# Sticky  a little scientific involvement with TF bees.



## lharder

I had a research group from the University of British Columbia to take some samples from my bees. It is part of a larger survey of 1000 colonies Canada wide. Components tested throughout the season are 

1) Hygienic behaviour
2) Aggression/defensive behaviour
3) Overwintering ability
4) Mite loads
5) Nosema and other pathogens
6) Gut microbiota
7) Honey production
8) Innate immunity

It was great to see competent people working with my hives that overwintered as nucs. One of the project leaders worked in Mark Winston's lab for many years and it was cool to see how quickly they found my queens and she gently handled and marked them. Very reassuring to see. 

They enjoyed working with the bees, the foundationless comb, and commented how healthy and gentle the bees appeared. 

Now if only I had bees that had a long history of TF like those of SP or Fusion, or Michael Bush. I suspect these bees will not really stand out in interesting ways. 

http://cbr.ubc.ca/people/investigators/leonard-foster/ is a link to some information lead researcher.


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## orthoman

It would be great if they opened up their apiaries for similar study.


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## lharder

So I already have some information from initial hygienic behaviour testing. I asked about sharing the info from my bees and I got the "share as much as you like"

Of the 12 colonies tested, all overwintered nucs with mostly my own raised queens, I had 4 colonies that exhibited 100 % hygienic behaviour. This was done by putting a 2 1/2 inch tube into the comb to what would be foundation if there was some, over a patch of brood that was in the pink eyed pupal stage. Liquid nitrogen was poured into the tube, it was frozen into place then about another 250 ml was poured in. When it thawed and the tube removed, missing brood cells were tallied, and the frame placed back into the broodnest between 2 frames of brood. 24 hrs later the frame was checked to see how much was cleaned up. I don't have all the info for all the hives, and will relay the info as I get it because it varied quite a bit from sometimes as low as 50 percent. And the variation is as interesting as the best results. 

When we were in my own yard, I had a chance to do my 2nd year overwintered colonies without treatment. Will have results at 6 tonight.


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## COAL REAPER

pretty cool. thanks for sharing results.


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## squarepeg

very cool indeed lharder, many thanks for keeping us posted. i'm considering contacting some of the researchers at one of our agricultural universities to see if they might be interested in adopting a similar protocol so that we might do some comparisons.


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## beepro

It is interesting how a beekeeper once achieved a certain level to want something
more. The old timer been keeping bees more than half of their life time. How can a 
small operation compared to theirs? It is the bee experience that count the most!


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## lharder

So I have results from my second year survivors. 1 out of 3 very hygienic. My most productive queen was actually kind of pathetic at this test, but they were manipulated with snelgrove boards so the demographics is altered.


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## JWChesnut

lharder said:


> My most productive queen was actually kind of pathetic at this test


The principles: "No Free Lunch" and "You can't have your cake and eat it too" applies. By productive do you mean brood growth or honey collection.

Hygienic bees are notorious for this constraint. Hygienic behaviour is killing your own larvae, and over-enthusiasm with this action causes slow growth. The "bloodlines" selected systematically and offered as breeding stock have sought to balance VSH with desirable productivity. Balance and nuance.

I maintain a "pure" VSH queen in a Ulster-type observation hive (to watch the VSH action). Use of pure type VSH has the added benefit that the 5 frame Ulster base grows very slowly. A production queen will outgrow the 5 frame base in weeks. I had the same queen in the Ulster since August '15 with no appreciable growth. A natual "dwarf", a Bonsai honeybee.


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## Daniel Y

At one time I heard that to much of a good thing results in a bad thing. Meaning that you don't want 100% hygienic behavior. For some reason closer to 50% is in my head. In a nut shell to much hygiene is as destructive to the colony brood production as no hygiene. Another train of thought is what is the difference between a bee being killed by varroa transmitted disease or a nurse bee doing it in? it is the same reduction in production. something of a delicate balance must be struck.


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## John Davis

Sounds like a good study. One thing to keep in mind is the understanding of the difference between the measurement process for hygienic and varroa specific hygienic. The freeze test (or some other method like killing all with needles) is a standard for "hygienic". 

The VSH tests involve opening cells and counting numbers of larvae with mites as well as the number of mites that are reproducing successfully. You can find the specific protocols used on some of the VSH related sites. The behaviors that are specific to VSH are not just removing infected brood. Some uncap take out accessible mites and recap, these and other behaviors result in the suppression of the varroa population. 

The early concentration of the VSH genetics did result in queens that would not build up well. Keep in mind that if the varroa loads are high and the bees are removing the affected larvae growth will be slow. VSH is one tool, not the silver bullet.


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## lharder

The most productive queen is the one that produced the most honey last year, overwintered the strongest and building the quickest this spring. The Saskatraz queens had much smaller clusters this spring, took their time getting going, but are doing well now. 

It will be most interesting this next spring. I'll have lots of "proxy" data that can be compared to actual survival without treatment. I don't know if they are sampling any other TF apiaries, so my data will not be that relevant, except perhaps observationally. 

That said, I may make a few nucs from the 1st year hygienic hives, that happen to be strong as well and see how they do.


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## crofter

lharder; I found the Saskatraz experiment very interesting as a study of what all can be involved in a bee research project and a strong suggestion that a lot of claimed research in some other accounts have a lot of questionable gaps in their controls and objectivity. I believe Tibor Szabo had some input to the Saskatraz project and was involved with the development of the "Alberta Bee" at Beaverlodge. I sure am pleased with the bees I purchase from their family Apiary. There seems no comparison in wintering habit and spring buildup compared to mainly "italian" bees. I dont know their pedigree but I dont think it is a fluke. 

I think it would be bordering on delusional for me to think I could improve upon them. After 5 years I am going to bring in a few new queens from him as I probably am my own drone source. I have one colony that is showing a bit of headbutting last season and again this year and that will shortly see a regime change! Other than that it would take a lot better record keeping and far more hives than I have to base any decision making on.


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## Sunday Farmer

orthoman said:


> It would be great if they opened up their apiaries for similar study.


Yep. That would be necessary to keep a base for the TF dialogue .


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## lharder

I don't think there would be any problem finding TF keepers to work with if you looked for them. The scientists themselves haven't looked for it. If they thought it was important they would develop a few TF apiaries of their own. Its probably because scientists that work with bees are most often from an agricultural background. Useful traits are observed and bred into bees with the hope it will help survival. Then treatment is pulled to see if it works. If they were from a wildlife/ecology/evolution background, they would be looking at how solutions develop on their own without imposing one, and try to figure out what those solutions are. Seeley is an example of this approach. The shortage of wildlife types in bee research is that honeybees get enough attention as it is and its probably not cool to study them. Also with all that management and bee movement, there is too much chaos in the system. Beekeepers would be viewed as mostly irresponsible having brought most of their problems on themselves. 

My background is in mostly in plant and insect ecology in forest settings. So I think the TF approach is scientifically reasonable and interesting. But I want to understand why it works when it works, and why it doesn't when it doesn't. Hopefully some progress can be made.


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## beepro

Progress already been made by the LA bee lab. They only exchange the 
breeders that show the progress. Maybe these are mainly the insect scientists who
look into it or the beekeepers who like to maintain these type of bees. Going to have
a chance to evaluate one pretty soon. I'm excited about it already!


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## JRG13

lharder said:


> I don't think there would be any problem finding TF keepers to work with if you looked for them. The scientists themselves haven't looked for it. If they thought it was important they would develop a few TF apiaries of their own. Its probably because scientists that work with bees are most often from an agricultural background. Useful traits are observed and bred into bees with the hope it will help survival. Then treatment is pulled to see if it works. If they were from a wildlife/ecology/evolution background, they would be looking at how solutions develop on their own without imposing one, and try to figure out what those solutions are. Seeley is an example of this approach. The shortage of wildlife types in bee research is that honeybees get enough attention as it is and its probably not cool to study them. Also with all that management and bee movement, there is too much chaos in the system. Beekeepers would be viewed as mostly irresponsible having brought most of their problems on themselves.
> 
> My background is in mostly in plant and insect ecology in forest settings. So I think the TF approach is scientifically reasonable and interesting. But I want to understand why it works when it works, and why it doesn't when it doesn't. Hopefully some progress can be made.


Problem is backyard beekeepers or small time TF operations don't look at the big picture of the commercial aspect of things. There's more to it then just selecting for resistance or survivability and then throw into it the non local aspect of migratory beekeeping and the equation becomes much more complex. Fusion Power has one of the better approaches, he has the resistance, and then is continually improving on certain aspects of his bees to fit his model.


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## Sunday Farmer

JRG13 said:


> Problem is backyard beekeepers or small time TF operations don't look at the big picture of the commercial aspect of things. There's more to it then just selecting for resistance or survivability and then throw into it the non local aspect of migratory beekeeping and the equation becomes much more complex. Fusion Power has one of the better approaches, he has the resistance, and then is continually improving on certain aspects of his bees to fit his model.


I'm sorry. I probably missed this in another thread, where is it that Fusion Power has resistance and proof of improvement?


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## beepro

In a situation like this why not just ask FP about it?
No matter what people claim the proof is on after the winter.
Let's see who has the most hives that made it coming next Spring.


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## Fusion_power

What JRG was alluding to is that my bees express very high levels of VSH and when crossed with Carpenter queens they also express high levels of allogrooming. The background is that I've spent the last 11 years using mite tolerant genetics and have used no treatments of any sort on my bees in that time. What I have done is look diligently for outside genetics that could complement my line and bring them in when found. I got some queens from Carpenter Apiaries 4 years ago and quickly found that they are very synergistic with my bees. Mating a Carpenter virgin with my line drones gives mite tolerance as good as or better than my own bees but improves colony size and honey production. I brought in some BWeaver queens last year to trial and quickly decided that I don't need the hassle of usurpation swarms and aggressive hive defense. That said, I have one BWeaver queen that is a star performer this year having produced about 100 pounds of honey so far. It is also the only colony that did not throw any usurpation swarms. I'm debating raising a few queens from her and mating to my drones just to see if the other traits are worth having.


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## beepro

You can isolate this hive and put some drones hives there to make a few
queens for this experiment. It would be fun to see what else can come from this mix.
Are the Carpenter queens the Italians based or carnis stock based? Also, are they the
angle biter bees or different bees from the angle biting website?


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## JRG13

I would guess they're Italians based on the way they look. I believe it's the same trait, but you never know genetically, but Carpenter selects for the same or a similar criteria. Perhaps I did not word that last post correctly, but it seems the devout just preach, get some feral bees and that's just about the end all of it.... it's not that simple and feral bees don't always have the best traits to work with from a commercial aspect. Not to say they're all bad, but sometimes it's better to mine traits from them into existing stocks as Fusion has done and then keep adjusting them to suit your needs.


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## Oldtimer

Just before Easter I got my first shipment of New Zealand produced (supposed) TF queens.

Had a look in some of the hives 2 days ago and one of them in particular is extremely hygeinic. Or at least, they were pulling and chewing a lot of larvae. Initially I thought well this one is no good cos they obviously have a mite infestation so likely I won't be breeding from it. But on further thought it could be they have no more mites than the other hives but are just being more obviously aggressive about getting them out.

Very interesting question. Anyhow we are going into winter here so I'll leave judgement till next spring when it will be a lot more obvious if this hive did have a big mite issue, or if they got right on top of it.


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## Fusion_power

OT, keep in mind that combining VSH with Allogrooming gives the optimum level of mite tolerance along with honey production potential.


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## Oldtimer

Agreed, and I base that on where attempts to breed varroa resistant bees based purely on hygiene have ended up. There must be more to it than just hygiene. But I note in lharders opening post he says they are looking at a lot more things than just hygiene.

Also, the bees I got were not from the NZ VSH breeding program they came from somewhere else.


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## lharder

Well good luck with that OT. Know anything about their history? Just the beginning of the process. 

Meanwhile, the second visit of intrepid samplers is upon me. Initial hive weights will be taken for the honey production test and the 2nd hygienic test will be done. Whatever boxes I need to have on for the next two weeks need to be on before Monday. They should be OK as they stand, but I just may undersuper with an empty box and frames just in case I need it. Meanwhile, I suspect a supercedure in one of the test hives, knocking it out of the pool. Was stealing a bit of brood and noticed a queen cell that looked emerged, and another queen cell. It also means no stealing brood for nucs for awhile.

So it looks like I have some hygienic behaviour in my overwintered nucs (5 out of 12?), not necessarily vsh. I have some queens from an apiary in Saskatchewan that are apparently biters, which have ties with the Saskatraz program as well. Hmmm. I think they will look at some groomed off mites looking for damage. Will be interesting to see what they find. 

I think generally, more resistance traits are better than one. One is often easily overcome. Mites are probably easier to overcome than cereal rusts for instance (for their respective hosts of course) so perhaps a few are sufficient. My uncle spent some time traveling looking at wild cousins of oats looking for resistant traits. A common activity in plant breeders. Just in case feral stuff is not properly appreciated. 

And don't forget the effect of the viral background, how dynamic it is and how it interacts with mites. What if the benefit of isolated apiaries has more to do with more stable viral dynamics rather than isolated bee breeding? This information is more difficult to assess unless properly equipped so ignored. Much easier to count mites. As technology improves, hopefully we will get a much better picture of whats happening over landscape scales.


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## Oldtimer

lharder said:


> Know anything about their history?


Yes pretty interesting actually. There is a beekeeper here who had some kind of health issue and hardly looked at his bees for 18 months. Then when he was able to get back into it nearly all hives were dead, but there was a handful of hives alive, looking good, and with marked queens so he knew they were not new swarms. 18 months survival treatment free may seem chicken feed to you guys in the US, but here in NZ it's virtually unheard of. Trouble was by now he had no money to get himself re established so he asked other beekeepers to put money in, and if they did, he would re establish his bees breeding from the survivors, and when able, would send queens to the folks who put money in. So I put some money in, this was a few years ago, and finally my first batch of queens has showed up. He has been very careful with drone control and where to mate plus trying to weed any mite prone hives that develop, out of his breeding pool. He has periodically updated the stakeholders with how things are going and what he is doing and looks like he has been very careful and done it well. Each cage was marked with a code that denoted which breeder queen that queen had come from, and also which breeder queens had supplied drones where she was mated. So I'll be using his stock for my own breeders next season.

Just wondering lharder, why does it matter if the hive supersedes? This is normally a smooth process with the young queen gradually taking over from the old queen and should not affect results too much. Or is it that they want to work with one queen of known genetics in each hive and not have any changes?


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## Fusion_power

Evaluating a single queen can be expressed with standard analysis of variance. Evaluating two different queens in the same hive at the same time can't, the results will always be suspect. Look up single anova if you want to stretch your brain a bit.

One note you might want to keep near and dear is that early generation treatment free bees often have multiple flaws. They may swarm, break brood rearing at the wrong time, not build up to an appropriate level for the flow, etc. They represent raw material from which more refined selections should be made.

The most effective method of transitioning to treatment free is to get the right genetics and go cold turkey. You might want to do this with one yard of bees while still treating others. Also, some drone mothers will be the most important part of your work next spring. Would be very nice if you could get a few TF queens mated very early to replace all the queens in an apiary and then let them produce drones for later pure matings.


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## beepro

Don't just ignore the drones!
With a high density of the treated drones, the next generation of resistant bees is really insignificant.
With an isolated mating yard saturated with the resistant genetics going to the DCAs, then there is a
good chance to find some good genetics for the 3rd generation. I only send off the good drones to the
local DCAs by careful selection of the drone mother colony. This way the resistant genetics are ensured
when it comes to selection of a breeder queen. This is a slow process where as with AI it will speed up the
selection process with good certainty. KC mentioned to send off the drones and virgin queens to an AI facility.


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## Oldtimer

Thanks for the advice guys.

Other thing I was wondering about lharder, who actually pays for this? Just, seems like a heckuva lot of time will be put in by these researchers, is it government funded? Just curious, big issue over here is we are a small country and getting money for any kind of research is a major problem.


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> Yes pretty interesting actually. There is a beekeeper here who had some kind of health issue and hardly looked at his bees for 18 months. Then when he was able to get back into it nearly all hives were dead, but there was a handful of hives alive, looking good, and with marked queens so he knew they were not new swarms. 18 months survival treatment free may seem chicken feed to you guys in the US, but here in NZ it's virtually unheard of. Trouble was by now he had no money to get himself re established so he asked other beekeepers to put money in, and if they did, he would re establish his bees breeding from the survivors, and when able, would send queens to the folks who put money in. So I put some money in, this was a few years ago, and finally my first batch of queens has showed up. He has been very careful with drone control and where to mate plus trying to weed any mite prone hives that develop, out of his breeding pool. He has periodically updated the stakeholders with how things are going and what he is doing and looks like he has been very careful and done it well. Each cage was marked with a code that denoted which breeder queen that queen had come from, and also which breeder queens had supplied drones where she was mated. So I'll be using his stock for my own breeders next season.
> 
> Just wondering lharder, why does it matter if the hive supersedes? This is normally a smooth process with the young queen gradually taking over from the old queen and should not affect results too much. Or is it that they want to work with one queen of known genetics in each hive and not have any changes?


Sounds like the stories in the US. Serendipitous stumbling onto a good situation and being canny enough to work with it. Even if this doesn't work out, it sounds there are rumblings of mite resistance in your neck of the woods. Promising signs. Good for you in supporting it.

Yes they are trying to match genetics with outcomes. The results of that colony is hopelessly compromised. Marking and clipping the wings of existing queens shows how seriously they take it (I cringed a bit when they asked me if they could clip wings, but agreed to its usefulness in this situation). One of the practical goals of this project is to have genetic markers that identify resistance traits that can be used to assess bees. If you could sample a few bees from a new queen, you could assess her before her traits are expressed in a colony. I imagine as soon as you could sample some eggs. By doing some viral stuff as well we get a bit of toe dipping in the complexity of this situation. It may not just be a practical technical exercise, but some interesting science may come out of it. 

Funding? Not sure, but probable multiple sources. There is some government funding of course and the provincial bee keeping associations are throwing in some money. We have a lab dedicated to bee health in Alberta with abilities to sample virus types and some money dedicated to some practical but useful research. Meaning some tie ins are easy to do with infrastructure laid down. Lenard Foster has considerable expertise in the molecular/genetic side of things in his lab at UBC. I'll see if I can root out the funding formula for you.


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## squarepeg

it's mostly by default i guess, because of lack of expertise and a limited amount of time available, that i haven't really been selecting for this trait or that. 

rather i'm letting overall performance and general success determine which of my queens i select grafts from.

obviously they are selected for survival since they wouldn't be here to select from otherwise, but i do give points for how many winters a colony has made it through. 

going hopelessly queenless is the same as a colony loss for me in this regard. so the more winters survived with the colony successfully requeening itself the better, unless the colony has shown a high propensity for swarming.

after survival i guess it's honey production, (which happens to be closely associated with a favorable response to swarm prevention), that is the next important deciding factor as to which queens are looked at for breeder status. this is where keeping careful notes about how much new comb gets drawn and how much honey gets harvested comes in handy.

it's only been a few short years, but i'm getting the sense that overall quality, overwintering success, successful supercedure, and productivity are all trending in a positive direction.


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## lharder

SP, I think your approach is perfect. Its a bit of a black box approach where success is built upon and failure abandoned even if the precise reasons aren't immediately apparent. Just as mother nature does it. Survival and honey production are the key parameters to focus on. The strength of this approach is that potential useful traits aren't weeded out if they aren't identified yet. It also allows genetic solutions that aren't necessarily our own. Nature is constantly mixing things up and experimenting. I think of it as a complex algorithm that instantly adapts to constantly shifting selection pressures.

Its also my approach, though I am just at the survival stage at this point. 

So I think I would use genetic tools (if they were available) more as an understanding of what's going on. What are the known traits that are at work in the local population? If we had a list, we could specifically import a few traits that are absent and introduce them to the local pool for mother nature to mess with. New and a broader base of solutions to problems could be arrived at. Ongoing sampling could identify whether a trait was successfully introduced and its frequency in the population. I can do some of this without genetic tools, but much more guesswork is involved.

Its also possible that we don't have to stop at bee genetics. We could also look at pest/disease genetics and at some point, with a greater understanding of symbiotic relationships in a hive, those genetics as well. 

Then put it in context of management, a fairly complete understanding of local success could be arrived at.


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## squarepeg

many thanks lharder for your thoughtful reply. i've been following your reports with great interest, and i appreciate that you take the time to share them with us.


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## lharder

The group came out yesterday and today to do the second round of hygienic testing and take initial hive weights for a 2 week honey production test. Hopefully the flow kicks in a big way as its supposed to. Will be interesting to see how consistent hygienic behaviour is. Just looking at it briefly there is some within hive variation between the 2 tests. 

Will be reporting in as results come in.


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## beepro

What are the known traits that are at work in the local population?

The only way to know is to do some test trials in term of the bee behaviors.
By that I will test the bee's mite fighting ability as well as their hygienic behavior
within 2 bee emergence cycles. If they lack the hygienic behaviors then bring in
queens that have this traits. If they are deficient in the might fighting ability then
also buy queens from a reputable bee operation to enhance this traits. After 3-4 generation
of grafting then you should know what traits are known in the local bee population. It is not
as simple as one thought. After 4 years of experimenting still need to enhance what is needed 
in the local population. The goal is to make better mite fighting and honey producing bees with
gentleness incorporated.


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## Sunday Farmer

beepro said:


> The only way to know is to do some test trials in term of the bee behaviors.
> By that I will test the bee's mite fighting ability as well as their hygienic behavior
> within 2 bee emergence cycles. If they lack the hygienic behaviors then bring in
> queens that have this traits.


How do you run your test trials? It would be cool to check a queen after two emergence cycles. How do you do that in your apiary? And while you're doing this, what is your base line for hygenic behavior? Like- I.e. How hygenic ?


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## beepro

I began my little bee experiment after acquiring some Cordovan queens from a 
reputable breeder who use the survivor queens as breeders. 
With these queen I have grafted many daughters from. They
are open mated with the local Carnis drones from the local bee association carnis bees. The majority
of the local drones are the carnis genetics because listed on the local bee association are what
they used. Now I have the carnis and Cordovan to compare to in term of their mite fighting ability
and hygienic behaviors. After 4 generation I can keep track of which hive have the hygienic behaviors
when they do housekeeping and the mite removal if any. At first, they did not do a good job at fighting the mites.
I blamed it on the local carnis drones but it could be both sides involved. Seeing my only 2 hives crashed by
the mites 2 years ago, I incorporated the allogrooming behaviors with a Russian x Italians queen from a 
out of state tf apiary. Instantly, from her daughters I can see the mite count drop significantly leaving only 2-4 mites
per frame of the newly emerged bees. Finally, no more DWVs and mite infested bees. My apiary is near mite free now, finally! 
Now I got a Glenn x LA bee lab daughter from a reputable breeder. She carry the vsh genetics from her mother coming from the LA bee lab. I will use her to graft some daughters for the Autumn queens. Then will do some test to decide how hygienic they are. How hygienic? It is good enough to keep the mites under control if not to get rid of them completely without any of my help. But when needed to keep the hive surviving until the might fighting ability kicks in I can always do some oav using my homemade oav gadget under the hive. 

Glenn x LA bee lab vsh queen:


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## mike bispham

lharder said:


> And don't forget the effect of the viral background, how dynamic it is and how it interacts with mites. What if the benefit of isolated apiaries has more to do with more stable viral dynamics rather than isolated bee breeding? This information is more difficult to assess unless properly equipped so ignored. Much easier to count mites. As technology improves, hopefully we will get a much better picture of whats happening over landscape scales.


Does any of this mite-monitoring truly improve on traditional make-increase-from-the-best, when 'best' is the most productive under hands off condition?

I guess most of the need for more intensive genetic management comes from poor ability to influence the drone environment due to an insufficient number of hives and interference from nearby treaters.

I have 80 hives kept under zero interference, given unlimited brood space, at a fairly isolated location. The good-uns build big, make lots of drones and lots of honey; and I make more bees from them (and their drones). Its systematic, simple, and seems to be working well. Its all done from survivor stock. I spend my time making more boxes rather than looking for mites, or even looking at bees. I haven't seen any DWV this year at all. 

What I'm trying to do is run a natural selection environment in the belief that that is the best possible mechanism for producing strong strains. Upon that foundation I'm helping productivity along. What the factors are that are working are I've no idea. I just know (pace John Kefuss) they are working.

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

Mike, yes your approach is a black box one and is a powerful approach in my opinion. I am trying to achieve something similar. I also have this opportunity to have this parallel set of proxy information at the same time. 

I've been thinking that tf may work best in the back eddys of the beekeeping world. It may be just about some genetic isolation and the relative size of your apiary compared to others. These are things I am also trying to follow to some degree. I want to increase my size and become more of a genetic bully in my area, I want some elements of isolated mating that reinforces resistant genetics (I also am interested some open mating where there are other beekeepers where some resistant genetics can infiltrate and my bees can steal some new genetic tools. 

However, the other advantage of relative isolation is that the viral/disease environment is relatively stable. Meaning natural selection has a set of goal posts to aim at that is relatively slow to move. In the heart of migratory path of commercial beekeepers, ones bees would be exposed to every new viral/disease variant and other pests that are out there. It would make adaptation much more difficult. In a more isolated setting, bees would have occasional challenges to adapt to rather than an constant onslaught of them. If we gain more specific understanding of this process with regard to bees (I think the principles of the risks or moving biological material around are well understood at the theoretical level), then perhaps some unsustainable business models can be gradually undermined and we can move to a more sustainable local type of beekeeping.


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## lharder

Small update: Got a little mite data from May. Percentage values ranges from 0 to 5 %. 160 to 290 bees were shaken twice with alcohol. The 5 % figure was an outlier with other values ranging from 0 to 1.8 in 12 colonies. Should probably histogram it. I have some bee weight data as well, so I'm hoping I can get a comparison with some others in the study who are on 5.4 foundations. Most of my bees are foundationless. 

So we are going to do it again this week. Will also be sampling for nosema and other pathogens. Gonna be real interesting to get these results. There are also going to be some mite boards installed and samples of mites taken to see if these bees beat them up. The queens will also be looked for and verified. That's going to be heaps of fun this time of year.


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## squarepeg

good report lharder, many thanks for the update, following with great interest.


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## Fusion_power

Lharder, would you mind posting how many total colonies you have and how many of them are in the study?

30 to 40 percent highly hygienic is incredibly high compared to the estimate made years ago that less than 3% of all bees were hygienic. This would on the surface indicate that a major genetic shift is occurring in our bees.


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## lharder

There are 12 colonies of my colonies in this study. These were survivors from 26 overwintered nucs that I went into winter in (death largely my fault as far as I can tell, but I was trying to get my numbers up till the end of August as well. So they weren't as strong as they could have been and had moisture issues).

I also had 4 other full size colonies that are going in their 3rd summer. 

Colonies across Canada are being sampled so there should be a interesting population description that comes out of it. 

I just had a look at the bee weight data. Average bee weights ranges from 0.21 to 0.25 g between hives. Thats actually a 20% difference. I makes me curious about the within hive differences. The hive with the highest mite count had small bees, while low counts were seen in the larger bees. 

I just cut and paste the data table for those who are interested. Sorry about the formatting.

Weight of 50 Bees	Weight per Bee	Total Bee Weight	Total Bees	Shake 1	Shake 2	Shake 3	Sum of Varroa	Mites per Hundred Bees
12.34	0.2468	39.42	160	1	0 1	0.6260781329
11.62	0.2324	44.56	192	1	0 1	0.5215439856
11.59	0.2318	36.79	159	2	0 2	1.260125034
12.28	0.2456	42.09	171	1	0 1	0.5835115229
12.01	0.2402	44.85	187	0	0 0	0
10.6 0.212	68.58	323	2	0 2	0.6182560513
10.97	0.2194	53.83	245	12	0 12	4.8909530002
11.72	0.2344	67.08	286	1	0 1	0.3494335122
11.62	0.2324	54.79	236	1	0 1	0.4241649936
12.54	0.2508	36.02	144	1	0 1	0.6962798445
10.77	0.2154	45.51	211	4	0 4	1.8932102835
10.61	0.2122	51.92	245	3	0 3	1.2261171032


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## Fusion_power

One colony has zeros for varroa. Did you perform any special manipulations on that colony that could have affected the results? Presuming no special manipulations, that colony would have potential as a breeder.


