AD>And... since the amount of fall feed was only 5 quarts per hive -- >if I recall, I would disagree with Andy and say that the syrup >should not have been the cause of collapse. It seems to have been >the failure of the mite treatment. Yee Gadds Bee Friends did I say that, I got to stop this late niter posting. I hope not as I have never really found any reliable method of judging individual beehive health problems without at least a hands on look, and I try never to do that via the internet, and even with a hands on look at tens of thousands sick hives that did die if they are too far gone it is only a educated guess. But I must admit in my own defence that if the hives were on the verge of collapse from any cause the extra stress of inverting sugar would be as good a guess as any. But then all should know I am not convinced that I have ever seen a hive that died from mites alone, but I will continue to look. Many years ago I was not convinced that all AFB came from bee trees as most other beekeepers here were quick to blame as most did not have many close neighboring beekeepers. I looked and looked and in one year helped remove 35 established hives from one old building and have yet to find that first bee tree with AFB. I know others have, I may have met one person in all these years to talk to that had found AFB in a bee tree but even then it is appears as being really a rare sight and was to him as he had cut hundreds of trees to find that one over a long history of years and you would think if that was the main cause of inoculation of hivebees it would not be so rare. Now I am sure beekeepers no longer blame AFB on bee trees not because they are all gone but because it is always their neighbour who is just across the road who must not know how to take care of his disease that is at fault. I have seen the sugar loss many times in feeding over wintering hives with AFB they always seem to die, and the one's not fed don't. One of the advantages to feeding sugar as done here with the inverted gallon can over the top of the hive is that all sick and week hives can be identified. They are the one's that will have syrup running out the entrances the next day. Some times the cans can be removed to save the remaining sugar for others and the hives checked or marked for help later. I have run into complete yards of hives that should have not been fed, but were because the last time the beekeeper was inside the hives they were in excellent shape but had dramatically declined since. I can remember one load that I moved that had so much sugar running out the entrances that as I drove down the highway at night I noticed all the cars that passed me had there windshield wipers on and it was not raining, just lucky some highway patrol man was not among them or I would have been washing police cars at the county farm for thirty days or so. Well with maybe one exception for that telepathic diagnosis of bee problems via the net could be the classic American Foul Brood symptoms; if it stinks, ropes out, has sunken brood caps, and scale it may be AFB. And it also could have some mites, or many mites just before death, but I still would not say the mites were the cause of death or that any prescribed treatment for mites that did not include treatment for the AFB would have effected the outcome. One thing I can say for sure with confidence is if your bees have varroa mites and if they get sick for any reason and their is a dramatic population decline there will be more mites found per sample as the population declines. You can quote me on that one. I really wanted to say if they are put under extreme stress, which could be positive or negative in nature the same thing could result, but that would not be politically correct so I have been told, but in any case I have never doubted my fellow beekeeper word when it comes to having problems with bees or the unexplained death of them because I have seen so many bee problems in my own travels and the majority of them could not be explained with the knowledge and tools we have today in the bee yard. The real mite problem as I see it is that our bees have been showing symptoms of dramatic population declines as long as I have been around and before that and for sure before any mites could be found and even today some of these hives that die have few if any mites big or small when they die. I guess it is natural to say if your bees have lots of mites and die the mites killed them and maybe they did. It may only be interesting that this can not be demonstrated by the addition of a known number of mites to healthy bee hives and have those bees hives die, but some have said it takes more then one or two seasons which goes against the science that proscribes that all rats must die at the end of the experiment in year one. Beekeepers in this area are having problems maybe related to late summer pesticide treatments on cotton months earlier, and some also seem to think that the mite problems have declined here and are happy to continue using the prescribed strips. So far the problem is limited to two reports from two beekeepers with a total loss (dead or close to it) of 500 hives. I suspect there are many more. I looked at a sample of the 300 hives reported on in a earlier post and they had no visual signs of mites and were under mite treatment at the time I looked. In that case the beekeeper took my advice and moved them into storage the same week and used the good fall locations for other bees. ttul, Andy- (c) Permission is granted to freely copy this document in any form, or to print for any use. (w)Opinions are not necessarily facts. Use at own risk. --- ~ QMPro 1.53 ~ ~ Everything I say is true, and that's a lie