"I tried powdered sugar on two colonies that had natural fall of about 60 
mites/day.  Did three treatments, four days apart, dusting both boxes. 
Theoretically, this should have removed most phoretic mites through an 
entire mite reproductive cycle.  Mite counts 2 days later were lower, but 
not by much.  The result surprised me--I expected a much higher overall 
kill"
  Hi Randy, when you do your mite counts after using powdered sugar, wait 
at least 5 days.  The bees groom themselves and our mite counts have been 
high for at least 3 days after removing the powdered sugar.  By 5 day the 
counts are much lower.  Could you do one more count?  I have done mite 
counts the day after a PS dusting, 3 days and then 5 days.  The count on 
day 5+ is quite a bit lower than day 3 and the day after, way too many to 
count.  I'm sure we talked about smoking and not smoking before pulling 
stickies.  Smoke causes about twice as many mites to fall.  We are not 
smoking the bees at all when we use sticky boards for 24 hour counts to 
try and be consistent. 
   Randy, again, thank you for including powdered sugar treatments in your 
experiments.
   Sincerely,
   Janet Brisson, Grass Valley, CA

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