>Nice graphs Allen! Would have been really nice if there had been a couple
>of controls, so that we could quantify the overall benefit of oxalic vapor
>treatment!
Very true. I began this as a tabulation of my own treatment, and it grew. I
make no pretense of doing Real Science.
>A contrarian might also look at your data and might say, "I wonder whether
>you chose nice weather days for treatments, and that the increased mite
>drops were the result of weather change, and had absolutely nothing to do
>with treatment!"
Well, I did track the weather, too, and posted it at some points. I may
add on that data later. Unfortunately Environment Canada seems to update
it sporadically, so daily updates were not practical. However, they do
eventually post it. My impression was that warm days may have caused the occasional
anomalous increase in drop, but I did not observe it across all hives on those days.
There are other things going on. Dee has speculated about some of them.
Personally, I don't know.
From what I saw, the weather did have some effect, but not all that drastic.
Cold days seems to reduce the drop slightly, along with the amount of debris,
but not by much. Warm days upped the drop a bit, but not drastically.
I treated on some of the colder days, actually, but not below freezing.
> (Before you go apoplectic, I'm just funnin' you).
No worries. I appreciate all comments and even kidding can carry some truth.
For that matter, I have expressed some concerns that we cannot even compare the
two methods I used except by using deductive reasoning and extrapolation.
Even though my efforts are less than ideal, I figure I am in good company in that
regard when I look at some of the other stuff that gets published. Additionally,
I hope my feeble attempt inspires someone to do better. For some reason, no one
seems to have gone to the bother of illustrating this aspect of varroa observation
on the 'net, although I am sure that many capable people have done the work,
then buried the work somewhere.
As Mickey Mouse as my report is, I think it is better than many, and that is
a shame.
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