I still say the first mistake is assuming they died. I've never stopped finding them.
But even if you have a stable varroa population within a hive, how many hitchhiking varroa would it take to overwelm a hive? How many crashing hives getting robbed would it take? I think this is a problem for any hive where there are a lot of colonies around it crashing from Varroa.
Drones drift shamelessly and workers drift some and robbers will rob anything that is dying from mites.
were did they go then?, I didnt believe all feral hives died but most did, face it, they just don't up and vanish but most did....
if a hive is crashing and population down for enough to not protect its self then mite population would be down also right, without bee's mites don't last? MB you been around mites longer than me so tell me something, whats a healthy mite count on a large hive and whats the mite count on a half or less populated crashing hive? I am sure you counted both...
now in a small cell hive or a hygienic hive mites shouldn't be successful breeding or reproducing so how do they kill a hive like that that lives or resist mites? just wondering!!!
since hives collapsed in the 90's and mite also of course then when hives come back up in numbers and mites also the small cell want help if you have a number of hive in your area that are crashing from mites, is that what you are saying because your hives will be robbing others that are crashing from mites, if this is true and SC works, sounds like a short term fix, guest we need to work on resistant bee's instead.... we will need a country of resistant bee's to keep robbing and mite transfer from being a crashing thing again like the 90's... I am just thinking and typing as the questions pop up, not condemning know one.....