This summer has been so hot I haven't been able to use the Formic Acid I wanted to use when I first saw mites on my girls.
I got a whole new colony this spring because the one from last year froze during a really brutally cold winter; and this one is far more gentle. Not quite as productive, but really friendly to work with, and they calm down very quickly.
But I saw mites in July, and I started dusting them all with powdered sugar every time I went in, and I even went into the hive a couple of extra times just to dust them and make sure they got a good coating with the stuff, and my mite counts have actually gone down. Right when they were rocketing up on the colony that died of them.
So I'm convinced it's an effective treatment, never mind the study and the hundreds of hives they did in the study that said the same thing... *laughs* I'm actually seeing it work with my own two eyes and it's amazing to not find deformed young bees in the deeps, to not see any mites on the field workers throughout the supers, and to find the mite drops on my sticky board at the bottom of the hive go *down* significantly over the summer.
So simple and so harmless. Not that easy to do, as it requires going in a lot more often, and that's actually been good for my beekeeping skills, just doing it more makes it easier to do.
I also pulled two medium supers of capped frames today. All full up and ready to go for when my brother-in-law and his wife get here to help with spinning the honey.
