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Thu, 25 Nov 2010 17:44:21 -0500 |
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Deep Thought |
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?> I have seen far more dead bees on the ground in recent years. I have
checked time and again, and haven't found that nosema counts correlate, so
think that it is something else. I strongly suspect virus.
I agree, and I strongly suspect that the viruses were enabled by allowing
varroa to get up above a threshold level at some time over the past season,
even if the mite levels are currently found to be low.
It seems to me that like the after-effects of hives starving a bit at some
point in preceding months, varroa predation comes back to bite later.
I still recall that DH was sternly warned about his varroa levels months
before his CCD crash.
In Alberta, simply maintaining a tight control on maximum varroa levels over
a span of several years has driven losses back to the baseline while those
who failed to do so find they are playing Russian Roulette.
There is no direct relationship between mite levels and certainty of
collapse, but there seems to be a direct relationship, or possibly a log
relationship, between peak mite levels during a season and probability of
collapse in subsequent months.
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