>And without a control group, one can't say whether your four treatments
>with oxalic vapor were of any benefit in mite control over natural
>mortality at that time of year.

OK.  I see what you are saying here.  It _is_ remotely possible that all 
the oxalic did is accelerate the natural drop and kill mites which would 
die in the next few days anyhow, resulting in no additional  total mite 
drop over what would have occurred naturally.  Having some untreated 
hives to compare would be valuable to prove that the oxalic resulted in
increased mite mortality.  Given the variability I  demonstrated , I wonder 
how many controls it would have taken, and would we take the average, 
or track each control hive?  

Interesting as that could be, that takes me far from where I was going.

Proving  that oxalic evaporation kills more mites than using nothing 
was not my purpose.  I think others have proven that conclusively
enough for me.

What I did was  merely  record observations of my treatments and the 
after effects on each of six hives, and share that detail FWIW.

I also made note of the young mites dropping and suggested that they
are an indicator of emerging brood in hives with non-zero mite loads, and 
that this could be used to predict the efficacy of treatment -- or not -- since
presence of brood is known to reduce efficacy.

So, given that I accepted that evaporating oxalic acid in hives kills  
plenty  of mites, my contribution was recording the variation from the mean
that is commonly presented, and thus showing how the response is highly 
variable between hives.  

The  interesting  thing is that regardless of the variation in magnitude and 
timing  of the kill -- it is beginning to appear -- the end result is decent control
 in my situation -- if multiple applications are used.

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