One last rant and I will sit down and shut-up, I promise.

My chart got garbled up and may be difficult to read for reasons beyond me. To sum it up if I throw out the high and low and average the rest I got a 6% reduction in mite count ~30 days post treatment. Admittedly in late summer the normal mite population is exploding so that would mitigate the result a little. 

Mark, Each sample was from a separate yard in remote regions of intense agriculture at least 5 miles apart.

Thanks Scott, If I read your result correctly you got 86 and 44% reduction. One good, one not good enough.

Thanks Karla. For me 5 to 8% infestation is normal at the end of summer unfortunately. I have done samples that reach 20%. My threshold  for winter preparation is not over 2%, 1% is better. If MAQS killed anywhere near the claimed 90% I'd be in clover but for whatever reason the application was a failure. As for being good a controlling low mite counts (with tongue firmly in cheek) I've found that hopping on one foot and puffing my smoker 3 times at the rising sun works good. As long as there aren't any mites that is. 

These days I have been pulling suppers and putting in Apivar. I hate to do it, my first synthetic application in 4 years. I select a random apparently thriving, large (15+ frames) colony in each yard and put in a sticky board. The 24 hr. count has been many hundreds, perhaps a thousand, far more than I am willing to count.

Any one that has followed this thread from the start knows that I started by stating my alarm at finding lots of surviving mites when I pulled the strips. As per Randy's suggestion I followed with 16 and 30 day samples. My questions were always about the claim of killing mites in capped cells and not harming the pupae. Are there any studies variying those claims. Those questions remain unanswered. 

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