Mite Counting with Software- Looking Back

(written, but not published,in November 2020):

 

This year (2020) was the year I thought I'd finally get a handle on mite control, after many years (5 since it's been serious?) of trying pretty much everything I could to rein them in.  I have never found the "standard" serious treatments, MAQS, Formic-Pro, Apivar, Randy's OA towel method, or OA "by the book" to be that effective.  Even when used multiple times during the year (and of course, OA always in winter). I still see exploding populations. Consistently, when I have had dead outs, despite the treatments,  autopsies show high infestations of capped cells - 60% sometimes. Its like I have "power mites".

Last year I bought a Provap, which has been a great tool for applying OA. I usually (though not now) run 35 to 40 hives, and speed and efficiency is essential. So having this tool, and having no real evidence of any negative affects of OA on hives (not at all like formic!), I decided to treat 1x on a schedule- and do this monthly, or closer, to be able to more accurately track increases, and any jumps. If I found an increase above a certain threshold, (and this site mitecalculator.com has a terrific calculator for synchronizing mite drop counts from OA with counts from (say) an alcohol wash- really a great tool) , then I'd do engage in a full course of treatments.

However, where I live, midway through May we get a flow, then about June 1 we get another one, and so for about 6 weeks there's no real opportunity to treat with OA without having supers on. And I think those weeks turned out to be critical. In retrospect- and for next year - a FP treatment would be ideal then.

What I saw was massive increases in maybe a fifth of my hives, which eventually spread to others as the summer progressed.I intensely provapped right after I pulled the supers- 3-4 grams a shot, every 4 days, 4x in a row. Then again, waiting for a drop and control in the count. No luck. The mites kept coming in, even doubling over a week. Migration? Natural growth? I'm not sure.

My thoughts on this are various, and evolving.  But now it's November, and I'm still dealing with it. 

OA opens a window to a world I never see otherwise- each treatment is a mite count, and a view into what's happening in a hive.

But this post is about counting mites.

Counting mites is tedious, of course. Especially in infested hives,  It's hard to know for sure how they get this way, despite attention and regular treatments, but its essential to me that eventually I have a better understanding of it.


So I photographed the boards, but then amped up the contrast, and tweaked the saturation so the mites were really obvious, inserted the image into AutoCAD, and dropped a red mite symbol on each one.

Then I just clicked a button to report  how many, and also made a dramatic image of the drop. Which was not, by any means, random- but there were patterns.

Here is what I did- a closeup of  a photo where there are lots of mites:

But here is what the full sheet looks like when every mite get tagged in bright red. This is a really bad infestation - not stopped despite a lot of OAV treatments.

What are area seeing here? For one- patterns. Obvious densities in some areas, and not others. Which makes sense- mites drop from where the brood is above. But also- at this density- a massing of mites on the lower, and right border. What's with that?

I rarely see this, an it looks to me like a movement, not a drop. At the lower border, against the sidewall, one would expect very little brood, just stores above- yet there is a high density of mite. Did they drop half dead and walk there to get back up in the hive? Same at upper right? 

The blue lines I added after- to indicate the alignment of the seams. You can see that this had very little impact on how mites dropped- which suggests very much that they didn't drop dead- but moved. When debris drops- it drops in lines- these mites aren't doing that.

The count here- in mid August- was 2748 mites. I can't recall how much after treatment this was. But that's an astounding number- and exponential jump.

Reading through this in March 2021, I know that despite efforts, I still don't know how to solve this problem (does anyone?) . The hive above, oddly, is I think still alive (there were some combinations involved so I am not sure if its the same queen). But plenty of others are not.

Painting these in red pops out the facts- and allows an easy count. Not that I recommend doing so- this is more about getting a visual feeling of how bad it really is. It is.