A simplified technique for counting Varroa jacobsoni Oud. on sticky boards

The most common method used to assess the level of mite infestation in a bee colony is to count all the mites that fall onto sticky boards placed on the bottom of a colony. Unfortunately, this is a laborious and boring task. Therefore, a stratified sampling technique was devised to accurately estimate the number of mites on sticky boards. The technique, when compared to a census count of all mites, resulted in a coefficient of determination of 0.97 or greater. The stratified sampling protocol in which we randomly selected 33% of the cells on a sticky board and did not choose new random numbers for each sticky board resulted in an accurate estimate of the number of Varroa jacobsoni. This technique gave a mean percent error of 0.4% ± 9.5% for any one estimate of a sticky board.