I have two hives side by side, wintered over from last year that are equal strength. Each hive has produced @ 75 pounds of honey this season so far. 
Nether hive had any thing done to control mites, just open screen bottoms boards for natural drop. They are in deep boxes and each has 6 frames of bees in each brood box.

Hive 1 was requeened June 8 with a queen from a "mite tolerant, hardy breeding stock, treatment free" queen breeder. I let them be to see just how well they dealt with mites on their own. 

Hive 2 was given a broodless time of two weeks and requeened July 31 with a northern raised queen. Left them alone as far as mites to see what the broodless period would do. In the end the broodless period did not make them have less bees than hive #1 so the new queen really got going. The two weeks of no brood did not set them back as I expected it would.

September 2 both hives got MAQS with sticky boards for 24 hours.

Hive 1 dropped 1042 mites (very scary I do not know how treatment free can do it)

Hive 2 dropped 143 mites.

The broodless period wins this round. Now I get to see which hives lives through the winter. I do get that the treatment free queen probably would do best in the yard and state she was raised in, Maine is a few states north from her birth place.

I am no scientist just a beekeeper so if I made a major blunder in my comparisons tell me, like you can not compare ducks with chickens or VHS queens to local yokels. 

Karen T-K
Maine

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