>I'm attempting to rally against the attitude of defeatism that I'm hearing
from this group.

No defeatism here!

We have had many years of using only soft, minimal treatment with thymol crystals and no monitoring other than recording deformed wings and noting mites in drone brood ; we do not breed from those colonies.  Now we very rarely see a deformed wing and I cannot remember the last time that I saw a varroa mite.

We must give bees the opportunity to develop resistance.

Best wishes

Peter 
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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