Things have definitely changed in mite treatments. First is was put two strips (apistan) in per year. Then came resistance and it went to checkmite and IPM don't treat if a mite count doesn't go above a certain number.
Now it's three mites per hundred is the treatment number and since that almost guaranteed to be found treat anyway.
Whenever it seems we get a handle on them they throw us a curve. Thirty years ago I never imagined I would be studying up of bee viruses and mites. Heck, who knew bugs get viruses?

Lost 80% of my hives last spring.
Built the hives back up by splitting the remaining hives and adding mated bought queens to the queen less hives that were split.Managed to get 800 pounds of honey.
I only ever treated in August with Apilifevar till last spring.All surviving colonies got an April when the daytime temps were in the 70S of Mite away strips, then again in August with Apilifevar.
Had 33 nucs,and 17 full sized hives going into this Winter,All made it through the Winter,but 2 full sized hives were weak but with laying queens.
Put one weak hive in a nuc box, and the other got robbed out.
Moving 4 double decker nucs to full sized hives today.

Mites, number one enemy.

As for furred critters if you're in bear country electric fencing, the stronger the better, is a must. Only other furred trouble is skunks. They pester the bees at night scratching at the entrance and eating bees that respond. They can irritate colonies to the point of making them hard to work to even weakening or depopulating colonies. Easily remedied by placing hives on high stands out of reach or using barriers at the hive entrances like bird spikes or carpet strips. Mice can be a problem in the winter, they make mouse guards just for this. Cheap fix is to move your queen excluders (metal) to the bottom board in the fall.

Feathered critters rarely cause major issues but both turkeys and guineas travel in flocks and have good appetites. Most other poultry/fowl don't bother bees and chickens around and under the hives actually helps as they eat small hive beetles.
Occasionally a flycatcher like kingbirds or pheboes will set up shop but they don't eat enough to be damaging. Martins are accused of eating bees but I just don't see it. There may be issues at queen rearing operations though.

BTW, bears and skunks aren't after the honey (carbs) they eat the brood mostly (protein).

Honey is a great coon bait though coons won't brave the wrath of the bees to get it.

I am doing the hippie thing of no treating as stated to not do above. But, really I am treating just not with chemicals......I brood break, select for resistance etc. Listen to 10 bee keepers and you will get 20 answers. Read, learn, and apply, re-apply, diagnose and improve.

NRA, there is a lot of money in bee keeping - you might as well put some of yours in too!! All kidding aside it's very rewarding to work with your bees...

I've been keeping bees for about 5 years now, finally overwintered my first hive.

Last year I got my 4th package & was given a swarm from a friend. The package made it, the swarm did not.

I learned much more last year than I did the prior 3 by comparing each hive to one another, that and I also leaned on the couple I got my swarm from for some advice and ideas I had. As someone else said, ask 20 people and you'll get 20 opinions. Heck, they might all work but you gotta pick one and go, not ponder which one for 3 weeks and miss the boat, i quit doing that. I get some sound advice from reputable sources & bounce those ideas off one person.

If I had any advice it would be this - It's expensive, order enough equipment ahead of time so that you can add boxes and frames as the colony grows, anticipating growth ahead of time is much better than realizing it too late and ordering equipment.

Same goes for mites, buy formic acid with your initial package. Formic, Apivar & Oxylic acid seem to be the big three. 2 being organic & the apivar synthetic (Correct me if i'm wrong) combine to lower the risk of resistance. I've tried some of the hippy methods, they didn't work & i'm not interested in losing bees and spending $120 bucks a package.

I was lazy with my mite checks in years past but it's become evident that they're likely the number one reason I was losing hives. I was dillengent about checking mites with a sugar rolls (Alcohol wash is more accurate) and I treated when necessary.

So, let me summarize.

1. Buy a book and read reputable online resources. I highly recommend http://scientificbeekeeping.com/ Randy Oliver does his research correctly & thoroughly. He's been in business for decades for a reason.
2. Join your local club & admit you know nothing & get a mentor. clubs also often have a loaner extractor, bottling bucket & other essential tools for extraction.
3. Order what you need for 1 or two hives ahead of time. Don't get sucked into the novelty garbage. Veil, hive tool, smoker & I like those grippers to pull frames out of the hive. That's what I used 95% of the time. Kitchen dish gloves work fine if you want to protect your hands
4. Get in there every week and check things out. You cant be in it for honey the first year, you need to learn. If you do not learn, no honey for you next year.

I'll reiterate that the club to folks helped me considerably. hearing what works and didn't work from back yard keepers like me & what worked and didn't work for commercial folks. This year I plan to be more active in the club as well and participate in the club hive inspections every other week or so. I want to learn, experience is the best teacher.

