I also wish for a treatment free beekeeping operation but realize that darwinian methods aren't going to get me there.  I therefore am advocating Randy Oliver's method (I think I got the gist of it correct) in that I allow my hives to go treatment free until.....   until they get to a dangerous threshold for the survival of the colony at which point they start getting treated for the presence of varroa.  The queens are replaced at an appropriate time with queens from hives which have shown more tolerance/resistance to the mites and the process is continued and the line of little resistance is eliminated.   

All that being said, as one who desires to teach and inform proper IPM, does anyone have a syllabus for teaching good IPM techniques to clubs and groups of beekeepers who would share such syllabus for me to use?   I hope I've been learning techniques, methods, modes to conduct a good IPM program with my operation but would like confirmation that what I'm doing is correct before trying to teach others a good IPM program.   Thanks for any assistance in this area that's offered.


Mike in LA


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