Hey All,
Sure, I'm a first year beekeeper, but I really want to do things as organically as possible. I've started already this season moving my girls to small cell, and used essential oils in their feed. They have screened bottom boards, and I used drone comb to check for and destroy mites (I found only 5 in a whole frame of drone comb).
A couple of powered sugar shakes resulted in no mites at all, so by and large, I think the numbers were very low. Next year, I'd like to either buy small cell packages, or organically raised bees, or similar.
I'm curious if anyone else is trying this path.