Laurence Edwards urges beekeepers to treat varroa mites now with amitraz strips like Apivar before winter. Use one strip per five frames of brood, placed between middle frames, with supers removed. He's seen no resistance to amitraz and says it works while you feed or requeen, unlike thymol or formic treatments.
This is a final shout out to anyone who is late with their varroa treatments this year. If you've not treated your colonies yet, get the honey off, take a strip like this. This is an Apivar strip, but you can use Apitraz as well. It is impregnated with a chemical called amitraz, which is a very effective miticide. I've not seen any resistance towards amitraz in my bees whatsoever. Really, really effective. All you do is you get one strip, you place it in between the middle of the frames of brood. You want to use one strip per 5 frames of brood. Not per 5 frames of bees, so have a look, see how many frames of brood that you've got, and pop the strip in like that. Really, really simple. You can't have supers on when you're doing this, but you can feed at the same time, and you can also requeen at the same time, which you cannot do using thymol or formic-based products. Don't leave it to luck over winter. Get a good quality, effective treatment in, and you will thank me in the spring when your bees come through the winter looking really, really strong.
