We have been following the discussion on the alternative methods of treating varroa on the list. Thank you Christopher for your positive remarks on the methods. We were hobby beekeepers for over 25 years in the Netherlands and we never treated for varroa. At first we thought we had to give up our bees, because we didn't want to use the chemicals. We only used tobacco in the smoker when we worked our bees. But we decided to give our bees a chance. We quit moving our bees, let them swarm, caught the swarm and listened for the new queen(s) to emerge. Then we opened up the other queen cells at night. We only extracted honey at the end of the season, before feeding. Other members of our beekeeperclub told us we would loose our bees within three years. But we still had bees after 15 years ! We probably lost a couple of hives, due to varroa, but we still kept four to five hives every year and it looked like things went better over the years. Leen once noticed some kind of grooming and we sent an article to the Dutch Beekeepers Magazine and asked if anybody ever noticed that kind of behaviour. No reactions ! Now we are professional beekeepers in the Peace River area of Alberta, Canada. We started two years ago and wintered 800 hives this year. The mites were here just before us and we test and use Apistan. We have a short intense season in Northern Canada and we have to make a living of our bees (and make our payments). We asked the extension people for a slowrelease formic acid method, so far no reply. We have been looking on the internet on the essential oil methods and especially the one that uses hem in the extender patties looks very attractive as we use the unmedicated patties to try to keep the tracheal mite infestation low, but we don't know if this method is allowed in Canada. From the beautiful Peace county Leen and Maria van den Berg.