In message <[log in to unmask]>,
[log in to unmask] writes
>Because the gestation
>time for a drone is 24 days, 3 days longer than worker brood gestation, it
>would appear that the female mite prefers to lay her mite eggs with drone
>larva rather than worker larva, hence providing more food for her mite
>progeny as well as perhaps more mites per bee cell than a worker bee cell.
If I may add a small comment to George's point, I was taught that the
varroa detects the drones by smell, which was said to be connected to
the different feeding of the drone before capping, and a different pH.
Hence the mechanism.
>Hence, by entering one frame of drone size foundation into a brood nest and
>removing it BEFORE the drones emerge would badly deplete the Varroa
>population of a colony.
The amount of drone brood foundation would depend on the number of mites
available to enter cells at the time. Unless the population were very
large, I suggest a whole frame would be too many. Only a small
proportion of the drones would carry varroa and the ratio of effort to
varroa loss would be too high. The Eastern Europeans developed a method
where 3 frames with a portion of drone foundation were put in at
intervals of a week and removed at the same interval. One round would be
fine, covering 21 days. If I remember right, one third of a frame's
worth or less was fine. Various approaches have been used from
detachable sections, returned after freezing, to sections cut out. Super
frames can be used but not together in a block, or the comb goes every
which way across the bottoms.
--
James Kilty