Recovery

Today is day two of the bee equivalent of rest with plenty of fluids. The bees are excited and feeding eagerly on the essential-oil infused syrup. Yesterday, they appeared puny and greyish; today, seriously, they look better: brighter yellow and maybe even a little bigger & fluffier.
With their numbers reduced and since that fallen comb was now empty, I was able to remove it with no trouble. Once that was out of the way I wiped the hive floor with a damp cloth. There were a number of little brown specks that might have been varroa mites. None of them seemed to be moving, and my eyes are just not sharp enough to tell for sure. They're easy to identify on a bee, because they have a distinctive semi-round shape, and proportionally, it would be like a human with a tick the size of a big apple between their shoulder blades--but scattered amongst other tiny detritus, just too hard to see.
I did disrupt a hive beetle or two; one, I was able to squish--the other, two workers tackled him before he could take three steps in the open. Good Bees! They must be feeling better. I saw only a couple of bees with damaged wings, a symptom of varroa and attendant infection.
While I straightened up the back of the hive, I rearranged/trimmed the bars with comb so they aren't touching each other or the sides. Tomorrow, I'm going to stop at the hardware store to look for something to use instead of the bamboo spacers I made: the bamboo sticks are too crookedy for the bees to be able to easily seal all the gaps between bars--too many openings means they have a harder time defending against intruders, like the hive beetles and a couple of spiders (shoo'ed gently--they weren't big enough to trouble the bees, I thought they might help with ants and small roaches) and german roaches I found (and squished). I also took a look at a different bar of brood comb, which did have some capped honey, a few fat grubs, and several rows of "U" shaped larvae.
So, here are the remedies I've employed so far:
Feeding strong syrup with essential oils
Note: Since I didn't have either spearmint or peppermint ess. oil, as is recommended, I tossed a tablespoon or so of peppermint leaves into a batch of syrup, then strained it. The bees seem to like it just fine.
Cleaning the hive-removal of old wax, cleaning the hive floor, and patrolling for pests
Replaced the follower board so there is only one empty bar in the hive space, and there are no gaps between the bars/hive frame (less space, easier for bees to tend).
Dusted the ground beneath the hive with diatomaceous earth, to control the hive beetle larvae. Will need to reapply this often, with all the rain...

I'm planning to make some design changes to the next hive. Here are some ideas:
1. landing strip/ rougher surface at entrance
2. screen bottom. This could take a couple forms: some beeks like an entirely open, screen floor; it's cooler, and mites fall right through, keeping them from climbing back up onto the comb and laying eggs. Another version is a bottom board with a small 'crawl" space and a screen with mesh big enough for mites and shb's to fall through, but too small for the bees. You can then use diatomaceous earth inside the hive, so pests fall through the screen and into a spiked pit of doom, but keep the bees safe from it. I plan to research both to decide if screen is the way to go. I worry about ants and roaches.
3. about 1/2 to 2/3 of the bars should be fatter, honey comb bars. It looks like my bees want to make their honeycomb between 1-1/8 and 1-1/4 inches thick, so I'll have to do the math. Comb plus bee space=size of new bars.