Hello Everyone,
   I am a new beekeeper this year in the San Francisco bay area and am becoming active in my local club in which many members are treatment free advocates.   I would like to try to encourage a different approach to treatment free beekeeping within my club which is for a hive that appears varroa or disease succeptible that rather than let that hive die, to treat once with one of the non-pesticide treatments such as MAQS or thymol, and requeen preferably with one from local "survivor" queen, with the hopes of averting dead out varroa factories.   I would like to suggest the idea that single treatment followed by requeening is treatment free, the single treatment does not purpetuate the existing genetic line and is simply a way to provide a platform to change the hive genetics more efficiently than hive death.  After 2 months or less any treated bee or brood will be gone and the hive is for all intents and purposes is a new one.

My question is at what point in the year would such a strategy be best employed if one wanted to balance the concepts of both "treatment free beekeeping" and aggresive requeening to get there.   My intial thought is when one does a mite check on Aug 15th.  My personal approach is the IPM strategy outlined by Randy Oliver.   I appologize in advance if this has been covered previously, or if this ends up being contentious... 

Thank you,  Mark

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