> Agreed, which is why I was doing both at the same time. However, if the
> intent is to determine if the mite infestation rate has reached a treatment
> threshold, I'm leery of natural drop.
Then the question arises: what is the best indicator of the need for
treatment? It seems to me that we are using tests, none of which
directly measure that condition. There may in fact be no way of
knowing, as evidenced by some who routinely run at mite levels above the
benchmarks with apparent impunity. These measurements are _assumed_ to
be surrogates, but there is no real proof that they have any close and
immediate correlation to what we want to know.
Alcohol wash does not reflect accurately the total mite infestation in a
hive unless those numbers are combined with knowledge about the amount
of brood in the hive, the season, the phase of the moon and who is going
to win the World Series. In other words, the number must be interpreted,
and history has shown that no threshold above zero can predict the
outcome with certainty.
The same is true of drop counts.
I find the arguments for preferring washes over drops to be circular.
"Washes are good because they can be compared to mite wash benchmarks."
We know the benchmarks to be very unreliable in any one specific
instance. Moreover, benchmarks have proven too high time and time again
and had to be lowered.
In the early years of varroa, we managed a large commercial operation --
3,500 hives -- using only drops as a monitoring method and AFAIK, never
lost a hive to varroa during that time. It was dead simple the way we
did it whether supers were on or not, and we could hire non-beekeeping
students to do them, and we did. They slipped in the boards, came back
later and then counted the results. In one instance, the hives and
students were 160 miles away from us and we got results by phone.
Since then, as a "hobby" beekeeper, and having forsaken my former
methods -- partly due to being influenced by those advocating the wash
and the difficulty in doing washes in a timely fashion on hives in 3 to
5 boxes after my management changed -- I have lost hives. In one case
the loss was 100%.
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