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## lharder

No special manipulation. A brood break when they were made up as a nuc and given a queen cell, and another in winter. I'm sure there is varroa in there. I'm looking forward to the results of the 2nd test. 

I made queens from most of the colonies that showed hygienic behaviour (also the most vigorous) but this one somehow got left out.


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## Daniel Y

Fusion_power said:


> Lharder, would you mind posting how many total colonies you have and how many of them are in the study?
> 
> 30 to 40 percent highly hygienic is incredibly high compared to the estimate made years ago that less than 3% of all bees were hygienic. This would on the surface indicate that a major genetic shift is occurring in our bees.


This could on the surface indicate many things. One of them that came to mind for me is that advancement in results of research and improvement or development of methods has had a huge improvement. mainly due to internet. Previously our expectation in advancements has been based upon individuals doing what they do observing what they observe and making what advancement they can alone. that is no linger true those attempting to do new things have at their finger tips access to many others doing the same. they can share their results nearly in real time. This has made a dramatic impact on the pace advancements are made. I am most familiar with the effect it has had on cancer research. Some describing it as putting advancement on a bullet train. In the little bit of time I have spent on breeding specific forums I see that this effort is subject to that influence at least to some degree.
In all I don't think our previous experience leaves us with an accurate expectation of progress under todays conditions. It is no longer necessary to expect to wait years for results. But very reasonably it may only be a matter of months. Secrecy is harmful to discovery and I am certain there is a fair share of that going on. But even if it is only a handful that will share their information I suspect that effort will dwarf any effort being made by a secretive individual or program.
I have seen myself with only limited effort that extreme progress is likely being made. Not only toward what does work but identifying and correcting what does not.

For me this would support the idea that much is changing and comparably quickly. I am not so sure it is related to genetic alteration as much as it is simply identifying the desirable traits that already exist in the mass of undesirable traits. More of a weeding progress at this point than any direct enhancement of those traits. Last I knew of they have identified traits but in that effort they have also discovered they are not the silver lining they where hoped to be. they have their own list of issues. To much of a good thing is not a good thing sort of issue. 
I don't see a genetic shift. I see a genetic consolidation of what has always already existed.


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## Nordak

This has been a great read, very informative. Thanks for posting this, and congratulations on the results. Good stuff.


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## crofter

That is the kind of testing we need to see done and quantified somehow to assess what actually is responsible for reported successes. It could be an important predictor of how transportable or stable the characteristics will be. If the genetic makeup requires traits passed down continuously on both the drone and queen sides a very successful line can also be a very delicate balance to maintain. 

Reading the story of the Saskatraz project sure impressed me with the importance of precise and comprehensive record keeping. 

Good work!:thumbsup::thumbsup:


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## lharder

Thanks for the encouraging interesting comments. I was thinking the study might document the demise of a tf apiary, but not just yet. If anything, this effort is going to provide a great baseline going forward. Of course the real test is coming up. Winter. Be interesting to compare this data with actual survival. I did have that one colony survive 2 winters with indifferent hygienic results. It certainly looks like Saskatraz queens may be a good starting point for those who want to do tf but don't have a strong feral presence. I have some traps out here and have 0 hits. 

I can also think about how to track certain parameters within the apiary population. I don't think its crucial in a tf context, but is helpful in communicating with those who treat, and those who treat but are considering tf. If a good data set is available, then realistic expectations can be described. Since I am not treating I don't have to test every hive to determine treatment regime, but can rather sample a sub set. Not nearly the work, but informative of population parameters. I am hoping after this year for some ongoing collaboration. A treatment free operation is an ideal place to do some adaptive genetic work.


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## lharder

The research group came and took samples for the midpoint of the study. They will be used to determine mite counts, nosema (sample taken from honey supers where older bees reside), and a variety of viruses. Mite boards were place. I think just cardboard with a sheet of parchment paper coated with vasaline. A rubber mesh was on top to avoid bee contact. I get to gather the parchment paper on Thursday, bag it up and send it on. The mite counts will be done by some poor summer student hire at the university I believe. The mite samples will be processed then sent to a lab in Manitoba where they will be put on slides to examine bee caused damage. 

The viral samples will be sent to the bee diagnostic center in Beaverlodge, Alberta. 

The funding formula is complicated but there is support at the University, Federal, Provincial, with some private involvement with Genome Canada. At least it looks like a private corp that is interested in applications of genome information (not necessarily genetically modified though I am sure that is part of it). Big, big project. 

At any rate, we looked for queens to avoid sampling them and to verify genetic continuity. All were queen right but 3 were new...sneaky bees. They were assessed as to how recently they requeened, then sampled anyway. This sample may be good but the next big one in October they will be out of the study population. 

The president of the local bee club was out with us and all five of us were buried in hives looking for queens with the summer student claiming the prize for most queens found. Lots of honey and everyone thought the bees overall looked good with good populations.

Once again people commented on the nice comb they were producing. I might have the foundationless thing under control.


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## Fusion_power

You mentioned that they clipped wings the last time around. There are two possible things going on. Either the bees had 2 queens to start with or else they superseded because they did not like the clipped wing queens. A study about 40 years ago showed that 1 in 20 is a natural 2 queen colony at least part of the year.

It will be interesting to see what percent of mites are gnawed on and to see what total mite drop counts you get.


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## squarepeg

great report lharder, many thanks.


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## lharder

Fusion_power said:


> You mentioned that they clipped wings the last time around. There are two possible things going on. Either the bees had 2 queens to start with or else they superseded because they did not like the clipped wing queens. A study about 40 years ago showed that 1 in 20 is a natural 2 queen colony at least part of the year.
> 
> It will be interesting to see what percent of mites are gnawed on and to see what total mite drop counts you get.


It would be interesting to have a mite drop count and compare it to the alcohol wash mite count, but I'm not sure they are going to do that with the alcohol method data which seems very thorough. 3 shakes to get every darned mite. Maybe hopefully the mite drop count will be part of the data set. 

It was maybe a bit early to think of 2 queen systems when they did it in May. I think there is a supercedure risk with clipped wings. But maybe it was just sloppy beekeeping as well. I did have get into the hives to get brood, and there is always queen crushing or queen transfer risk (I took extra precautions). They also marked them, but the marks were almost completely groomed off so it was good that it was done. Not sure how to get around this. Bees being fussy about their queens and health status may be an important survival trait. Hive not doing well? Supercede.


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## Nordak

I think supercedure is a powerful tool indeed. I had a hive last year with a pretty high mite load, that in the previous year I did not see. It was my first year, however.This was a visually high load, so it was pretty bad. The bees seemed to thrive, regardless, no DWV, no outward signs of sickness. At around the time I was going to requeen, the bees decided to do it for me through a supercedure. This is all anecdotal of course, but that same hive had a 2:300 sugar roll count when I checked just a couple of days ago. Again, this is anecdotal as well, but my bees won't allow a queen to be marked, they chew it off every time. I think there might be something to that.


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## Fusion_power

I've noted marks being groomed off of my queens for several years now. It may be indicative of hygienic traits.


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## beepro

To prevent the mark color from being groom off I put a dab of the TB glue
on her thorax first. When the glue is almost dry in a few minutes then I put on
that year's bee color. The white dot may not be a perfect dot but at least the bees
cannot chew it off for a long long time. I had queens that died when the marking was still on her.
White is the most transparent color to put on.


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## crofter

I wondered if the water borne paints like in the Posca are not as durable as the zylene paints like Testors model paints. I have watched the workers definitely going to work on the dots. I think I helps if you allow plenty of time to dry before you release her.


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## lharder

I thought I would post a couple of pictures to put things in context.




















The first one is my main production yard where the research is taking place 12 colonies that started as overwintered nucs reside there. The second is my nuc yard. Currently at capacity with 32 nucs started this year. The 3rd is me getting ready to move some frames of bees/brood using a screen board to provide ventilation. 

Almost all my stuff is home made so I expect a bit of ribbing. I half expected the research team to turn around and go away when they first visited the site. But the setting is so nice that it made up for it.

I have some more bees at home. I may be looking at another site depending on the success of my latest queen matings that are done for this year. 12 potential nucs, 3 two queen hives, and 2 one queen hives. I wouldn't mind moving the works out for the winter.


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## lharder

I did pick up the mite drop sheets on Thursday after 72 hrs on the hive. Packaged them and shipped them.

I put on some reading glasses to get a sense of how many mites dropped. Some I saw only a few, but some had up to 25 or 30. My sense was it was the stronger hives with the most mite drop. 

I talked with the field/lab manager and they will do a tally from each hive as they prepare the mites for shipping to the Manitoba lab. So we will be able to compare mite drop vs alcohol wash data. Yay.


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## lharder

Came across this presentation with Daniel Weaver. 

Interesting stuff

https://vimeo.com/179703681

Still waiting for data from the last sampling


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## Nordak

In case anyone was wondering, here is the article from NPR he referred to: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...illing-mistake-backyard-beekeepers-are-making

Thanks for posting, lharder. It's good we have people like Mr. Weaver who are dedicated to keeping bees healthy. His statement regarding having one of the most genetically diverse breeding program is one I can believe given the various reports on the BWeaver line. From everything I've gathered, you never know what you are going to get behavioral wise. Undoubtedly though, they have good resistance traits.


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## mike bispham

Nordak said:


> In case anyone was wondering, here is the article from NPR he referred to: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt...illing-mistake-backyard-beekeepers-are-making


This article advocates systematic treating. It has nothing to do with TF beekeeping...?

Mike (UK)


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## Nordak

mike bispham said:


> This article advocates systematic treating. It has nothing to do with TF beekeeping...?
> 
> Mike (UK)


If you watched the video, Danny Weaver makes reference to the article in a sort of astonished way. That's why I posted it, in reference to the video, and understand his astonishment. NPR seems an unlikely medium for an article such as this.


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## mike bispham

Nordak said:


> If you watched the video, Danny Weaver makes reference to the article in a sort of astonished way. That's why I posted it, in reference to the video, and understand his astonishment. NPR seems an unlikely medium for an article such as this.


I kind of get it now! Don't really understand the context...? 
M


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## lharder

To do what he did in the 90s, when things were much more bleak, took courage. He also understood the basic process of population adaptation much better than most bee experts who have training in agriculture, but not in ecology and evolution. The question was, was 1000 colonies enough to work with at that time? Luckily for him, it was, barely.


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## lharder

Just got a little tidbit of mite count data. Heather tabled it nicely for me with May's data. Hopefully some of formatting is maintained when I post here. Short summary, some hives went up, some went down, 3 vs 1 in May had 0 mites detected. Doesn't look like exponential growth in mite numbers. That kind of model doesn't work with these bees. They seem to be doing something. 

hive date #mites % date #mites %
1147	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.63	7/25/2016	5	2.21
1148	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.52	7/25/2016	1	0.53
1149	Leroy	5/9/2016	2	1.26	7/25/2016	0	0.00
1150	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.58	7/25/2016	6	2.45
1151	Leroy	5/9/2016	0	0.00	7/25/2016	9	3.42
1152	Leroy	5/9/2016	2	0.62	7/25/2016	13	6.10
1153	Leroy	5/9/2016	12	4.89	7/25/2016	6	2.14
1154	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.35	7/25/2016	4	2.07
1155	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.42	7/25/2016	0	0.00
1156	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.70	7/25/2016	0	0.00
1157	Leroy	5/9/2016	4	1.89	7/25/2016	3	1.19
1158	Leroy	5/9/2016	3	1.23	7/25/2016	2	0.77


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## Nordak

Excellent results! I was looking at the similarities in our mite counts/percentages as my test was run the same date, 7/25. I don't have the data set you do, but it's an interesting comparison none the less: 

Data runs hive, count, %

BW1C 19:300 6.3

FH2C 2:300 .67

FH3C 4:300 1.3


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## lharder

I'm really quite surprised at how low some of the counts were. These are simply 1st yr daughters of Saskatraz queens. 

How did you do your mite counts?


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## Nordak

Sugar roll. I brought bees inside for testing in the AC to offset humidity issues. I included any residual sugar left over from the shake after releasing the bees and added any mites to the total counts. Probably not nearly as accurate, but noteworthy in terms of the similarities. These were all first year daughters in 3rd year established hives. The lowest two were of purely feral sources, while the highest was a 3rd generation BWeaver from open mated genetics. The highest was one I was initially worried about as having symptoms of PMS, but as you know, has seemingly turned the corner and doing well.


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## lharder

So the Beeweaver is a little higher than the ferals. Be interesting if with more sampling, if that trend continued with the generations. 

I think I will continue to do some mite counts next year as I have somewhat of a baseline. When I sell queens or discuss TF with local beekeepers, I can bring actual local data into the discussion.


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## Nordak

The BWeaver line has been interesting in how it has expressed itself through the daughters I've had from my original. The mother queen's offspring had vigor that I'd never witnessed before. The bees could almost be described as hyperactive. Things such as following my hive tool when brought over the hive, pronounced head butting, biting..they just moved with more speed and energy. Extremely fast build up. I liked them, but unfortunately all of this vigor expressed itself in the extreme this year in excessive swarming. Part of that was my doing by not managing correctly. Many of the defensive traits have simmered down in successive daughters, but it seems some of the resistance traits, by measurement, are not there. Disease tolerance, on the other hand, is impressive, as I have not seen the virus troubles expressed from these higher mite loads. My feeling is that some of the resistance mechanism of BWeaver bees has a lot to do with swarming. This has been an argument made toward feral survivor colonies, that their sheer existence relies on outbreeding mites. In my own experience, the bees I have here seem to brood around explosive mite population. Slow build up, shut down in dearth, resume brooding in Fall. More of a minimalist approach comparatively speaking to the outbreeding mites scenario. I can see advantages in a natural setting to both scenarios, and my guess is it has to do with resource and population pressures why certain bees express differing behaviors in different environments.


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## lharder

Seems there is always a bit of chaos in the system with new genetics. The combinations get a bit messed up as new genetics get incorporated into the local system. More experimentation, more failure, until things settle down. But this isn't a bad thing, unless too much is done at once. The question is how do we know if the new genetic material wasn't present in the first place, and if not, is it maintained at the population level? It is here where I would like to bring some high tech into the situation and do some genetic testing. If I know the status of the receiver and donor populations, then I can make a rational decision about bringing in some queens from somewhere and adding genetic diversity.


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## Fusion_power

Beeweaver queens show poor combining ability with my bees. This is likely because of the huge difference in genetics.

If you want to get some genetic diversity, Carpenters queens are a good option. I'm not sure how you would get them into Canada unless you can get a veterinary permit.


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## Nordak

I am far from a geneticist, or even pretend to know much about honey bee breeding in how it relates to fine tuning gene expression, but from what little I've gathered on the behavior of the bees I have from the BWeaver lineage, I don't think it's one I will continue to propogate. I'm basically using the offspring to fill voids where I need to strengthen my colonies by utilizing comb, brood and stores. I think BWeaver has great standalone queens, but I haven't been impressed with the combinations shown with my bees either. I have an Anarchy Apiaries queen obtained this year, and look forward to what the daughters from this queen do. They are very productive bees, but appear to have some frugality as well. I can't speak for resistance yet as it"s too soon. They seem more like my bees behaviorally.


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## lharder

I have just come back from our local beekeeper meeting where the lead researcher (Leonard Foster) of the massive survey my bees are part of came to do a talk. 

So just a few points and tidbits before I forget. Doesn't take long. 

Some of the resistance markers they are looking for are the proteins associated with resistance, rather than the DNA sequences themselves. For one thing, the ratio of genes to proteins is relatively low. So there may be for instance 10000 proteins associated with 1000 genes. Some of those proteins are polygenomic which I take to mean, more than one gene is associated with the production of some proteins. Also many genes associated with resistance are polygenomic, which means markers at the genetic level may not be as useful as those at the protein level. 

At any rate this information opens up the tool kit considerably of what is possible. 

An interesting tidbit I got is that they have developed a varroa resistance test in some research centers in Manitoba. They grow some colonies without resistance and build up mites levels, they then combine with other bees of known mite levels to create a hive of known mite levels. These bees are given a queen with interesting known genetics, and placed on fresh comb. They are overwintered to see if they survive. They have some bees with the same survival and honey production without treatment, as "treated, normally managed" bees. An exciting result. 

That's all the head retained for now. 

Oh another interesting tidbit. He had some video of a royal jelly production unit that he visited in China. They had cell bars containing about 66 cells. The grafter was able to graft cells at about 1 or 2 seconds per cell. She had over 90% acceptance. Blindingly fast.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> Just got a little tidbit of mite count data. Heather tabled it nicely for me with May's data. Hopefully some of formatting is maintained when I post here. Short summary, some hives went up, some went down, 3 vs 1 in May had 0 mites detected. Doesn't look like exponential growth in mite numbers. That kind of model doesn't work with these bees. They seem to be doing something.
> 
> hive date #mites % date #mites %
> 1147	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.63	7/25/2016	5	2.21
> 1148	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.52	7/25/2016	1	0.53
> 1149	Leroy	5/9/2016	2	1.26	7/25/2016	0	0.00
> 1150	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.58	7/25/2016	6	2.45
> 1151	Leroy	5/9/2016	0	0.00	7/25/2016	9	3.42
> 1152	Leroy	5/9/2016	2	0.62	7/25/2016	13	6.10
> 1153	Leroy	5/9/2016	12	4.89	7/25/2016	6	2.14
> 1154	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.35	7/25/2016	4	2.07
> 1155	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.42	7/25/2016	0	0.00
> 1156	Leroy	5/9/2016	1	0.70	7/25/2016	0	0.00
> 1157	Leroy	5/9/2016	4	1.89	7/25/2016	3	1.19
> 1158	Leroy	5/9/2016	3	1.23	7/25/2016	2	0.77


Very interesting stuff! Were all hives having normal brood rearing between 5/9/2016 and 7/25/2016 that is 2,5 months?


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## Nordak

lharder said:


> I have just come back from our local beekeeper meeting where the lead researcher (Leonard Foster) of the massive survey my bees are part of came to do a talk.
> 
> So just a few points and tidbits before I forget. Doesn't take long.
> 
> Some of the resistance markers they are looking for are the proteins associated with resistance, rather than the DNA sequences themselves. For one thing, the ratio of genes to proteins is relatively low. So there may be for instance 10000 proteins associated with 1000 genes. Some of those proteins are polygenomic which I take to mean, more than one gene is associated with the production of some proteins. Also many genes associated with resistance are polygenomic, which means markers at the genetic level may not be as useful as those at the protein level.
> 
> At any rate this information opens up the tool kit considerably of what is possible.
> 
> An interesting tidbit I got is that they have developed a varroa resistance test in some research centers in Manitoba. They grow some colonies without resistance and build up mites levels, they then combine with other bees of known mite levels to create a hive of known mite levels. These bees are given a queen with interesting known genetics, and placed on fresh comb. They are overwintered to see if they survive. They have some bees with the same survival and honey production without treatment, as "treated, normally managed" bees. An exciting result.
> 
> That's all the head retained for now.
> 
> Oh another interesting tidbit. He had some video of a royal jelly production unit that he visited in China. They had cell bars containing about 66 cells. The grafter was able to graft cells at about 1 or 2 seconds per cell. She had over 90% acceptance. Blindingly fast.


Fascinating. Thanks so much for sharing. Wow.


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> Very interesting stuff! Were all hives having normal brood rearing between 5/9/2016 and 7/25/2016 that is 2,5 months?


There have been at least 4 supercedures between the first and second mite counts. I should ask which colonies they were found in. There has always been some brood in all the hives. There has been a nectar flow for the entirety of period. Subtle questions about whether the bees altered brood production is something I didn't observe but wasn't looking for it either. I have prodded the field team about cooler temperatures and they will be taking the last sample before winter soon.


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## lharder

A couple more tidbits.

They are also going to be looking for some scutellata markers in Canadian bees. That will be interesting. I am very curious about how much infiltration of that type has made it into the genome of Europeans. 

Also they have done some trials using hygienic behaviour, where they have selected basing on actually doing the test vs selecting based on protein markers they have associated with hygienic behaviour. Field testing the premise that they can use protein markers for selection. They had very nice results. They have also noted that honey production hasn't suffered when they selected for this one trait.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> There have been at least 4 supercedures between the first and second mite counts.


Supercedure can reduce mite count 90% in my experience. Don´t ask where they go, maybe to other hives.


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## lharder

It was my thought as well that it could have an influence. I will try to investigate and report.


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## JWChesnut

Juhani Lunden said:


> Supercedure can reduce mite count 90% in my experience. Don´t ask where they go, maybe to other hives.


Absolutely. The important principle to appreciate: selection of pre-adaptations (frequent supersedure) will occur far more rapidly than exotic mechanisms (such as VSH based on recessive traits). The simplest mechanism out competes complex and delicate ones, in the absence of directed breeding.

In a "Keefuss-type aka Bond" trial, you have a race to the bottom. Hives swarm frequently, supercede, and shrink in pre-swarm size. The bee go "feral", in the same way a plow horse is no thoroughbred. 

Repeatedly, the discussion on this forum falls into the "Ascent of Man" fallacy that bedevils popular and amateur genetics. This is belief that evolution always makes things "more perfect" (which of course has Perfect defined as utility for man). NO, NO, NO... Evolution promotes "whatever works" -- and small, swarmy, non-productive hives work just fine for the bees.


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## mike bispham

JWChesnut said:


> The important principle to appreciate: selection of pre-adaptations (frequent supersedure) will occur far more rapidly than exotic mechanisms (such as VSH based on recessive traits). The simplest mechanism out competes complex and delicate ones, in the absence of directed breeding.


Do you have any scientific backing for this John? It seem to me that some advantages may be seen first, but natural selection doesn't stop once its over the first hurdle. It continues, fine-tuning toward the best adapted - the strains displaying the best collections of mechanisms leading to efficient conversion of energy resources to viable offspring.

What makes you think frequent swarming is 'simpler' than any other mite management mechanism?



JWChesnut said:


> In a "Keefuss-type aka Bond" trial, you have a race to the bottom. Hives swarm frequently, supercede, and shrink in pre-swarm size. The bee go "feral", in the same way a plow horse is no thoroughbred.


Nonsense. You have a perfectly natural elimination of the least well adapted, leading to a population inheriting the strength-providing characteristics. Where on earth do you get this stuff? Plough horses btw are bred for ploughing! 



JWChesnut said:


> Repeatedly, the discussion on this forum falls into the "Ascent of Man" fallacy that bedevils popular and amateur genetics.


You just made this one up too didn't you (nothing comes up on google)



JWChesnut said:


> This is belief that evolution always makes things "more perfect"


'More perfect' is a nonsense. Perfection is absolute - something is either perfect or it isn't. 



JWChesnut said:


> (which of course has Perfect defined as utility for man).


It does? I'd have thought that in this forum (non-treatment section) the understanding that bees are best bred for independent health was at least as strong as any tendency toward utility.



JWChesnut said:


> NO, NO, NO... Evolution promotes "whatever works" -- and small, swarmy, non-productive hives work just fine for the bees.


And within (if I grant you that early outcome) the community of small swarmy hives, individuals will compete resulting in strains that can convert available energy to viable offspring better. Some of those will be larger (since that provides is a standing advantage in bees).

Evolution promotes what works best, according to that criteria. 

My bees are largely naturally adapted (over just 20 years, in the face of disruption from treating beekeepers), and show no signs whatever of excess swarminess. They're not all as large and productive as I'd like them, but I think that's always been the case - more uniform productivity is one of the primary aims of breeding - precisely because it doesn't happen naturally.. 

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

The UBC research group came out today to do their last sampling of the year (mites and virus) and to access clusters and get a weight going into winter. 9 of the original 12 (3 dropped out because of supercedure) were sampled. 8 of 9 had viable clusters with maybe 3 with large clusters. I should be getting official data on this as well. One has gone downhill drastically, and had lots of mites on the bottom board. I forget which number it is but will relay that info when I get a chance. I have them all to a reasonable weight for winter, and they have their insulated telescoping cover, the extent of their winter protection. I think I am more or less done with that yard.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> The UBC research group came out today...


can you share what the year end sampling revealed?

where do you stand at this point in terms of colonies going into winter and losses so far?


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## beepro

See, without having a method to remove the mites off the colony, all winter long when they are in
clustered mode will crashed the colony. At early Spring build up if the colony is overwhelmed by the 
mites then they will have a hard time building up the hive population leading to an eventual hive crashed.
I won't be repeating this same mistakes again this year. Better to take the mites out of the cap frames early on.


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## mike bispham

beepro said:


> See, without having a method to remove the mites off the colony, all winter long when they are in
> clustered mode will crashed the colony. At early Spring build up if the colony is overwhelmed by the
> mites then they will have a hard time building up the hive population leading to an eventual hive crashed.
> I won't be repeating this same mistakes again this year. Better to take the mites out of the cap frames early on.


Letting them do things their own way is how you find out which colonies can keep mite numbers low going into winter, keep them low coming out again. Its also how you can easily eliminate the genes of those colonies that can't do that.

Transferring what will happen with mite-vulnerable bees to resistant ones doesn't work. Some bees have what it takes to get through and build again, and its finding them, and multiplying them, and eliminating the rest that TF beekeeping hinges on.

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

I'm still waiting for data and will share it when I get it. The research field team has been working hard this fall into the holiday season. They have survey hives near Vancouver where it is considerably warmer compared to the interior of BC where I am. 

Out of the 12 original hives, 11 had viable clusters. 3 dropped out of the sample population because of supercedure. 4 more splits were put out there in fall. So 15/16 started the winter with survival potential. I haven't checked them recently. Its been cold. We've had probably 2 solid weeks of -15 to -20 C. Some of my hives at home have little frost beards above the upper entrances. Warmed a bit to -10 but still not at temperatures where I want to pop lids and disturb things. For comparison, average highs this time of year are in the -1 C area. I'm waiting for some 10 C or so weather to do a late winter assessment whenever that comes.


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## squarepeg

sounds really good lharder, thanks for the update.


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## beepro

What is the goal? To identify the most resistant hives with the least amount of hive resources used going tf! In this case using 8 nuc hives not 300 hives.

As far as I know, there are 2 ways to check for resistance. The old traditional let them die hard bond method. Doing it your way as suggested to eliminate the entire hive without the resistant. Or my method to let them build up resistant again by removing 95% of the mites during the winter time. The parents coming from the mite resistant apiary already. All summer long leading up to mid-Oct. with no treatment. The resistant hives will build up to 3-4 frames strong in a few winter months with sugar and patty subs feeding while the less resistant bees just dwindling away. I blamed it on the queens not strong enough to recover. Some strong queens, needing in a hurry for winter survival, do not care as they just laid away and allow whatever the bees can keep up with warming the broods. This is not your normal way I know! With 4 frame of bees coming out of our mild winter environment, they will build up into strong colony by May. I will stop feeding once our early flow begins. The hives that don't have this ability to recover fast enough will not make it in my breeder queen selection process. Of the 8 nuc hives using my method of resistance testing, 3 are already dead (one queen I made them balled her, 2 went missing from the hives) and 2 showing a high re-infestation rate that they cannot rebuild the hive population fast enough. Of the 3 surviving colonies that showed a high re-population rate each of 3-4 frame of bees now with low mite levels, they are the ones that I will take grafts from during the early Spring queen rearing days as well as making some flying drones too. The other 2 survivors even though not that strong still showed that they can withstand the mites somewhat here. Every year we have the usual arctic chills flowing our way and this year is no exception either snowing in the higher elevation areas. This is my 2nd years testing them with this method. It is better than leaving the hive died in the middle of winter when the wax moths completely destroyed the precious drawn frames. During the real warm Spring build up time if none show any sign of resistance then they will not have it in them. Don't just test them from one angle. Evaluate them from multiple angles to see how resistant they are. 62.5% survival rate is not too bad, eh. Like they said there is more than one way to skin a cat! 


Hive with laying away queens:


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## lharder

So its been colder than normal here this winter. Three stretches of -20 C lows of a few days without any cleansing flight weather in between. I noticed quite a bit of frost build up above and sometimes in the upper entrance of the hives. So with the cold weather yesterday, I decided to take the opportunity to do an informal survey using this fact. 

At home, 2 of 4 hives in big boxes had upper entrance frost. 1 queen is going into her 3rd winter and the rest are new queens. Of 11 nucs, 9 had evidence of life. 

