>>> What do you think happens next?
 >> recheck hive number nine?
 > And if varroa is that low (compared to others) use it as mother !

That sounds like a plane until you realize that my 100 hives now 
standing all come from 22 overwintered hives and that I split by letting 
them raise their own queens - most of them twice or more.  I quit buying 
queens after the first splitting round and let nature do the job thereafter.

So, the hives have very divergent histories.  I tried to pick the 
biggest to use for drops since I figured they would be the ones which 
had the original queen all the way through and have the most mites.  
That one hive, though, in spite of its size may have had a three to four 
week queenless period at least once and be unlike the others.  Hard to say.

At any rate I am overcome with good luck.  I have 100 good hives, was 
forced to extract and they are still overloaded with honey that I have 
no intention of extracting, even if some hives are five boxes high and 
full, _BUT_ now I have to figure out how to deal with the mites.

'No treatment' is not an option.   Won't chance that route, having been 
too tolerant of mites two years back, but how do I place Apivar in hives 
that high and heavy if I decided to do that?  Looks to me as if oxalic 
evaporation is the easiest option, but I will have to repeat at least 
five times, like last year.  I figure to start now even if most of the 
mites are in brood.

I also think Randy is right and that these huge EPS hives are 'mite 
hotels'.  If I could keep my hives smaller or ran them for honey, they 
would be much more manageable than doing things this way.

Varroa control is proving a problem this year.

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