I've been keeping bees for 8 years now and I feel like it's the strain of the bees, not the type of hive, that determines if they can deal with the mites or simply collapse. I have bought boxes of Italian and Hawaiian bees and they didn't make it. They were a mess and needed all kinds of medications and acids just to stay alive. I caught a few feral swarms. These are bees that have learned to live on their own and thrive. I literally stopped all meds and feeding. They just live. Every once in a while I pull a few frames of honey from the super but never even open or check the lower boxes.

The downside to my bees living and also living without me taking their entire hive apart every two weeks to tend to them is that I had to leave the bee-keeping group I was in because they consider me a crappy beekeeper who is screwing up the entire ecosystem. My hives, to them, are known as dirty hives. They look at my hives as a varroa mite factory. Those mites, in their mind, will eventually end up on their highly bred bees and they will have the add even more medication and treatments to prop them up. When I explain that my bees already existed out in the wild and I'm simply giving them a safe place to live they really don't care. I got tired of the snide remarks and felt it was time to leave the group.