At my Heffley Creek site I have 16 hives in 10 or 8 frame boxes. Its in a fairly sheltered spot and 14 had frost, one with a trace. I had to clear some entrances out. 9 (now 8) were going into their 2nd winter. 3 are 2nd winter hives that had superceded this summer, the rest new splits from last spring. Looking ok though I am concerned about their stores as they will be going through lots. 

My nuc site is a bit different. More exposed, more sun, more wind, some extra ventilation with the inner covers. About half had frost, but I didn't get the sense that this technique was going to be accurate here. I suspect that a larger proportion of nucs have died at this site but will have to wait to pop some inner covers to verify. 2 nucs had some dysentery at the top entrance. Am a bit more concerned about this site. The nuc site had 30 nucs going into winter.


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## squarepeg

excellent report lharder, thanks for keeping us updated.


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## lharder

So I popped a few lids in my back yard yesterday. 8 of 11 nucs are still kicking, but the cold weather has beaten them down. Not so many bees, but I wasn't able to dig down so they may be deeper in the 3 box stack. One had a very nice cluster in the top box. So not so good overall with a bit of delusional wiggle room for hope. At least we have some mild barely above freezing weather for the next while. 

Of my 4 hives in larger boxes, 2 had died. Both didn't have many bees in them, probably a mite/virus collapse. These were queens going into their first winter. The other 2 had nice clusters in the top box with lots of food. One is doing nicely in its 3rd year.

All hives had no moisture on the sides and inner cover. So at least that is ok.

I'm going to go out today and check my big hive site and bring some food with me. Last I checked, 14 of 16 had evidence of life so I want to check moisture and food reserves and see where the clusters are. If time allows will check my nuc site as well.


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## lharder

I checked the rest of my hives yesterday. It was about 6 C. I just pop the top lid off, and if the bees are deeper take a frame or 2 out so I can see deeper in the box. A few bees were flying. 11 of 16 at one site still kicking though I think a couple more will drop out. Looks like that last cold snap did some in. 22 of 30 nucs still going. Think some more will drop out there too. But there were some with nice clusters. Maybe 50 % overall by the time the first pollen comes in? Looks like another warmish day today. Fingers crossed for a good cleansing flight. 

Food is good, moisture excellent. In a couple weeks I'll put feeding shims on the strongest clusters and put frames of food from deadouts directly on them.


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## lharder

So instead of a week, I decided to go out again today and put feeding rims and frames of food on my strongest clusters. Better safe than sorry. While my survival won't be great, I'm very pleased at the strength of some of the clusters in both my 2nd year hives and the nucs. Certainly not dwindling like JW reports for his site. I'll have something to work with. Getting excited for 2017.

I got a note from UBC, and I should be getting the final fall mite count shortly.


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## lharder

So here are the mite count numbers including the fall numbers

Varroa count- Leroy 
Colony Mites per Hundred Bees- round 1 round 2 round 3 
1147 0.626078133 2.212429379 15 
1148 0.521543986 0.525382756 1 
1149 1.260125034 0 11 
1150 0.583511523 2.448375154 8 
1151 0 3.423785595 10 
1152 0.618256051 6.099753695 14 
1153 4.890953 2.142334282 9 
1154 0.349433512 2.070519099 7 
1155 0.424164994 0 - 
1156 0.696279845 0 - 
1157 1.893210283 1.192315637 - 
1158 1.226117103 0.769450549 - 

Round 1: 05/09/2016 
Round 2: 07/25/2016 
Round 3: ​10/13/2016 

The last four hives superceded but had clusters going into winter. I have 11 out of 16 surviving out there last I checked, but don't have hive numbers. I will attach that data after I go out there next. 

It looks like the first 2 samplings aren't that important as most of the mites must be in the brood. Its when the colony shrinks in fall that mites counts really become significant. Except for possibly one, its doesn't look like these bees are super aggressive getting rid of mites. It will be interesting to see the mite mauling data when it comes. I think I really need to do a spring mite count to see what happened to mites over winter.


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## Fusion_power

1148 looks interesting. Now the question is what kind of colony has it been over the past year and does the cluster look good for spring.


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## lharder

Fusion_power said:


> 1148 looks interesting. Now the question is what kind of colony has it been over the past year and does the cluster look good for spring.


Yes, the info is a little piece meal. I hope to consolidate it in some way so the info can be understood in context. There is more coming, so the context only grows richer.


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## JWChesnut

The summer mite colony data reasonably predicts the autumn mite tally (a 5x expansion). The regression is improved by taking a "max" value of the spring and summer numbers. In other words, baseline load reasonably predicts the autumn maximum. 
Good reason to eliminate mites early in the baseline period (and/or use minimum baseline number as a split selection criteria) to avoid winter losses.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> So here are the mite count numbers including the fall numbers
> 
> Varroa count- Leroy
> Colony Mites per Hundred Bees- round 1 round 2 round 3
> 1147 * 0.626078133 *2.212429379 15
> 1148 0.521543986 * 0.525382756 *1
> 1149 1.260125034 0 11
> 1150 0.583511523 2.448375154 8
> 1151 0 3.423785595 10
> 1152 0.618256051 6.099753695 14
> 1153 4.890953 2.142334282 9
> 1154 0.349433512 2.070519099 7
> 1155 0.424164994 0 -
> 1156 0.696279845 0 -
> 1157 1.893210283 1.192315637 -
> 1158  1.226117103 0.769450549 -
> 
> Round 1: 05/09/2016
> Round 2: 07/25/2016
> Round 3: ​10/13/2016
> 
> .


Why do they report results with such a vast number of decimals? The accuracy is ridiculous.


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## Oldtimer

Ha, yes I was wondering that . Just one extra mite that happened to be in, or out, of the wash, would have totally changed all those decimals!

Not a critisism though lharder, doesn't change the overall scheme of things and very interesting thread!


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## Juhani Lunden

Fusion_power said:


> 1148 looks interesting. Now the question is what kind of colony has it been over the past year and does the cluster look good for spring.


Surely is interesting queen and thread, thanks lharder! Back in 2009 when I sent 50 queens to 8 different beekeeepers in Finland and Europe for a test, the situation then was that about 25% of these queens had no mite increase in one years time. 

1148 the mite numers have doubled in a summer. In Finland they recon that about 40-50% of the mites die during winter. Like Fusion-power I would also would look what kind of background 1148 has. Sadly often happens that queens which seem promising have some explanation in their past (swarm, dink in some phase, drones cut etc.)


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> Why do they report results with such a vast number of decimals? The accuracy is ridiculous.


I think its because they used a spread sheet, are busy, are reporting to me the lowly beekeeper who harasses them occasionally for results, hence no formatting. I asked if there was a timetable for other results (viral, nosema, mite biting etc) , but the samples are in the slow churning bowels of academia and no timeline is available Still very grateful for the information and I must be patient.


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## lharder

JWChesnut said:


> View attachment 30541
> 
> 
> The summer mite colony data reasonably predicts the autumn mite tally (a 5x expansion). The regression is improved by taking a "max" value of the spring and summer numbers. In other words, baseline load reasonably predicts the autumn maximum.
> Good reason to eliminate mites early in the baseline period (and/or use minimum baseline number as a split selection criteria) to avoid winter losses.


Thanks for the graph. There has been some criticism about mite counts from others, and it looks like the dynamics are complicated because of intra hive brooding variability. The low mite hive may simply brooding later than the other higher mite count colonies. 

In spite of these mite counts, I have colonies behaving very differently this winter. Some have some petered out, and I have to say, some of these were reluctant to feed and put on weight this fall and died. Others have robust clusters, some deep yet in the hive. I'm guessing they all had higher mite counts, but some shrug it off. Perhaps due to resistance to local viruses and nosema. I will report on cluster strength and survival this spring. March is probably when that will officially occur. 

Since my little apiary is in no danger of disappearing thus far (it looks like I will have about double the colonies, maybe more, this spring compared to last, after a harsher than usual winter), I don't think there is any value to treating and losing information about actual survival, whatever mechanisms it is arrived at. 

I do plan on doing some mite counts on hives this spring after they kick into gear about the same time they were done last year. I guess I need to shop around for a shaker jar.


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## JWChesnut

lharder said:


> Some have some petered out, and I have to say, some of these were reluctant to feed and put on weight this fall and died.


In my TF trials this year I am seeing that behaviour consistently -- "lack of appetite" seems to be a serious issue with compromised hives. This is a more serious problem for me this year than in previous years, and may represent an emerging disease symptom.


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## Juhani Lunden

JWChesnut said:


> In my TF trials this year I am seeing that behaviour consistently -- "lack of appetite" seems to be a serious issue with compromised hives. This is a more serious problem for me this year than in previous years, and may represent an emerging disease symptom.


Yes, there is a clear connection between "lack of appetite" and emerging problmems.

In fact it has come to my mind that the "no sugar feeding" doctrine some seem to have in TF beekeeping may have its roots here: There has been some weak hives (mite problems), they get fed with sugar in purpose of strengthning, but in fact they were in such deep troubles that taking in and processing sugar was too much work for them and they die. Maybe would have died anyway, who knows.


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> Ha, yes I was wondering that . Just one extra mite that happened to be in, or out, of the wash, would have totally changed all those decimals!
> 
> Not a critisism though lharder, doesn't change the overall scheme of things and very interesting thread!


I don't mind if you poke a bit of fun at me. I probably/definitely deserve it
Your input is valued, even if its critical.


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## Riverderwent

Oldtimer said:


> very interesting thread!


True.


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## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> In fact it has come to my mind that the "no sugar feeding" doctrine some seem to have in TF beekeeping may have its roots here: There has been some weak hives (mite problems), they get fed with sugar in purpose of strengthning, but in fact they were in such deep troubles that taking in and processing sugar was too much work for them and they die.


Not my no sugar feeding roots.


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## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> Not my no sugar feeding roots.


:thumbsup:


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## lharder

I've been thinking (I know dangerous) about the mite counts a bit and what they mean. I think a bee that controls mites is one that doesn't let mites spiral out of control year to year. So maybe 15 % fall mite counts are ok so long as it stays about 15 % from year to year. It means the bees are doing something about them if this kind of stability exists. 

So what is to be looked for is some sort of year to year stability in mite counts as some sort of initial first step. Now I'm guessing that thresholds for doing something about mites might be different from hive to hive, but in terms of production and survival its not entirely sure what is optimal. We would guess almost zero, however bees have a list of tasks on the priority list of things they have to do and other things may be more important at a given time. 

So it looks like I'll be doing some mite counts this next year and seeing if this idea has any possible merit.


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## squarepeg

except for the outlier #1148, (which may indicate good resistance if there wasn't a sampling error), the range of 7-15 mites per 100 bees is pretty much what i have seen in the handful of late season samples (alcohol wash) that i have taken.


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## lharder

Yes it was your observations that prompted the idea that the bees are doing something about the mites, arriving at season to season stasis, just not to the extent that we think would be good.


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## Riverderwent

lharder said:


> Yes it was your observations that prompted the idea that the bees are doing something about the mites, arriving at season to season stasis, just not to the extent that we think would be good.


Some success may be due as much to the beekeeper's mite tolerance as it is to the bees'.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> Some success may be due as much to the beekeeper's mite tolerance as it is to the bees'.


:thumbsup:


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## lharder

So an interesting possibility emerged today. I've been in communication with Dr. Leonard Foster about possible future collaboration. I floated the idea of doing a long term study tracking resistance (and others as we are interested in more than just survival) markers in the local population of bees. Not only mine, but any ferals we find and I would like to sample bees from other beekeepers as well to get a big picture idea. In the process I will also possibly get artificially selected bees from other collaborators to test out as well in a TF situation. He seems to really like the idea and we will talk about it at our semi annual meeting. Could be a really interesting project.


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## tpope

Good for you!


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## Nordak

Very cool, lharder. Keep us updated!


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## 1102009

Yes, please do, Iharder!


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## lharder

So I went out to get the electric fences going and checked the clusters. Down to 9 of 16 at the study site. I forgot to write down which clusters went down. 

However, by far the strongest cluster was a hive with 11 % mite count in the fall (1149). They filled a full medium box with overflow in the box below. A couple other with ok clusters, but I expect to lose a couple more with less than 50 % survival at that site. 

Different story at nuc site with 21 of 32 clusters going. Most looked pretty good.


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## lharder

Make that 5 of 16, with one a dink that keeps going regardless. 3 good clusters and that's it. The nuc site is still holding its own. 

Mike Palmer is in town to give a talk, and since he was here a day early, we arranged an ad hoc visit to my bees. The UBC research group came out as well, some beekeepers who were interested in learning how to overwinter nucs and wanted to see it in action, and a prominent BC queen rearer, Liz Huxter (sp?) I was a bit chagrined to show people my bees in the worst possible shape and have my horrible beekeeping skills exposed. The weather was horrible with new snow and blustery in the morning. Luckily, by the time we got out there, the wind had died down.

We weighed and sampled the living hives that were part of the study group (didn't take long), Mike was in there picking up and looking at dead bees finding evidence of viral infection, giving some pointers.

Leonard Foster noted that while the bee death was not good, the site provided really good information because of its TF status. Liz Huxter was excited about the few strong colonies that were there and was interested in their story. She also noted that the location may be contributing to the death toll. A bit of a hollow by the river. So I might have to change things up. Heather Higo noted that I wasn't the only one with a high death toll from the study group, and that the winter has been tough on our bees this year. 

Overall message, the death was disappointing but some strong clusters were interesting developments. 

After that we went to visit my nuc site. We just looked at the set up, popped a few inner covers to look at some clusters. After the despair of the first site, a few more smiles and a few were impressed by what I was able to accomplish and its potential. I think even Mike gave a "seems to be working" partial thumbs up to that site and didn't offer any major fixes to improve what I was doing. I can think of some tweaks though. 

So at the end of it, I think I have made some new friends. Liz is interested in what I am doing and wants me to come down and see her operation. She is innovative and is an immense source of knowledge so I am honored by the offer. 

We got to hear 4 hours of M. Palmer's presentation today. As always packed with good information. To me the central point always seems to be "we can be producing our own bees, and wean ourselves off of bees coming from elsewhere, and its cheaper." TF or not, taking that message to heart would reduce many of our problems. I think that message just bounces off many people, but maybe with the new generation there will be a shift in attitude. Meanwhile the lesson is really about ourselves and how we hold ourselves back by an inability to ingest new information and let that inform our thinking.


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## Oldtimer

Good post lharder must be nerve wracking having a "panel of experts" come and check the bees! Have been in that situation myself the odd time and people find every fault real or imagined .

Anyway sounds like a fun day, nice work!


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## squarepeg

excellent report lharder, thanks for keeping us updated.

i totally agree with your point about mp's admonition for everyone to produce their own bees and the potential that has to solve some problems.

ot, any second thoughts about gracing us with a visit during your off season, the bass fishing offer still stands!


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## gww

Iharder
Neat report. I intent to provide my own queens cause I am too cheep to buy anything. That was quite a few experts looking at what you were doing. No doubt that it will be bennificial in some way for all involved.
Thanks for the report.
gww


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## Oldtimer

Ha, thanks SP . I won't be making it, really got a bit too much going on. But having read you for years I would love to meet not to mention see some real TF bees! In fact there's a whole bunch of stuff I would like to do if I ever make it to the USA and attempting to catch a bass would be high on the list .

Maybe in 3 or 4 years things will slow down a bit I'll do it!


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## lharder

Thanks OT. Its easier sometimes to work in obscurity, but in the end much more is gained by bringing other knowledgeable people into the mix. As a result some interesting possibilities present themselves. This year some interesting long term projects are starting to take shape to see if we can understand viral environments in a geographical and temporal context and their effects on the ecology, adaptation and evolution of honey bees on a regional basis. We learn something, that only results in more questions.


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## Riverderwent

Lharder, what you are doing is important. Good report.


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## JWChesnut

So 3 of 16 are strong going into spring. 11 are dead, and 2 are questionable. Correct.


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## lharder

JWChesnut said:


> So 3 of 16 are strong going into spring. 11 are dead, and 2 are questionable. Correct.


Yes, essentially so JW. A disaster, except for the 3 strong ones. The Saskatraz stock seems to fade in their second year in spite of excellent hygienic behavior overall. The local queen line is still going strong and has some nice looking daughters. Then there is that one queen from Pederson apiaries from Saskatchewan. It looks really good coming out of its 2nd winter. It is probably as strong as I've seen a second year colony coming out of winter in my short 3 years. Those bees are probably similar to the Saskatraz, except this one is mated in Saskatchewan, while the Saskatraz were mated in California originally. 

So I've been curious about site effects. While I may look into new site options, I may also look into wintering configuration and see if I can make winter a little less stressful for an already stressed bee to boost survival a bit. I heard an interesting presentation today about using insulation with no top entrances and its affect on spring strength and brooding.


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## Nordak

I'd have tripped all over myself. Sounds like you handled yourself admirably. That's a day you'll never forget. Keep up the great work, Leroy.


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## 1102009

> and have my horrible beekeeping skills exposed.


What? :scratch: Come on!

This depends on your view, I think your visitors hold you in high regard just as we do.


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## Daniel Y

I would be interested in those 3 remaining hives being tracked for an additional year or two. or for as long as they hold out. Mainly to they continue to survive. I would also like to know more about each of those that did not so far and why. Was it losses to being in a low spot? Viruses? etc. 

Mainly I am posting in regard to the produce our own bees comment and how I see you get a trend moving. First of all at this point I think gww's comment reflects the general positon of producing your own. Only cheap beekeepers make their own. A real beekeeper buys them, right? I think this thinking needs to reverse. It makes since to me that a beekeeper with the ability to produce their own queens and build up their own colonies is a better beekeeper. I find it takes a lot more skill to do so.
I don't think the Add to dictionary hive was developed and simply became a success. I think it was promoted as a better way to keep bees. over time it was recognizes at the equipment used by the more successful beekeepers. until it became a standard. I think rearing your own queens and producing your own colonies could also. Good beekeepers make their own. those that can't have to resort to the wallet. If nothing else stop the I make my own because I am cheap mentality. I make my own because I am that good.


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## lharder

Yes, I am thinking about moving the Saskatchewan bees to my home yard for safe keeping. I will talk to the landowner about another site on the land a little further away from the water. 

There could be 3 experiments happening at once. Site selection on a piece of land, overwintering configuration, and they will all get robbing screens this year. Well the robbing screen won't be an experiment. But maybe it will be at some point. The question is how much horizontal transmission happens within an apiary?


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> The question is how much horizontal transmission happens within an apiary?


in my view that's a very important question.

we can expect a certain amount of normal drift in the typical yard set up when similarly looking hives are lined up side by side. additional drift can occur when colonies become queenless and the remaining bees join up with neighboring queenright colonies.

but it appears the greatest opportunity for horizontal transmission occurs when a collapsing colony gets robbed out by other nearby colonies. 

we have reports from time to time about yard wide losses that reflect the 'domino effect' that results from the successive robbing out collapsing colonies and the gradual accumulation of more and more mites in the remaining ones until all or most collapse.

setting up the yards in such a way as to minimize drift and using robbing screens make really good sense, especially for operations that are in the developmental stages of propagating resistant stock.


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> Good post lharder must be nerve wracking having a "panel of experts" come and check the bees!


Would surely be intimidating.


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## Michael Palmer

Shouldn't have been intimidating for Leroy. We were there to help and not criticize or judge. Hopefully he will raise some queens from those that showed some promise. Inch by inch, row by row, eh Leroy?


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## lharder

That's the plan Mike. BTW, went back to put some boxes of food on the strong clusters and found a couple more clusters we didn't get in to. Both were part of the study last summer, but were booted out when they superceded. Once was a nice cluster, the other "ok" A pleasant surprise. 

I wrote down the hive numbers and approximate cluster size, but misplaced the paper. Just to get the story right for each hive. I guess I'll do it again next week.

But I got into everything, so far have 7 of 16 living at Heffley (2 small clusters), 19 of 30 at the nuc site, 8 of 11 nucs at home, and 2 of 4 big hives at home as well. I'll probably lose a couple of the small clusters at Heffley and a couple more nucs as well. The big hives at home look really nice and demolished the pollen patty I gave them so I gave them another. 

So I laid some food frames in feeding rims for some of my strong clusters. I discovered that the queen will lay in horizontal frames. Some of them had brood. Sometimes I should just leave well enough alone and trust I did the job correctly in fall.


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## Fusion_power

There is a development stage in mite resistant bees where you raise queens and 2/3 of them are susceptible. After about 7 years with no treatments, the resistant queens start to outnumber the susceptible. After about 10 years, they get to the stage that few or none fail due to mites. That is the stage where you start to see queen performance as the major factor in honey production.


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## Juhani Lunden

Fusion_power said:


> There is a development stage in mite resistant bees where you raise queens and 2/3 of them are susceptible. After about 7 years with no treatments, the resistant queens start to outnumber the susceptible. After about 10 years, they get to the stage that few or none fail due to mites. That is the stage where you start to see queen performance as the major factor in honey production.


Interesting, your own experience is behind this conslusion (7 years, 10 years) but do you have other cases which fit into that?

( Mine does, but there are difficulties to make exact comparison, because of the "treatment diminishing period 2001-2008" of mine, mite numbers were rising from 2004, huge losses 2004-2008) 

The development stage surely is nerve wrecking. Living in uncertainty. 
But the more joyfull is the moment when you realize mites are not a problem any more.


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## Fusion_power

I started with known mite resistant genetics so my timeline would be more like 2/3 of colonies were mite resistant from the first year, but it was 7 years before I stopped seeing mite damage in any colonies. The last 5 years or so have been pretty good. I ignore mites because I can't find many in my bees. I still look for damage. Last year I had a queen from BWeaver that showed several deformed wing bees. I got rid of that queen just after the spring flow ended.


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## Juhani Lunden

Fusion_power said:


> I started with known mite resistant genetics so my timeline would be more like 2/3 of colonies were mite resistant from the first year, but it was 7 years before I stopped seeing mite damage in any colonies. The last 5 years or so have been pretty good. I ignore mites because I can't find many in my bees. I still look for damage. Last year I had a queen from BWeaver that showed several deformed wing bees. I got rid of that queen just after the spring flow ended.


I had Primorski (=Russian) bees to start with.


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## bentonkb

Juhani,
Can you explain why you have a max of one nuc per hive and don't collect swarms? I skimmed your website looking for an explanation.


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## Juhani Lunden

bentonkb said:


> Juhani,
> Can you explain why you have a max of one nuc per hive and don't collect swarms? I skimmed your website looking for an explanation.


I want to emphasize, that my success is not becuase I collect swarms, and make up losses this way.

I have recieved some swarms, from local people phoning me in need for help, but they are no good bees. All are dead by the next spring. There is no wild bee population in Finland, not until climate change is warming us enough. Hopefully not. 

I want to emphasize that making only want nuc out of each hive (good enough) the evaluaation of hives is possible. Making different numbers of nucs of different hives is making huge errors in colony evaluation. Say one hive gives away only 4-5 frames of brood (and mites) the other gives away 75% of its brood. Makes a big difference, and makes truthfull evaluation almost impossible. 

Making a lot of nucs is sometimes necessary for a TF beekeeper, but one needs to consider the side effects. Wrong hives may be selected to breeding purposes.


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## 1102009

Juhani Lunden said:


> I want to emphasize that making only want nuc out of each hive (good enough) the evaluaation of hives is possible. Making different numbers of nucs of different hives is making huge errors in colony evaluation. Say one hive gives away only 4-5 frames of brood (and mites) the other gives away 75% of its brood. Makes a big difference, and makes truthfull evaluation almost impossible.
> 
> Making a lot of nucs is sometimes necessary for a TF beekeeper, but one needs to consider the side effects. Wrong hives may be selected to breeding purposes.


You mean "Sammelbrutableger"? Making one nuc with frames from different colonies? I believe you are just right. Do you introduce your queens into this nucs or do you let them raise their own queens?
Do you raise your queens separately?
Sorry maybe the same questions once again but I have not the time to read every post and my brain is not digesting all the information.

A small number of hives left after a crash would mean to start expansion out of the survivors and evaluation will come later if you have established hives, do you agree?
How old is the colony ( or queen) when you do the evaluation?


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## Michael Palmer

lharder said:


> So I laid some food frames in feeding rims for some of my strong clusters. I discovered that the queen will lay in horizontal frames. Some of them had brood. Sometimes I should just leave well enough alone and trust I did the job correctly in fall.


Use a slab of fondant next time


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## bentonkb

Juhani Lunden said:


> I want to emphasize, that my success is not becuase I collect swarms, and make up losses this way.
> 
> I have recieved some swarms, from local people phoning me in need for help, but they are no good bees. All are dead by the next spring. There is no wild bee population in Finland, not until climate change is warming us enough. Hopefully not.
> 
> I want to emphasize that making only want nuc out of each hive (good enough) the evaluaation of hives is possible. Making different numbers of nucs of different hives is making huge errors in colony evaluation. Say one hive gives away only 4-5 frames of brood (and mites) the other gives away 75% of its brood. Makes a big difference, and makes truthfull evaluation almost impossible.
> 
> Making a lot of nucs is sometimes necessary for a TF beekeeper, but one needs to consider the side effects. Wrong hives may be selected to breeding purposes.


Interesting. Beekeeping is Finland sounds hard, but I imagine that Finns never expect life to be easy.

The conditions here in Virginia are much different. The winter is relatively short and mild. We also get a short drought each summer, so we get two natural brood breaks each year. The local agriculture is mostly tree farms, hay, and cattle. Not a lot of heavy pesticide use. As a result, the feral bees can survive on their own as long as they can find nesting cavities.


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## WesternWilson

beemandan said:


> Would surely be intimidating.


Leroy was a most gracious and unruffled host. It takes guts to experiment with technique and then invite perfect strangers into your winter yard to see the results. From where I sat, everyone was interested and supportive. Leroy has some very interesting lines and generously shared advice on where to source queens he's found good additions to his apiary. 

Thankyou so much Leroy, it was a terrific day. Hope to see you at some of the summer field days up there this summer.


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## lharder

WesternWilson said:


> Leroy was a most gracious and unruffled host. It takes guts to experiment with technique and then invite perfect strangers into your winter yard to see the results. From where I sat, everyone was interested and supportive. Leroy has some very interesting lines and generously shared advice on where to source queens he's found good additions to his apiary.
> 
> Thankyou so much Leroy, it was a terrific day. Hope to see you at some of the summer field days up there this summer.


Thanks WW


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## lharder

Daniel Y said:


> I would be interested in those 3 remaining hives being tracked for an additional year or two. or for as long as they hold out. Mainly to they continue to survive. I would also like to know more about each of those that did not so far and why. Was it losses to being in a low spot? Viruses? etc.


I made some daughters from all the "promising" colonies in the study. The ones with vigour and good hygienic behavior. I even kept track of them, mostly. Better record keeping is on its way. So maybe the mortality trail followed down the queen line. I'll see if I can piece together an ancedotal story eventually.


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## lharder

Michael Palmer said:


> Use a slab of fondant next time


You mean the easy way?


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## lharder

Fusion_power said:


> There is a development stage in mite resistant bees where you raise queens and 2/3 of them are susceptible. After about 7 years with no treatments, the resistant queens start to outnumber the susceptible. After about 10 years, they get to the stage that few or none fail due to mites. That is the stage where you start to see queen performance as the major factor in honey production.


That's an interesting observation. Patience, patience, patience. I'm not sure what my first year percentage loss is trending as its hopelessly confounded with my learning how to bee keep and I haven't been at this long enough to see a trend. Hopefully there will be genetic and viral data going forward to document what is happening. I will be doing some sampling going forward. Some mite counts as well as VSH surveys. I'm thinking traditional mite counts don't offer good information so I'm beginning to think a combination of brood and adult sampling is required to get a good sense of what is going on. 

I'm guessing some viral resistance or some other form of virus/bee interaction is at the heart of survival now with some mite control. There is no way to really sample that without molecular techniques at present. Except to see how a colony performs without treatment. Is it mites, or is it does a viral breakdown lead to loss of mite control within a hive?


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## lharder

So I decided to put together some context with the colonies. Hive number followed by 3 sets of mite counts, whether they were productive or dinks last year and their status this spring, and a few comments. Most of the queens were daughters of Saskatraz queens mating in California. Except for 1148 and 49 who were from Peterson apiaries in Saskatchewan, and 1150 and 1151 who were granddaughters of my original hawaiin queen. 


