One additional thing I have going for the OAV showing little or no Varroa
is that the non-treatment beekeeper who once lived across the street has
moved along with her bees. My guess is I would still see varroa if she was
still there even with the OAV.

Which prompted me to mentor every beekeeper that I knew of in my immediate
area - so far four- and have converted three to OAV but the fourth is just
coming on-board (still MAQS), so needs some encouragement. I lend them my
vaporizer to let them see the difference and two have bought them and the
third is using mine now.

It does not take much of a sales pitch since a package or nuc costs as much
as a vaporizer.

One nice thing about mentoring is you run into some new things. I have
never had a package swarm, but one of my mentees did. Since I was helping
another mentee with a split- he saw queen cells- I could not go, but when I
found there were no queen cells and no reason for a split, went to help
along with the mentee I was helping. With a ladder, the mentee had dropped
the swarm from a lower (relative) branch on an apple tree into a nuc box
(from a prior try at beekeeping) and boxed it up in a plastic container
with a screened lid. Many of the bees were still on the branch. So I got
them down and put them on the screen and they stayed. Then we moved them
into the nuc and into a new hive (parts provided by the mentee I had been
helping). So both mentees had the joy of seeing a swarm, seeing it hived
and sharing in helping each other. Plus, where there we two hives, now
there are three.

My son from LA also participated. The mentee keeps chickens and kindly gave
us a dozen fresh eggs and, soon after, showed up at the house with  a
fresh-baked blueberry pie. They ware all excellent. His comment, "Dad, you
live in Norman Rockwell country."

Bill Truesdell
Bath, Maine

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