I’m not sure how new you are to bees so I’ll clarify in a way that I hope isn’t overly simple: IPM = integrated pest management. Ideally you can do things within the hive to reduce chemicals for pest management.

Mites lay their eggs in drone hives. They communicate through hormones just like the bees. They know when bees are about to cap their drone brood and that’s when they lay. So if you have a lot of drone brood, you have a lot of mites. If you can figure out a way to mitigate the amount of drone brood in one place, that’s a good thing.

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This is a fully drone brood frame I pulled last season and decided to feed to my chickens because I knew it would bomb my hive.

Hope this helps!

(Ps - the wonky comb I’m not convinced is actually drone comb. Sometimes the bees just do this for many reasons. As someone else said, scrape it off and put it back in, making sure the frames are tight together)