Oh, by the way, it is WAY cheaper than trapping. Every coon I kill costs me 25 bucks to tan. Every pound of honey I collect PAYS me 8 bucks. I don't need a truck to drive from one end of my property to the other to do a "Hive Check" Daily either. I already know they're there

A lot of "naturalists" hobby bee keepers are really just Mite Farmers, but they don't know it. If their bees are within flying distance to your bees, it becomes more real (and angering). IF you're going to be a mite farmer, don't start. You are just causing problems for your neighbor bee keeper. Every University that has a bee lab says to TREAT your bees. With how "natural" most Universities are, I think this says something. Our local University bee lab recommends 3 times per year.

I do know a guy who brood breaks and says he does well, however. Not sure how "well" is, though.

I've found a good percentage of the Local bee keeping assoc's fall under these Naturalists. Take what they say with a grain of salt.

YouTube has thousands of hours of great info....many from commercial bee keepers who have to do things right. Not that some of the hobbyists don't have it figured out, too, but there seems to be a difference in thoughts at times between the two. Kind of like trappers I guess.

I think the 20 bee keepers/20 different opinions has gone by the wayside a bit. I "think" this craft has become more unified over the years. You just can't screw up as much as you could in the past. Mainly in regards to parasites and disease control. The big shots and universities are finally starting to call people out onto the carpet it seems.

Best investment I made was to buy a new TV with a Roku box so I could watch YouTube bee vids on my couch. I"ve watched hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of bee keeping vids over the years. It beats regular TV and per time invested you get much more info per minute than a book or an assoc meeting.

That said, it's addicting....and a real nice/relaxing hobby for those of us who are aging past the fast cars, fast life age.

Good point on the associations, they vary greatly. If you're fortunate like I am you may have several in your area. I'm past president of Henry County, current vice president of Potato Creek (Spalding County). There's a club in Fayette County and Clayton County as well as Rockdale, Fulton and Coweta. These are all adjoining counties on the south side of Atlanta and all within an hour of me. All the adjoining counties north of Fulton have clubs as well and I believe Fulton may have two. South of me is a club in Bibb/Macon 45 minutes away. All but Fayette are also affiliated clubs of the State Association.
Each club is autonomous to persue however they want to operate. Fayette has chosen to go it alone (and I assume partake in hippy dippy nonsense since they keep buying new bees every year for some reason). Coweta seems to be more structured and cooperative promoting their own "Coweta Method" of beekeeping that involves queen rearing and overwintering nucs similar to what Palmer in Vermont does. Clayton aka Tara Bee Club is the mother and grandmother club to all these being the oldest in central Georgia. Henry seems to want to be a teaching club catering to the new beekeeper, fortunately there's enough old hands on board to counter the non sense. Potato Creek I'm sad to say hasn't found its footing yet and is as much a social club as anything else.
Henry's meeting is tonight and they're starting a new early mentoring (Q&A) meeting tonight at 6 before the regular meeting at 7 where we'll have Bruce Morgan of Sparta GA (Dr Jamie Ellis' father-in-law) speaking on his 25 years in beekeeping. Afterwords is a Board of Directors meeting that I get to sit in on in an advisory capacity as past president. But they don't need it as I think they're doing just fine without us past officers meddling.

yes, the natural wild bees are mite farmers and they too just don't know it...........so don't forget to treat them.........oh, I guess you don't need to if you have your own airspace for your bees and make sure they don't allow any feral bees in your hives ever - so you best paint them all pink too

On the serious side - I have had good results with Mn Hygienic Queens. They seem to do what I want.

The ferals are indeed mite factories. There's no way around that. What I am seeing in ferals that survive longer than three seasons is behavioral differences that seem to allow toleration of mites or moderate mite reproduction to a tolerable level.

Small broodnests (can overwinter in a single deep only)
Limited brood producton shutting down quickly on a dearth (I've seen colonies go nearly brood less here from June to august)
Hygienic traits pulling brood
Heavy propolis (I've had entire entrances sealed)
Consistent swarming (one tree I know swarmed three times in ten days)

None of the above are conducive to large honey crops. If you can live with it fine but most of us can't. I love my little brown bombers (they head butt) but I gave up on feral stock/survivor about three years ago.

