> > >I thought I made my understanding of crystals forming on the surfaces of > the hive clear with my next question about putting bees into an already > treated nuc box. I didn't address your question about that since I have no specific data from which to derive an answer. However, I can share some data from a recent experiment in which I tracked mite drop and alcohol wash counts in four test hives, full of brood, in late spring. Two hives were vaporized (one with a Varrox, one with Provape 110), and two dribbled with OA in solution (one with 1:1 water:sugar, the other with 1:1 water: glycerin). I then reapplied the vaporizations (but not the dribbles) at days 10 and 19. The glycerin dribble caused by far the greatest initial increase in mite drop--the other three were about the same. The two dribbles resulted in the best mite reduction initially, but by Day 26, all four colonies exhibited roughly 50% reductions in their alcohol wash counts from baseline--after a single dribble, compared to three vaporizations at roughly 10-day intervals. Keep in mind, that there was an n of only one for each treatment, so don't run too far with this data. The above results suggest that the added humectants increased the efficacy of the OA greatly--initially as well as over time, and indicate that the effect of the crystals from vaporization is very short term (this is supported by Saskia Schneider's findings). Also keep in mind that mites do very little walking over comb surfaces. You can draw your own tentative speculations as to whether fogging a super prior to installing bees would have much effect on mites. These sorts of experiments are not difficult to run--why don't you set one up with a few nucs (comb-treated and untreated controls) and test your hypothesis? Then let us know the results. -- 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