Hello Everyone,

I visited the Lusbys in March of this year. Although I didn't get into as
many hives as Allen Dick did I did check for varroa when their were lots
of drones and drone brood in the hives.

I did not see a single varroa on any adult bee or any typical symptoms of
high infestation such as those due to deformed or milky wing virus, not a
spot of varroa feces on the cell walls, no crawlers, etc.

In a few of the hives a couple of frames would have a few cells of
uncapped brood at the purple eye stage which indicated to me that the
bees were removing what few varroa they had discovered. I noted less than
a dozen of these cells in all.

I had gone to Arizona thinking that even with the amazing results posted
here on Bee-L concerning the mite cleansing I had seen on my small cell
hives that it might be too little or to late for my type of bee. They
were highly mite infested and the cluster size was small. The Lusbys
indicated that what I had seen was typical and indicated that the
survivors would have low mite levels, be healthy and expand rapidly.

Such has been the case with my mongrels, SMRs, and Carniolans as I have
posted also. Not the special bees that I thought I would need to complete
the other third of the Lusbys method, just my survivors.

I am still counting mites, but doing it at 2 to 4 week intervals rather
than daily to weekly as before. I will continue to count mites throughout
this fall and next spring. Will report my results here but am thinking
about other things now like how to get bees to draw out more small cell
foundation and yes, how do the smaller bees react to the different size
comb.

Best Wishes
Dennis