Scott - Maqs? What happened to your OA?
Because OA doesn't penetrate the capped brood which is where most of the problem is. Formic Acid kills the mites in the capped brood and then the bees go in and clean the dead mites out.
Formic Acid for warm weather when there is capped brood, especially drone brood.
OA in the late fall and/or late winter when there is no capped brood. I did an OA in early January and got a 1,000 mite kill. Kept checking my sticky boards all thru the swarming, no mites.
According to Apis, all of the swarming I had this spring prevented mites, I don't understand that, but I know I haven't had a single mite until now. So treatment is eminate. Then I continue to check the sticky boards all summer.
GLOCK - I don't have it in me to kill a cups worth of bees to get a mite count, and I don't like messing with the sugar shake. Not only that, for this year and all the swarming, I don't have the bee count to loose any at this time.
I'll have to find the math equation that Randy Oliver suggested to use for sticky board mite count. Seems it's 10 mites on the sticky board, 100 in the hive, and that's not count within the capped brood. That's too many for me
