>Finally, can routine oxalic acid treatment be equated to not treating? That's just not good BS(bee science). :-)

I'd say not.  I mentioned being influenced by the "No Treatment" bunch, but do not consider what I did to be "no treatment".   Minimal treatment, maybe, but a better description is IPM, with insufficient monitoring.

My problem was a common one.  My hive numbers grew faster than my time and ambition.  I spend a lot of time away and when I was home in bee season, I spent some of my limited bee time and energy on inspecting other peoples' bees.

When I had three hives a few years back, there was nothing to watching them and any manipulation took only a few hours. As the numbers balloooned, even a small job took up several days and whereas tipping hives to place my drop screens under had been a trivial job, even the thought became monumental given that during that time I changed to fatter EPS hives that were harder to tip.  Also, where I had run hives in two boxes mopst of the time, I had gone to running bees in threes fours and fives.

I really should have done some varroa shakes earlier, but did not see any signs of high mite levels in the drone brood and getting into the brood chambers on big hives was not simple.  Besides, I hate drowning bees in alcohol and prefer natural drops.  

At any rate, I was done in by the problem of scale and the tendancy to believe other people who say things we all like to hear.

Back to the question of treatments: 

IMO, any treatment has an effect, be it splitting, applying drugs, applying chemicals requeening, feeding supplements, adding supers, or pretty well anything we do to a hive.

Each and every one of these many treatments have consequences that will influence the eventual condition of the bees and the various other hive inhabitants, both welcome and unwelcome.

I have asked many times if anyone thinks that my Tylosin treatment helped the mites as much or mo0re than the bees.  Has anyone ever considered the possibility?  

I suspect that if we think deeply, we will agree that some treatments lead to the neeed for other treatments, but that the systems are so complex that we cannot count on a favourable equilibrium to be maintained over long periods.  We try interventions of various sorts, but I don't think any one among us fully can predict the outcome. 

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