Julia wrote,
"Oh, I know that already!  I haven't posted much to this list, but I went
through quite a time with my hive this year.  First year package
bees.  They swarmed in late July (bad) and I captured the swarm (good), but
both hives went queenless (bad) so I re-queened (good) but they killed them
both (bad) but managed to re-queen one (good) and combined both hives a
week later (good).  However, they lost a good 5 weeks of laying so the hive
was weakened."

Julia, one option I have not seen you mention, nor others, is that if you
have a weak colony that has attracted Wax Moths you may want to transfer the
colony into a Nucleus hive body (5 deep frames) as opposed to keeping it in
a standard hive body (10 frames). By restricting the weak colony to a
smaller space you give them less hive volume to protect from pests such as
the Wax moth. This should also assist in controlling your Chalk Brood. Chalk
Brood is fairly common in expanding colonies and usually occurs around the
edges of the brood cluster. Once the colony has expanded to fill the Nucleus
hive body you can then transfer it to a standard hive body. At that time of
the transfer it should have enough of a population to protect the volume.
While it may be too late for you to do this process this year, it may come
in handy next year.
Are you feeding your bees heavy syrup to increase their winter stores?

Ken Haller