Minimal Varroa - now what?

[match]

I've just completed my summer varroa count, with good results - a daily mite drop of around 1.5 for the hives in my apiary. I think this is probably due to some of the hives superseding more than once, meaning a break in the brood cycle and no chance for varroa to get a good foothold.

So the question is - what to do now?

I could treat in Autumn with Apistan (no resistance here... yet)
I could treat with Oxalic Acid trickle in the winter
I could do both
I could do nothing

I'm currently leaning towards using oxalic only - I feel that if I don't have a bad infestation then using miticides is overkill. But I'm happy to take any alternative views!

 

[victor meldrew]

I would hold back on the apistan/bayvoral !
My reasoning being, the less you use these products the longer it will take for resistant mites to build up in numbers, this will leave you with a still effective magic bullet should you come across a heavily infested stock ?. For the time being at least.

John Wilkinson

 

[MJBee]

Apiguard (thymol) after the supers have been removed followed by oxalic trickle just after New Year works for me. The thymol gets the winter bees into the winter with a minimal varroa load then the oxalic during a broodless period sets the colony up for a good start in the spring.
Mike

 

[jon]

I am in a similar situation with a low mite count and I think I will go with oxalic or nothing this year.
I will do some careful mite counting in September before I decide.
there is a lot of speculation about wax contamination causing problems and Apistan is one of the main beekeeper provided sources of this.