Very surprising results, Paul!  Did not appear to be any reduction in mite
levels.  Now you've got me worried!

I didn't bother to write down mite counts by hive when we applied two
strips to my whole operation over the past couple of weeks.  We just go by
testing a few random hives in each yard, and if we see ANY mite counts that
worry us, we treat the entire operation (so that we can legitimately
compare mite levels at breeder selection time).

So the best that I will be able to do is yard spot checks--hardly
scientific.  We've already checked back for queen survival.  The first yard
that we checked contained 36 hives.  The first had gone queenless, and
scared us.  But all the others had queens laying again just fine.  In my
other yards, we only spot checked, but only found queenlessness only in
colonies that had already been marked as having a problem (David
Vanderdussen tells me that he observes the same).  Temps were in the 90's
and generally dry.

I'll let you know about post treatment mite levels in a couple of weeks.

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

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