Interesting bit of information I gathered from our latest convention from our guys here studdying formic indoor treatments and thermo-regulation associated to grooming behavoiurs.
They have been successfully treating mites in an indoor wintering facility with a two week maximum formic acid treatment. They have successfully found a concentration of 15-20 ppm that will successfully drop mites and show very little stress effect on the bees and wintered brood.
During the tests, they have found that the hives that are infected with varroa without funigation will have 35% of their brood cells infected with varroa.
Compaired to hives that are infected with varroa with a 10 day formic acid fumigation of the wintering room will have next to 0% of their wintering brood cells infected with varroa.
This test was done periodically pulling brood frames from the brood nest of the hives in the wintering shed throughout the wintering period. And yes, indoor wintering hives do brood throughout the winter.
Interesting question they found while performing all their studdies, is they found that the bees displayed a higher grooming behaviour with a lower ventalation air flow than with a higher ventalation air flow into the building. Factor that influenced this behaviour is not known. Being increased CO2 or hunidity were possible theories, but they are planning to investigate further.
It drew a bit of excitement amoungst the croud, showing that may be methods out there to contol mites by mear manipulation of the bees environment!!
Also along lines of grooming behaviour they talked about thermo-regulation and grooming behaviours.
Interesting enough, they found that when introducing mites into clusters of bees, their cluster temp rose from 31 degreesC to 36 degreesC using infer red or thermal imaging. But even more interesting is that only the clusters of bees that exibited a grooming behaviour to remove the mite, held a hotter cluster temp!
This excited the reaserchers termeniously. They see this increased cluster temp due to grooming activities as a response to hte mite as a marker they will beable to look for when searching for a high grooming bee in their queen breeding efforts. Using the infer red imaging to look for high grooming or hygenic bees will quicken up hte seach termendiously rather than having to physically test the bees hygenic behaviour over a matter of weeks.
Anyway, just a few rambling thoughts I gathered from the convention I just attended,..