1147	0.6 2.2 15	productive	dead
1148	0.5	0.5 1 small small spring cluster	lots of chalkbrood last year
1149 1.3 0 11 productive	large spring cluster	nice colony with Pederson Apiary queen. I believe also very hygienic if my memory is correct. 
1150 0.6	2.4 8 productive	dead 
1151 0.3	0.4 10 productive	dead

Both 1150 and 1151 were granddaughters of my first Hawaiin queen, have a few great granddaughters still in nucs.

1152 0.6 6. 14 productive	dead
1153 4.9	2.1 9 productive dead
1154 0.3 2.1 7 productive	dead	
1155 0.4 0 - productive	superceded, nice spring cluster
1156 0.7 0 -	small superceded has ok cluster 
1157 1.8 1.2	- productive	superceded dead
1158 1.2 0.8 - small superceded, small spring cluster

Round 1: 05/09/2016 
Round 2: 07/25/2016 
Round 3: ​10/13/2016 

Also interesting that the superceded colonies have faired a bit better. 

The other 4 colonies I brought from the home yard and were daughters of 2nd year survivors at the time. My saskatraz colonies that survived their second year, were superceded their 3rd summer, 2 of their daughters went out to the Heffley research site and 2 daughters stayed home. Both sets died this winter. 2 daughters from my local now 3 winter survivor went to Heffley and one stayed home. Both have strong clusters at Heffley and the daughter and the original mother are doing well at home. This is what I mean when it seems that the Saskatraz line is petering out and local genetics is doing better. I should also note that the 3 year survivor queen has lots of brood/bees moved in an out from other hives so she has been exposed to lots of viruses and mites on top of whatever dynamic was happening in her own hive. 

My only concern with the local line is that a vigorous local daughter at Heffley is showing signs of being feisty. That hive was full of bees last fall and any rap would bring them out of both top and bottom entrances with a couple ankle stings for my trouble. I may have my hands full with that one. 

I still have Saskatraz genetics at the nuc site. So it will be interesting how they do this year. Meanwhile, I have some plans to bring in some interesting genetics. The question is, can I get better hygienic behaviour incorporated into the local genetics? Also what is actually happening with the mites in the strong local line? It wasn't part of the study. Some mite counting is in order this year.


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## lharder

So a week after the miserable field day, I have pollen coming in at the home yard. I sense a bee explosion coming on.


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## WesternWilson

Amen, brother. May we have a long, glorious, forage-filled summer as a reward for this dreary spring...


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## JWChesnut

I moved your data into a spreadsheet.
Notes: you appear to classify clusters by "small or large" -- a binary parameter, but later add "ok" and "nice" You would be better served by defining the parameter strictly. You can have the binary split, or a quasi numeric value of seams of bees. The lineage data is confused (as even supersceded colonies have genetic linkage to the mother queen). Defining lineage by generation (F1, F2, etc) improves the data.

Defining generations away from a legitimate large-scale selection program allows one to observe, without bias, the process of reversion to the mean. Reversion, rather than "rapid evolution", is the fundamental process occuring in backyard apiaries populated by 3 or 4 surviving hives.


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## squarepeg

that's very cool jwchestnut. i'm not so savy with spreadsheets or statistics, but do you have a feel for how many colonies are needed to make a meaningful shift away from the mean?

my less detailed measurements are showing trending improvement in things like overwinter survival, honey production, and swarm prevention implementing the small scale selection that i am doing with +/- 20 hives...

...but that could be as much a function of having more drawn comb to work with and moving up the learning curve over time. if so, then the 'mean' i started with was pretty decent to begin with.


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## lharder

More detailed information was taken on cluster sizes and weight gains. We also have info on weights going into winter and coming out of winter for surviving hives. I don't have the info handy, but I wanted to give some context for what I found out there. 

I could go into a long winded hand waving explanation of my own (and really I mean that respectfully) why my bees, as my apiary grows may eventually alter gene frequencies in my area. And it looks like some good stuff is happening on the local scene as seen from my long lived tf queen. I was just lucky/stupid enough to unearth it. But more importantly, we hope to gather more data long term on my and other's bees genetics in the area in context with viral and other information. Information that will inform my statements hopefully. I concur, that threshold for change exists in an environment where selection pressures vary across the landscape. But as long as I'm still ticking and increasing hive numbers, the question is open. if my apiary fails, then the threshold wasn't overcome. If my losses begin to improve, then its possible the genetics is changing for the better (or I become a better beekeeper). Hopefully we will have molecular data to make the what I'm guessing will be a complicated story definitive.


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## Scottsbee

Exciting!! That was a great read! 

Following.


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## lharder

So I just had my bees inspected and I have an "official" permit to sell some bees. Varroa were within acceptable levels and overall the bees looked very healthy. The extra set of eyes was most welcome.


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## 1102009

Leroy, are you still there?
Want to update?


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## lharder

Yes I'm still here. Too busy working with bees to contribute much here. Still jarring the last of the honey, feeding the nucs to get up to weight, putting in a new site. 

Now just some insulation and the bees are ready for winter. 

Its been a dry challenging summer. No rain from the middle of June. Started off very strong. Too strong. Lost early nucs to too much nectar, not enough comb. Fire season started at the beginning of July with many very smoky days. We set a record with an air quality reading of 43 on a scale of one to 10 (if that makes any sense). Lots of nights with windows closed. 

Most of the hives going into their second winter look good. Was careful about leaving them enough food so didn't have to feed many. I think feeding and robbing really compromised the 2nd year hives last year. 

The nucs look very marginal, being hit by the dry summer, robbing and a skunk at my new site. The little bugger is slipping through my fence. Because I'm feeding I can't just close the bottom entrances. They are fed up, but I expect low survival with small cluster sizes overall. I'm hoping for a mild winter. 

Overall have about 40 in bigger boxes and 40 nucs going into winter.


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## 1102009

Thanks for the update.
Yes, of the fire we have heard in the media, I am sorry that you had such difficulties.
I hope that your colonies will be able to survive the winter well and survive in spite of their populace.
Good luck, Leroy!


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## squarepeg

80 colonies! way to go leroy. looking forward to hearing more about them when you get time.


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## lharder

I had a meeting with Leonard Foster (University of BC researcher) last week at our provincial semi annual in Kelowna. While we didn't get anything going this year, he wants to press forward this coming year. And he wants to attach a Ph.d student to the project. Very exciting. 

The hives are all insulated, fed and ready for winter. I've insulated the big hives for the first time. I have one site that sits in a big of hollow, and one site is quite windy, so I've given them more protection, and considering the poor state of the nucs I need to avoid needless winter kill. It will also give the bees a bit more of a buffer with regards to stores. I heard a good presentation about insulating hives with no upper entrance this spring and its effect on internal conditions. Had an early cold snap so was out in the snow and cold. In one hive I did see some bees on the bottom board doing some house keeping before I even got around to insulating it. Must be a large strong cluster in that one.


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## squarepeg

excellent. i am currently communicating with a professor of entomology at our state's leading agricultural university. if anything becomes of it we may want to pick your brains for ideas on how to meld science with field work.


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## 1102009

lharder said:


> I heard a good presentation about insulating hives with no upper entrance this spring and its effect on internal conditions. Had an early cold snap so was out in the snow and cold.


Please be more specific about that, it´s very interesting. What do you use for insulating and what shall be the results?

We will have the first snow and lower frost at the weekend and next week. But nothing compared to you I believe  Just some wet and windy weather with grey skies.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> excellent. i am currently communicating with a professor of entomology at our state's leading agricultural university. if anything becomes of it we may want to pick your brains for ideas on how to meld science with field work.


Any ideas about what you and the professor want to investigate?


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## lharder

SiWolKe said:


> Please be more specific about that, it´s very interesting. What do you use for insulating and what shall be the results?
> 
> We will have the first snow and lower frost at the weekend and next week. But nothing compared to you I believe  Just some wet and windy weather with grey skies.


I just use foam board. 2 inches on side, 1 inch on the sides. Its taped together. Small entrance on bottom board and I have drilled a small entrance slightly higher up so bees do not get trapped by moisture/dead bees. The goal is to create a dome of warmth, and condensation to happen (if it does) on the lower sides of the hives. The air is dry here, and we can get up to 2 weeks of minus 20 C. Last year 3 weeks. The lower edge of the insulation is not taped so there is some opportunity for limited air movement and moisture shedding there.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> Any ideas about what you and the professor want to investigate?


we have only exchanged a couple of emails so far and plan to have our first conversation in a few weeks.

my goal is to see if we can identify what factor(s) are allowing the bees here to thrive and be productive season after season off treatments.

here is dr. williams most recent (2nd author) publication:

https://www.researchgate.net/public...diversity_diet_quality_and_pesticide_exposure

i've always believed that nutrition is a big factor and it looks like dr. williams has some expertise in that department. i'm hoping that there may be enough going on with the bees up here to support a thesis or dissertation project for one of the graduate students at auburn.

if anything becomes of this we may to learn more about how you and your scientist friends are going about it.


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## 1102009

Leroy, please update, this you do could work like bees nesting in a natural setting and I´m really interested how they do with this management.
Especially the new entrance intrigues me because I had the idea to have an entrance in the middle of the box instead of at the bottom because I want to put in some stuff to create a microfauna/flora bottom like in a tree.

Squarepeg, thanks for the link which is as interesting to me as the cooperation with Dr. Williams is to you to find out this parameters. Please inform us in your thread.


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## grozzie2

SiWolKe said:


> Please be more specific about that, it´s very interesting.



I was at what I believe is the same presentation, it's online at the org website here:- http://bcbeekeepers.com/portfolio/rudi-peters-overwinter-hive-sensor-discoveries/


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## Juhani Lunden

grozzie2 said:


> I was at what I believe is the same presentation, it's online at the org website here:- http://bcbeekeepers.com/portfolio/rudi-peters-overwinter-hive-sensor-discoveries/


Thanks for the video link!

Quote of Rudi Peters:
"The amount of energy they need for heating air constantly going out of upper entrance is amazing." 
" Both hives survive (with or without upper entrance). What the big difference is the amount of brood frames I have. " Hives with no upper entrance have more brood in spring and they develop faster.


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> "Hives with no upper entrance have more brood in spring and they develop faster."


(juhani quoting peters)

that makes good sense. 

broodnest expansion in the spring proceeds naturally upward into the overhead honey reserves. 

heat rising up from the cluster helps with thermoregulation of the broodnest going up and moisture rising helps to dilute the stored honey so it can be turned into brood food.

snow blocking a lower entrance is one reason a top entrance may be necessary. a small one would suffice.

as has been mentioned the main thing is not letting moisture condense on the ceiling and dripping back down as freezing cold water onto the cluster, and that is easily prevented by having insulation on top.


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## squarepeg

squarepeg said:


> excellent. i am currently communicating with a professor of entomology at our state's leading agricultural university. if anything becomes of it we may want to pick your brains for ideas on how to meld science with field work.


i'll be meeting with the professor at an upcoming symposium scheduled for early february.

in the meantime i was able to find this web page that describes the project that lharder is participating in:

http://www.beeomics.ca

it appears the canadians have come up with a good plan and are executing it well.


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## lharder

Thats excellent Brian. Yes I think the study was useful and they are busy trying to unpack all the information. An interesting bit of information gathered is gut microflora information. Perhaps the only flaw is that it would have been nice to have expanded the scope and included the rest of North America, including some known somewhat stable TF populations such as SP's, FP, Bush and Weaver. They were very happy to have some information from my tf bees though it seems I have another 6 years or so of higher losses if my bees follow some general patterns out there. Leonard thinks its a unique opportunity to track what happens. I'm particularly interested to see how microflora deviates from treated bees over time.


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## lharder

One interesting little tidbit, is that they looked at associations between aggression and resistance, and didn't find any. Still preliminary.


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## Fusion_power

More aggressive bees tend to defend better against hive beetles. This is probably not a fixed association so highly likely that resistance traits can be separated from aggression.


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## beemandan

Fusion_power said:


> More aggressive bees tend to defend better against hive beetles.


I'm calling bull malarky on this one.


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## squarepeg

steve pernal presents 'beeomics project update' at the bchpa meeting bout 2 months ago:

https://vimeo.com/245973044

he discusses some the 12 honey bee traits (phenotypes) there are measuring with the goal of using these metrics to guide breeding better bees.

clement kent gives a presentation on the proteomics and genomics (markers) arm of the project:

https://vimeo.com/245971888

(this is the project lharder is contributing data to). 

very cool stuff.


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## Fusion_power

> I'm calling bull malarky on this one.


 Beemandan, aren't you the guy who complains that he can't get bees that are mite resistant? Do you have any bees that show better results fending off hive beetles? My statement is based on what I see with the offspring of queens I got from BWeaver. Have you tried any BWeaver queens?

You have already posted your opinion about treatment free beekeeping. It must eat you up that SP and I are treatment free and have been for multiple years.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> One interesting little tidbit, is that they looked at associations between aggression and resistance, and didn't find any.


That is good news. There are opinions, including me, that bees breeded towards resistance tend to be more aggressive or "more alert" as I call it. There need not to be any connection in genes, and partly, maybe mostly, these observations are just that general nervousness which is typical for highly infested bees. 
But, better sence of smell, a crucial factor for TF bees, can be the reason to become more easily irritated, IMO.

(As I have reported in my diary, this nervousness can totally change the character of the bees just for some weeks and then the same bees calm back again. Today it looks like this was an intermediate phenomen in the breeding process towards better resistance. )


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## beemandan

Fusion_power said:


> My statement is based on what I see with the offspring of queens I got from BWeaver.


Why don’t you say it that way instead of stating it as though it were a universal, irrefutable fact?
I keep mostly docile bees. I have a friend who has mostly overly defensive bees. Hers tend to get overrun with shb more often than mine. Do you see me posting that docile bees are better at fending off shb? No. It would be a ridiculous statement.
You tend to mislead new and naïve beekeepers by stating your opinions as fact. Some foolish people will believe you and act on it. You need to be more responsible.




Fusion_power said:


> You have already posted your opinion about treatment free beekeeping. It must eat you up that SP and I are treatment free and have been for multiple years.


What in the name of heaven does that have to do with shb?
And if I were like you I’d state that treatment free beekeeping is impossible but I don’t. I am open minded on the subject even though my experience has been negative…which is what I state. I am happy that you and sp are succeeding with your tf beekeeping. I would like to see some OBJECTIVE evaluations of you operations to try to determine the source of your success. Are you doing anything to make that happen? Or must everyone depend on your opinions?


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## gww

juhani


> (As I have reported in my diary, this nervousness can totally change the character of the bees just for some weeks and then the same bees calm back again.


I haven't treated yet and have noticed this a few times. Everytime I have seen my bees change attitude, first I think derth, sometimes feeding makes them act pretty nosy (I wonder if some of this has to do with messing with the hives too feed), Also if they have swarmed and I hive the swarm and or mess with the hives making splits cause of queen cells. Plus it probly happens with sickness and even before mites, langstroth in his book was of the opinion that bees that checked you out while pretty far from the hive were sick bees. He said if you smashed them they would be full of a yellow pus. 

I do think when I am feeding that the bees learn to assotiate smoke with food cause they will fly fifty yards and check out my smoker while I light it though they seem to be serching pretty hard when the flow dries up. 

I am new and try and pay attention and have no doubt I could miss read the cause and effect of things.
Cheers
gww


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## msl

Across the board we seem to see resistance and aggression together
But aggression is often seen in many out crossings 


> A point of interest is that when one crosses a gentle strain of the Dark Bee (A. m. mellifera) with gentle Italian (A. m. ligustica) stock, the hybrid offspring are often reported to be fiercely “hot.” This suggests to me that defensiveness is an innate trait that has been epigenetically downregulated in domestic stocks; hybridization may allow the default trait to express itself fully (and painfully).


 Randy Oliver


> almost universal with the offspring from a cross, [is to go back] to the characters proper to either pure parent form.


 Darwin
As a side note given the amount of AMM ferals there used to be in the US...no wonder they got a bad name with the oldtimers 
So aggressiveness may or may not be separability from resistance mechanisms the study gives us hope that its just something we need to breed for after remixing down to the wild type bee and starting fresh 
The flip side is also true, we may lose dezirbull traits. along the way that will take a lot (or too much) work to recover..ie throwing th baby out with the bath water and losesing of years and years of selective breeding...


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## 1102009

Except with africanized bees it is my personal opinion that:

Defensiveness is triggered by a danger, it changes with different situations and moments. But it´s in the genetics race concerned how fast the reaction is triggered.
I have humble experience but I have worked with 3 races of bees. 

The trigger to act aggressive is very low with the AMM. If they are molested by wasps or hornets, if they are queenless or if they are not used to be managed often, one must beware and work calmly.
I would never open them without protection clothes.
Same with the hybrids.

The Elgons are docile but sometimes have a "bee yard watcher" a bee which attacks everything moving in the bee yard. They are a little nervous but good to work.
Same with the hybrids.

The Carniolans, if they are local mutts, in my eyes are not bees anymore, but docile livestock. You can do what you want with them, cuddly toys they are and you must be happy if they expel wax moths or fight the wasps.
I´ve only once watched them getting nervous that was when the neighbor hive wanted to steal the honey while they were opened.
The hybrids change to be normal bees again, acting more alert.

In my eyes fusion_ power is absolutely right in his opinion if he means defensiveness.
Not very important VSH related but most important if it comes to mite biting, shb I have not yet. Wax moths.


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## squarepeg

when it comes to shb the bees i am working with appear to be oblivious to them. i've not observed them chasing or paying any attention whatsoever to loose beetles running around in the hives.

i'm surprised i don't have more trouble with shb since i am pushing the envelope with respect to giving my colonies much more space than they can easily patrol. at this time of year cluster size averages less than five deep frames of bees while my hive volumes are the equivalent of over 3.5 deeps.

i've only had a couple of instances of shb infestation and both of those were after the colonies had completely collapsed but not before. 

my guess is that having a beetle trap in each and every box is helping, and that these bees are very good at quickly removing any shb eggs and/or larvae before they can become problematic.

it my case it appears to be more of a hygienic strategy than aggression or defensiveness.


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## beemandan

squarepeg said:


> when it comes to shb the bees i am working with appear to be oblivious to them. i've not observed them chasing or paying any attention whatsoever to loose beetles running around in the hives.


An interesting departure from the topic but my bees definitely recognize shb as nest invaders. They will corral them onto the top of the inner covers or tops of the uppermost frame bars or the outsides of the outermost frames or around the perimeters of the bottom boards. As far as they can be driven from the brood. No traps.


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## squarepeg

another link with respect to lharder's 'scientific involvement':

"A Bio-Economic Case Study of Canadian Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies: Marker-Assisted Selection (MAS) in Queen Breeding Affects Beekeeper Profits."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5444677/

among other things the paper looks at profitability of treated vs. untreated colonies.

i've got it bookmarked for a more careful read later.


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## 1102009

Well I remember what nordak told us, I hope he will update:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?337743-Anyone-Check-for-Mite-Biting/page3

#59

Thanks for the links, SP, I will study them in time.


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## squarepeg

i believe that mite biting is one of the behaviors the scientists are quantifying.

hive microbiota is another one.

so far this is the most ambitious approach i have seen with respect to melding science with field results in an effort to move the ball forward on mite resistance.

i hope to discuss this further with the university professor from Auburn when we meet next month.

it would be nice if we could adopt a similar approach here and come up with some of those 'objective' metrics than dan alluded to.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> another link with respect to lharder's 'scientific involvement':
> 
> "A Bio-Economic Case Study of Canadian Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Colonies: Marker-Assisted Selection (MAS) in Queen Breeding Affects Beekeeper Profits."
> 
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5444677/
> 
> among other things the paper looks at profitability of treated vs. untreated colonies.
> 
> i've got it bookmarked for a more careful read later.


Looking forward with interest your take on this considering your profitable little operation with TF bees.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> Looking forward with interest your take on this considering your profitable little operation with TF bees.


i'm going back through it for the second time and trying to translate the results into something meaningful to me. this quote from the discussion section caught my attention:

"We see profit gains of over 200% for our beekeeper in the case study from replacing weaker non-MAS colonies that are not able to effectively manage their higher Varroa loads with stronger more resistant MAS colonies. With a greater number of stronger colonies that have an innate resistance to Varroa, treatment becomes less critical, as these colonies are better able to survive without effective acaracide or other treatment."


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## squarepeg

sorry lharder, but there are too many moving parts for me to come up with a 'take'.

it appears the authors have satisfied themselves that 'marker assisted selection' yields measurably positive results with respect to ending up with more profitable bees.

it also appears that prices in canada make honey production a challenging pursuit.

one encouraging take away was this:

"As well, when MAS testing comes to market and is adopted by an increasing number of diagnostic labs (most university protein mass spectrometry core labs can offer these types of analyses with little effort by just adding in honey bee proteins), the cost per test will fall, further increasing MAS colony profits for beekeepers."

i'll bounce this off of the auburn professor, as well as write to dr. foster this spring and see if he is interested in sampling my stock.


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## Fusion_power

I put in some time studying MAS a couple of years ago with regard to plant breeding. The short story is that it is not as effective as selection based on whole genome analysis. MAS is a tool. We will have much better tools in a few more years.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> i'm going back through it for the second time and trying to translate the results into something meaningful to me. this quote from the discussion section caught my attention:
> 
> "We see profit gains of over 200% for our beekeeper in the case study from replacing weaker non-MAS colonies that are not able to effectively manage their higher Varroa loads with stronger more resistant MAS colonies. With a greater number of stronger colonies that have an innate resistance to Varroa, treatment becomes less critical, as these colonies are better able to survive without effective acaracide or other treatment."


This is exactly how we all should see, and promote, TF beekeeping. More money.
Nobody has come up with a silver bullet, bees which work out all over the world with no treatments. Today the advantage of TF bees comes with crossings with commercial stock. With hybrid vigor in play we get stronger livestock with better qualities. For a commercial guy with hundreds or thousands of colonies it is a huge saving when treatment, or their timing, becomes less critical. I think this is especially true in situations when honey prices and profit margins are low.

The importance of varroa resistance has been accepted. Good example is the bee breeding evaluation index used by German bee institutes: the weight of varroa resistance is 40%. This is old information it may be even higher today, anyhow, varroa resistance is the most important character of bees.


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## 1102009

> This is exactly how we all should see, and promote, TF beekeeping. More money.


Sad, but true.
Perhaps we will still need bees for pollination in future, so their value rise and mite resistance becomes even more important because they must bear the chemicals of the environment, too.


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## squarepeg

Fusion_power said:


> I put in some time studying MAS a couple of years ago with regard to plant breeding. The short story is that it is not as effective as selection based on whole genome analysis. MAS is a tool. We will have much better tools in a few more years.


interesting. throughout his thread lharder has been advocating for selection based on global performance and avoiding the introduction of outside genetics and potentially novel pathogens. for most of us it's about all we can do anyway.

although the sample size is small and i've only 8 seasons my journals tell me that for whatever reason i am making some progress, particularly when it comes to swarm prevention and honey production.

winter losses have remained well under 20% on average and that's been stable. supplying fresh queens to the colonies at the end of the season would likely improve winter survival and honey production but i'm more interested in colony longevity (without requeening) at this point.


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## beemandan

squarepeg said:


> winter survival has remained well under 20% on average and is stable.


I am confident that you meant winter loss.


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## squarepeg

:doh: thanks for keeping me honest dan...

yes, that was supposed to read 'winter losses', correction made.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> interesting. throughout his thread lharder has been advocating for selection based on global performance and avoiding the introduction of outside genetics and potentially novel pathogens. for most of us it's about all we can do anyway.
> 
> although the sample size is small and i've only 8 seasons my journals tell me that for whatever reason i am making some progress, particularly when it comes to swarm prevention and honey production.
> 
> winter losses have remained well under 20% on average and that's been stable. supplying fresh queens to the colonies at the end of the season would likely improve winter survival and honey production but i'm more interested in colony longevity (without requeening) at this point.


The power of selection through bond is that it is simple. Anyone can do it. Its power improves with scale. The more people who do it, the more resilient bees are. As more people raise their own queens, the more likely new trait variants are to emerge locally and global genetic diversity increase. But it also entails some loss because of how genetic population systems are constantly mixing and matching. Its useful in the long run as traits not useful now are maintained in the population if selection pressure shifts. So there will always be some culling at the tail ends of the normal curve. Its a good lesson for beekeepers is that we shouldn't be trying to save everything. There is a cost to maintaining healthy bee populations. In some ways Brian, your short term loss due to lack of requeening is an investment in the long term. Queens that live a long time, and colonies that are successful requeening themselves will become more predominant in the population if we allow nature to weed out short lived queens. I call it research cost

Its easy to envision a scenario where mite resistance is high, and mite populations fall. With partial removal of the selection pressure, mites might make a comeback, at which point selection pressure is turned on again. A type of oscillation. Perhaps such a thing happens with other pathogens as well like foul brood.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> In some ways Brian, your short term loss due to lack of requeening is an investment in the long term. Queens that live a long time, and colonies that are successful requeening themselves will become more predominant in the population if we allow nature to weed out short lived queens. I call it research cost


agreed. (but my name is not brian)


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## 1102009

lharder said:


> Queens that live a long time, and colonies that are successful requeening themselves will become more predominant in the population if we allow nature to weed out short lived queens. I call it research cost


I´m with you if the short life is virus induced.
I´m not if it´s because of the chemicals used in the environment.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> agreed. (but my name is not brian)


Sorry, a steel trap my mind is not.


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## JRG13

Don't think for a second that the bond method is just as capable or simpler than MAS. The end results can be the same as the bond method just weeds out the markers that aren't working anyways. MAS selection really helps you get down to the nitty gritty quickly, but you need to know what you're looking for and what you have. The bond method is just sloppy as you may lose other desirable traits in the short or long run where MAS would help you maintain the whole package while looking for what you want or need at the same time. Also, MAS is used more to integrate genes from wild species into commercial lines, which doesn't really translate well into bees. It has some use in finding what you're looking for though, but you would just be screening other peoples bees for markers you wanted or it could tell you if your bees had the favorable or known markers associated with certain genes.


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## squarepeg

JRG13 said:


> ...it could tell you if your bees had the favorable or known markers associated with certain genes.


fingers crossed about the possibilities there.


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## JRG13

The only thing about that paper, not sure if they even used real markers as I haven't heard of many being developed for bees. I didn't read the whole thing though, but since it was a case study, and based on 20 colonies or something, I take it with a grain of salt. Right now, most of us could only use phenotypic selection of FAS as they call it but if they do get some markers identified it would be useful for queen breeders to get some good solid genetic data on their lines.


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## lharder

JRG13 said:


> Don't think for a second that the bond method is just as capable or simpler than MAS. The end results can be the same as the bond method just weeds out the markers that aren't working anyways. MAS selection really helps you get down to the nitty gritty quickly, but you need to know what you're looking for and what you have. The bond method is just sloppy as you may lose other desirable traits in the short or long run where MAS would help you maintain the whole package while looking for what you want or need at the same time. Also, MAS is used more to integrate genes from wild species into commercial lines, which doesn't really translate well into bees. It has some use in finding what you're looking for though, but you would just be screening other peoples bees for markers you wanted or it could tell you if your bees had the favorable or known markers associated with certain genes.


It has already been shown that allele diversity is maintained in the Arnot Forest study even though a bottleneck occurred. Even if allele diversity was compromised, it could be mitigated by gradual reintroduction of genetics. Even with MAS, the trouble is what exactly is the winning combination? Bond gets to the heart of the matter and is the needed ground testing. 

The model in this study is a bit simplistic. The adaptive target is static for instance. In real life there will be shifts even in local situations without much genetic in migration. In a commercial migratory system, there will be wild swings in the adaptive landscape and any system will fail in these circumstances, probably without much predictability in the short term. We still haven't come to grips with this concept. 

In my situation, with bond the base line of selection, I would hope to use MAS to characterize my population of bees both in terms of whether a given marker is there or not, and its relative frequency in the population. Using this information, I can bring in queens with markers absent in my local population and see what bond and my selection does to them. A scientific tool to understanding natural selection at work using bees as a model. We can also by detailed tracking of the pathogen environment, see how population genetics respond to a shifting adaptive landscape. If we can do this to different bee populations, we could get a sense of how variable and volatile adaptive landscapes are, and maybe model what happens with various amounts of artificial bee(pathogen) movement.


