Hello Bill & All,
Bill makes  excellent points but also maybe without realizing highlights
another problem our USDA people are always pointing out to beekeepers.

Bill said:
so it makes sense to treat all the crop. You do not want to come back over
and over again just to treat each affected area in turn.

Most beekeepers  are pressed for time. They want a "magic bullit".
 A treatment for varroa they can simply drop into a gallon of bee feed and
be done with all bee parasite & bee disease. Many may laugh but I have heard
over and over big beekeepers ask the USDA-ARS for the above at meetings!

It is no surprise the worlds beekeepers quickly accepted chemical strips as
part of their way of doing business( much like the apple grower uses around
fourteen chemical sprays a year to insure perfect fruit).

Now all over the U.S. bees are becoming resistant to both the two main
strips in use. Exactly like when fluvaliante resistant varroa were found in
the U.S. and tens of thousands of commercial hives started crashing
beekeepers instead of placing the blame on themselves for not being on top
of the situation blamed:
1. winter
2. bad queens
3.viruses
4. some new unknown problem
5. bad advice from bee supply house
6. bad advice from fellow beekeepers ( should be number one problem maybe)
Bill said;
Same with bees. In a large operation it would seem to make more sense with
limited sampling to treat all the colonies rather than discrete colonies,
unless you can show that there is no Varroa in a colony, which  is
difficult.

Usually when resistant varroa occur only one hive to a  pallet is effected
and can easily go undetected with random testing.

Bill said:
One of the few things I learned from a statistics class was when one
fluorescent bulb went out in a factory (at about its normal life), it
was more cost efficient to replace them all than just the one,

Here is the problem I refered to. Blanket treating lets  lines of bees
survive which have got zero tolerance to varroa & creates super chemical
resistant varroa such as we are seeing now

Varroa which are resistant to coumaphos can not be controlled by rotating
back to fluvalanate. Sure you will kill what appears to be many varroa but
(as Jim Fischer pointed out) a huge amount of varroa will be left for the
next spring and before long varroa is crashing hives.

Bill said:
and actually be more cost efficient than a piecemeal
approach. Again, labor is the driving factor, not the cost of the bulb.

Hard to compare varroa to replacing light bulbs but I agree with the
principal

Varroa has caused more beekeepers to leave beekeeping than any problem ever
seen in beekeeping worldwide.

At first those using chemical strips laughed at the folly of those trying to
create a bee which could survive ver and the efforts of the small cell
beekeepers. Now with varroa control getting harder many of those beekeepers
are not laughing but looking our way.

Beekeeping history:

I am still amazed when looking back that HALF of the commercial hives in the
U.S. were lost to tracheal mites (when beekeepers  new they were spreading
and methods of control were around).

Half the hives in the U.S. were according to records killed by varroa
between 1987 and 1997. Apistan was around . Why did those beekeepers sit and
wait for hives to crash before taking action?

Both the above killing of hives did serve the purpose of killing bees which
could not tolerate varroa or tracheal mites at all .

The big kill in the 80's of hives by tracheal mites did leave us with bees
which for the most part could tolerate tracheal mites (many of the dark
lines without treatment).

The big kill off from varroa did little to leave us a survivor bee.

 I think the research of Dr. Harbo explains why many survivors survive.

Varroa control is a complicated subject .

Bob

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and  other info ---
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::