>will prove invaluable in certain scenarios.

Has been valuable in reducing varroa loads in hives before the end of the
honey flow.

> If I were to receive, ship or sell packages I would want them at least
hosed down with Sucrocide,

Has been done and has worked from what we can tell.

>not to mention using it in the inclosed feed cans and / or the queen cage
candy.

I have never heard of its use in this manor and not sure if would work? I
was part of the original Dadant testing and the above was never talked
about.

> quickly became one of the worse means of spreading mites.

Package bees spread mites faster than any other method! In fact the first
varroa were found in a huge package shipment! These packages were not
destroyed but distributed to beekeepers which always amazed me!

Migratory beekeepers were quickly blammed by package shippers.

Our reps are not the best and we have got broad shoulders so we took the
heat!

>If Sucrocide can significantly "de-Varroa" the
package industry

Good advice but the answer will be this from the package industry. "Why
spend the time and money". We are selling all the package bees we can
produce! Refuse to buy a package without sucrocide treatment and the
industry will take notice. Of course package bees are at record price levels
now. The added treatment would add around ten bucks per packaage (guess).
Maybe the package receiver needs to do the treatment? Not hard to do!

Rip makes an excellent point. My article on the Australian package bees
(Oct. 2005 ABJ) shows that a varroa free package can survive the  first year
easily even when surrounded by hives with heavy varroa loads. All Australian
package bees remain untreated as I write this post!


Leaving most of post to provide understanding of a difference of opinion:

>  Preventing the spread of various "superior mite strains" by creating,
both cost and time, "effective" bottle necks will be a major factor in
bringing the Varroa problem "to heel".  They are never going to go away,
like AFB, Varroa is an artifact of human behavior and here to stay, it is a
beekeeper problem not a bee problem.

The above is the researcher position. Very careful choice of words like
"effective bottle necks". "Beekeeper problem and not a bee problem."

My idea to place sugar syrup drums of AFB in the narrow straits of Panama
was an effective bottle neck but rejected and now we have to deal with AHB.
No quarantine or burning of hives with mites has ever worked! I appreciate
the researcher position but researchers are a smaller minority than even
commercial beekeepers. Almond growers and others needing pollination rule
the USDA. Many
researchers , bee inspectors and USDA officials have tried to stop the flow
of hives on local levels. They have told us you are not leaving this state!
Then the local official gets a call from his boss and
 we wave "bye bye". Never fails to put a grin on the migratory beekeepers
face!
Beekeeping problems have to be solved without the disruption of the U.S.
pollination.

Bob

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