Like two of my apiaries in New York State....

NY took varroa/nosema samples of most of my NY apiaries this summer. 
Very low mite loads via alcohol wash. Except...

Two apiaries with a 3 year old, 10 colony apiary right between my 
two....him wanting to be a non-treatment beekeeper. My bees rolled 
15-20, rather than the 2 or 3 in the rest of the NY bees.

And then there's the nuc yard up along the Canada border where I have 
several apiaries dedicated to wintering nucleus colonies. All wintered 
exceptionally well this past winter, excepting this one. What the heck 
happened?? What did we do or not do or do differently...

We're inspecting the nucs, all weak and greasy looking and half are 
dead...and a guy drives into the yard and begins shaking his finger at 
me..."Didn't I know he had 10 colonies over there through the trees?" 
"And they all crashed and burned because you moved your bees in on me"! 
None of my packaged bees built up and they all died in the late 
summer/early Fall. So I checked. Didn't need 400x to see the nosema 
spores. 40x and it looked like a Christmas tree.

My bees robbed out his sick bees, and there you have the rest of the 
story. And I might add why I told the NY inspector they have to 
reinstate the inspection program. It isn't fair to those of us who have 
everything invested in our bees, to have newbees in the neighborhood, 
harboring pests and pathogens that they haven't got a clue about. It's 
only a matter of time before AFB shows up...hopefully not near my mating 
yard, as I haven't used TM in years.







Joe, I fully agree that mite immigration is a major factor, but that
> immigration would be a function of colony density and individual colony
> resistance.
>
>
>    

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