If you let the orchid with the "lice" just sit in the water, the lice will eventually drown. Watch them and you will see that they stop hopping around. That will "interrupt" their life cycle and you will be rid of them for awhile. Most orchids can take the soaking for the time it takes for the buggers to succumb.

If you are going to soak the pots to address the bug problem, I recommend adding a very small amount of plant-friendly soap in the water.
The soap will break down any protective oil coating on the insects and will make it much more difficult for them to survive the soaking.

Some bugs have a very good coating of protective oil that they just float up to the surface unharmed.

Here is a photo of fungus gnat larvae close up:

http://ipm.ncsu.edu/current_ipm/06PestNews/06News10/fung5a.jpg

There are bazillions of remedies for fungus gnats. Some work better than others. If you go to the houseplant forum, you can read lots of ideas. Personally, I would go with the mosquito dunk water, although I have never tried it on orchids, just in my birdbaths and ponds to control mosquito larvae - maybe some orchid expert can confirm if this would be OK. Bt (the stuff in the dunks) is a natural substance, not a poison, so may suit the "organic" in your name!

If they're not fungus gnat larvae, they may be springtails. Springtails are invisible until you water, and then they start jumping around. Springtails thrive in medium that is starting to break down, so this may be a sign that the plant needs repotting. Look for an insecticide that will eradicate springtails and use it once a week for about three weeks. Eradicate them before you repot or you will only give them a new home.

Thank you all for the info. I have been testing out my guess remedy of 3-4 dropperfuls of neem oil to a spray bottle of water on my other houseplants for about 3 weeks with good results. So I gently sprayed a little to the tops of the mix of the orchids in question. That was 2 nights ago, and have seen nothing since. This morning I gave them each their own pot to soak in and I watched very closely and I saw nothing move this time. There was never "jumping" just crawling.
Thanks for the heads up. I will repeat this process for several weeks.

Many insects lay eggs in the medium, so you might want to flush the medium a couple of times with the neem oil formula.

All this talk of water with fungus gnats is quite perilous. Remember that fungus gnat larvae NEED the water to stay alive. In the interior landscaping industry, the presence of gnats can occasionally be an indication of excessive watering. So instead of keeping it soaking wet with all the attempts at drowning them, I'd suggest you let the plants dry down for a few weeks. Or better yet, just repot the plant; get rid of their habitat. That should get rid of them, no muss no fuss no chemicals. the spraying the top of the medium with the neem oil is a very good idea, i believe that would suffocate both the adults and the larvae.

FYI: Fungus gnats don't hurt the plants. They get their name from the fact that they eat the fungus in the degrading soil. If you get enough of them, they may cause some problems to the plant. But you'd have to have a pretty bad infestation for that to happen. Other than that, they are mainly a human annoyance.

I am not positive that these are gnat larvae. It was an assumption that I made to connect the two as I have not had any other bug issues. The neem works wonders, it kills the adults on contact. I have done a load of repotting and that also has helped. The plants that I am sitting were really over watered and in need of fresh soil. I am light on the water myself but they have migrated their way into my plants all the same.
I did read somewhere that their larvae can eat up the roots of a plant which is why I got concerned for my 2 inchers.

Glad to hear the water treatment worked for you. I also will dunk a pot and spray the adults as they try to fly off with Safer insecticidal soap With the water at just below the level of the pot rim, I wait about five minutes till I see the small larve on the surface. They are probably 1/64 of an inch long and white in color. They seem to be able to twitch their body and jump around. I then spray the surface with Safer and all the movement stops within a few seconds. It has never seemed to hurt any of my orchids, I have about 55 of various species.