BBKA Forum

Quite, and presumably the opposite effect in terms of the bees and their larvae?

Quick followup.

The 2x oxalic acid trickles have been effective. Drop counts 0/day and <1 /day from my 2 hives.

Gave both some fondant.

Just waiting now for warmer weather - though theyve been out collecting pollen most days this week.

Jules

Good to hear Jules.

As mentioned on another thread, I was at a talk by Paolo Mielgo of Vita at the weekend and he was talking about the risk of varroa mite developing resistance to treatments, particularly from excessive or inappropriate use. Sobering stuff. He said that there had been particular issues in the US with repeated applications of treatments rendering the treatments ( perhaps counter-intuitively) less effective. So the theory goes, use the least treatments one can get away with to ensure and maintain their efficacy, treat all colonies at the same time and rotate the treatments used.

Prof Stephen Martin also spoke about the experiments in Gotland with simply leaving the bees to get on with it untreated. As Nigel mentioned elsewhere, the only ones that survived (most didn't) were small colonies that repeatedly swarmed - which makes sense. Also that Dwarf Wing Virus was a relatively unknown issue before varroa and pockets of supposedly varroa resistant bees may have more to do with coincident local populations of less virulent virus strains. Interesting stuff.

He also made a point of how many researchers are now working on honey bee viruses compared with the days of Bailey and Ball at Rothamstead. When you consider their combined contribution with the amount of funding and technology they had at their disposal then, its a pretty impressive legacy.