How I came to my first fogging

[Maine_Beekeeper]

Good evening everyone -
The drama of new beekeepers in Maine continues...
I have 8 hives now (and 3 nucs). All full hives are on SBB and have been since May. 2 parents, 2 new packages, and 4 from caught swarms (my own bees - from the parents). I've done sporattic mite counts with shelf paper taped to the inserts of the SBB. Last count was in mid July. At worst on 24 hours we were looking at 40 mites or so, most hives down in the low teens. (all hives on two fully drawn deeps and an assortment of shallow supers from 1 to 3)
I have treated with grease patties with wintergreen oil (also sporradically) in the spring and early summer mostly.
For the most part, I've been feeling ok about mites - drops aren't big and ofcourse I've got the SBB so "bye bye mites".
Yesterday I pulled honey off the Blackwatch parent (we name our hives, not our queens) and there was some drone brood at the bottoms of the super frames. Husband was totally bummed - I said let's cut the brood out and extract the rest - good opportunity to check for mites. Well sure as heck, mites. Pretty much one per cell on 7 of ten cells.
Holy mackanoly we started to FREAK.
We went back into the hive and tore them totally apart. Powdered sugared every frame (caught and set aside the queen). Released her back in once the sugaring was done. Put back on the supers. Boy were they confused. It took several hours for them to settle back in.
So today cooler heads still have not prevailed. I got more shelf paper and put in boards on 4 hives around noon. At 4pm I went to Lowes and bought a fogger (had mineral oil on hand from my beeswax handcream projects of last winter).
Reading all the posts on Beesource like crazy.
I've got no thymol but I do have tons of essential oils around (wintergreen, lemongrass, peppermint, eucalyptus) but there was too much debate about supers on plus thymol/essential oils so I punted and went for straight FGMO fog - 4 seconds per hive. This was in the drizzle - solid rain last night and off and on all day - I thought good - bees are mostly all in the hives.
Fogged all of the full hives.
I checked the boards that I'd put in about 3 hours earlier in each of the 4 hives before fogging - all had several 3-6 mites in 3 hours. (including Blackwatch which I'd sugared the day before). I put boards in the ones that didn't already have them before fogging. I plan to check and post mite counts tomorrow noontime for 24 drop on the first 4, the remainders 4pm.
What did I do wrong? What did I do right?

[Sundance]

First..... relax. I would suggest adding
thymol to the FGMO from now on. Iddee on
the board has it in 50 gram packets that
go into a liter of FGMO.

I would be careful with essential oils
myself. Not that they are bad mind you,
just go slowly.

I would try the thymol strips/pads for
the immediate issues as sugar will not
cut it if you have a heavy load.

After brood is done I use oxalic acid
on troubled hives. Very effective and
super cheap.

Monitor your mite drop over a couple of
days to get a good average as well.

[Sundance]

And PS....... Have you considered small
cell foundation for the brood nest??? ;)

[Maine_Beekeeper]

Hi Bruce -
thanks for the post and calming words.
Yes, I've considered small cell for brood nest. One of my nucs is on small cell and I have a box of 50+ sheets of foundation. In reality, it is hard to regress unless that is the plan in the early spring (which it wasn't then but is now)- and even then is tough I'm sure.
Almost perfect husband is resisting me on this - I say small cell just starter strips (per MB) and he says the frames will be "wonky" and terrible to manage. I say "let's run a hive on medium supers (per MB) and he says sure when you get a new package next spring but I don't want any more bees "from away" and ps. all the bees/brood we have now are on full deeps so we can't just move them over that easy.
I read the internet and Beesource. He reads books and Bee Culture Magazine.
On a totally unrelated note, I've got to say if nothing else keeping bees has strengthened our marriage as we've always got something to talk about that we're both really interested in.