So day 3 of the Hopguard II application. Checked the drop board again today and the #s have dropped substantially. Still hundreds of mites, but more centered on the drop board, directly under the brood frames, rather than covering the entire board. I would guess these are recently hatched varroa that were in brood cells.
Temps dropped substantially here overnight last night and today's high barely hit 60 with mostly cloudy skies all day. Sure glad I got the entrance reducer in and the drop board installed. Still haven't gotten the mouse screen in place because the bees have been bearding at the new reduced sized entrance. They did clean up the remaining honey off the frames I left out there for them so I brought them and the empty honey super in for storage. Found some dead yellow jackets too, so they must have gotten the bees pissed off. Anyway, with the lower temps and weather change, most of the bees should have stayed close to home today and therefore have better exposure to the strips.
If the drop # continues to decrease as it has, I will consider doing a 2nd treatment mid month to make sure and kill the ones who are coming out of brood cells. I'm hoping it will work as advertised over the 30 day period and continue to kill mites over the majority of that time. Since the mites enter the cells right before capping (day 6-8) and the worker emerges at day 21, if the strips work for at least 12-15 days of the 30, they should kill most of the mites that were out as well as those that hatch out with hatching brood, before they get a chance to re-enter new brood cells.
I'll update this over time so we can all learn.
mites 
. I will pull the board every day over the coming week to monitor progress.
. This shows the edge of the board so you can get a size perspective.
