> What I'm curious about is whether beekeepers noticed whether it was
 > common for the best honey producers to dwindle more in late summer
 > than the moderate honey producers... I'm curious as to how much it
 > has to do with varroa.

I assume that you are checking for brood?  The heaviest hives in a yard
are sometimes those which went queenless for a while just before or
during the flow.  Assuming you did and and to answer your question 
directly, though, I don't recall that effect at all, before varroa.

For that matter, though, _I don't see that now_, except in the year that 
I lost all my hives to something that I assume was spread with the help 
of varroa.  Varroa I checked in that yard that fall was at levels that 
should not have been lethal to more than a percentage of hives according 
to what we are told by the "experts", and well below levels seen before 
in my outfit [2004] and which did not kill hives. 
http://www.honeybeeworld.com/diary/2004/diary110104.htm

The year I lost them all, the best hives rolled over first and and 
dwindled to nothing  my first indication something was wrong was what 
looked like EFB and a sudden crossness in the first big hive to go.  Two 
weeks or so later (maybe a month) all there was left was a handful of 
young bees, a queen and some sealed brood.  If we had CCD here in 
Canada, I would have called it CCD, but we don't and there is no 
compensation, so I don't, even if it was.

Otherwise, I am not seeing what you describe, and when I was doing fall 
inspection of beekeepers throughout Alberta in two different years, I 
did not see that either.  All the beekeepers were using Apivar with good 
success and maybe a little formic for tracheal (most not), plus 
fumagillin. The worst yard I saw had about 20 mites in a wash (with a 
few individual washes around 30).

I wonder if treatments you are and others around you are using might be 
a factor.  Right now, up here, with Apivar working presently, beekeeping 
is much like before varroa IMO, at least.

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