I appreciate all your comments on using EO's I wanted to know if that "Magic" formula was magic. We will be using the Apistan Strips since we have enough to treat all the hives, my friend claims it has worked in his yards in the past so I guess I will see just how well. Since two hives have heavy mites in the yard he treated last year with strips I have my doubts. I think we will make it through the winter fine in some of the yards because the bees look good, they are from packages put in new locations where there has not been hives in the past and they are not coming back to the infected yard for the winter. The mites are in the hives at his home. I will be shaking a bunch of them as Allen suggested to see where we stand going into the winter, may be it will give us an idea on who are the survivors when spring comes and build up from those hives. All the honey supers are coming off today and probably Saturday, it looks like the weather will not hold to work on Friday. We would have no honey if we did not take advantage of the good fall weather. We ended up putting in 3 acres of buckwheat in August for one yard to work because they where so light they never would have gone through the winter. Will start feeding with a Fumagiliin B mixture and we are going to use Tetra Bee. AFB has been in neighboring towns this summer. Always something to think/worry about. Yesterday we moved some of our hives because someone, human, was getting into them stealing brood frames and honey. Swapping our frames out for other frames, you can tell real fast when you never use plastic and suddenly plastic frames show up in your brood boxes. We brand the boxes and now will start branding the frames or writing on them with a permanent marker. Won't stopped them from doing it but at least the ID is there. Jumping from two hives to 50 more has been an adventure. I have painted, scraped, scorched, re-nailed, built frames until I was doing it in my sleep. The equipment is looking better, now the bees have to live. Thanks, Karen *********************************************** The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html Access BEE-L directly at: http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A0=BEE-L