opportunity, then with normal distribution, there would be multiple mites
in almost every cell.  We know that multiple mites per cell is a recipe for collapse, 
yet such hives survive and often do quite well.

I wonder if you know the phoretic load for this hive?  Is there any chance it had
only a few mites?

Now someone needs to investigate this further and also to check the 
brood of a nuc in spring/summer with known phoretic levels and a new queen 
that has just begun laying after a broodless period to test the assertion that all
the mites pile into the first brood, killing both the brood and themselves.

I find that assertion dubious, if for no other reason than the fact that varroa can 
survive a long time on dead larvae, or even in the absence of food.

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

Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at:
http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm