Varroa Mite Saga (Part 1)

Back in September, I did "the right thing." I was so proud of myself, little miss dudley doo-right had built new screened bottom boards (SBB) and had both hives sitting on them.

My SBBs are so easy to use when I want to check for mites. I just spray Pam on some construction paper, slide it under the board, then come back 24-72 hours later and examine it.

On my first try, I could barely wait. I think I waited 23 hours before I grabbed that construction paper and found no mites!

Hmmm, what's that spot? One mite. Can you see it?

Here's a close up, thanks to my trusty camera with the great macro lens. Used to be my boyfriend's camera but now it has propolis all over it and, well, he faced facts before I did. The fact that I'm probably buying him his next camera.

Is this thing ugly or what? But only one is great news. Until the beeks told me to do a 72 hour test. Crap. Luckily, my hives passed that test, too. Maybe less than ten mites on the whole sheet.

Still, I decided to do a sugar dusting just to further reduce the mites. I only did one dusting per hive, as it was just a prophylactic treatment.

This was September. In October, I took off the SBBs for winter, put the hives on solid boards, and to top entrances. Note that one hive is mostly foundationless and the other is mostly on foundation. The foundationless is theoretically more resistant to mites.

So everything was good in the garden. And I thought I was done for the Fall.

The hives are both young and small, and I keep checking their honey stores. So I did what I hoped was one last check in November. Can you say "population explosion?"