Varroa destructor is a dangerous pest directly for beekeeping and indirectly for crops that require insect pollination. The present investigation has been carried out to study the efficacy and persistence of some essential oils and formic acid against Varroa mite in colonies of Apis mellifera Linn. at Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. The number of dead/fallen mites on the thick white paper sheet at bottom of the hives was used to determine the mite mortality. The results revealed among seven treatments

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... pplied for Varroa mite control, Garlic oil (T2) treatment gave significantly superior results in reducing the Varroa mite population up to three weeks with an overall mean value of 75.03 per cent followed by formic acid giving 72.94 per cent mite mortality. The overall matricidal efficacy during the three weeks observation indicated that high persistence was observed in the garlic oil treatment with 29.69 fallen mites/hive after one week of treatment, 26.23 fallen mites/hive after two weeks of treatment and 18.33 fallen mites/hive after three weeks of treatment with mite mortality ranging from 76.00 to 76.73 per cent. The hives treated with tulsi oil, turmeric oil, ajwain oil, cinnamon oil, clove oil and formic acid also showed good persistence with mite mortality ranging from 56.85 to 75.03 per cent upto 3 weeks of the treatments.