Allen Dick asked for clarification of the advice to reduce tracheal mites, by making splits, and removing them after a few days flight. The idea is to make splits from tracheal mite infested colonies, leave the splits near the parent colonies for a few days, then remove the splits to a new location. In field trials of this method, the splits ended up with only about 10 % of the infestation (% of bees with mites) as the parent hives (both groups had new queens). That's as good as a chemical treatment. Possibly it results from the older (infested) bees returning to the parent hives, while a cohort of relatively less infested bees ended up in the splits, and continued to out-reproduce the mites. The parent hives could be treated, or used as "dead-end" units, used for honey production then killed. Kerry Clark, Apiculture Specialist B.C. Ministry of Agriculture 1201 103 Ave Dawson Creek B.C. V1G 4J2 CANADA Tel (604) 784-2225 fax (604) 784-2299 INTERNET [log in to unmask]