I checked a number of my hives Sunday and opened a few drone cells. These
colonies have had normal mite populations and I was expecting to treat them
within the next few months with Apistan. Instead of finding the normal mite
load on the drone larvae ( around 50% with mites) I looked over some
workers as well and still found no signs of mites!

The hives have queens from different breeders so I doubt there is anything
there (I wish!).

Has anyone else seen a mite population drop? Could this be heat related? It
has been very hot down here. Mites can dry out and die if conditions are
right, but I do not think that this level would be the case.

I am going to do a sticky board test this weekend to follow up on my
observations.

Any thoughts?