This is my first year beekeeping also. About a month ago, I started seeing bees with DWV. Not a lot at first. I also began to see bees doing burial flights with pupae that had been pulled from their cells. At the time, I had a 48 hour drop count of 61. I couldn’t really find any definitive answer you can hang your veil on for the million dollar question….What is the threshold? Since my bees seem to have good hygienic behavior, I decided to observe and prepare to treat if necessary. I “hoped” they could manage the pest without my intervention…yeah, wishful thinking. I monitored drop counts periodically to see if things changed. Drop counts did actually decrease to 20-25 for a 24 hour period. But…I began to see a daily increase in the number of bees with DWV on the ground and pupae being flown off. I decided to go ahead and begin the first round of treatments with HopGuard on the 8/26 and have monitored the drop count daily since beginning. Tomorrow I’ll insert the second round of strips. Being my first ….and only hive, I was concerned that if I didn't step in things were going to get ugly. :-\
Round 1 Mite Counts
Day 1 – 270
Day 2 – 160
Day 3 – 25
Day 4 – 22
Day 5 – 16
Day 6 - 19
Richard