Lots of honey and few mites

I went into the hive today. It was warm, clear and calm. My plan today was to 1) check the honey supply; 2) see if there was much/any brood, and if there was, put the drone frame in again for mite control; and 3) treat with powdered sugar.
First some explanation. The bees need honey to get through the winter when the honey flow is over and to raise brood in the spring. On my last check, there was only one frame of capped honey, not nearly enough, so I started feeding again. Today, I hefted the boxes, and they felt heavy. In the top super, there were 4 frames of capped honey and honey being made in two others. In the middle supper were several (6? I don't remember even though I counted them). There was even some in the brood box. So it looks like my girls have enough stores. I'll continue to feed them this month or until they stop taking the syrup.


There was talk of varroa control again at the last beekeepers guild meeting. My beekeeping books also recommend treating if needed at this time of year. I'm still trying to decide what the best approach is. Two experienced keepers said that if a keeper has only one hive, he should treat. Keepers with many hives expect to lose one third each year. So I figured I should treat... or maybe do another sugar roll count and be guided by that... or just go ahead and treat with formic acid (as Ian suggested). So I went online to Scientific Beekeeping. This guy is referred to often at the Beekeepers Guild and seems to know what he's talking about. In one of his articles he tells of the one-two punch of using drone frame and dusting with powdered sugar. This method appeals to me because it's non-toxic and inexpensive. In the brood box, I saw my beautiful queen bee as well as a couple of frames of brood. So I took out one frame of drawn comb and put the drone frame in. I'll take it out in 4 weeks. That's the comb on the right. It's now in the freezer for a couple of days to kill any wax moth eggs or larvae and then will be stored in a sealed bag for future use.
Next came the sugar treatment. In the picture at top is my equipment for this endeavor. First I made a sticky board. At Staples, I found a sheet of white foam board. I thought this might be work as well as Masonite. I cut a piece to fit into the beetle trap tray and made a 1" grid with a sharpie. I smeared it with vaseline to catch the mites. The plan was to sift 2 cups of powdered sugar over the frames, wait an hour and then do a mite count.
Here's what went wrong. The foam board was sitting in the sun and warped, so when I put it in, it scraped against the edge of the hive and the screen bottom. I forgot to put it in until after I sifted the sugar on. When I took it out, it again scraped on the bottom of the hive, taking off a fair amount of vaseline. I used the spatula to clean off the screen the best I could. It also spilled powdered sugar on the stand, which was being avidly eaten by many bees not from my hive. They will probably be back looking for more or to rob for several days. (I have read in Biology of the Honeybee that bees will remember where there was good foraging for many days and will return daily until the nectar (or powdered sugar) is gone. Perhaps a future blog will tell more of the things I have learned about bees.)
When I examined the sticky board, including the blobs of vaseline/sugar/pollen that I scraped off the screen, I found a total of 3 mites. This is very good, I think.