a Scott snip followed by > my comment.. 
Unfortunately, Seeley himself has shown that spacing is extremely important in keeping mites under control, as grouped colonies showed late-season influxes from robbing out crashing colonies whereas spaced colonies did not.

>I have witnessed this in commercial bees (typically set on 4 way pallets) in that first one hive is impacted by mites and then the one next door is the next to fall.  I suspect this is a clear case of the effects of drifting and bees that have no mite resistance.  In my own case I typically set bees down on the ground on old pallets with two hives on each pallet and I rarely see the same effect... Via testing my own bees do seem to display some resistance to varroa.

Gene in Central Texas... 

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