> 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. *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Guidelines for posting to BEE-L can be found at: http://honeybeeworld.com/bee-l/guidelines.htm