It's been a few days now and things have had a little time to settle. I'm still at a loss to conclude what I learned at Apimondia. The field trip was worth the buss ride just to see Babe's pallet arrangement for beehives outside the Plant health facility on Vancouver Island. I had read of it before, but never seen it. I consider the common supers to be an ingenious idea. Basically they run 8? hives on a pallet in a horizontal four queen hive arrangement. My first reaction about Apimondia itself is that I learn more at an Alberta Beekeepers Convention or ABF meeeting, but I know that isn't fair. I guess I expected to get more hard info like we do when practical beekeepers get together. At such times we get the scientists to show up and give us the latest magic bullet without expressing their deepest thoughts and misgivings. With the sort of mix we had at Apimondia, I think I came home with more questions than answers. Here is a random sampling to get things rolling... * Varroa and the problems it poses was definitely the flavour of the year. * I have in my possession some of the www.varroa.com mite strips given me by Wang. They don't even look like Apistan (R). The literature says they contain fluvalinate, but I didn't see 'fluvalinate-tau'. Hmmm. * I visited the Apistan booth and Max gave me a sample of the latest Vita treatment. It is 25% Thymol and works by the bees tracking through it. * Marva Spivak gave a really top notch talk and ended by suggesting bee breeders leave at least one yard untreated for any disease. When queried about what to do if the hives stated to 'go south', she seemed at a bit of a loss and we never did get an answer that I could understand... * There was a lot of talk about the mechanisms of resistance, but each speaker seemed to have a slightly different idea of how it works. * The consensus seemed to be that killing all the varroa -- or nearly all the varroa -- in a hive is a bad idea. Most solutions seemed to be aimed at controlling the levels of mites, but I had a bit of trouble understanding how to be sure that the levels are what they seem when one has hives scattered around the country. * The mite we think of as varroa jacobwhatever is not the one that gives us grief over here in America. There are 5 distinct species of mites that are visably different and have different ranges. If I got that right. * Sherriff style veils have taken over the bee fashion scene, with a little competition from a style that has a cloth coolie hat and tubular section that is attached by a zipper. * Pierco frames have a credible looking competitor from Nepal. * My mead is better than any I tasted all week. Aaron likes Guiness. * The new Swinger looks great. * The Billet hive loader is the answer for small to medium beekeepers who hate hiring help. * The Israeli hive platform thingy I dissed a year or so ago has some interesting possibilities, but probably not quite as many as the originators imagine. I'd dearly love to have one to play with. The cost is over $300 Canadian and it holds four hives. * Larry sold a lot of books. That's it for now. I know it's not much, but maybe this will trigger some ideas from others. allen ----- See if your questions have been answered in over a decade of discussions. BEE-L archives & more: http://listserv.albany.edu/archives/bee-l.html Search sci.agriculture.beekeeping at http://www.deja.com/ or visit http://www.internode.net/HoneyBee to access both on the same page.