Greetings to all.
    I am elated with the recent trend of contibutions to this forum. As I have suggested many times, all of us are in need of pooling our resources to arrive at manageable conditions to deal with paraitic mites. It seems that all of us have the same interest, however, we seem to depart away from each other when it comes to solutions. Hopefully, an agreeable to all(?) situation will develop resulting in benefits to beekeeping in particular and humanity in general.
     Yes, I have heard of many and diversified attempts at mite control (fogging pesticides into the hive, for instance) tried by innovative and some desperate beekeepers trying to keep from losing their bees. The bad side of these attempts is that they end up losing their bees, money spent and their faith in those of us who are trying to find reasonable economic means for them.
     Fogging pesticides directly into the hive leads to several undesirable conditions: contamination of your wax, honey and other hive contents; direct kill of your bees; enhanced mite resistance due to minute pesticide release from the pesticides that become permanently inbbeded in your wax and equipment; weakening/death of the bee population increases mite population; and furthermore mite resistance worsens. Fluvalinate has been proven for many years to be one the most resistance provoking chemicals used against honey bee mites. I have tested fluvalinate in my own hives and found that it did not affect the mites in those hives at all. Fogging fluvalinate, and in time, just about any of the pesticides presently in use will not be effective against mites due to development of resistance by the mites.
    Fogging with FGMO has proven beyond doubt to be effective against honey bee mites. I have only used the Burgess fogger (advertised to reduce the dropplet size to ca. 15 micra, hence I can not give opinions for other types of foggers. Only concientious research can answer the question posed of the fogger that reduces fog size to .5 micra. I would be hesitant to try reducing the size of the dropplet to lesser sizes than already proved to be effective thinking that it might reach a point in which it will not block the spiracles of the mites.
    I wholeheartedly agree with zero tolerance for mites. In my FGMO presentations and writings, I always emphazise my belief that one mite is one mite too many within a hive because of the rate at which mites multiply. This belief is exemplified by the graph I used in my January 2005 issue of ABJ ("after 120 days 48,828,125 mites have been reproduced"). This is the REAL reason why bee hives are collapsing these days!
May The Lord guide us all in search of solutions for this pest.
Dr. Rodriguez
--
Proclaiming The Lord´s expression and creation with our honey bees.


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