Oh, and it's the rare feral colony that's makes it into its fifth season.

i'm not sure how many ferals made it thru the big crashes of tracheal and varroa in these parts back in the day. most of the folks that had bees back then pretty much decided there were few if any ferals really left and what was found in trees, chimney, etc were just escapees from commercial colonies given that the southern and western part of the state is pretty much migratory pollination. historically isolation has helped some areas have less issues with mites than others and parts of this state are pretty isolated so i can see feral bees making it in the UP or pockets of the northern lower.

many of us here were involved in collecting components of survivor stock that usda used in creating vsh. over a decade thru 90's into 2006-2007 I messed with alot of survivor stock (none of which came from ferals but all from commercial colonies) and I'd say the small populations/brood nests were the most common theme. In the early days we crossed alot of survivor lines by way of insemination and many of those daughter colonies still exhibited that same trait even after open mating. i believe some of the folks like seeley have more recently documented high swarming in feral colonies but 20+ years ago we didnt actually see much swarming with those colonies at least compared to some of the other colonies. in fact, most of the survivors never really built up to a point that they would excessively (repeatedly) swarm or produce a crop for that matter but swarming was a common theme with russian hybrids and eventually the most of the more well known treatment free folks mixed that into their stock. and as vsh trait has been spread out enough to get into the general population at a level thats at least high enough to keep some of them alive for awhile I think bigger populations and swarming have become a little more common in the survivor type stock at least around here. but thats just a local observation in grand scheme of things.

Guess I'm a hippie too. Only kept bees for three years now. But my " mentor " has been keeping bees since the 70's. So all this required mite treatment is news to me based on how he has taught me. I'm on a facebook group and they say the same thing about needing to treat mites.

Not saying y'all are wrong. Maybe there are different ways of doing things depending on what you are trying to do long term.

Im glad this bee keeping thing is not like trapping . everyone agrees on everything. lol.


maybe just keep buying my honey and go by one of the local guys with bees and get stung 7 or 8 times a year and all will be good. LOL

Tell me more about spring treatment. I just installed 3 packages about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Things are starting to bloom here so I assumed flow was starting and a spring treatment wasn’t a good idea.

If you're in a very cold area, GET RUSSIANS. I'm in MI and I can't keep Italian alive to save my life, my Russians were my only survivors this year. They are super aggressive though. They're also resistant to mites but I treat anyways.

Hey BullOx----also seems to me that italian style bees struggle here in this day and age. one of the upsides to them is that they can be a good starting point for a new beekeeper as they do tend to be a little friendlier than some bees (like your russians). and before the arrival of tracheal and varroa they were actually pretty common in these parts. however often times they arent as inclined to have some of the characteristics we might consider more common in northern style bees like heavy propolis & burr comb or quietness on comb during winter. probably where they struggle most is that they do a poor job of regulating to the weather---they lay later into the year when others have long shutdown which in theory gives them winter bees but it also puts them into winter with giant hungry clusters and a varroa population that keeps expanding compared to others. sometimes you can help the cause by leaving them lots of winter stores and that will get them to the next year but they normally are laying well before others by late winter early spring. if the weather works in their favor in the spring they will be fine BUT if not they brood up, run out of everything stored, dont bother to shutdown when nothing is coming in and croak in spring. also keep in mind that unless you are buying new queens to replace everything each spring eventually you get a mix of genes with some traits showing up more than others from swarming, supercedure, etc. a bee like the old minnesota hygienic has plenty of italian style traits but still did good up here.

where did you get your russians? i used some a long long time ago when they were first released. the first generation daughters didnt combine nicely with my bees at that time so i got away from them but i did like some of their traits that seemed to eventually get passed along by their drones.

I personally either use the above Oxalic acid vaporized or Apivar strips in the spring. Apivar strips come in a 10 pak and once opened they are activated....so if you can't use all 10 strips, you are wasting money I guess. Apivar stays in the hive for a minimum of 42 days....56 days max. Not to be used when supers are on for honey consumption (bee consumption is fine) Take strips out a week or two before adding human consumption honey supers. One strip for up to 5 frames of bees....so with a package you'll only need one strip per package.

Maybe try the Saskatraz's. I'm having good luck with them...and they don't chase you down the street.

But like anything, Once a northern bee...the will be raised in Calif now....and how hardy is anything out of calif? I/m done buying junk Calif bees. I've found my best luck to do a walk away split with my best overwintered northern hives. In the right conditions, they make really nice queens all on their own. Some of my best queens came through walk away over wintered splits. Easy, cheap and about 75% effective per split/Queen on the first attempt.

those california hybrid saskatraz do show plenty of vigor. Overall they seem decent at the moment and winter doesnt seem to bother too bad from locals are saying. But probably the best benefit off them is the drone stock they provide unless you get your hands on pure breeder that you can open mate to what you want