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## lharder

So after a long absence (I've been busy with renovations and life) I'm back for a bit. Looks like a very busy summer ahead. 

I've had a chance to go through some bees. 

First the bad news. Late nucs I started in August were a disaster. 5 of 17. They were under alot of robbing pressure during a severe drought. The middling nucs were devastated by skunks at one site and I expect poor survival of the 20 i have out there. 

At home I lost 2 of 4 second year hive. I still have one hive continuously occupied for 4 winters I believe. I starting to lose track. 

At one of my country locations I have 14 of 19 survive, all with pretty good clusters. Breaking it down 5 of 6 early nucs, and 9 of 13 2 year old hives. At my other country location I had 11 of 16 survive. 1 of 2 nucs (one nuc that died was set back by a bear) and 10 of 14 second year hives. All the second year clusters that made it are decent to very strong. I didn't mark queens so I don't have a good handle on how many supercedures took place. Quite a few clusters occupying 2 medium boxes and spilling into a 3rd. Overall the bees are much stronger than last year and I'll have lots to choose from for making queens compared to last year. A few of the strong clusters were light and I added food. The decent clusters were just competent looking. Still had lots of food for spring.

The long term project is still a go, and a protocol is in place. Looks some other interesting side projects are also possible. Somehow I need to free up some time to take more data. At least some of my queens will be marked going forward. And yes I'll probably spend some time counting mites and tracking weight gain.


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## squarepeg

way to go lharder, many thanks for the update!

marking queens and a few more mite counts are on my list to to do's for 2018 as well.


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## 1102009

Not a bad report, Leroy. Best to you!


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## lharder

I checked my skunk ravaged nucs. Only 6 of 24 made it. I'm guessing if it wasn't for the skunk I would have had 10 or so more hives. I also checked a couple of hives I had left at someone i was helping get started. I wasn't expecting anything as they were weak nucs coming out of last winter. My mentee thought they were dead as he hadn't noticed any activity. Popped the lids and bees came spilling out. I think that brings my hive total to 42 or 44 this year. Last year I had 35 going into spring and sold 7 nucs. Considering the poor nuc year, I'm happy the 2nd year hives have picked up the slack.


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## Buzz-kill

:thumbsup:


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## lharder

Checked a couple hives yesterday. I have a couple micronucs I wanted to shake some nurse bees into. I have a number of hives that are in 4 medium 8 frame boxes already. They were strong coming out of winter as nucs, and are strong again after their second winter. They have just produced their first crop of drones. Many of my hives were just sitting there since I last reported. They don't have much brood and seem to be waiting for spring and fresh pollen. They are bringing in big quantities now and imagine they will build up finally. Two distinct strategies. The boomers (who would be in danger of running out of food if I didn't add it) and the bet hedgers. One would be able to take advantage of empty cavities by swarming early, but run the risk of running out of food. The others have lots of food, but may miss out during the early swarm season.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> Two distinct strategies. The boomers (who would be in danger of running out of food if I didn't add it) and the bet hedgers.


seeing the same here lharder. 

kind of neat to have both so all bases are covered and equalizing for production is pretty straight forward. 

i have only been wintering established colonies so far and haven't had a case of boomer running out of honey, but i can see how a nuc could if the weather turned unfavorable.


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## mike bispham

I don't like to equalize as I think it messes with my selection process, but I would like to see a smaller range of difference. My thinking is that a lot of this (and loss of small nucs) is down to robbing. I've never see large scale fighting but I see a lot of minor tussling and obviously sneaky slipping in, and I reckon sneaky and more hard-nosed thieving out of lesser colonies is rampant. Rather than go for evening up I'm going to try distance between large and small and robbing screens this year. 

Mike (UK)


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## GregB

lharder said:


> Checked a couple hives yesterday. I have a couple micronucs I wanted to shake some nurse bees into. I have a number of hives that are in 4 medium 8 frame boxes already. They were strong coming out of winter as nucs, and are strong again after their second winter. They have just produced their first crop of drones. Many of my hives were just sitting there since I last reported. They don't have much brood and seem to be waiting for spring and fresh pollen. They are bringing in big quantities now and imagine they will build up finally. Two distinct strategies. The boomers (who would be in danger of running out of food if I didn't add it) and the bet hedgers. One would be able to take advantage of empty cavities by swarming early, but run the risk of running out of food. The others have lots of food, but may miss out during the early swarm season.


The "late bloomer" strategy is rather AMM/Russian way (bad or good, depending your particular N. American locality) - in long run it is better to start late, as long as you can explode fast and furious and do the entire summer cycle in 2-3 months.
The "early bloomer" - a Southern trend rather (again, bad or good depending).

In the historic homeland, honey bees are still mostly confined to their own origins (though less so now than in the past).
Meanwhile, N. America is a proverbial "melting pot" for both people and the bees and this is what we get all over the place.

PS: as of this season, "late bloomers" in my place are better off; no spring in sight yet. In total we had 3-4 good flying days for the year 2018.


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## Daniel Y

Fusion_power said:


> Beemandan, aren't you the guy who complains that he can't get bees that are mite resistant? Do you have any bees that show better results fending off hive beetles? My statement is based on what I see with the offspring of queens I got from BWeaver. Have you tried any BWeaver queens?
> 
> You have already posted your opinion about treatment free beekeeping. It must eat you up that SP and I are treatment free and have been for multiple years.


What exactly does mite resistance have to do with Beetles? I don't know that I have ever attempted to observe better resistance in bees. but I can assure you I know for a fact of better environment to avoid hive beetles. I don't have them here. Never have. I have noticed that my bees tendency to resist many other things is not a stead fast thing. but wavers from keeping anything and everything out of the hive. to being outright robbed into non existence. a pretty broad range for a single hive. but I have watched it happen time and time again. this leads me to believe that although you may have a hive today that resists beetles today. You wont have that tomorrow.


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## lharder

mike bispham said:


> I don't like to equalize as I think it messes with my selection process, but I would like to see a smaller range of difference. My thinking is that a lot of this (and loss of small nucs) is down to robbing. I've never see large scale fighting but I see a lot of minor tussling and obviously sneaky slipping in, and I reckon sneaky and more hard-nosed thieving out of lesser colonies is rampant. Rather than go for evening up I'm going to try distance between large and small and robbing screens this year.
> 
> Mike (UK)


Yes I sigh in relief when the bees have more forage to take advantage of in spring. They can get out of each others business.


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## AvatarDad

Seeing the quote about equalization reminded me of the 2 Keith Delaplane lectures I've seen recently.

Dr. D, who heads up the UGA bee lab, has a grant to study polyandry, and is excited about the new project. I'm not going to steal his thunder and I don't have access to his slide-deck, but one of the discussion points talked about during his lecture was how equalization can mimic the effects of polyandry (multiple mating). 

So, the research shows that queens who mate with more males have generally better outcomes... better growth, better pest resistance, better disease resistance, better foraging. So, unless we artificially inseminate, how do we make sure our promiscuous queens mate with 30 dudes? (Anyone answering "buy them a drink" will be banned by Squarepeg for a week... I'm just saying... don't do it)

During a Q and A, Dr. Delaplane mused that rotating frames of brood around an apiary might have the same effect as prolific mating. Let's say you have 3 queens, each with 10 patrilines (unique mating partners). These are "ok" but not "great" mated queens. Now, move one frame clockwise from each hive. Each hive now has 20 patrilines. Now, rotate a frame counter-clockwise for each hive. Now you are at 30 patrilines per hive, and are mimicing heroically mated queens. (Disregard patriline overlap and some other pesky nuances... the point is you have more and different bees in each hive now). 

The point being:  what if only 1 of your 3 queens has some kind of hygienic behavior or a special defense against a virus? Well... after our big experiment, all your colonies have the benefit of that.

This was very exciting to me personally. I don't plan on buying a AI rig any time soon, and like most of us just "hope for the best" during mating. But, I've seen equalized hives really take off in the past. Now I'm wondering if there was more effect there than just "more bees" which I always assume was the whole difference. Maybe I was improving the genetic outcome of the colony by giving them some "adopted sisters".

Thanks
Mike


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## mike bispham

AvatarDad said:


> The point being: what if only 1 of your 3 queens has some kind of hygienic behavior or a special defense against a virus? Well... after our big experiment, all your colonies have the benefit of that.
> 
> Thanks
> Mike


Hi Mike, 

But now you don't know which queens are the more resistant, and can't pick out the winners for genetic material going forward. Nor do the winners make more drones to move the better genes forward.

I might consider it in a production-only apiary, a long way from my mating apiary. Without that caution I think its another in a long list of foolhardy things to do that weaken bees through messing with (instead of supporting) the all-important selection processes. 

Mike


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## AvatarDad

After I posted I realized I meant to address that, but didn't. 

You are exactly right. Rotating frames around completely ruins any chances of selecting and breeding queens, since they will all appear identical if the method works as expected. The "musing" below was in response to a question from the floor "How do I get these positive effects without an AI rig and a staff of helpers?" And Keith mentioned "this should work" but has has not researched it specifically. So, I don't want to put words in his mouth. For his research he will be measuring specifically bred hygienic bees against "mutts" artificially bred with a lot of partners (I don't remember, but it might have been 50). The experimental design is more complex than that; I'm not trying to explain his experiment in detail (nor do I really want to... it's his experiment to publish, I figure).

But for a hobby-beekeeper with 2 or 3 hives and no intention to breed, this might be a viable way of improving the health of the entire apiary. (Or, obviously, a way to spread diseases everywhere as well... anyone trying this at home should be careful and thoughtful and not take any brood from ailing hives). 

(the much less famous) Mike


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## lharder

So a small update.

I am in the midst of it now. The flow is on, we have had a bit of rain, and will get some more this weekend. It has also cooled off a bit which is great. 

I've been making lots of nucs. I am using snelgrove boards to control swarming and make queen cells. I believe I am on hive number 6. These all strong 2 winter survivors. One I caught right at the beginning of swarm preparation. I have about 50 nucs in process and have lofty goals of maybe producing 100. If I don't quite make it it will be ok. I have dragged out the grafting supplies and will be boning up on that skill soon. 

I have at least 2 new sites and have an invitation to explore a 3rd. I have 2 sites close together (the center for queen mating this year) and will have new sites 2 and 3 miles to the south along the river valley, and 3 miles to the north. I will be putting pallets, bees and bear fences up all at the same time. I am behind on box making and this is an ongoing task. One day a week on the table saw. House renovations this winter set me back. 

The study has yet to be initiated. Course work for the student has interfered. She will get here just in time to see some dust settle as this is the month. But I hope to set her up with some interesting comparisons down the line. I have a local line originating with a kona queen way back, a line from Pederson apiaries in Saskatchewan, a line from Saskatraz stock, a line of Liz Huxter VSH stock which I will make daughters off this week, and a new entrant this year, I will be getting queen cells from Iain Glass' (from ethical bees) whose stock has be TF for 10 years in addition to selection for VSH. He is been working near Vancouver and on Vancouver Island I believe. Its an exciting development and will change the discussion in this province long term.


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## 1102009

Exciting progress!

When do you think you might be able to evaluate the lines?
They must be established production colonies?

Your strategy reminds me of my friend Bartek in Poland who will have around 100 colonies in fall going into winter but not of such sophisticated  lines.
He already provided some co-workers with nucs.


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## msl

:thumbsup:
sounds like you are progressing well!


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## lharder

SiWolKe said:


> Exciting progress!
> 
> When do you think you might be able to evaluate the lines?
> They must be established production colonies?
> 
> Your strategy reminds me of my friend Bartek in Poland who will have around 100 colonies in fall going into winter but not of such sophisticated  lines.
> He already provided some co-workers with nucs.


I have no idea how it is going to pan out. Ideally she should have been here early May to get her first assessments done for this year and get sorted. Now it is very dynamic between swarm prevention, the flow in June and raising nucs. So not much good information is available except for genetic for this year and of course survival down the road. But this is the start of a long term project. So once it is set up, then good information should come of it. I can't go into any detail about the protocol as I haven't discussed what I can make public at this time. So sorry about any vagueness in my discussion of the project.

Yes it is some version of trying to control the mating space for my queens. Maybe some day I can go out and try to figure out where the drone aggregation areas are and be more precisely strategic. Its an evolving situation.


----------



## lharder

msl said:


> :thumbsup:
> sounds like you are progressing well!


Well there are always hiccups. My overwintered nucs overall aren't doing well. I am noticing that the ones mated in my home yard are kind of sitting there except for a few exceptions. Maybe half? But the ones mated in Heffley Creek are doing quite well. Hmmm. All my queens will be mated at the Heffley Creek site this year so I'm hoping that last years success there will continue. So I will probably spend some time doing some queen pinching and combining with nucs with new queens.


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## 1102009

lharder said:


> Well there are always hiccups. My overwintered nucs overall aren't doing well. I am noticing that the ones mated in my home yard are kind of sitting there except for a few exceptions. Maybe half? But the ones mated in Heffley Creek are doing quite well. Hmmm. All my queens will be mated at the Heffley Creek site this year so I'm hoping that last years success there will continue. So I will probably spend some time doing some queen pinching and combining with nucs with new queens.


Leroy
maybe the difference is in the flow? Can you elaborate on the state they are in? What do you mean by sitting there? Are the broodnests spotty and so on? What´s the difference between the location if it comes to broodnests and honey domes?


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## lharder

SiWolKe said:


> Leroy
> maybe the difference is in the flow? Can you elaborate on the state they are in? What do you mean by sitting there? Are the broodnests spotty and so on? What´s the difference between the location if it comes to broodnests and honey domes?


They are just building more slowly than the others and are bringing in less nectar. The dry spell may have affected them, but I have others that are strong. I have pulled some nice frames of brood from them to support the nucs so I am slowing them down even more. I have a couple that are still in one box, some are in 2 or 3, but the most vigorous is in 5 dadant mediums already.


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## 1102009

Interesting. 
Thanks for answering.
Following, this is most exciting for me.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> They are just building more slowly than the others and are bringing in less nectar.


My best bees used to need boxes 3 weeks after willow started blooming. 

Today the best hives need boxes 6 weeks after willow has started blooming. (5 weeks this year because of record hot May)

Of course some TF bees might have other strategies to survive which allows them to develop rapidly, but my point is don´t make assumption that the bees mated at your home yard are somehow inferior (regarding TF) before some measurements of infestation buildup rate for example.


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## mike bispham

Juhani Lunden said:


> Today the best hives need boxes 6 weeks after willow has started blooming. (5 weeks this year because of record hot May)
> 
> Of course some TF bees might have other strategies to survive which allows them to develop rapidly, but my point is don´t make assumption that the bees mated at your home yard are somehow inferior (regarding TF) before some measurements of infestation buildup rate for example.


I find my hives' productivity/building rates are spread out, but I've never mopped up the low end of queens that were good for a few years then tailed off. I suspect that re-queening or breaking up the bottom 1/3rd would make a big difference overall. But I'm still reluctant to take out queens that did well unassisted for 3 years - they are still putting up what must be useful drones. And I've had many instances of what must be supercedure - the duff hives are suddenly piling it on like billio.

I'm reluctant too to fill my dronespace with thousands of drones from big-hive 2nd year (untested-by-time) queens. 

Do you see what I mean? Too much interference in pursuit of productivity might be a wrong move. Any thoughts?

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> My best bees used to need boxes 3 weeks after willow started blooming.
> 
> Today the best hives need boxes 6 weeks after willow has started blooming. (5 weeks this year because of record hot May)
> 
> Of course some TF bees might have other strategies to survive which allows them to develop rapidly, but my point is don´t make assumption that the bees mated at your home yard are somehow inferior (regarding TF) before some measurements of infestation buildup rate for example.


I am now at the point where all my queens are made from strong 2 winter survivors. I know it is early in the game for me at the 5 year mark and I am probably going to experience lots of genetic chaos and loss before a set of solutions is converged at. But the strong 2 winter survivors give me some hope that productive TF hives are possible. I have some in 7 8 frame mediums full of bees and heavy with nectar. These weren't the most populous hives at the beginning of spring, but very competent and frugal it seemed to me. I have others full of bees in early spring, but were in danger of starving and don't seem to bring in as much. Bees doesn't equal honey it appears. 

I have other hives that are on their 4th summer that are somewhat mediocre in their build up. But they tend to be heavy, frugal and competent in their own way. But not stellar. Mike Palmer thought one of them was a goner when he looked at them that one spring after their 2nd winter. They are just small cluster winterers as I have some Russian genetics. At this point they can stay as I don't want to over select. But I am not making any queens from them and if start getting some consistency with more productive hives, then I will weed them out over time. Our flow tends to end in the middle of July and any work that needs to be done should be done by then. 

This year I have some overwintered nucs that are in their 2nd season at my mating sites. I will overwinter no nucs at these sites this winter and will only have second year survivors for next years mating season. I will bring in strong 2 year old hives from other sites to fill in the gaps in the spring. The mating site will feed the out yards, which will feed back strong hives back to the mating site. Over time I hope genetic testing may be able to see how much outside influence there is over time and I can fine tune this arrangement. I want to have strong influence over the immediate mating environment, and a more passive influence over the surrounding area with my out yards. There are beekeepers around, some of who raise their own queens. Over time I hope we can persuade them, even as they treat, to start counting mites, incorporate some mite resistant stock and apply across the apiary selection.


----------



## lharder

So I placed another bunch of cells from a nice hive into mating nucs. I then retrieved a frame from another hive to start some new queen cells. This hive is into its 3rd summer. I have already removed 2 boxes of honey from it, and they have filled another 2. As I retrieved the frame, I counted frames of brood. 17 medium frames of brood, lots wall to wall. I retrieved the frame, when it was showering with thunder in the distance. Hardly an aggressive reaction, especially compared to another hive that stapled my socks to my ankles the other day I have some daughters from this hive already, and am hoping for more. What a lovely hive!


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## mike bispham

lharder said:


> So I placed another bunch of cells from a nice hive into mating nucs. I then retrieved a frame from another hive to start some new queen cells. This hive is into its 3rd summer. I have already removed 2 boxes of honey from it, and they have filled another 2. As I retrieved the frame, I counted frames of brood. 17 medium frames of brood, lots wall to wall. I retrieved the frame, when it was showering with thunder in the distance. Hardly an aggressive reaction, especially compared to another hive that stapled my socks to my ankles the other day I have some daughters from this hive already, and am hoping for more. What a lovely hive!


I've been at it too. Working the hives when the weather is warm and sunny and the older bees are out and about makes all the difference!

Report:

Cell starting: Good 

Nuc taking: Good

Mating: Not yet good 

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

mike bispham said:


> I've been at it too. Working the hives when the weather is warm and sunny and the older bees are out and about makes all the difference!
> 
> Report:
> 
> Cell starting: Good
> 
> Nuc taking: Good
> 
> Mating: Not yet good
> 
> Mike (UK)


Has the weather been cooperating? I'm a bit lucky in that I rarely get long stretches of weather where queens can't fly. I can get a nasty dearth though. 

Yesterday the bees were well behaved in spite of the marginal weather. It was the first time I have transported queen cells in a cooler. My set up was hot water in containers, a layer of foam with holes for the queen cells. Hopefully they were kept warm enough. I'll find out in a couple of weeks if I have damaged them. These cells were a result of grafting. For my next set I had beautiful white foundationless comb with lots of very young larvae and eggs along the margin. The comb itself was about 3/4 made. Along the margins I cut away the comb with eggs (leaving a row or so) leaving the larvae. 

I started the cell builder with a five over five frame boxes stocked with 7 frames of brood. I also had empty frames as we are on a flow and I wanted to give them a place to build comb, not on the cells I started. I placed this over a hive using its top entrance. I blocked the top entrance diverting the foragers of that hive into the cell builder. For the first set of cells I waited about 5 days before starting the cells. It was packed with bees at that point. I gave them a comb with open brood a day before I placed the queen cells. I was 15 out of 24. I would say about half the cells were gorgeous. But all except one appeared to be well fed with lots of royal jelly at the base of the cell. By the time the cells were capped, I had new comb all packed with honey. That little cell builder was heavy. 

For this set up I took away a couple frames of honey to insert empty frames again. Again I gave them some open brood 24 hours before (removed before giving queen cups to them) to get the royal jelly juices flowing. All the brood is emerged now so they have just that one frame of young larvae to look after. Looking forward to seeing how many queen cells I get with this.


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## Juhani Lunden

Six sets of grafts back so far, maybe couple ahead. Usually there is no point making any new grafts after 10. of July, and because there is danger them not getting mated (lack of drones /poor weather/ delayed egglaying start for inseminated). Goal is to inseminate all queens, but of course some free mated should be left as reference. First inseminated are laying (graft date 31. of May). Breeder infestation seems to be around 2%.


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## mike bispham

lharder said:


> Has the weather been cooperating?


Yes, the weather is good. The queens just seem to disappear. I'm wondering if I haven't left the separated nucs long enough before adding the cells, and they are being killed, or if they're not making it back from mating flights. Or if I just need to wait a few more days, and look again...

Thanks for the rest. I haven't been making as much effort, just really cramming small cavities (using dividing boards) in hives placed at midday where others have been moved way. I get 10-15 mostly small emergency cells from notched comb. I thought that was a good yield for a quick and easy process, but maybe small queens is part of the mating problem somehow.

Mike (UK)


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## Oldtimer

That MIGHT be the problem although there are many reasons for poor mating.

Big fat well fed cells will get a higher mating % than smaller cells.

However there is a heap of factors for poor mating %. In some situations bees will kill the virgins when they emerge, if you suspect this is happening, make the nucs, then leave them queenless 24 hours before planting the queen cells.


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## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> In some situations bees will kill the virgins when they emerge, if you suspect this is happening, make the nucs, then leave them queenless 24 hours before planting the queen cells.


Thanks Oldtimer. I'm pretty sure I'd done this, but I'll take a bit more care. 

I've been raising nucs using the Simms method (I think there are other names) and then dividing to make twin 2 and 3 frame mating nucs in a 6 frame nuc box, entrances at either end. I'll take care in future to make these 24 hours ahead of transfer. 

Do you consider it important to put the cells in a particular place? How many would you put in working like that?
that?

Mike (UK)


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## Oldtimer

I googled but couldn't find out what the simms method is. But anyhow there's any amount of methods, just as long as the bees can keep the cell at the right temperature is the main thing. one interesting thing to bear in mind is the weaker the nuc, the more likely to accept the cell. Very weak "baby nucs" made with a coffee cup of bees and no brood have pretty much 100% acceptance.

The pic is how I place cells in a typical nuc, towards the top middle of the brood, where there's the best chance of the bees keeping it warm. Can't stick a cell onto capped brood there has to be some empty cells to stick it to. I would have placed the cell a bit lower if there had been more empty cells to get some anchorage onto. The cell in the pic was made by the cut cell method.


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## mike bispham

Thanks, I found your main instruction pages, good stuff!

https://beesource.com/resources/ele...queen-cells-without-grafting-cut-cell-method/

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

I have had good success this year with my nucs. I haven't done a tabulation but each run of 10 to 15 nucs seems to have a couple that didn't turn out. I do seem to be having a bit better success in an area without as much vegetation. Seems less confusion for them perhaps? I have learned not to let queen cells on the bottom of the frame remain there. I cut them out and wedge them very gently between 2 frames of brood. They are barely in the comb area but seem to do just fine. I've used the cut cell info from OT and have produced some very nice cells using it. My use of the snelgrove board seems to produce consistently nice queens compared to my grafted or cut cell queens. I get nice queens out of the latter methods but overall more spotty. I have more to learn it seems.


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## lharder

So the batch of grafts I did didn't turn out. Not sure if it was my transport method or the fact I used only bees from the site. I usually use of mix of bees/brood from off site with onsite bees. The offsite bees never go anywhere and anchor the hive. 

That frame of new comb with eggs and very young larvae in a populous cell builder yielded only 7 usable cells, but what magnificent cells they were. I put a few doubles in the mating nucs. I'm fine with that as I phasing out of queen rearing for the year. As for the age of the larvae they chose, they chose the youngest larvae on the fringes of the comb. There was probably lots of usable older larvae they could have used in the middle of the frame. I have an even more populous cell builder that I put another frame of white comb with young larvae. Lets see what they do with that. 

I am in the range of 80 or so queen cells placed. So far about 65 laying queens. 30 moved to new locations so far.


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## lharder

So I am going to place the last batch of queen cells tomorrow. I don't need them and will maybe sell them later this summer for those that want them. I am really happy to be at the end of this. I don't have nucs handy to steal brood from so I have to move lots of heavy boxes to get at brood. 

I have moved 52 nucs into their new locations. Some are very strong already. I have put a 4th 6 frame medium box on some of them this weekend. I have another 48 or so in the mating yard, a good portion already with queens. So I think I have more or less met my goal of 100 nucs started. A few less at this time would be fine as I am barely able to make boxes and frames fast enough for them. 

As for my big hives, all of them are plugged with honey and I am out of boxes and frames. Even the weak hives will have some honey to extract. There is still a flow happening and I wish I had an extra box for all of them. By the time I have them built and put on I expect the main flow to be over. 

So I think what I have is what I get. My main focus the next two weeks is giving expanding nucs room, getting those bear fences completed and getting ready for extraction. My very rough estimate is about 3500 pounds to deal with. I am so happy that there will be lots of honey to go around (given my early fears of another dry year) and feeding should be relatively light this fall. I need a bit of a break.


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## squarepeg

:thumbsup: outstanding report lharder. 

lots of hard work there with much to show for it!

are you still providing data to the research group?


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> I have moved 52 nucs into their new locations. Some are very strong already. I have put a 4th 6 frame medium box on some of them this weekend. I have another 48 or so in the mating yard, a good portion already with queens. So I think I have more or less met my goal of 100 nucs started.


Thanks for the report.

How long have you been TF?


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## 1102009

Hey Leroy I know exactly how you feel, having worked like that for 2 weeks from 9 in the morning to 8 in the evening 

I don´t know how many square boxes full of honey I lifted. And Erik did and does this his whole life.

Awesome! Thanks for updating!


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## lharder

The research group is coming under a different set of time constraints than mine. They are still supposed to be here this summer and set things in motion. I am working making that site all 10 frame equipment to make it compatible with whatever they throw at me. Meanwhile I have set up some interesting queen lines to look at at that site. A couple of Saskatchewan ones including a line originating with Saskatraz queens and Pederson Apiaries from a place called Cut Knife. A line from Liz Huxter, a VSH selector from the southern Interior of BC, a local line originating from Kona queens, and a brand new line from Iain Glass of Ethical Bees on the gulf islands of BC who works with survivor stock with additional selection for VSH. Hopefully I introduced the virgin queens he sent me correctly and they get mated.


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## mike bispham

That sounds like the tail end of a lot of work! You've achieved a lot LH. I've set out this year to do about the same, but I don't think I'm going to get the mating rates I need. But I've learned a lot, and will giving it a good push next year. 

How many hives did you have to work with at the beginning of the year?

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> Thanks for the report.
> 
> How long have you been TF?


I think its 5 years now. I'm starting to lose track.


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## lharder

SiWolKe said:


> Hey Leroy I know exactly how you feel, having worked like that for 2 weeks from 9 in the morning to 8 in the evening
> 
> I don´t know how many square boxes full of honey I lifted. And Erik did and does this his whole life.
> 
> Awesome! Thanks for updating!


I don't work that long every day, but I try to get something done to keep the momentum going and of course things happen besides bees that need attention, like leaking faucets. I think I'm supposed to go camping sometime in August and start taking a bit of down time. Still lots to be done though.


----------



## lharder

mike bispham said:


> That sounds like the tail end of a lot of work! You've achieved a lot LH. I've set out this year to do about the same, but I don't think I'm going to get the mating rates I need. But I've learned a lot, and will giving it a good push next year.
> 
> How many hives did you have to work with at the beginning of the year?
> 
> Mike (UK)


It was 40 to 45 range. A portion of those hives weren't that strong in late spring. Many of those are now quite strong and I will get a honey crop from them. But they couldn't make a strong contribution to nuc making. I leaned on one site quite heavily for brood contribution. At the mating sites I would make nucs up using one frame of brood and bees from an off site and one from the mating site. The off site bees weren't going anywhere so would anchor the new nuc. Getting home bees to stay was always unpredictable depending on whether one actually had nurse bees with the brood. Trouble was I had 2 mating sites, but only one contributing site. That will change next year and the ratio will be 3 to 2 or 4 to 2. I still have one site I would like to put in this year. Still I will get lots of honey from that contributing site in spite of the continual removal of bees and brood. I'm so impressed with some of these colonies.


