Great thread idea, HP! I read this on HoneyBeeSuite.com when I was in my research phase and it has guided me ever since. It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the beekeeping techniques that there are, especially as a newbee, but this cleared the whole floor for me.
"spend your first year learning everything you can about the two species you will be raising in your hives: honey bees and Varroa mites. By 'everything' I mean biology, life cycles, population dynamics, and the interaction between these two housemates."
Somewhere else on her website, and I can't seem to find it at the moment, she says, "Learn about bees, not beekeeping". As a beginner I felt that I was drowning in all the options, but biology was something I could do. By learning about how bees work and what bees do, I felt like I was able to understand the "why" of the bees' behavior and the beekeeping techniques, which enabled me to problem-solve with no prior experience or hands-on mentoring. It was much less daunting, and a more direct route of educating myself, to learn what the bees need and to figure out how I personally could best provide it, than to learn the different mechanics of the methods people use to provide for their bees without truly understanding why.