Apple Mail--incoming messages

Question

Hi...  I am setting up a new MacBook Pro and I use Apple Mail just as I did on my old computer...  I've imported the mail and tried to set the new one up like it is/was on the old. 
But something is different because every five minutes (or at least it seems like every five minutes) when I have Mail setup to check for new mail, I see things like
8 incoming messages
followed a only seconds later by say,
15 incoming messages
But there are no mail messages actually coming in and nor should there be??? 
Once that message or two gets done, I look around for any new mail and there is none..  I can also immediately click the "check mail" button manually and, as expected, it will get the NO NEW MAIL sound...  But then five minues later when it's again time to check mail automatically, more often than not, here comes another barrage of
12 incoming messages
or something silly like that...  I thought it might be RSS feed stuff but I can't find any of that set up or running... 
It's clearly not real messages coming in, at least nothing I can find...  And my old setup on my old computer (also Apple Mail and both old and new are running on 10.8.3, Mail version 6.3) certainly does nothing like that... 
So what is it???  What are these phantom incoming messages??
thanks...  bob..

Answer 1

Why not just turn off the Gmail "Important" and "All Mail" labels for IMAP access? You can do this in Gmail's Webmail interface (gmail.com), under Settings (the gear icon), in the "Labels" tab. Turn off "Show in IMAP" for those two labels.
Matt