Success, hopefully

I've checked on the bees regularly in the past 2 months. Basically that meant morning drive-bys to see what type of activity and in my box to check the limetray weekly  to see if there was any evidence of a problem. My goal was to, "leave them bees alone," until they had some time to build back up.
We push the abandoned hive down into two honey supers, which had been serving as the broodbox so that there would be less for the bees to have to patrol with a small population.
We had two hurricane brushes, one with Irma in mid-september, and the second at the beginning of October with hurricane Maria that did no damage to us.
I've been feeding both of hives to relieve any stress during the late summer and rainy days, before the Spanish needle started blooming.
The middle of September came and went and all looked well. My schedule did not allow me to go into the hives until about the 20th of September. My friend and I inspected my hive and a hive that had been abandoned in the same meadow.
We found laying queens and both and while the population in my hive was low it was definitely on the increase. It was thanks to the three frames of eggs and stores that my friend had given me two months ago.
We put beetle traps in both hives. Each had three small drops of a roach insecticide that is recommended to keep Hive beetles down.
Now the goal was to get it strong enough to treat it for mites.
Today, October 14th, I went into both hives to treat with apivar. This is amitraz strips, two per brood box with the goal of knocking down the varroa mites before winter. If I had been a better beekeeper, I would have done I might count before I treat it to compare with the mic count afterwards,  but that's not the case.
Both hives had good nectar stores. I am feeding but the fall bloom has started.
Amitraz strips will stay in for 42 days or until November 24,Thanksgiving weekend.
Both boxes are bringing in pollen from a variety of sources including Spanish needles and goldenrod.
I kept the inspection short and sweet as I want to call the the inspector out for his annual inspection, which I've not been able to have done in the past two years.
In my hive, I moved one of the experimental frames that has no Foundation but two cross dowels in it so that the bees can build any wax they might need on this new foundationless frame.
The other hive uses  honey supers as their brood box, and so I put a third one with some blanks and some drawn foundation on top. I don't expect the queen to really move up in there as some of them are blanks and some of them are old run-out foundation but they might want to move some of the honey up there if she runs out of laying space.
Both hives are queen right and quiet. What a great way to go into the fall!