Solstice PSA: your bee population peaks this week — your mite population peaks in two months. Mind the crossing curves

Happy solstice, Northern colleagues. A teaching moment I give every mentee on this exact week: today your colonies are at or near their annual population peak — 40-50,000 bees in a strong hive, brood nest maximal. Varroa, meanwhile, is still climbing. Mites reproduce in capped brood, so their curve lags the brood curve; while your bee population starts its slow post-solstice decline, the mite population keeps growing into August. Two curves: bees falling, mites rising. They cross in late summer — precisely when the winter bees are being reared. A colony that 'looked booming in June' collapses in October because the mites-per-bee ratio exploded across those crossing curves, and the winter bees got parasitised in the cell. So: wash or sugar-roll a sample now for your baseline (300 bees, half-cup), diarise a July recheck, and have your August treatment already sitting on the shelf. The June beekeeper protects the October colony.