Thanks for the report.  Good to know there is progress being made.

> I have around 300 hives and honey sales form the major part of our 
> family's income. (This was a tough year weather-wise and I will have to 
> make adjustments)

Does this mean larger than normal loss?

> In measuring mite numbers, I have found it useful to uncap several drone 
> cells. My experience is that this is  for measuring extremes.. not getting 
> exact mite counts to the nth significant digit.. In other words, if you 
> find every cell w/ mites...look closer...If you find zero cells with 
> mites...look closer. I wont go into detail, but for my purposes am mainly 
> interested in extremes.  There is little doubt in my mind that you can use 
> drone pulling as a good tool to measure extremes.

Good point.

I've been starting to do that since reducing treatments to oxalic drizzle, 
which seems to have variable efficacy.  The observations can be quite 
shocking. 

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