Dee Lusby wrote:
> Randy:
> But this is what you gotta see! You gotta see more mite
> drop and lots of it especially in early doings 1-2 years
> starting. More the better and lots of it. Then when
> stabilized and cleaned out, it stops and receeds back! 
>
>   

But, in the paper you pointed to, they never saw the "receeds back" 
part.  The small cell always showed higher numbers of mites being 
dropped, for all four years. Since mites don't live that long, all these 
mites being dropped later in the test period had to be new mites, that 
grew up in the small cells, didn't they?

And, in each given treatment interval, the small cell showed more mites 
dropping for the entire interval.  If the counts were higher because it 
was easier to knock mites off of bees on small cell, then I would have 
expected that there would have been a large "pulse" of mite drop at the 
beginning of each test interval, which would rapidly tail off to below 
the levels seen for the large cell bees by the end of the test 
interval.  This never happened.

I'm sorry, I don't see where this study is any sort of ringing 
endorsement of small cell.  It is at best inconclusive, unless the 
question can be answered of where all those extra mites in the small 
cell hives were coming from for all four years of the testing. 

-- 
Tim Eisele
[log in to unmask]

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