Hello James, Bob and Everyone,

Thanks for the information. I too have noticed live damaged mites. Some
are apparently mortally wounded while others move irregularly comparted
to other undamaged mites.

The bees behavior certainly does change toward the mites as the season
progresses. As the season ends most hives starting cleansing the hives of
mites about the same time, but others started the process almost 6 weeks
later. It could be as Bob stated that the bees can sense a certain mite
level.

Today, I used powdered sugar on my SMR small cell hives. Little or no
brood was present in the hives. About 400 mites/hive dropped from the
powdered sugar treatment. It was cool, in the 50's degrees F, and the
bees were in a loose cluster with about 8 solid frames of bees.

This is the last inspection inside the hive of the year for me. Next
spring will be interesting.

One of the large commercial beekeepers told that his traditional method
of treating mites with Apistan failed this year with most of the drones
in some hives having two or three mites each after treatment. The other
commercial beekeeper is having worse problems with mites than that. He
has switched to Checkmite. I guess that could explain alot of the
problems I have been having with mite immigration.

Best Wishes

Dennis Murrell