When can I treat for varroa, and what would be best this time of year?

[mustrum]

I went to the bee yard and checked on my hives today. I have four hives, each in double deeps. Of the 4, 2 are booming, one is moderate, and the other only fair as it was a late season split. I noticed when cleaning off the white board beneath the weakest hive that there were a significant number of mites...maybe 50 or 60 in all. none of the others had any mites that I noticed. I treated all the hives with Apiguard in the late summer/ early fall, but this one seems to have a problem.

I have been considering using the MiteAway strips I have, as the temps have been in the 50's during the day (dropping to the 30's at night).

Should I treat this early? Should I treat ALL the hives to make sure I have a relatively low mite count going into build-up? SHould I use the miteaway strips (wonder if they cause a significant amount of die-off that would weaken the hives too much)...or should I wait until the temps are a little higher?

Would really appreciate some advice or insight here...

Thanks,

Joel

[Michael Bush]

You have a drop of 50 or 60 mites in winter. If that is within 24 hours that's fine. If it's in three months, that's great.

[BEES4U]

The unseen Varroa mites:

Calvin Robinson has a great video that shows the mites on capped drone cells.
The video has excellent clearity/resulution!
http://www.wncbees.org/pests/VarroaVideo.cfm

He shows 6, six Varroa mites within one capped drone cell!
Treat when you have double digit numbers!

[bluegrass]

Here is another good video, from HAS in Frankfort KY 2007
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9258595842918#

[sqkcrk]

Treat when you have double digit numbers!

And when temps are right for whatever product you use.

[cdanderson]

I know some people had issues but for me... MAQS worked fine. I used it during the hot summer (had 3 days of cloudy weather with temps below 92) but still very warm. I had no noticeable bee kill and no queen problems. That was my experience and may not be yours. If I was concerned about mites I probably would treat, do half and then the other half. This time of year, if you loose a queen you might not be able to get another ?