The biggest problem currently (that we can affect in our hives) is mites!
Small hive beetle
Varroa mites
Tracheal mites
I hate mites. What are your best methods to knock down their numbers?

From what I understand if you can keep your varroa mites in check everything else shouldn't be a problem. I keep hearing good things about oxalic acid it's a organic treatment and from what I understand you can do it while your honey supers are on. From what I understand the best way to apply is with a vaporizer they say not to do the dribble method.

Opend my hive today and had some drone brood cross comb. So I ripped it out and decided to take some brood apart to see if there were any mites it wasn't a big piece only about 10 brood cells. I found three mites in one cell. I guess it's time to do a real mite count.

3 mites in 10 cells? Time to get out the mineral oil fumigator and add 12 drops of wintergreen per 16oz of food grade mineral oil.

I use formic acid USDA approved organic. The mite away II strips are easy to do. We also incorporate screen bottom boards, powder sugar dusting before we put honey supers on and Drone comb that gets switched out every 20 days.
Here you also need to feed syrup in the spring and in the fall with Fumigillan B for Nosema Creana control.

We also had a problem with some of our bee yards next to big farms with contaminated pollen from GMO corn and Beans.

Use the Beltsville Maryland Bee Lab if in doubt what caused your bees to die. It is a free service.

Al

@trailtwister Thanks for the info on sending the dead bees to see what killed them. I wish I would have known about that when mine died.

@homeshow I just bought a oxalic acid vaporizer. I don't plan on using it till fall and then again in the spring

I imagine everyone is aware of this:

Pesticides damage survival of bee colonies, landmark study shows: https://www.theguardian.com/en...

I'm sorry if it's been posted previously. I just ran across it today.