"Are the small hive beetles now established in California?"

Not that I know of, but with the hundreds of thousands of hives coming
through the state borders every year, I'd like as much isolation as I can
get. My only mite loss last year was in an avocado ranch where there were
two of us with bees. The farmer was tricky and I didn't learn there were
two of us until his son mentioned it to me. I since found out the other
guy lost his entire apiary, and while I don't the reason, I suspect his
colonies crashed due to mites and infected mine. I lost the one hive and
had to treat the others all over again.

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