> I think it has to do with the bees' swarming. You have a
>serious break in the brood rearing in both the swarm and the parent. Some
>European researchers experimented with this, I don't know what they found.

Mr. Borst
Thank you for summarizing Dr. Seeley's talk. You are very lucky to have met
both Dr. Griffin and Dr. Seeley! I might have bumped into Dr. Wenner in
California, but I don't remember. Anyway, I was thinking that somebody could
try letting bees swarm regularly and see if the mite buildup were less. That
certainly would account for the ability of ferals to survive in the woods,
like Seeley, Wenner and others have observed. Unfortunately the only study I
could find contained bad news.

"In a honey bee population of 150 colonies, the development of an introduced
Varroa destructor mite population was monitored in swarming and non-swarming
colonies for two years in a Nordic climate. The results demonstrated a
reduced mite population as a result of swarming only for the first swarm
season studied. In the second swarm season, there were much higher mite
levels (based on debris counts of mites) and fewer colonies swarmed, but
there was no significant difference in infestation levels of adult bees in
the fall between swarming and non-swarming colonies."

"Swarming in honey bees (Apis mellifera) and Varroa destructor population
development in Sweden by Ingemar FRIES, Henrik HANSEN, Anton IMDORF, Peter
ROSENKRANZ"

Isis Glass

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