47 mites

Cathy was visiting from Lexington and took a look into the hive with me on the 19th. A sunny day after several foggy days. Calm and in the low 60's. The girls were calm and we saw the queen in the lower brood box.
Honey report: there were 4 frames of capped honey in the top super and 6 in the middle super. (The middle super was heavy enough to make it difficult to lift.) Some of the honey seemed clear, as if made from sugar syrup and the rest of the frames had darker honey of various shades. I wondered if there is enough honey for the winter and if I should stop feeding them. I emailed Ian, and he replied "Sounds like you are on top of the feed situation but might want to cut back on the syrup feeding so the queen can have a rest from egg laying." So I filled the feeder for the last time. Next time I go into the hive I'll remove the feeder and leave the Vivaldi box on as the top cover.
Brood: I took a brief look in the brood box, mainly to find the queen for Cathy. There were two frames with brood and larvae; there may have been 1 or 2 more but I didn't look. The drone frame had some drawn cells, no larvae or capped cells. This is as expected since all my sources say that in the fall and winter no drones are raised. A few cells had a small amount of clear nectar or sugar syrup. I removed it and put back the frame with drawn comb.
Powdered sugar treatment: I had made a new sticky board from a plastic sheet used for fluorescent ceiling lights. We sifted powdered sugar over the hive with the top super off. A little over an hour later, I took out the sticky board and counted the mites. They were alive and kicking their little legs and trying unsuccessfully to crawl through the sugar, vaseline and debris. There were 47!
Varroa report and Jeremy Rose: Jeremy Rose is the author of Beekeeping in Coastal California. This book is written for this climate and has a month by month tutorial. It also includes photos of local plants and tells their relative importance to bees. For example, poison oak is a major nectar source in March-May. He also includes a section on Varroa control, so I emailed him regarding treating my hive. 47 mites seemed like a lot, most sources say to treat if the count is over 50 and two beekeepers in the beekeepers guild had advised to treat if one has only a single hive, but still I'm not thrilled about treating with any chemicals. Formic acid has been recommended and is non-toxic. He wrote back within hours, "47 mites is enough to treat the hive. Keep in mind that if you treat once you will probably always have to treat periodically". Naturally, my curiosity was piqued by the second sentence, so I asked him why. His response, "treating does something to make the mites reproduce more aggressively. Sugar dusting would probably be effective for you. You would need to do it weekly for maybe the next 4 weeks in order to bring the mite levels down". A bit unscientific, but good enough for me to not use formic acid or a different miticide. Back to Costco for sacks of powdered sugar!