>O.K that all sounds great, the book made it sound like you were suposed to medicate every spring and fall.
Some people do. But do you take antibiotic so you won't get sick?
I've been keeping bees 31 years and I've never used fumidil, I used Terramycin twice, the first two years because I read the books and was afraid of AFB. I haven't used it for the last 29 years. I've never used menthol (used for tracheal mites). I've never used Checkmite (for Varroa). I did use Apistan three times and it failed the last time comletely because of Apistan resistance and I've never used it since. I used Paramoth (to keep wax moths out of stored combs) once and I couldn't stand the smell or the thought of it in my honey or my hives. IMO chemicals and pesticides don't belong in beehives.
Medicating is somethig you do for something that is sick. If you plan i right you shouldn't need to.
The problem with Varroa is, if you're using regular foundation (5.4mm cell size) and you don't do something from time to time, the Varroa will kill your hive. Your job is to monitor so you know when you need to do something and then you can decide if they need to be treated and then decide what you are willing to have in your hive or use drone trapping or powdered sugar or something on those lines. In the end, I'd try to get to natural cell size and when you monitor the mites and don't find any significant change in the numbers for a few years, you can quite worrying about the Varroa altogether.
