Recent mite drop counts - your thoughts?

Very briefly - I have two Apimaye hives which have removable debris trays - cleaned and replaced on 14th March - checked both and estimated mite drop of about 7/day/hive after 14 days. Treated 1 hive with Hiveclean (i forgot to do the other) and cleaned the trays - next day 1 tray had about 70 dead varroa; the untreated hive had 5; recleaned, replaced; after three more days (today); the treated hive had another 100 plus or so dead varroa; the untreated maybe 25.

So - assuming 10,000 bees/hive currently and 1 varroa/bee and no new varroa being added at the moment - this implies at least 2% of the treated bees had varroa. Does anyone have any idea what sort of kill I might have achieved and what sort of infestation level I had and may still have now. I'm going to do the other hive ASAP if the weather looks OK - but any comments or other advice? I started 2013 so am still new.

You may get part of your answer from the Beebase varroa calculator http://www.nationalbeeunit.com/public/BeeDiseases/varroaCalculator.cfm

The other booklets worth reading are on this page

• Using Artificial Swarming for Varroa Control pdf
• Using Drone Brood Removal for Varroa Control pdf
• Using Integrated Pest Management for Varroa Control pdf
• Varroa Control Using Organic Acids pdf

Dead mites may have fallen from bees or could have already been dead, but in cells that are being cleaned out.

Hiveclean is not a recognised varroa treatment, the manufacturer makes no claims that it might be. Snippet from the website ...

BeeVital® HiveClean activates the purification of bee colonies. Honeybees will be regenerated by natural means and will produce good quality honey. HiveClean activates the natural cleaning instinct of the bees and keeps them strong and in proper condition. ... etc​

Natural mite drop can be a poor indicator of infestation even using the beebase calculator. Have you looked in yet? When you do try a sugar roll on some bees. That might give you a better idea. What treatment did the hives get last year?

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Colonies are now small, filling perhaps one box or less. What about brood frames, how many capped?

What ever, 70 killed mites is huge, because 500 mites are perhaps under brood caps.
When mites douple themselves in a month, in May mite number is over critical line.

One way is destroy all brood and then treat colonies with OA tricklng. That is harsh but ...