Think I have a big mite problem

[Hobie]

Long story short, I have recently noticed bees with deformed wings walking around in front of the hive (2 deeps) I bought from another local beekeeper last month. He told me he did a sugar roll in early July and got a count of about 6. Until today, reading this forum, I did not know what to make of the deformed-winged bees.

I had wanted to combine my queenless tree-cut-out hive (1 deep) with this one, but now I don't want them anywhere near an infested colony. I am worried about the queenless colony because they do not appear to be foraging, although there are plenty of house bees. Other colonies are foraging to beat the band.

Anyway, I plan to sugar both hives today and do a mite count. Any advice on how to deal with this? When you get deformed wings, how bad an infestation is it? I have no mite-icide or anything and would have to order it.Help!

[drobbins]

Hobie,

if I were you I'd decide how I ws going to deal with the problem and make arrangements to get the needed material today
then do something to determine how bad the problem is, either sugar roll or stickyboard (I prefer the stickyboard if you have SBB)
Then bomb em with powdered sugar while you wait for whatever you've ordered to show up
you should get some kind of count before you do anything so you have a baseline to compare to later

Dave

[beegee]

The deformed wings are most likely a viral infection carried by the mites. Even if you have low mite counts, you can high a raging viral infection. The next hive over may have higher mite counts and lesser susceptibility to the virus.