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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Allen Dick <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:04:38 -0700
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> ...condition of the fallen mites in the control hives.  Are they old and
> decrepit or beaten up by grooming bees and on their way out anyway, or are
> they lively, virile mites that you'd be glad to have fall out of your hive?

They vary from immature to active to old and to dead mites.

Immatures fall down  since a mite's development stops when the cell is uncapped
and the bee emerges.  FWIW, if a pupa dies, and thus does not emerge on
schedule, I assume the mites keep developing on the carcass until house bees
uncap, since Kenn showed us the mites can live quite a while on dead brood.
That's all the more reason to have hygienic bees -- and fast ones too.

Active adults fall due to a number of factors, including random chance.

Old and weak or dying mites, naturally drop to the floor eventually.

Some bees damage mites more than other strains, and in such hives many chewed
mites may be found on the floor.

All in all, the study of floors and what drops is fascinating.  Look closely and
you will wonder what you are looking at.  You may remember looking at sticky
boards when you were here, and all the odd things we saw.

Sticky boards are stick partly to keep the active mites from climbing back up.
I saw a talk at Apimondia where the researcher showed mite traps and experiments
to see how many mites dropping would go back up, and how far.  I can't recall
the speaker, or the details, but the results were pretty amazing.

> Aaron Morris - thinking the more we know, the more there is that we don't
> know!

That's true, and much of what we know is wrong, or only true in certain
situations.

allen

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