>However, again, after my washes yesterday, I am coming up with 3-4 mites per 100 bees and that is the same I found in these hives after the first round of treatments. As of now, I'm planning to throw in some Apivar strips to the higher hives, and overall, I'm disappointed with the results after the amount of work this took.

I have seen similar results with a one strip treatment of MAQS late in the season.  Or even two one strip treatments two weeks apark.  It appears that the treatment wasn't effective, but instead you probably had as much as a 50% or possibly better knock-back.  When you look at the mite vs bee population curve,  the declining bee population and brood area leads to a rapidly increasing mite-to-bee ratio.   Your OA treatments have been effective enough to hold that ratio, but not reduce it.  To reduce it, you need a more effective treatment, or to wait until they are broodless and treat then.  Randy has a mite model spreadsheet, that I have found useful for predicting/explaining mite population dynamics - particularly late in the season.  It becomes easy to see why a two strip MAQS treatment is much more effective than two one-strip treatments.

In my area OA dribble and less commonly OA vapour are used as a final cleanup when wrapping as opposed to a late summer/fall substitute for formic, thymol or synthetic treatments.  It just isn't very good when there is brood.

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