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## mike bispham

Same palaver here. I've leaned heavily on 4 hives that need to be moved, so I'm basically taking them apart bit by bit. I'm using strong (double height) 6 frame nucs as swap-feeders to load partitioned 3 frames starters, given a frame of notched-cell eggs, getting an average of maybe 8 cells per load. 

I'm going to try hatching bottled queen cells in an incubator next, to see if I get better acceptance/mating rates. That's my disappointing angle so far. I'll probably only get 20 or 25 new nucs the way things are currently looking. 

On the plus side they are all made from my best hives, no random splits, and all mated at my 100 unlimited brood nest 'deme', so that'll be selective breeding properly underway. 

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

mike bispham said:


> That's my disappointing angle so far. I'll probably only get 20 or 25 new nucs the way things are currently looking.
> 
> On the plus side they are all made from my best hives, no random splits, and all mated at my 100 unlimited brood nest 'deme', so that'll be selective breeding properly underway.
> 
> Mike (UK)


I wonder what is going on with your mating success. The one time I tried to transport cells with a cooler was met with disaster. I think I'm about 4 for 15 on that attempt (I didn't bring in any bees from off site so even the successful ones are weak). But generally I have 1 or 2 failures out of 10. Even the failures often make their own cells and are fine a short time later. I no longer try to rehab failures. Just shake them out on strong hives, let the foragers join a nearby nuc. This is often with transporting cells on the frames they were raised from off site, with another frame of bees to support. So some how your cell handling may be the problem. I know of others that are big on the use of incubators and virgin introductions. I may try that method at some point. I should also point out that my weather is often very good for both cell placement and mating flights. We rarely get more than a couple days of rain in a row. I do recall trying to place cells when cold and rainy and having very poor success with that bunch. The queens died in the cells from the cold during handling. But it was either use them or lose them at that point. An incubator and virgin introductions would be useful in that case.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> I think its 5 years now. I'm starting to lose track.


To refresh memory, post December 2016



lharder said:


> I like both the nucs and hives to be strong going into winter.
> 
> My 2nd winter was basically 4 to 30 including nucs, but the equipment and strength wasn't up to snuff and nuc survival was less than 50 %. This year I went into winter with 20 big box colonies and 43 nucs. The last nucs had laying queens mid July or so and had a chance to build up with some brood donations from stronger early nucs to get them going strong. I had to feed lots to get later nucs up to weight. But some are on 20 medium frames, and others 15. Overall much stronger. Overall better prepared for winter with better equipment.
> 
> Next year, the ratio of new nucs to established hives will be lower and its likely I will be able to sell a few nucs this spring. I need bee yards and will be content with 1 new one. Now the beekeeper is the limiting factor.
> 
> Its not a bad thing to expand quickly. But do so at a rate where one can do a pretty good job keeping up with all associated tasks. There is a learning curve and there are lots of ways to set the bees back out of ignorance. I would start selling honey as well as bees. Once customers taste that good honey, they will come back. But the sooner that customer base is developed, the better.


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> To refresh memory, post December 2016


 Yes it is my 5th summer. Your post is also a reminder of how plastic "plans" are. My expansion is a result of taking advantage of opportunity of nice sites offered. Now I should be holding back on expansion and thinking consolidation. I have lots of work to do streamlining operations, data collection, selection and marketing. I don't think the pain of hard bond is over yet so we will see how it goes.


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## lharder

I was going through some of the young nucs today at my mating site to see how they are doing. I think for some that were started before a certain date, things are going quite well. They already have lots of honey, are building comb, and are building in numbers. I don't think I will be feeding many of the nucs this fall. There is lots of food to go around in this bee season. 

What I have noticed is that the mating success of some of the later starts is not so good. Same basic methodology, but half the results. I was looking at one start and found the queen, without wings. She had been affected by deformed wing virus it looked like and wasn't going to make it. It got me thinking about how virus loads are building throughout the season and my later mediocre returns maybe a reflection of that. 

A turn of thought again goes towards working with what nature gives rather than trying to force things. It seems easier this year with better consistent moisture. I forced things too much last year with little to show for it. There are windows to accomplish things and after that is it like swimming upstream.


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## mike bispham

lharder said:


> What I have noticed is that the mating success of some of the later starts is not so good. Same basic methodology, but half the results.


I'm still struggling. Robbing is clearly an issue now, and it makes me wonder if it hasn't been part of the problem all along. While I've kept entrances small I haven't used screens, and some of the nucs have been just a few hundred bees. I think the larger ones have on the whole been more successful.

It makes sense to me that robbers will try to kill the queen - that will supply a weakening colony that can be raided out. 

Mike (UK)


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## GregB

mike bispham said:


> I'm still struggling. Robbing is clearly an issue now, and it makes me wonder if it hasn't been part of the problem all along. While I've kept entrances small I haven't used screens, and some of the nucs have been just a few hundred bees. I think the larger ones have on the whole been more successful.
> 
> It makes sense to me that robbers will try to kill the queen - that will supply a weakening colony that can be raided out.
> 
> Mike (UK)


There are ways to capture the robber bees on the spot and retain them so they boost the robbing target (instead of killing it).
Fighting fire with fire.
Worth trying.

Basic idea - let them in and do not let them out (one way in).
This is the opposite of the robber screen function.


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## mike bispham

GregV said:


> There are ways to capture the robber bees on the spot and retain them so they boost the robbing target (instead of killing it).
> Fighting fire with fire.
> Worth trying.
> 
> Basic idea - let them in and do not let them out (one way in).
> This is the opposite of the robber screen function.


Yes, I've thought about that and experimented a bit. I'm fearful they will fight while trapped inside, again killing the queen. Then again you have to move both miles away or they'll just fly back (and come again, and if you are trying to mate a queen in a specific place (I am) that's no good. 

When I have moved trapped bees a distance I find they abscond - heaven knows where. Perhaps I need to keep them together longer to form a unit.

I'm open to suggestions...

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

I had some rob outs early and lost some queens that way. You can tell right away because the set up is abandoned early with only a few scattered bees. I lost one of my bought virgins and this was the case even though I tried to shake enough bees in. Hopefully her sister can be built up in time for winter and she survives. She comes from 10 year TF stock with VSH. 

I always achieve more consistent results when I bring bees and brood from off site to anchor the nuc and prevent flyback to parent hives. This year I did nucs set up with 1 frame of bees from off site and 1 frame from on site. But even this could be inconsistent with some nucs starting off strong, and some not so strong. Next year all the bees/brood will be from off site as I have more support sites than mating sites now and the starts will be more consistent. 

With the last couple batches of cells I've noticed more torn down when I checked for emergence. I think there was something wrong with the cells, perhaps virus/mite related and related to how I set up my cell builder. There may have been more phoretic mites around and the queen cells became a target. 

In a way I am kind of relieved at the lack of success later on. I have plenty of nucs to keep a handle on and am at the limit of my box and frame making ability. I've moved 63 nucs to their new locations so far. Most of these already have enough honey for the winter. Some have excess honey so I should be able to do some supplementation as well. The biggest are on 24 medium frames (4 boxes) already. I have another 30 or so still at the mating site of uncertain status, maybe 2/3 with laying queens, with the last set about to start. I'm giving frames of emerging brood to the weaker ones, trying to boost them in time to take advantage of the last of the flow. 

And today, I have all the components to get my bear fences operational. That will take some worry off my shoulders going into fall.


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## GregB

mike bispham said:


> Yes, I've thought about that and experimented a bit. I'm fearful they will fight while trapped inside, again killing the queen. Then again you have to move both miles away or they'll just fly back (and come again, and if you are trying to mate a queen in a specific place (I am) that's no good.
> 
> When I have moved trapped bees a distance I find they abscond - heaven knows where. Perhaps I need to keep them together longer to form a unit.
> 
> I'm open to suggestions...
> 
> Mike (UK)


I got some ideas and will probably just open a new thread as this is not-related to the thread context.


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## mike bispham

GregV said:


> I got some ideas and will probably just open a new thread as this is not-related to the thread context.


Thanks Greg, will you drop a link here?

Mike (UK)


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## GregB

Go to the general "bee forum" and look for "About robber trapping..."


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## lharder

Bear fences are operational. Now I can sleep a bit better. 

Went through adding boxes to the nucs. Didn't have enough boxes, need more. The biggest now have a 5th 6 frame medium box on them. I added a 4th box to one that probably should have swarmed. Big clump of bees bearding on the entrance. Though it is hot, they are still bringing in nectar and building comb. I think I will have to do very little feeding this fall. The biggest starts will give up some of their honey to newest ones. 

I haven't had time to extract honey yet and won't for a couple more weeks. More box and frame building is in store, and I have to move the last of the new starts behind the protection of bear fences.


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## lharder

I am finally starting to take honey off my hives. It will be a one time harvest. At the same time I am putting them into their winter configurations, make sure they have some room in the brood nest, do a brood inspection for AFB in particular, then taking a small brood sample of about 100 cells of pink eyed pupae to do a brood assay later. Its time consuming, but I thought it provides the most amount of information. As I went through I recorded on the brood nest the boxes of honey pulled, and the presence of chalk brood and DWV. If I encountered either I did not take a brood sample as it is not a candidate for future queen rearing. 

I processed the samples last night and this morning. I happened to have a stereoscope handy and dental tools which I used to pull the pupae out. 

I found the process fascinating and I think doing it not only gives a more accurate idea about what is going on mite wise at a time when mites are at their worst, but also lets one observe mite/brood interactions one on one. I processed the samples while still living. This provided additional information. I found live mites (usually), dead mites, juvenile mites without adults (I assumed the adult was around).
Sparked a couple of ideas as I was doing it. 

Anyway here are the mite counts on the first 5 hives

#mites #juv mites pupae % mite repro%
E-18-1	12 9 86 14 75
1158 18 12 90 20 66.614
P-17-1	3 2 119 2.5 66.7
P-17-2	8 6 90 8.9 75
P-17-3	2 1 106 1.9 50

The E-18-1 is this years queen that requeened an existing hive, 1158 has continually occupied that spot for 4 years, The p series queens are daughters of a Pederson apiary queen from last year. Some of the numbers are high, but some are very encouraging. Those with low counts are candidates for queen rearing next year. 

2 years ago, when mite washes were done, the only near zero mite counts were on poor performers. This year I may be seeing a shift where some of the stronger hives also have low mite counts. This is done with natural selection alone. Still lots of variation that I would hope to reduce over time. I have had VSH genetics, and it looks like there may be a bit in action. But its probably not the only mechanism at work.


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## lharder

I have some mite biting data from the 2016 data. If anyone recalls, a sheet of wax paper on cardboard was coated with petroleum jelly with a rubber mesh on top to allow bees to walk but the mites to stick. This was left on the hive for 24 hours

column 1 is colony number
column 2 the mite drop
column 3 the undamaged mites
column 4 mites with light damage
column 5 mites with medium damage
column 6 mites with high damage
column 7 % damaged
column 8 percentage mite infestation in the fall for reference

1147	13	8 5	38%	15%
1148	1	1 0%	1%
1149	37	26 1	10	30%	11%
1150	9	6 1	2	33%	8%
1151	115	85	3 27	26%	10%
1152	29	15 14	48%	14%
1153	77	61 16	21%	8%
1154	50	39	1 10	22%	7%
1155	8	5 3	38%	na
1156	8	5 3	38%	na
1157	4	4 0%	na
1158	0 0%	na


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## lharder

It looks like mite biting is present in my population. Both Saskatraz and Hawaian lines seem to have some mite biting abilities. Mite drops are all over the place. Doesn't seem to have a strong correlation to fall mite levels.


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## squarepeg

your fall mite levels are about the same as what i have seen in the few samples i've taken.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> your fall mite levels are about the same as what i have seen in the few samples i've taken.


from post 266?


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> The E-18-1 is this years queen that requeened an existing hive, 1158 has continually occupied that spot for 4 years,
> 
> The p series queens are daughters of a Pederson apiary queen from last year. Some of the numbers are high, but some are very encouraging. Those with low counts are candidates for queen rearing next year.


What is the history of the Pederson queens hives? Nucs?


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> from post 266?


from post 267. i've only done a few juhani, and i got 8% to 14%.


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> What is the history of the Pederson queens hives? Nucs?


The original queen was from Pederson's Apiaries in Cut knife, Saskatchewan. They have some loose association with Saskatraz apiaries in the same province. When I talked to them way back, they did mention their stock had some mite biting tendencies. I believe their bees are mutts with quite a bit of Russian influence.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> from post 267. i've only done a few juhani, and i got 8% to 14%.


I think a brood sample could be quite different than a sample of phoretic mites. If there are lots of incoming phoretic mites, a nurse bee sample may not give a very good indication of how the hive is actually dealing with mites. How much ends up in the brood may be a more realistic indicator of a hive's future. These are winter bees that are being raised now.

I have a zero, and a few more near zeros with this years sampling. And a few more in the below 10 percent range. I'll post a complete result set when I'm done. Last time the hives with zero mites were survivors, but didn't do anything and were riddled with chalk brood. This year I have near zeros with productive honey producing colonies. And that one colony with zero mites. Another mystery and another laggard. This one without chalk brood.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> from post 267. i've only done a few juhani, and i got 8% to 14%.


Are the figures mite biting (=damaged mites/ all mites) %


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> The original queen was from Pederson's Apiaries in Cut knife, Saskatchewan. They have some loose association with Saskatraz apiaries in the same province. When I talked to them way back, they did mention their stock had some mite biting tendencies. I believe their bees are mutts with quite a bit of Russian influence.


You did not say what was the history of the hives (with Pederson queens) Are they nucs or established colonies, length of broodless period etc??


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> Are the figures mite biting (=damaged mites/ all mites) %





lharder said:


> column 8 percentage mite infestation in the fall for reference.


this is what i was comparing my counts to juhani.


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## Juhani Lunden

The table is hard to read. 

I cannot see there any figures in column 8.

Some figures in column 7.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> column 1 is colony number
> column 2 the mite drop
> column 3 the undamaged mites
> column 4 mites with light damage
> column 5 mites with medium damage
> column 6 mites with high damage
> column 7 % damaged
> column 8 percentage mite infestation in the fall for reference
> 
> 1147	13	8 5	38%	15%
> 1148	1	1 0%	1%
> 1149	37	26 1	10	30%	11%
> 1150	9	6 1	2	33%	8%
> 1151	115	85	3 27	26%	10%
> 1152	29	15 14	48%	14%
> 1153	77	61 16	21%	8%
> 1154	50	39	1 10	22%	7%
> 1155	8	5 3	38%	na
> 1156	8	5 3	38%	na
> 1157	4	4 0%	na
> 1158	0 0%	na


does it show better here?


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## lharder

sorry about the formatting. Importing a spreadsheet doesn't work very well. 

The p-17 queens were nucs this past winter and will be going into their 2nd winter. I have some 2018 queens on production hives because of an experiment but generally queens spend their first winter in a nuc. I make note of some supercedures that take place if I notice them I'll have more data from 2 or more winter survivors later on.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> does it show better here?


Hive 1151 for example:

column number ( )


1151 (1)	115(2)	85(3)	3(4)	27(5)	26%(6)	10%(7)

Most of the hives have less than 7 columns


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## lharder

I see, some zeros are missing from the mite data. On the spread sheet its an empty cell. Right justify to fill in the zeros.


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## squarepeg

ah, i didn't notice that. i was looking at the last number as the "percentage mite infestation in the fall for reference"

with the exception of 1148 at 1%, all the others ranged from 7% - 15% similar to the handful of late season counts that i have done.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> the others ranged from 7% - 15% similar to the handful of late season counts that i have done.



Sugar shake/ alcohol wash?
brood /broodless period?


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> Sugar shake/ alcohol wash?
> brood /broodless period?


alcohol wash, fall brood up underway after summer broodless period.

i'll have more time to spend with the bees after retirement next year.

my intention is to take my longest lived colonies (4 winters or more) and take monthly data on them for a year, tracking population size, frames of brood, alcohol wash, ect.

the idea is to plug those numbers into randy oliver's mite model and generate an 'r' value (a measure of mite resistance) for my bees.

i want to compare this to other bees for which that value has been determined.


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> ranged from 7% - 15% similar to the handful of late season counts that i have done.


Wow that is quite a lot. 
I have estimated in our conditions that bees do not (in average) manage to next season if they have more than 5% infestation by end of summer. Some survive to next season, but in bad shape.

But reading about mites feeding of the fat body, that is no wonder. Well formed fat body is absolutely crucial for wintering success here in Finland.


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## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> Wow that is quite a lot.


yes, from what you and others are reporting one would expect much higher losses and/or very weak colonies coming out of winter than what i am experiencing.

the latest installment in his series of articles on varroa randy oliver uses the 15% mark in this context:

"Practical application: keep in mind that it is not varroa that kills a colony—it is typically a virulent strain of Deformed Wing Virus, vectored and facilitated by the mite. Once the infestation rate of varroa exceeds about 15% (~50 mites in an alcohol wash of 1⁄2 cup of bees), DWV tends to go “epidemic” in the hive, killing the developing brood."

from: american bee journal, sept. 2018, volume 158, no. 9, p. 1013-1014

i sometimes observe a few dwv bees and crawlers (cbpv?) in a small percentage of my hives, but what i also observe is these are no more or less likely to collapse than hives not showing any diseased bees.

perhaps the viruses here are less virulent, or perhaps the good nutrition here supports extra good fat bodies. most likely it is some combination of factors that allows our local strain to cope with such high infestation.


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## squarepeg

also: there is a big difference between finland winters and alabama winters.


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## lharder

There may be a 2 step selection process going on. If a hive is vulnerable to virus, then even if it has mite resistance qualities, they aren't expressed high enough so they get overwhelmed. But even virus resistant bees will suffer if they have lots of mites feeding on fat bodies, and of course mite populations can build year over year without anything to stop them. For a hive to survive, they must be able to deal with local viruses, then even if mites get to 10 percent in fall, they must be able to reset to some low level by the following spring preventing the year upon year buildup. It does make sense that mite levels in a northern climate going into fall needs to be less than a more temperate one. All hands on deck are needed to survive the long winter.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> I have some 2018 queens on production hives because of an experiment but generally queens spend their first winter in a nuc. I make note of some supercedures that take place if I notice them I'll have more data from 2 or more winter survivors later on.


What is the difference between your nuc and production hive, I mean number of frames/ hive cavity in liters ?

How are the nucs made? How many brood frames, with cell or laying queen?


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> What is the difference between your nuc and production hive, I mean number of frames/ hive cavity in liters ?
> 
> How are the nucs made? How many brood frames, with cell or laying queen?


Perhaps I should just call my nucs "starters". I make them up from May to July weather dependent with 2 frames of brood, a frame of food and a queen cell. They are either in a side by side 6 frame set up (a size I really like) or a side by side 5 frame set up, all medium frames. Some of my earliest ones ended up with 5 boxes, many are in 4, but the youngest nucs are in 2 boxes. I think this is that last year of major expansion for me so I will probably not raise nucs past the end of June going forward and the ratio of nucs to production hives will shrink. The first set of nucs I can get a honey crop off. Sometimes I put excluders on them and put a super or 2 on top that the side by side starters share. Up to this year I have made queens from hives that have survived 2 winters and promising 1 year survivors. This year I had a good choice of productive 2 year survivors to make queens from so all the queens were made from this stock. My production hives are in either 8 frame, 10 frame or square dadant boxes, all mediums. 2 boxes are brood nest. I add room as they need it during the flow. I was scrambling this summer making equipment as fast as I could to keep up with it all. I would say my best 2 year survivor queen this year filled about 8 medium 8 frame boxes full of honey. She filled all 18 frames in the brood nest with brood and I was constantly removing frames of brood from her to contain her.


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## squarepeg

good morning lharder.

how was your 2018 season and where did you end up in terms of hive count?


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## Litsinger

lharder:

I just wanted to comment that I really enjoyed reading your chronicles to-date, and the information contained herein was like trying to take a drink out of a fire hose. There is much wisdom and considered thought/observations/opinions on here, and I am looking forward to gleaning more insights from your efforts as they unfold.

Russ


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## lharder

I have just got back from a trip to Australia and Hawaii. Mostly unplugged. I did look for bees wherever I went. Bees in Tasmania are all over the place, must be a good healthy wild population there. They also have very strict quarantine measures in place with no interstate movement of comb allowed. Even a dog at the airport sniffing out offenders. 


I have about 90 nucs and maybe 34 production hives. I had some significant fall mortality of some production hives at my home site and a nearby site near Kamloops that I didn't see at my other sites. A first for me. A few nucs there also aren't as good as the other sites. I've been scrambling to get everything winterized before my big trip, and still have a few things to do now that I am back. Things are more or less ready, but there are a few lose ends. Our fall and early winter have been very mild. 
Will post more as I have time. My new years has been spent dealing with a small sewer line backup.


Happy new year


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## squarepeg

happy new year to you too and thanks for the update lharder.

good job on getting the hive count up!

looking forward to hearing more when you have time.


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## lharder

I went to one site that besides leaving honey on after harvest in early fall, haven't had a chance to properly winterize before my trip. I popped the lids and had a look at the clusters. There were 14 hives there, with 2 being queenless as I pulled honey. I took brood samples for mites when I harvested honey for 12 hives. About half had mite infestations below 10 percent and half above with the most serious infestation at 37 percent. Unlike the Kamloops location where I had serious mortality (8 of 13 production hives), all the hives alive at fall harvest are still alive now. Even the hive with a high mite count of 37 % had a strong cluster (I will see what happens in early spring with that one). I should say that the mite counts were not out of line between the two sites. At the Kamloops site I had hives with relatively low mite counts not make it, while those with higher (19) make it thus far. 



In statistics, we are taught that if there isn't a strong correlation between a proposed factor and outcome, then there are probably other factors at play. I think this may be case of mites being only part of the problem. This myopic focus on mites any time there is a mortality event is misplaced and distracts from other potential issues like viruses. 


In this case there are site differences. What are they? I did harvest and reduce their size a bit later at my Kamloops site. Maybe that led to robbing as the smaller bee populations were unable to defend their space. I have problems with ants and wasps at the Kamloops site as well. Maybe it was a new virus in the area. I don't really know. 

I will be providing more information on who survives what mite count this spring.


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## msl

what are your counts in reference to, mites per 100 cells?


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## JWChesnut

Just as individual hives are super-organisms, we should think of apiaries as organisms. Apiaries have cascading failures. Weakness in a single hive leads to eventual mortality of many of its neighbors. Right now the ever lunatic Solomon Parker is leading a cheerleading campaign on his social media against the idea of "mite bombs" -- which is really just shorthand for cascading failures, run, do not walk away, from Parker's special brand of madness.


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## squarepeg

JWChesnut said:


> Just as individual hives are super-organisms, we should think of apiaries as organisms. Apiaries have cascading failures. Weakness in a single hive leads to eventual mortality of many of its neighbors. Right now the ever lunatic Solomon Parker is leading a cheerleading campaign on his social media against the idea of "mite bombs" -- which is really just shorthand for cascading failures, run, do not walk away, from Parker's special brand of madness.


good post, and believe it or not something we stand in agreement on jwc. 

most of my losses last year were at one apiary, and the result of an early fall mite collapse and the ensuing rob out by the other hives.

my thinking is that even the most mite resistant bees can't be bullet proof and there is undoubtedly an upper limit to what any colony can tolerate.

i've taken more care this year by reducing all entrances to very small and making around to the out yards more often especially on the flying days.


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## msl

> Just as individual hives are super-organisms, we should think of apiaries as organisms


I disagree........ think of them like any other high density agriculture...feed lots and the like. You have to deal with sickness and pests to stop it from spreading, etc do to the unnaturally high pop density

In the wild sense bees will survive as a species if man stopped managing them. 
Apiaries on the other hand will not. 

I did see Parkers latest move.... had a hive die when it was too cold for the bees to be flying, see they didn't get robbed, no such thing as mitebombs etc....SMH... 
I get it... its hard to believe let them die is helping the bees and believe in mite bombs being harmful. Much like many TF gurus tell people not to count mites out of concern they might chose to save the hive whit treatment if they see what realy going on with there bees 

Been sticking one of his podcasts on while working out on the bowflex... Turning aggravation in to motivation :lpf:

Genetic resistance IS our future, but it will never be bomb proof (pun intended), so ways of limiting/heading off cascades need to be considered and discussed.


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## lharder

But overall mite counts were not that different from site to site If it was a mite bomb, then we would have seen more mites in the remaining hives at that site. I don't think that was the most important factor. Still that focus on mites without data.

When I looked at a robbed out hive, there were LOTS of dead bees. When a site enters a robbing dynamic, is it the transferred mites that are hard on hives or the loss of bees (and diversion of normal hive function) from the robbing itself? 


At my other sites, I installed robbing screens as I put them in winter configurations. The site I had trouble with was harvested last and late with the robbing problems present by the time I got there.


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## Michael Bush

>Apiaries have cascading failures. Weakness in a single hive leads to eventual mortality of many of its neighbors.

Then this would invalidate any research done about Varroa within the same yard...


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## msl

lharder said:


> But overall mite counts were not that different from site to site If it was a mite bomb, then we would have seen more mites in the remaining hives at that site. .





lharder said:


> the results were 0 to 38 percent damaged, but the zeros were correlated with low mite drops to begin with. 22 to 38 percent with high mite drops.


There are some reports of the Purdue MBB holding back mite bombs, your rates are high, might be something there
https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne15-819/


> The 2015 season was marked regionally with substantial Fall losses due to being overwhelmed by mites; the MBB bees stole the remaining honey from collapsing neighboring hives, and also brought back hitchhiker mites with them, and guard bees groomed them off, killed them, and left them in piles next to the entrance.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> If it was a mite bomb, then we would have seen more mites in the remaining hives at that site.


perhaps the remaining colonies were less inclined toward robbing, or possibly good at grooming them away by the time you got there.




lharder said:


> When I looked at a robbed out hive, there were LOTS of dead bees. When a site enters a robbing dynamic, is it the transferred mites that are hard on hives or the loss of bees (and diversion of normal hive function) from the robbing itself?


good question. i'm guessing both play a role, but the impact of the mite/viruses on getting a healthy overwintering population in place is probably the greater factor. 




lharder said:


> At my other sites, I installed robbing screens as I put them in winter configurations. The site I had trouble with was harvested last and late with the robbing problems present by the time I got there.


interesting, and is supportive the cascade dynamic or 'domino effect' as it is sometimes called.


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## lharder

msl said:


> what are your counts in reference to, mites per 100 cells?


at my Kamloops site, 5 to 64 with the 64 an outlier. Mostly 15 percent or so for hives going into their third winter (these are hives that died) and mostly less (5 to 10) for hives going into their second year. I didn't lose a second year hive going into fall. I'm interested in what those 2nd year hives that survive will have going into their 3rd winter.


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## lharder

[QUOTE
good question. i'm guessing both play a role, but the impact of the mite/viruses on getting a healthy overwintering population in place is probably the greater factor. 
[/QUOTE]

The hives that died were probably finished off by robbing (and wasps), not by additional mites gained by robbing others. I suspect both mites and viruses in this case were part of a summer long dynamic, rather than a short term brought on by robbing others. I didn't notice so much before but the hives that died were going into their 3rd winter, while those that survived into their second. It should also be noted that the second year hives had mostly reasonable mite counts. Once an apiary enters into a robbing dynamic it is cascading. I saw that in weak nucs (that probably didn't have many mites), that didn't have the resources to defend themselves. Normally they would but once robbers get some success... One by one they go with a few winners. 


I suspect the robbed out hives were weak to begin with, but exasperated by a robbing dynamic that is difficult to stop once started.


