what mite count is acceptable?

[honeyshack]

I am not sure about the most of the treatments
I believe with Apivar you need to keep supers off for 14d
With formic, you can treat if you remove the supers, however the day you remove, you can replace the the supers BUT you have to wait 14d to pull honey. Reason...formic is regularly found in honey, just not that quanity
http://pr-rp.pmra-arla.gc.ca/PR_SOL/...1?p_ukid=10582
This website is from the gov group which registers pest products

Please scroll down to page two, directions of use

[MichelinMan]

Well I'm not sure if Cincinatti is similar to Ontario, but in Ontario we treat following these thresholds:


Threshold guidelines for varroa mite levels in May and August.
Note: Treatment levels have been lowered from previous recommendations.
Treat when varroa is greater than or equal to the following:

Monitoring Method: Ether Roll
Number of Varroa Mites in May: 1 mite/100 bees
Number of Varroa Mites in August: 2 mites/100 bees

Monitoring Method: Alcohol Wash
Number of Varroa Mites in May: 2 mites/100 bees
Number of Varroa Mites in August: 3 mites/100 bees

Monitoring Method: Sticky Board
Number of Varroa Mites in May: 9 mites/24hr drop
Number of Varroa Mites in August: 12 mites/24hr drop


I think the theory is based on the premise that a sticky board captures 3% of the mites (by natural death or groomed off). So for every 3 mites that lands on the sticky board there are 97 other mites in the hive. So if you have 40 mites on the board then there is almost 1300 mites in the hive!

[Karen Amelia]

Well, I ordered some Apiguard (sounds like the Thymomite strips would be preferable but I didn't know about them in time) right away but I've got three full supers on each hive and am not yet ready to extract. Apiguard mfgr's recommendation is not to treat while honey filled supers are on hive, so this has convinced me to wait until mid July when I extract and then treat. I hope that the bees with the 40 mite count can suffer the mite burden until then.