Dr. Rodriguez spoke at the ABF Convention last night at about 5PM.
 
He described his technique for varroa control to a small, but interested
group of listeners.
 
He will be publishing his article in several magazines over the next few
months, and we expect to present his results on the net for interested
observers to examine.
 
Essentially his method involves using stips of common waxed paper coated with
food grade mineral oil.  The strips are inserted into the hive and left for
two weeks at which time new strips are inserted.  Details later.
 
In his tests which are as of yet limited, he had hives go from 54 capped
cells per 100 showing varroa to virtually none.
 
He used a number of  untreated controls for comparison.  They died.
 
Since these are limited tests, they need to be repeated by other beekeepers
and by scientists in order to verify that this technique does indeed work
under all the various possible situations that beekeepers encounter.
 
For one thing mite drop counts would be very appropriate in susequent tests
to establish the rate of mite attrition.
 
It will be interesting to seee how well these results can be duplicated in
various locations over the next months.
 
Details of the treatments will follow later.