a Peter Borst snip... 

Honestly, I never split hives for that specific reason. I split them to repopulate my boxes in spring. My experience, however, is that by midsummer all hives, whether packages, splits, swarms, you name it -- all of them have varroa over the threshold.

my comment...
I guess I also qualify as a doubting Thomas.  I also do not split for the purpose of mite control but I do split hives to have replacements in line when hives do expire.  As far as I KNOW hives would perish long before varroa arrived.  The other purpose for me splitting is to reduce the height of a hive since I am a lazy beekeeper and do not like dragging along a step ladder to inspect hives.

I split primarily using queen cells which at the max allows a hive to go almost broodless for about 3 weeks.  My primary yardstick to measure for queen mother stock is hives that survive and for some period of time and not some narrow yard stick of varroa count over some very limited time frame.  It should be pointed out that 'threshold' as suggest by Peter above is very much bee keeper define and this number may not represent whether a hive will or will not survive on it own without beekeeper intervention.  Since I do allow some use of my hives for student's science projects related to varroa it is not that uncommon to have a difficult time finding hives that exceed the student's definition of some varroa threshold in a give bee yard.

Does anyone know how this 'threshold' was defined? Given that various sampling techniques which may give you different number does this 'threshold' change based on sampling technique?

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