Hi all,
I just pulled my Apistan strips and to my surprise two of my four hives had
burr comb with all stages of drone brood present even though it is mid
December.  The hives are in double deeps.  I live in the San Francisco Bay
Area so we don't have as much down time but this is earlier than I expected.
Both hives are strong, one I requeened last summer, the other was a swarm
caught last spring that is such a lovely hive I didn't requeen it.

After scraping the burr comb off I inspected for mites.  The swarm hive had
many visible mites when I put the strips in but the brood comb revealed no
mites currently.  The other hive had no visible mites when I put in the
strips but currently over 50% of the drone brood had multiple mites.  I
examined 20 capped cells and found 24 mites in 12 cells.  The Apistan strips
I used, in this hive only, were ones I bought last year and although I kept
them in their origanl package, out of the sun, my hunch is that they may
have lost their effectiveness.  I pulled out a few frames and saw a good
brood pattern, no dead bood in cells, only one really beaten up set of
wings.  It was a bit chilly so I didn't want to inspect each frame.  I have
seen many orientation flights when the sun it out, but there have been quite
a few dead bees out in front of the hive lately although until today I had
no reason to count them on a daily basis.  The bees solidly cover ten deep
frames at this time.

Do I retreat immediately with Apistan?  For the record I had the Apistan in
for 51 days and followed the directions.  The hive in question was treated
with four strips.  For various reasons I was not able to put in sticky
boards to count mite drop when I put the Apistan strips in or I would more
about mite drop at that time.

I had been planning to split both these hives this spring.  Given that they
are already raising drone brood when do you think I should consider doing
this?  The Eucalyptus is about to begin blooming but our wettest months have
yet to come.

Any help/opinions for this newbee are welcome.

Learning frm my mistakes again.
Sarah Grew
Wilcat Canyon, CA