>Some of these hives have high mite counts, determined by confectionery

> sugar shakes.  The mite treatment will be MAQS.  I have not been able to
> find comment on http://www.nodglobal.com/ regarding "proper dose" for such
> hives.
>

Aaron, we've used MAQS on various heights of hives.  The treatment is most
effective when applied in the center of the actual brood area, so you need
to look between the frames to see where the brood is.

We find that the taller the hive, the less effective the treatment.  It is
apparently too easy for the bees to move away from the vapors, or to
control the air flow.  Effective treatment with formic is all about
creating the right concentration of formic fumes around the brood and bees
so as to be toxic to varroa, but not too harmful to the bees--very tricky!

One problem is that you could place strips throughout the hive, but then
you could release so much formic vapor that it could harm the bees.  We
simply have not experimented enough to see how many strips a tall have can
handle.

However, Bill Lord's recent post on the "Amrine" formic flash finally
kicked me into trying it.  The results of our intial test (two hives, two
days ago) were impressive!  So I built 8 more flash boards yesterday
(trying out two different sorts of pads, for rapid or extended flash).
I'll be heading out soon this morning to see the results.  We plan to
continue testing variations of design and treatment in the upcoming weeks.

-- 
Randy Oliver
Grass Valley, CA
www.ScientificBeekeeping.com

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