On Sep 8, 10:45 am, Maren at google jach.hawaii.edu> wrote:

Hi Maren and Hawaiian Beekeepers,

I got out of beekeeping just as the trechea mite hit. I stayed out
for the whole big mess that the indisutry went through with the
mites. I started again in 2006 at 4000 feet in the Okanogan of
Washington State. I did a lot of note checking with some who went
through the chemical wringer with the rest and survived to still own
their houses and their businesses. I started with two four frame nucs
and in the fall both had heavy mite counts in the drone cells. I made
sure they had their stores, made a second split and recombined at the
end of the season and wished them well. We had a record snow fall
from November on.

Now the experts back east warned me that the second season i would
have the first failures from mites. They made my winter full of
dread, so i trudged out in four feet of snow and placed my ear against
the supers--plenty of bees, normal dead, cleaned the BB and waited.
While i waited in my remote cabin i measured the cell size on Mann
Lake's PF-100 frame (it fell into the small cell size 4.55mm) and
reported this, printed it, some claimed to know but i published this
on B-L and on beesource. I discussed this with Dee Lusby and she
thought it was still to large, but was the only person encouraging.

The following season i added five packages, two small colonies and
split the entire works using PF-100 frames. During my drone brood
tests there were exactly ZERO mites!

Part of that is the hygenic nature of the bees on the mainland, but
that does not close to explaining how these colonies, combined to make
eighteen with three queens lost (15) currently giants, made it without
any mites. I am coming over folks, the Big Island--my advice is to
simply rely on the hygenic features in your current population and
learn the high value of new combs and cell size first and keep the
chemicals out of your bees. Begin easy and then if the losses are too
great, then think of chemicals.

smallcellBK