> Come on Jim, aren't you curious to know?
As I said, understanding of the impact on
pheromones on bee behavior implies that adding
a DIFFERENT MIX of pheromones to a queenright
hive is something that may put the laying queen
"at risk".
I love lures for dealing with queenless bees,
and they are indispensable for gathering up
bees "left behind" when their colonies are
removed, moved, or killed, but I don't see
any difference between putting a lure in
a queenright hive and adding a 2nd queen.
Except, of course, that the strip cannot
be "killed", while the existing queen can,
and the lure is a pheromone "boom box",
perhaps overpowering the "colony odor".
> I'm not saying I'd want to raise bees that way,
> but it's not like there isn't any QMP in a natural
> hive.
I'm confused.
How is it OK to introduce synthetic analogs
which are close (but not exactly the same)
as things that you understand to be in the hive,
but not OK to introduce formic acid, which is
exactly the same as the formic acid found in the hive?
If the objection is to the much more massive
amount of formic used in mite treatments, then
please understand that the whole "1/4 strip"
tactic does not reduce the concentration of
the pheromones in the least. Think about the
surface area of the strip versus the cubic
capacity of the hive. The surface area of the
strip is "negligible" as compared to the volume
of the hive. Temperature is going to have a
bigger impact on the volatilization of the
chemicals off the strip than strip surface area.
Now, if we dealt in powers of 10 (odors, like
most other sensory phenomena, have logarithmic
response curves), and reduced the surface area
to 1/10th, or increased the hive volume by a
factor of 10, then you might be able to limit
the impact of the lure.
But even then, bees close to the lure will
treat it like a queen, other bees that come
in contact with those bees will accept the
lure odor as their "new colony odor", and
one then has the proper conditions for a
tiny little unintentional coup de 'etat.