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## lharder

msl said:


> There are some reports of the Purdue MBB holding back mite bombs, your rates are high, might be something there
> https://projects.sare.org/project-reports/fne15-819/


Mite biting is useful to be sure. I think there is a difference between dealing with a few introduced mites and holding back a mite bomb. Do you have any data supporting a significant increase of mites in an otherwise healthy hive from a robbed out one? From what I've read, there are studies showing mite transfer, but not significant mite transfer. This could be significant for treated hives without any other mechanisms of resistance, but not so much for hives with some resistance. 

The other reason for concern is if there were new virus types circulating around. There is not much that could be done about that at any rate.


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## squarepeg

randy oliver addresses some of these questions in this article:

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/the-varroa-problem-part-16b/ 

(May 2018)

in which he writes:

"Practical question: is this immigration of mites due mainly to the drifting of workers abandoning their collapsing hive, or instead due to bees engaged in robbing inadvertently carrying them home? And if not the bees in managed apiaries, is it from collapsing feral colonies and/or escaped swarms?

I have yet to see data that answers the above questions. Some research is already underway, and I hope to run an experiment myself this summer in order to help to answer the question."


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## lharder

There was a study in Germany that showed mite transfer under controlled circumstances. Took place where there were no other colonies, receiver colonies had mites were treated to 0 %. Untreated coloines that were mite susceptible (produced large numbers of mites) were placed at various distances away within flying distance and there was a dearth. The study showed mite transfer, but in spite of perfect storm conditions, I noticed in real terms not that many mites were transferred. But this wasn't a case of collapsing hives either, so it wasn't documenting a situation where there was a failure. But even in the case of a failure, a large number of bees presumably with a good portion of the mites leave the hive to die on the ground. 


I am curious about pure numbers of mites transferred over and whether it is enough to significantly alter an infestation rate beyond what an otherwise somewhat resistant hive is able to deal with. 


In my situation with my one site (and I don't think there is a difference in the bees between that and my other sites), why did they experience a mortality event and the other sites didn't. I suspect if I could have dealt with that site sooner reducing colony size and put robbing screens on earlier, I could have shut down the robbing dynamic and maybe the losses would have occurred in the winter. I have another site with a fair proportion of hives going into their 3rd winter, so I will be able to compare the after winter mortality rates of those with the overall mortality rates of my stricken site. 

I still have 3 colonies at my stricken site that are going into their 3rd winter and in decent shape. Did I take queens from them this year? No. 

But it looks like I may have some 3 winter survivors with decent production to make queens from. This year I have some good mite data for colonies coming out of their 2nd winter and to maybe move (or split up and requeen) some mite susceptible colonies out of the mating area should they survive the winter. I also have some queens going into their 2nd winter that have fall brood mite counts under 5 %. There is serious opportunity to up the ante. I should also mention that a colony that originated from a local queen cell my first summer is still kicking with mite levels in the fall of 8 %. 

I'm looking forward to tracking this year's colonies that were all mated in an area where I had a large number of bees. Those that survive into their 2nd fall will have brood mite counts done and it will be interesting to see if overall variability starts to go down with a more control over the mating area. I am quite pleased with the information the fall/late summer brood mite counts have given me. I only have some much time to take data, and this seems worth the effort.


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## squarepeg

excellent post lharder. many thanks for contributing and we are looking forward to see how things progress with you and your bees.


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## JRG13

Randy may have written something on this, but he recently found that collapsing hives were spreading mites via dispersion of the bees into the other hives in the area.


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## msl

this one is all right, and lists most of the study's on the subject if you want to do a deep dive
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824817/

long and short is there seems to be an sharp increase in mites, not predicted by the normal mite growth curve that is dependent on the areas mite load. A hive with a high load dose not need to colaspace to be effecting there neighbors.

_"The honey bee parasite Varroa destructor Anderson & Trueman can disperse and invade honey bee colonies by attaching to "drifting" and "robbing" honey bees that move into nonnatal colonies. We quantified the weekly invasion rates and the subsequent mite population growth from the end of July to November 2011 in 28 honey bee colonies kept in two apiaries that had high (HBD) and low (LBD) densities of neighboring colonies. At each apiary, half (seven) of the colonies were continuously treated with acaricides to kill all Varroa mites and thereby determine the invasion rates. The other group of colonies was only treated before the beginning of the experiment and then left untreated to record Varroa population growth until a final treatment in November. The numbers of bees and brood cells of all colonies were estimated according to the Liebefeld evaluation method. The invasion rates varied among individual colonies but revealed highly significant differences between the study sites. The average invasion rate per colony over the entire 3.5-mo period ranged from 266 to 1,171 mites at the HBD site compared with only 72 to 248 mites at the LBD apiary. In the untreated colonies, the Varroa population reached an average final infestation in November of 2,082 mites per colony (HBD) and 340 mites per colony (LBD)."_
Frey, Rosenkranz 2014
you lkeep what your nehobor keeps
TF BYBK in a HBD can be getting crushed, while one in a LBD is doing fine and thinks there stock is something special...
I was fine till BYBK became a huge thing and I went from LBD to HBD


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## squarepeg

so it may turn out that robbing screens offer some protection by making it less likely for a mite-carrying drifter to find it's way into the hive, hmm.

am i correct lharder in that the only yard you suffered heavy losses in was the one that you did not place robbing screens?

as far as i know randy hasn't published his findings yet on the drifting experiment he mentioned conducting this past summer. i'll be watching for it.


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## mike bispham

I have grown from zero to 100 hives over 8 years by collecting swarms, making increase and facilitating natural increase. All the while running a live and let die regime.

I've had colonies die, but fewer by proportion every year. I've never noticed adjacent hives suffering. 

I think bees naturally rob each other to death if they can do so profitably. 

In a mite-vulnerable apiary I can imagine a mite bomb effect. In a mite resistant one, especially a large one, no. The mites get shared out, and dealt with, and they were probably less fecund mites in the first place. 

So my point is: whether or not 'mite bombs' are a reality depends on your bees.

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

msl said:


> this one is all right, and lists most of the study's on the subject if you want to do a deep dive
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824817/
> 
> long and short is there seems to be an sharp increase in mites, not predicted by the normal mite growth curve that is dependent on the areas mite load. A hive with a high load dose not need to colaspace to be effecting there neighbors.
> 
> _"The honey bee parasite Varroa destructor Anderson & Trueman can disperse and invade honey bee colonies by attaching to "drifting" and "robbing" honey bees that move into nonnatal colonies. We quantified the weekly invasion rates and the subsequent mite population growth from the end of July to November 2011 in 28 honey bee colonies kept in two apiaries that had high (HBD) and low (LBD) densities of neighboring colonies. At each apiary, half (seven) of the colonies were continuously treated with acaricides to kill all Varroa mites and thereby determine the invasion rates. The other group of colonies was only treated before the beginning of the experiment and then left untreated to record Varroa population growth until a final treatment in November. The numbers of bees and brood cells of all colonies were estimated according to the Liebefeld evaluation method. The invasion rates varied among individual colonies but revealed highly significant differences between the study sites. The average invasion rate per colony over the entire 3.5-mo period ranged from 266 to 1,171 mites at the HBD site compared with only 72 to 248 mites at the LBD apiary. In the untreated colonies, the Varroa population reached an average final infestation in November of 2,082 mites per colony (HBD) and 340 mites per colony (LBD)."_
> Frey, Rosenkranz 2014
> you lkeep what your nehobor keeps
> TF BYBK in a HBD can be getting crushed, while one in a LBD is doing fine and thinks there stock is something special...
> I was fine till BYBK became a huge thing and I went from LBD to HBD


Thanks for that study. When I read it I was struck by the low reproductive rate of mites in the study hives. Or perhaps they started off with such a low population of mites that errors rates were large. Wouldn't such a low reproductive rate in brood cells indicate vsh? If that is the case, and if surrounding commercial hives (little was said of them or their density, or their mite resistance) were not so well advantaged, then perhaps we could expect a population increase. Mites don't appear out of no where. They didn't think the additional mites were from robbing of collapsing hives, but it seems that well adapted bees would import mites from their not so well adapted neighbors. Less outgoing mites, more incoming mites. 

Even in situations where bees are well adapted to mites, one would expect some failures some of the time. It would be expected that there would be a fall bump in mite populations. In this case the advantages of additional resources gained from robbing would be offset to some extent by the additional mites. One of those common optimisation situations.

But, perhaps the lesson here is that a well adapted hive will produce less mites overall, and is probably taking mites out of the system than contributing to it compared to a hive that depends on treatment. By selection it is possible to reduce the overall mite reproductive success, with influx and outflux of mites about the same. It is the responsibility of all to select.


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> so it may turn out that robbing screens offer some protection by making it less likely for a mite-carrying drifter to find it's way into the hive, hmm.
> 
> am i correct lharder in that the only yard you suffered heavy losses in was the one that you did not place robbing screens?
> 
> as far as i know randy hasn't published his findings yet on the drifting experiment he mentioned conducting this past summer. i'll be watching for it.


I am seeing a slow build up to the value of robbing screens. This is the first year I used them as much as I did. The site I had losses was the last I got too, and the robbing dynamic was already well on the way by the time I got them on. I was always running behind, with all the expansion I did. Not sure how this next year will play out as I have to build a bunch of production hive boxes and frames and will probably be doing it all summer trying to keep up. Last year I was building nuc boxes like crazy to keep up with the nucs and neglecting other aspects of beekeeping. I have one more site to install and then will play consolidate to manage more efficiently. 

Nonetheless, I consider myself in the transitory phase, with high variability in mite counts. Once I am in a more stable phase, perhaps an occasional challenge to the bees is useful to maintain selection. Like a tough winter, a drought, or occasional collapsing hives due to viruses/mites. One could look at these events as disasters, but perhaps we could look at them as unpleasant but useful tuning events that maintains robustness in our stock.


----------



## Oldtimer

I've seen so many dodgy studies now (not saying the above is one), that I put more store on what I observe myself. Which is, that once mites arrived in my country, they spread rapidly even to wild hives with good distance to the nearest other hives. Only thing that slowed them down was bodies of water between islands.
Other thing I've observed is what I believe to be the effects of robbing. A commercial beekeeper in my area has a practise of moving bees off to productive areas but assembling holding yards of the "dinks" that he didn't think worth moving. These dink yards can have a large number of hives plus be in a pretty sorry state, and best I can tell the owner applies all his labor force to the productive hives and the dinks only get a look at if he can afford the time. When one of these dink yards has been plonked a few hundred yards from one of my own apiaries, I have observed my own bees to gain sugar and honey when they shouldn't have, and rapidly go from a negligeable mite level to a highly dangerous one needing immediate chemical treatment or lose the bees.

My personal view is that hives being robbed is not a major source of mite invasion to the hive being robbed, but that mites in hives near death by mites understand the situation and jump onto the robber bees. I have watched this situation and actually seen mites transfer from hive bees onto robber bees, and they are so fast at it, blink and you miss it.


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## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> ...once mites arrived in my country, they spread rapidly even to wild hives with good distance to the nearest other hives.


Arriving as a new predator the native populations will have almost no resistance at all, and yes colonies will topple domino-like. Its the same when any new predator or disease arrives in a non-resistant population. (the arrival of European diseases on native American populations is fine example, but there any number. Its just what happens, and very easily understood. 

What slows mites down is either treatments that grossly inhibit the evolution of resistance, or rapid evolution where there are sufficient numbers of wild/feral colonies, (or beekeeper led breeding which has never happened as far as I know; or beekeepers take the live and let die route, or something as effective).

That's all standard population/animal husbandry science. You don't need to count anything to know it will happen. 

Mike (UK)


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## msl

> Wouldn't such a low reproductive rate in brood cells indicate vsh


I don't think so, feels like something else at work..
"We did not find any cells where the foundress produced more than a single fully developed daughter mite in the infested cell." 



> But, perhaps the lesson here is that a well adapted hive will produce less mites overall, and is probably taking mites out of the system than contributing to it compared to a hive that depends on treatment.


only if the depended hive isn't treated, as that would provide a high kill rate on said incoming mites.
the flip side is a hive that survives, but not thrives will be outputting more mites then either extreme, and that is the problem. 
What your talking about is a kefuss mite black hole, But to get there you have to select for hives that keep the mites low, not just alive.



> You don't need to count anything to know it will happen.


faith based beekeeping get us no were..
Feral cats have cased extinction of 60+ species
rats some in in the 70s
no balance, bargain, or adaption. Just extinction. 
The is no question feral/wild bees will continue to survive, but traits for wild survival are often in direct opposition to those valued by humans.... swarming/production and defensive behavior come to mind..


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## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> Arriving as a new predator the native populations will have almost no resistance at all, and yes colonies will topple domino-like. Its the same when any new predator or disease arrives in a non-resistant population..... Its just what happens, and very easily understood.


Appreciate you wiseing us up to that fact. Really, I doubt the rest of us had a clue. i think i can easily understand it now.


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> I've seen so many dodgy studies now (not saying the above is one), that I put more store on what I observe myself. Which is, that once mites arrived in my country, they spread rapidly even to wild hives with good distance to the nearest other hives. Only thing that slowed them down was bodies of water between islands.
> Other thing I've observed is what I believe to be the effects of robbing. A commercial beekeeper in my area has a practise of moving bees off to productive areas but assembling holding yards of the "dinks" that he didn't think worth moving. These dink yards can have a large number of hives plus be in a pretty sorry state, and best I can tell the owner applies all his labor force to the productive hives and the dinks only get a look at if he can afford the time. When one of these dink yards has been plonked a few hundred yards from one of my own apiaries, I have observed my own bees to gain sugar and honey when they shouldn't have, and rapidly go from a negligeable mite level to a highly dangerous one needing immediate chemical treatment or lose the bees.
> 
> My personal view is that hives being robbed is not a major source of mite invasion to the hive being robbed, but that mites in hives near death by mites understand the situation and jump onto the robber bees. I have watched this situation and actually seen mites transfer from hive bees onto robber bees, and they are so fast at it, blink and you miss it.


And I guess these are run of the mill bees with no resistance to mites and hence actual mite bombs.


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## lharder

msl said:


> I don't think so, feels like something else at work..
> "We did not find any cells where the foundress produced more than a single fully developed daughter mite in the infested cell."
> 
> 
> only if the depended hive isn't treated, as that would provide a high kill rate on said incoming mites.
> the flip side is a hive that survives, but not thrives will be outputting more mites then either extreme, and that is the problem.
> What your talking about is a kefuss mite black hole, But to get there you have to select for hives that keep the mites low, not just alive.
> 
> 
> faith based beekeeping get us no were..
> Feral cats have cased extinction of 60+ species
> rats some in in the 70s
> no balance, bargain, or adaption. Just extinction.
> The is no question feral/wild bees will continue to survive, but traits for wild survival are often in direct opposition to those valued by humans.... swarming/production and defensive behavior come to mind..


But non resistance hives typically aren't treated for most of the growing season. Spring and fall around here. That leaves unrestricted mite production for a good chunk of the season. If the end game is extinction then sp, me, MB and a bunch of others as well as Arnot bees and other ferals would have been washed out a long time ago.


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## msl

> . If the end game is extinction then sp, me, MB and a bunch of others as well as Arnot bees and other ferals would have been washed out a long time ago


as I said
"The is no question feral/wild bees will continue to survive" traits for wild survival are often in direct opposition to those valued by humans.... swarming/production and defensive behavior come to mind.."
The flip side is if genetics was the end game why isn't Seeley a millionaire queen producer selling AF queens Or "all" the other "successful" TF types for that matter. 

The mite may not be threat to bees as a species, its a threat to beekeeping as a vocation 
bees need beekeepers like fish needs a bike......
Apiaries on the other hand, do to their nature are completely dependent on a beekeeper, it is in there nature to dwindal back towards natural dencinctys. 

For the most part agriculture requites domestic livestock, and "traits for wild survival are often in direct opposition to those valued by humans" 
even Kefuss was unable to produce a line that could be used in migratory pollination, or even one that could be exported to other beekeepers..
yes mite resistance is our future, but we need to be reasonable. 
As an example lets look at the TF meat market... sick animals are not left in the herd to spread pathogens. They are treated with antibiotics and often removed/quarantined, then sold to a different market. 

Using modern medicine to protect economically important lines that will be useful once the area mite load is lowered..but mostly to protect valuable resources to propagate and to provide for max increase from significantly resistant stocks, and to provide for a max distribution of genetics should be considered as part of any program of resistance development.. not to mention just out right SOP for sustainability moving forward. 
on-like talking a breeding female(brood mare,sow,heifer, etc) of other stocks.. I can take one of poor genetics, kill her, cut, break, hack, the stock apart ... what 4-5+ways in to mating nucs, and a good deal more shaking spam can miny nucs, ,600-900 bees in a miny, 7000 + cover bees in a full frame of brood, expounded over weeks/months of production and insert completely unrelated genetics.. try that with any other stock. Take an ax... make a divide of a sow, cow, goat or rabbit like that 

long and short is the general TF message is ignoring and activity blocking the scientific involvement... Bush(what, importing 50 packages this year) , S. Parker...umm ya.... 24+- hives no queen, nuc or bees sales in how long?
+ a ton of splits and swarm catches...but only 5% a year losses don't ya know.... but some how no growth
Keffus- full crash after transfer to his son and failure in france... years of selection yet treated bees being the norm in Chile 
Lusby.... oh god WTF mites were here but not an issue till we up sized foundation... then mites, AFB, EBB and every bee problem known to man reared it's ugly head https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlOC_l8JXCw

I see your growing... the value of mite counts and limiting the effect of mite bombs/ area mite load is growing in you. 

bee the light, bee the future of TF and understand that future may require a chemical intervention from time to time to achieve a global impact, not just a local one


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## lharder

Treatment free beekeeping is an attempt to use ecological principles to reduce the number of mortality events over time and create resilient stock. 

Industrial beekeeping is oblivious to this hence all the imported problems, the lack of resilience, and lack of opportunity for evolution to come up with some new tricks. As such, their methods, and the agricultural systems they support (almonds) are unsustainable. There probably is some use for some modern methods that would fit in with an ecological approach. I certainly approve of using molecular and genetic tools as a way of better understanding of how natural and artificial systems work. But overall the industrial approach has been a failure in terms of bee health.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> But overall the industrial approach has been a failure in terms of bee health.


in my view that description is a bit harsh.

i would describe the industrial approach as breaking even at this point, neither winning or losing against varroa/viruses but maintaining operational effectiveness.

the concern raised by randy oliver and others is that the day may come when treatments no longer keep it a zero-sum game. if that day comes then i would describe the approach as a failure.

in the meantime it behooves us all to take seriously moving the ball forward with respect to mite resistance since none of us can see into the future.


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## JWChesnut

The thread correspondent describes an autumn/early winter collapse of his main apiary accompanied by jaw-dropping varroa counts among his established hives. This is entirely predictable, and not indicative of any "progress". A lot of bees died, and that is what happens when Varroa management devolves to "a wing and a prayer".

The random colonies that escaped the carnage are just lucky, genetics among the battered remainder are a truncated morsel of the regional background.


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## squarepeg

JWChesnut said:


> ...are a truncated morsel of the regional background.


the successful selection for traits has been around about as long as beekeepers have been managing bees.

a selection process took place in this apiary.

how can you state with such certainty that the survivors aren't carrying beneficial traits?


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## grozzie2

squarepeg said:


> how can you state with such certainty that the survivors aren't carrying beneficial traits?


You cant. but lets turn the question slightly. How can you say with certainty it had anything to do with the bees ? Maybe the selection process is instead selecting for those colonies hosting less virulent mites...

I've slowly come to this conclusion as a reasonable hypothesis after years of reading about various folks having success with this style of selection, only to find when those 'special' queens are packaged up and sent to other places, they show no difference and colonies die just as fast as run of the mill commercial queens. This starts to strongly suggest that indeed it isn't the bees where the selection pressure is being applied, but rather the mites, a hypothesis that better fits the data than suggesting it is something about the bees, which has an inherent assumption that 'all mites are equal'.


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## squarepeg

100% agree grozzie.

one dynamic taking place in my area is that colonies that collapse rarely do so until the 'cold' of winter when flying (robbing and drifting) is not possible.

in this way there is a genetic dead end to those colony collapsing mites and associated viruses. both sides of the equation are important in the evolution of a viable parasite/host equilibrium.

my observations of (most often queenless and dwindled) hives that deserve to be not getting robbed suggest that traits on be the bees side of the equation may be at play.

these traits may be a lower propensity toward robbing and/or doing a better job at not allowing drifting bees into the hive.

it's likely all of the above and more is in play. if so then lharder's surviving colonies are worthy of propagating. hopefully lharder's involvement with the scientific community and the attention to the various metrics will help us understand what mechanism(s) are allowing the survival of colonies sans treatments.


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## JWChesnut

You are making the false "sire and dam" breeding analogy. Heritability in honeybees are low. Truncating the breeding population simply leaves an impoverished breeding set, and that impoverishment is replaced by feral gene flow. Instantly all the selection is overwhelmed, and you are back to square zero, but after unnecessarily killing a lot of high bred bees.


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## squarepeg

JWChesnut said:


> You are making the false "sire and dam" breeding analogy. Heritability in honeybees are low.


then how is it that other traits have been easily and successfully selected for? 



JWChesnut said:


> Truncating the breeding population simply leaves an impoverished breeding set, and that impoverishment is replaced by feral gene flow.


that may be the case. in my location it appears the feral gene flow is responsible for the successes we are having mangaging bees off treatments.

i feel fortunate that the 'square zero' bee here happens to have good temperament, can be managed against swarming, and produces a decent honey crop.

i understand that is not the case in yours and other locations jwc.


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## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> Appreciate you wiseing us up to that fact. Really, I doubt the rest of us had a clue. i think i can easily understand it now.


Yeah, I guess I got bored with this a while ago. I just successfully keep productive bees without anything except my 'natural selection management'. Every now and then I drop to say 'its still working' and to read you guys saying 'it isn't possible'. 

Forgive me if I occasionally feel it might be useful to newcomers reading these 'treatment free beekeeping' threads to state my facts. How to keep bees without treatments was obvious to me a long time ago. I remember you telling me forcefully for years on end that what I was doing wouldn't work. I kept stating why it would, and you kept saying 'take your book learning somewhere else, I've been keeping bees for half a century.'

So now you've wised up just a little and can criticise me for restating the most critical and fundamental fact about treatment-free beekeeping. You've learned something, and you've progressed from outright rudeness to sarcasm. Well done!

Mike UK


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## lharder

squarepeg said:


> in my view that description is a bit harsh.
> 
> i would describe the industrial approach as breaking even at this point, neither winning or losing against varroa/viruses but maintaining operational effectiveness.
> 
> the concern raised by randy oliver and others is that the day may come when treatments no longer keep it a zero-sum game. if that day comes then i would describe the approach as a failure.
> 
> in the meantime it behooves us all to take seriously moving the ball forward with respect to mite resistance since none of us can see into the future.


If I drew a small circle of perception of risk I would label within it called "near neighbor effects". This is level of our understanding of risk. Hence the focus on mite bombs. Around this I could draw a much bigger circle that corresponds with those associated with long distance movement of bees. Mixing of genetics, pests and pathogens. The size of the circles corresponds with the actual risks. We have seen this play out with the introduction of mites, beetles, viruses, Nosema, fungi. And yet we still really haven't learned anything. We still as an industry don't have a realistic perception of risk. So we will continue shooting ourselves in the foot.


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## lharder

grozzie2 said:


> You cant. but lets turn the question slightly. How can you say with certainty it had anything to do with the bees ? Maybe the selection process is instead selecting for those colonies hosting less virulent mites...
> 
> I've slowly come to this conclusion as a reasonable hypothesis after years of reading about various folks having success with this style of selection, only to find when those 'special' queens are packaged up and sent to other places, they show no difference and colonies die just as fast as run of the mill commercial queens. This starts to strongly suggest that indeed it isn't the bees where the selection pressure is being applied, but rather the mites, a hypothesis that better fits the data than suggesting it is something about the bees, which has an inherent assumption that 'all mites are equal'.


I think we should abandon the idea of special bees. Each region has its own set of challenges and the best bees for them are those that have run the gamut of local challenges. Mites is just one of those challenges. The pathogen environment is likely to be different from region to region depending on where natural restrictions to gene flow take place. A bee line may be quite good with mites, but this could fall apart if the colony gets sick from new viruses. So when I do bring in a queen, there is some risk that I will bring in a new virus that could be detrimental. When I bring her in, I don't expect her to perform well. But I am interested in the traits she may carry. So I make daughters asap. The success or failure is not that line per se, but rather if she brings interesting traits that the local population can take advantage of. Once I have a good list of traits in my population, then a harder case is needed to justify any importation of genetic material at all.

What you describe is a system approach to selection. Systems that survive propagate even if we don't understand the exact mechanisms. Its why natural selection (black box approach) is so useful in addition to our own selection criteria. It cancels out mistakes made out of our own ignorance. But we can examine that system and ask questions about why such and such is happening and perhaps make some inroads in understanding mechanisms.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> I think we should abandon the idea of special bees....


+100.

Need to be working with a population at all times.
Developing the population if none present.
Yep, the black box approach.


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## mike bispham

grozzie2 said:


> How can you say with certainty it had anything to do with the bees ? Maybe the selection process is instead selecting for those colonies hosting less virulent mites...


I think, first, that co-evolution of parasite and prey is an established fact. You need the right bee-mite partnership. (You probably also need the right mite-mite-microbe partnership.) 

And so yes, moving the bees to a new place where they will be exposed different mites - especially beekeeper-raised supermites - is going to have an impact. 

Mike (UK)


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## lharder

JWChesnut said:


> The thread correspondent describes an autumn/early winter collapse of his main apiary accompanied by jaw-dropping varroa counts among his established hives. This is entirely predictable, and not indicative of any "progress". A lot of bees died, and that is what happens when Varroa management devolves to "a wing and a prayer".
> 
> The random colonies that escaped the carnage are just lucky, genetics among the battered remainder are a truncated morsel of the regional background.


In one aspect you are right. The hives that died where going into their 3rd winter without treatment. I've had a few others like this, but not so many. I've never had so many hives survive going into their 3rd winter before. But before you state that all the bees die at this time, I have some that are into their 5th and 4th winter. And some of those 3 winter hives will survive and become more important in the breeding program. I also have so nice hives with low mite counts going into 2 plus winters. I think I have some opportunity to reduce the variability of mite numbers towards to low end going forward. 

I expect upwards of 20 hives to work with this year that have survived 2 plus winters. I expect some hives with "terrible" mite counts to drop out this winter, but they may surprise us. I'll try to take some mite counts of those that survive in spring. All in the interest of showing the range of what is survivable. Data trumps proclamations.


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## msl

squarepeg said:


> then how is it that other traits have been easily and successfully selected for?


As it turns aggression and production are some of the top heritable traits. 
Even in African stock selective breeding can reduce aggression by 1/2 -Guzman-Novoa and Page 1999
but much like mite resistance we see it doesn't take hold unless in a closed population... ie the genital AFB of PR 

We likely have the genital European bees we have do to the deforestation of Europe, putting humans in control of the majority of nest sites. With skep beekeeping culling 2/3 or so of the hives yearly it reasonable to assume some of the aggression may have been bottle necked out...If you going to cull hives, the hot ones are likely top of the list 
then came the new world, the bees wen't to the trees and human selection pressures were very much reduced Un like there UK brethren that stayed prettily dossel, the US AMMs got a rep for being hot...and US beekeepers couldn't slect from them what the wanted.. to the point an entirely new race was brought in, langstroh was selling queens for the = of $600 modern dollars!!!!
it was easier to go with a stock more naturally in line with what we want out of it... Ie we have cats for mousers, not ferrets or minks... but they could have worked out ok
some traits are much more heritable. IE HARBO, HARRIS 1999 H 0.65 for hygienic behavior(freeze killed), and 0.00 for physical damage to mites
Boecking EtAt put VSH at 0.18 and hygienic (pin killed) at .36
Brascamp EtAl 2016 put- 0.27, 0.37, 0.38 and 0.06 for honey yield, gentleness, calmness and swarming behavior

compare that with breast size in chickens being .56 and having much better mating conroal 
meanwhile Moretto EtAl 1993 found the Heritability of mite grooming in AHB was 0.71 !!!
you need a 0.25 for selection to work, add in the issues caused by mutipul open mateings and you can see why many feel bees are realy still wild, or only a gen or 2 from being so again


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## mike bispham

msl said:


> you need a 0.25 for selection to work, add in the issues caused by mutipul open mateings and you can see why many feel bees are realy still wild, or only a gen or 2 from being so again


It depends what you mean by 'work'; and it depends on two factors in the environment. 

