When to treat

Timing a treatment matters as much as choosing one, because the damage that kills a colony over winter is done to bees that have not been born yet. The long-lived winter bees, the ones that must survive four or five months on stored fat reserves alone, are reared from late summer into early autumn.

A mite that feeds on that generation while it develops shortens its lifespan permanently, and no treatment applied afterward can undo it. This is why timing beats speed: killing every mite in October, after the winter bees are already capped, protects almost nothing.

In this game's calendar that puts your real treatment windows early, days zero to forty-five, and again days one hundred forty to one hundred ninety-five, well ahead of the point where the colony commits its next generation to the cold months.