Cornell University’s NYS Beekeeper Tech Team released a report showing that the state of the New York’s beekeepers are being overwhelmed by varroa mites in 2016. A full 90% of colonies sampled had the parasitic pests.
The economic threshold is when an insect’s population level and/or the extent of crop damage at which the value of the crop — in this case, honey production — destroyed exceeds the cost of controlling the pest.