For the first: if you have enough bees to outnumber the ferals, and you keep them cool with selective f-side breeding and drone promotion, then you'll maintain cool bees. Is that 'working'? Or are you looking for something more? 

The factors in the environment are: 1) how many ferals there are; 2) what are sort of selective pressure is there to repel invaders. The feral bees, as a population, will be raising and lowering defensiveness according to need. If most of the available nest sites are poorly defendable, and there are attackers around, the population will be hot. If there are plenty of tree cavities with small entrances, they'll cool.

Nothing stands still. Wild populations are constantly changing as their environment changes. What happens to them affects you and what you do affects them. How much in each case is proportionate to the numbers.

My bees are generally ok, a little hot for most people esp when they are big I daresay. I don't select against it. It seems to me they mostly change with the wind, though the odd one or two I wouldn't breed from on grounds of undue stroppiness. 

Mike (UK)


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## msl

> It depends what you mean by 'work'; and it depends on two factors in the environment.


LOL no, it dose not... 
we are talking closed population breeding, a 0.25 means the trait is only under 25% genetic control. Harbo felt below .25 there was just not enough there to provide response to selection.. 
take the bean in the opening of this video, the size variation was environmental, not genetic, it had a very low H squared score as the genetics had very low effect on the phenotype, and selection had very little efect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ3V7V-yJbw

mean while going back to my point of us drifting to stocks pre disposed, Cohen EtAl 1978 put Italian bees at 0.54 for honey production while Bienefeld and Pirchner (1990) put carnys at 0.26


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## Litsinger

msl said:


> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ3V7V-yJbw


MSL:

While this discussion is above my level of experience to weigh-into, this is a really helpful video- he explained the genetic heritability point in a way I could follow and understand. Thank you for posting.

Russ


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## mike bispham

msl said:


> we are talking closed population breeding...


Which has no application whatsoever to what 99.9% of beekeepers do. I'm talking about treatment free beekeeping.

Mike (UK)


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## gww

I keep thinking that this is sorta an discussion of creation or evolution. It seems if evolution, then every trait now was introduced to a closed breeding pool. It had to start with just one even when 90 percent were against it, it stuck around. 
On a different tract, I still wonder if some of the resistance is learned due to pressure as much as inherited.
Cheers
gww


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## msl

Point was mike if you cant make it work in a closed pop, no way open breeding bees is going to work. In some stocks, some traits are going to be next to impossibly to select for 
We are not talking TF, even bees realy, just basic genetics. SP asked why we have been able to slect for some traits easily, others not so much.

that is not to say there arn't resistant traits out there that seem to be not only heratibul, but dominant in there expression, 
In fact bolth Harbo 2001 and the latest work coming out of Gotland suggest this, AND suggest the traites being passed down the maturinal line despite being out crossed with commercial drones


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## Michael Bush

> traits for wild survival are often in direct opposition to those valued by humans.... swarming/production and defensive behavior come to mind.."

And yet I'm still raising feral survivor stock, have little issues with swarming, no issues with defensive behavior and good productivity...


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## mike bispham

msl said:


> Point was mike if you cant make it work in a closed pop, no way open breeding bees is going to work. In some stocks, some traits are going to be next to impossibly to select for


For goodness sake! Yes! In commercial stock it will be hard to find resistance genes. In rough feral stock (long exposure to a predatory environment) it will take a while to locate gentler stock. So? What is your aim? Get the bees that will give you a good start. Keep them someplace away from traits you don't want/and/or have lots of them. Select and make increase.

Its called animal husbandry: people have been doing it for 5000 years or more.

With a closed population you get full control. With an open bee population you have massive breeding power through the fact that you can turn all your hives into sisters two or three times a year if you want to.

What else do you need to know? K.I.S.S.

Mike


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## msl

and yet I am not
My feral base stock was swarmy, aggressive, and non productive. Chase ya 400' on a bad day defensive, slide in the cloak board and people are being stung 100 yards away aggressive
how many years of selection form base stock are you? quite a few I would guess 

Are all of them that way? No
But to argue against base traits that are beneficent to wild survival is just silly. a large excess of honey is not a benefit, tossing another swarms is.
A full frame of brood is 9,000 bees... stinging a intruder a few hundred times is a win for the colony if it saves it from a few bites of brood being taken out. 

Long and short, you don't get bacon of feral hogs, much milk from a buffalo, or wool from a bighorn sheep. 

"_The hand of man_" Brother Adam on selection


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## mike bispham

msl said:


> and yet I am not
> My feral base stock was swarmy, aggressive, and non productive. Chase ya 400' on a bad day defensive, slide in the cloak board and people are being stung 100 yards away aggressive
> how many years of selection form base stock are you? quite a few I would guess


Like I said, get stock of the sort you want and go to work on them. 


msl said:


> Are all of them that way? No


There you go then.


msl said:


> But to argue against base traits that are beneficent to wild survival is just silly. a large excess of honey is not a benefit, tossing another swarms is.


A large excess of honey carries a large colony through the winter with give a fantastic advantage in the spring. The idea that feral or wild bees are unproductive is plain wrong. Nature selects for productivity. 



msl said:


> A full frame of brood is 9,000 bees... stinging a intruder a few hundred times is a win for the colony if it saves it from a few bites of brood being taken out.


Sure. If its damaged in any number of ways it may die. Genes gone. that's why bees have evolved stings and know how to use them. What is your point? 

As I've pointed out; anyplace hot behaviour is more than usually rewarded it is present. It seems to fade when it isn't needed.



msl said:


> Long and short, you don't get bacon of feral hogs, much milk from a buffalo, or wool from a bighorn sheep.


But if you get some nice feral bees and work to bring their desirable characteristics to the fore (and you know how to do that, and have the means to do it) you can.



msl said:


> _The hand of man_" Brother Adam on selection


That seems to me to be what I am saying. Husbandry IS selection: selection is the magic that makes good stock out of indifferent or over-varied stock. Beekeepers must do it, and he who does it well has the advantage over he who does it poorly. Twas ever thus. 

Mike (UK)


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## msl

> Nature selects for productivity.


Nature selects for successful reproduction. Beekeepers make bees productive by short circuiting reproduction and using large resulting population that would have been lost to swarming to store a crop. 
If a large horde of honey was a wild survival benefit bees would chose a larger cavity to nest in. 


> But if you get some nice feral bees and work to bring their desirable characteristics to the fore (and you know how to do that, and have the means to do it) you can.





> selection is the magic that makes good stock out of indifferent or over-varied stock. Beekeepers must do it, and he who does it well has the advantage over he who does it poorly. Twas ever thus.


Of coarse- No were am I saying you cant select from a reverted base stock, just that you can't expect nature to do it for you as most of the traits are at odds. That is not to infer that ferals don't have useful traits, or their F3s won't 

I don't have a bought bee in any of my yards,


----------



## mike bispham

msl said:


> Nature selects for successful reproduction.


And coming through winter with a large honey crop and a large population to build rapidly is the best possible way take advantage of smaller colonies and dead outs, taking their honey and swarming into established cavities and not having to build comb. Furthermore a big population can throw off multiple viable swarms early in the year. Those is some of the ways a large crop aids reproduction, and is there naturally selected *for*.




msl said:


> Beekeepers make bees productive by short circuiting reproduction and using large resulting population that would have been lost to swarming to store a crop.


Beekeepers redirect energy into honey gathering rather letting it disappear. Swarm prevention doesn't make bees more productive; just more productive of honey.



msl said:


> If a large horde of honey was a wild survival benefit bees would chose a larger cavity to nest in.


If you ever go in for cut-out work you'll learn that bees will nest in any cavity if it is defendable, and even cavities that aren't. And they'll build wonderful big combs - I've taken out combs 3 feet long and 3 feet wide. 



msl said:


> Of coarse- [what] am I saying [is] you cant [can?] select from a reverted base stock, just that you can't expect nature to do it for you as most of the traits are at odds. That is not to infer that ferals don't have useful traits, or their F3s won't


Bees are bees and are, in a way of thinking, just a collection of myriad 'traits.' In any halfway variable population, and especially in ferals, there is enough variability to locate and bring out all the important traits - various kinds of resistance, productivity, low swarming, docility, quietness on the comb. You could probably breed them to dance on the roof of the hive if you tried long enough. 

Look at all the domesticated dog breeds that have been developed from wolves. Species are plastic - some more than other - but bees have plenty of plasticity. In any population for find alleles for any circumstance, and nature will bring those best suited to any given environment to the top. And beekeepers - given sufficient numbers and a not overwhelmingly hostile environment can do the same. 

You still haven't 'got' the elegance and brilliance of natural selection. If you had these things would be obvious to you. And you'd now what would and wouldn't work in terms of husbandry. And them you wouldn't be complaining about tf not working for you, and continuously trying to find scientific support for your failure, which only seems to be support because you are taking it out of context. 

Mike (UK)


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> What you describe is a system approach to selection. Systems that survive propagate even if we don't understand the exact mechanisms. Its why natural selection (black box approach) is so useful in addition to our own selection criteria. It cancels out mistakes made out of our own ignorance. But we can examine that system and ask questions about why such and such is happening and perhaps make some inroads in understanding mechanisms.


exactly. at the end of the day i am selecting and propagating from the colonies that are the best at doing what i want them too. basically this means multiple winters of survival off treatments and yielding a big honey crop.

i agree that analyzing data might help to understand the mechansims, which satisfying in terms of our curiosity, but in the end we don't have to understand the mechanisms so long as we are getting the results.

that said i really hope i can someday figure out what factors are responsible for making it happen down here, for my own satisfaction as well as hopefully learning something that may make a difference to beekeeping at large.


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## lharder

Speaking of data squarepeg, I'm wondering if you are up to taking some fall brood samples. I would be very curious about that.


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## lharder

So I gave a little talk about my project to the local bee club. It was relatively well received with good questions. There is even talk of a field day for those interested in my project. One main point was that there are some good resistant traits in the local population though they aren't selected for. 


There is a major project happening on Vancouver Island with Iain Glass of Ethical Bees. He has been keeping bees without treatment for 10 years now and has leveraged this into a fairly big survey and selection project of about 1000 hives. Here is a link to an interview of his. https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/b-c...-to-stave-off-catastrophic-die-offs-1.4059734

I am in contact with him and we hope to expand this project into this area. One of the things I proposed at the meeting is that it was very useful and interesting to take fall brood samples before treating to identify queens that are doing well, and to make queens from them. With some selection we could improve the overall resilience of local bees.


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## squarepeg

lharder said:


> Speaking of data squarepeg, I'm wondering if you are up to taking some fall brood samples. I would be very curious about that.


maybe so lharder, but i'll likely be doing all i can to get all the harvestable honey in. 

if all goes according to plan, 2020 will be the year serious data collection begins.


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## lharder

The other day I visited the overwintered nucs the other day. I was most interested in checking the food stores of the weak sisters, nucs started late. 

The weakest hives I gave fondant at the beginning of December and thought I should check them and the next set of weak sisters that didn't get any food. 

Of the seven that I fed, 6 were perking along having consumed a little more than half of the 3.75 kg of fondant I gave them. However of the next set, it looked like I lost 3 of 8? clusters to starvation Some are quite low on food and I gave them a few frames of food I had with me. Not optimally positioned, but with the insulation and the mild winter perhaps they can organize. I am building some feeding shims and will throw on some fondant soon for some of them. At my other site I popped the lids of about 10 of the weakest nucs and had 9 still perking along. More food needed though. Clusters look pretty good. We are getting the coldest weather of the winter soon. -10 to -15 C. Not very cold but some of these are vulnerable now.


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## lharder

I made up some more feeding shims, bought some more fondant and went out to add feed to my bees that needed it. 

At my first site I added feed to two hives but didn't check any larger more established hives, with the assumption that the bigger hives would have lots of food. I wanted to do a more thorough check of my bigger site. 

At that site I added food to about 10 of the weaker sisters (nucs started later). I then checked for clusters and found 45 of 48 still living. Most with good to very good clusters. I even got stung on the ankle for my efforts. The 3 that didn't make it were late starts. A few weaker clusters were found on hives that were plugged with honey. Perhaps they didn't have any sense to leave room for raising winter bees. Its been such a mild winter that they haven't had major challenges. That is about to end with some cold air started to come in. A stretch of =10 to -17 C.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Here is a link to an interview of his. https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/b-c...-to-stave-off-catastrophic-die-offs-1.4059734





lharder said:


> I then checked for clusters and found 45 of 48 still living.


lharder:

Thanks for the update. It sounds like you are faring very well this winter so far?

Were you ever able to make contact with Mr. Glass? I wonder how he derived his resistance breeding protocols, namely:

_"He and his colleagues breed superior bee colonies through a technique known as “reproductive isolation.” They bring a hive of drone bees with highly valuable genes and a group of queen bees ready to mate to a remote area where no other bees are kept.

“It’s basically animal husbandry,” Glass said, adding that it would take at least four years before a full colony of “adaptive” bees could be bred."_

Do your apiaries afford the possibility of such isolation?

Thanks again for the update, and have a great weekend.

Russ


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## lharder

I don't know much beyond what you do about what ethical bees is doing. I hope to check it out in person sometime. I think isolation is useful, but over rated. I have lots of variation in my stock, probably representing some skewing of what is in the background already. My strategy is to dominate my mating areas with lots of bees and drones. On one hand more isolation would be useful, but on the other, I think a touch of mixing with other stock could bring some benefits. I could gain some useful characteristics from it. This is the first year I have implemented this strategy. However, I would not say that the bees in my proximate mating yards were ideal. Better than completely unselected bees, but could be much better. I have more information with my brood sampling for this year, and will have a broader base for selection after this coming season.


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## squarepeg

sorry if i missed it lharder, but when sampling brood for mites i assume you are uncapping worker brood and how many per hive per sampling?


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## lharder

Yes, a fall/late summer count of production hives going into the 2nd+ winter when things are at their worst. I count about 100 cells of purple eyed pupae. Not only adult mites, but those with mite families. It is an indication of VSH. I can verify that I have it in my population bees though it is variable. I will take bees that survive and have relatively low counts into the mating yard and take queens from those with the lowest counts as a general rule.


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## squarepeg

understood and thank you.

so you keep separate tallies of single foundress mites and mite families per 100 or so purple eyed pupae?

do the scientists you are collaborating with feel like this is a better metric than the alcohol wash of adult bees?


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## John Davis

The separate tallies are to make a determination of VSH as indicated by the level of reproducing mites. From a paper by Harbo, Harris etc. "Selecting for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene
Bee Health November 12, 2010" 
Select for low levels of reproductive mites.
Random population of mites 15-25% are non reproductive. 
Breeder Queens should be selected from hives with 75 +% non reproductive.


----------



## Litsinger

lharder said:


> My strategy is to dominate my mating areas with lots of bees and drones. On one hand more isolation would be useful, but on the other, I think a touch of mixing with other stock could bring some benefits. I could gain some useful characteristics from it. This is the first year I have implemented this strategy. However, I would not say that the bees in my proximate mating yards were ideal. Better than completely unselected bees, but could be much better. I have more information with my brood sampling for this year, and will have a broader base for selection after this coming season.


lharder:

While I haven't the experience you have to draw from, your plan seems sound to me. I am excited and hopeful that Randy Oliver is correct when he asserts:

_"Even purebred breeds hide aspects of their genetic heritage from us [6]. Two factors may cause these hidden traits to come to the fore: environmental factors or crossbreeding.

Darwin noted that the first generation of escaped domestic animals might exhibit minor phenotypical changes, in response to environmental cues, such growing more hair when it got cold. But what really caught his (and should catch our) attention was what could happen when two purebred breeds were “crossed.” The resulting hybrid [7] offspring are often noticeably different from either parent:

With crossed breeds, the act of crossing in itself certainly leads to the recovery of long-lost characters, as well as those derived from either parent form…From what we see of the power and scope of reversion, both in pure races, and when varieties…are crossed, we may infer that characters of almost every kind are capable of reappearing after having been lost for a great length of time.

He further noted that the most common form of reversion, “almost universal with the offspring from a cross, [is to go back] to the characters proper to either pure parent form.”

I share Darwin’s fascination with this clearly observable phenomenon.

Practical application: when queens of a managed stock mate with drones of other stocks, the resulting offspring may exhibit wild-type traits that had long lain dormant. Could this be the basis of a wild-type feral population, originally founded by escaped swarms from a variety of domesticated lines?"_

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/wha...omesticated-and-feral-bees/#reversion-to-wild



John Davis said:


> The separate tallies are to make a determination of VSH as indicated by the level of reproducing mites. From a paper by Harbo, Harris etc. "Selecting for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene
> Bee Health November 12, 2010"
> Select for low levels of reproductive mites.
> Random population of mites 15-25% are non reproductive.
> Breeder Queens should be selected from hives with 75 +% non reproductive.


John:

Thank you for outlining the VSH testing protocol- if I understand Mr. Harbo's breeding protocols, it appears he prefers to AI queens from single drones for maximum effect?

_"I described a method for getting the most information about VSH with minimal effort. Mistakes will be made. However, unlike maintaining pure pedigrees, it is usually simple to re-establish a measurable trait such as VSH. Most errors come from evaluating and breeding from queens that are multiply mated or free-mated. This is because the VSH trait is expressed at a high level when only some of the bees in a colony express the trait. Therefore, some colonies with freemated VSH queens score as high as the best VSH breeder queens. But, when grafting from such a colony, some of the daughter queens will have a much lower level of the VSH trait than expected. For maximum precision, evaluate progeny of queens that have been inseminated with semen from a single drone."_

http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static...018pdf.pdf?token=HrjMxTk8fADTTxn6gH9amOohXDM=

I also noted that Mr. Harbo _"...will not be offering breeder queens for sale in 2019 but will be focusing our resources on evaluating new selection methods and expanding the diversity of our varroa resistant bees."_

I wonder if he is evaluating whether to explore a more open-mated approach while dominating his local DCA's similar to what lharder is attempting to do?


----------



## squarepeg

John Davis said:


> The separate tallies are to make a determination of VSH as indicated by the level of reproducing mites. From a paper by Harbo, Harris etc. "Selecting for Varroa Sensitive Hygiene
> Bee Health November 12, 2010"
> Select for low levels of reproductive mites.
> Random population of mites 15-25% are non reproductive.
> Breeder Queens should be selected from hives with 75 +% non reproductive.


thank you for that john.

so is the measure of % mite families used for selection vs. % infested cells or % infestation on adult bees via alcohol wash?

(i'll try to find and read the harbo paper, thanks again)


----------



## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> thank you for that john.
> 
> so is the measure of % mite families used for selection vs. % infested cells or % infestation on adult bees via alcohol wash?
> 
> (i'll try to find and read the harbo paper, thanks again)


In Europe the selection criteria is: mites (under cell cover) found with no offspring / total number of mites found (under cell cover)

When this equation is low then the number off mites on adult bees is not important (it remains naturally low).
When infestation is low the tested hives are usually artificially infested (with mites from other hives), in this way the amount of needed work(opening and inspecting cells with microscope) is reduced.


----------



## squarepeg

Juhani Lunden said:


> In Europe the selection criteria is: mites (under cell cover) found with no offspring / total number of mites found (under cell cover)
> 
> When this equation is low then the number off mites on adult bees is not important (it remains naturally low).
> When infestation is low the tested hives are usually artificially infested (with mites from other hives), in this way the amount of needed work(opening and inspecting cells with microscope) is reduced.


thank you for that excellent explanation juhani.

when the infestation is low, and if one doesn't add a frame from an infested hive, is it necessary to keep opening cells until some minimum number is reached for the equation to have meaning?


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## Juhani Lunden

squarepeg said:


> thank you for that excellent explanation juhani.
> 
> when the infestation is low, and if one doesn't add a frame from an infested hive, is it necessary to keep opening cells until some minimum number is reached for the equation to have meaning?


Infestation is done by taking bees of infested hives and "washing " mites off the bees with powder sugar. (Powder sugar has to be watered away quickly to keep the mites alive.) This way just mites are added to the hives in test.

The artificial infestation is done just for what you wrote.
It is not practical to open 500 cells and find just 5 mites. Nor is the result reliable.


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## squarepeg

understood, thanks again juhani.


----------



## lharder

Litsinger said:


> lharder:
> 
> While I haven't the experience you have to draw from, your plan seems sound to me. I am excited and hopeful that Randy Oliver is correct when he asserts:
> 
> _"Even purebred breeds hide aspects of their genetic heritage from us [6]. Two factors may cause these hidden traits to come to the fore: environmental factors or crossbreeding.
> 
> Darwin noted that the first generation of escaped domestic animals might exhibit minor phenotypical changes, in response to environmental cues, such growing more hair when it got cold. But what really caught his (and should catch our) attention was what could happen when two purebred breeds were “crossed.” The resulting hybrid [7] offspring are often noticeably different from either parent:
> 
> With crossed breeds, the act of crossing in itself certainly leads to the recovery of long-lost characters, as well as those derived from either parent form…From what we see of the power and scope of reversion, both in pure races, and when varieties…are crossed, we may infer that characters of almost every kind are capable of reappearing after having been lost for a great length of time.
> 
> He further noted that the most common form of reversion, “almost universal with the offspring from a cross, [is to go back] to the characters proper to either pure parent form.”
> 
> I share Darwin’s fascination with this clearly observable phenomenon.
> 
> Practical application: when queens of a managed stock mate with drones of other stocks, the resulting offspring may exhibit wild-type traits that had long lain dormant. Could this be the basis of a wild-type feral population, originally founded by escaped swarms from a variety of domesticated lines?"_
> 
> http://scientificbeekeeping.com/wha...omesticated-and-feral-bees/#reversion-to-wild
> 
> 
> 
> John:
> 
> Thank you for outlining the VSH testing protocol- if I understand Mr. Harbo's breeding protocols, it appears he prefers to AI queens from single drones for maximum effect?
> 
> _"I described a method for getting the most information about VSH with minimal effort. Mistakes will be made. However, unlike maintaining pure pedigrees, it is usually simple to re-establish a measurable trait such as VSH. Most errors come from evaluating and breeding from queens that are multiply mated or free-mated. This is because the VSH trait is expressed at a high level when only some of the bees in a colony express the trait. Therefore, some colonies with freemated VSH queens score as high as the best VSH breeder queens. But, when grafting from such a colony, some of the daughter queens will have a much lower level of the VSH trait than expected. For maximum precision, evaluate progeny of queens that have been inseminated with semen from a single drone."_
> 
> http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static...018pdf.pdf?token=HrjMxTk8fADTTxn6gH9amOohXDM=
> 
> I also noted that Mr. Harbo _"...will not be offering breeder queens for sale in 2019 but will be focusing our resources on evaluating new selection methods and expanding the diversity of our varroa resistant bees."_
> 
> I wonder if he is evaluating whether to explore a more open-mated approach while dominating his local DCA's similar to what lharder is attempting to do?


Yes I think its some sort of principle in biology that things respond to stimuli. Take away the stimuli and no response is seen. It happens at different scales of organization. For example, when I was an arborist, a damaged tree could be held together with a cabling system. However, once outside support is provided, the tree no longer lays down wood in response to wind and it becomes completely dependant on the support system which must be maintained. I generally refused to put them in as most people have short attention span and the tree becomes a liability. A tree grows its support system in response to its environment. Expose them to new forces (removing trees around them) and their roots cannot take new wind forces at play and yo get lots of windfall. Make changes slowly and the trees will respond over time to change. 

The argument that bees are livestock like some ill bred pure bred dog is kind of silly to me. Many of our bees deal with natural often hostile environments and need to deal with it. At any rate, if you look at a population of bees as a system and we are interested in mechanisms of regulation, then the comparison between feral and domesticated is irrelevant. Both are subject to environmental forces and we need to make sensible decisions about whether we incorporate system regulation or ignore it. But there are consequences either way.


----------



## lharder

In terms of hierarchy, my selection is survival, then low mite count, then something like VSH or mite biting. When mite counts get very low, then it seems silly to overthink it, add mites to the system then select against that colony if VSH isn't the mechanism. We need to think multivariable solutions to multivariable problems. I'm not interested is VSH per se, just one means to an end. But I am very interested to see if it is maintained in my population under my selection criteria. 

But I am interested in low mite counts. In theory, I should be more interested in survival and production. We don't actually know what an optimum number of mites in relation to production actually is. It could be 10 percent where squarepeg operates in the absence of viral chaos. But it could be 5 percent in others. But to be able to select for low counts is an important fact that needs to be shown to the beekeeping industry in general. If landscape selection (every beekeeper selects tf or not) then some progress can be made in bee health.  For this reason it is important to connect at a level that average beekeepers can understand. Talking about selection for low mites is a good starting point.


----------



## lharder

squarepeg said:


> understood and thank you.
> 
> so you keep separate tallies of single foundress mites and mite families per 100 or so purple eyed pupae?
> 
> do the scientists you are collaborating with feel like this is a better metric than the alcohol wash of adult bees?


No I used my own poor judgement to make this decision. I watched lots of mite samples being taken and after thinking about it, it didn't seem to offer information with enough resolution. The effort vs information didn't seem quite there. Too many other things could be happening. The importance of winter bees for winter survival seemed paramount to me. Brood samples would show infestation at this critical time in later summer early fall in colonies that have had mites for at least 2 summers and one winter. It also allows me to track VSH in my population. Over time it should show it maintaining or waxing or waning in my system. It also shows me the variation within my population and perhaps guide me to more consistent results as I improve my mating area. I am very much interested in variation. A certain amount is necessary for populations to track changing environments, but is the variation we see consistent with what we would see in wild populations under selection? I'm guessing not.


----------



## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Yes I think its some sort of principle in biology that things respond to stimuli. Take away the stimuli and no response is seen.
> 
> At any rate, if you look at a population of bees as a system and we are interested in mechanisms of regulation, then the comparison between feral and domesticated is irrelevant. Both are subject to environmental forces and we need to make sensible decisions about whether we incorporate system regulation or ignore it. But there are consequences either way.





lharder said:


> Talking about selection for low mites is a good starting point.


lharder:

From my very humble vantage point, your approach and logic make good sense to me. Your analogy to your arborist work was helpful to me and is one that I think most people (present company included) can understand intuitively. The whole interaction between genotype (presumably the hard-wired genetic background) and the phenotype (the response to stimuli) fascinates me and gives me cause to wonder if more varroa resistance mechanisms will ultimately be unlocked as the AM species as a whole continues to adapt in the face of the pressure.

Your point about our management decisions is also astute from what little I know. The more I read and study, the less convinced I am that I personally understand enough about the multi-faceted factors which ultimately drive successful (and continued) adaptation to confidently make decisions about how to breed for resistance (though I am glad there are much smarter people than I who are developing systematic approaches to this).

That said, I think like you that mite levels seem to be the best and most critical place to start, and commensurate to this, to understand the mechanisms (both from a genetic and observational standpoint) that drive these low background levels.

I am not at all convinced that I am adding anything new to this discussion, but it is satisfying personally to rationalize through the concepts as one considers how a sustainable, inherent solution to varroa mites might be in reach for beekeepers everywhere.


----------



## lharder

A small break in the weather yesterday. An arctic air mass is still in play, but temperatures have moderated to a mere 0 to -10 C. Still well below seasonal. It was sunny with no wind, so I took advantage of the relatively good weather to check a site of production hives for food and survival. Of the 14 I checked 10 were alive. The first 1 I checked was dead, then the next 10 were alive with the last 3 dead outs. Food stores are not a problem. I didn't have a note book with me, but I think that once I get a final tally this spring and I compare them with mite counts I took in fall, there will be some surprises. For instance, one hive had such a spotty brood pattern that I was unable to get a brood sample. It had a nice cluster. Go figure. I wonder if they were doing a massive house cleaning when I was taking samples. Also I suspect that I have lost a low mite count hive. To be confirmed. 

I will be looking at hives that have these anomalies and survive with decent strength this spring. I will take a couple of brood samples and do some comparisons with hives that had lower mite counts this fall. The more this stuff is looked at it seems the less we know. I am wondering about non linear responses of bees to mite levels and how colonies make decisions about when to act.


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## squarepeg

very interesting lharder, thanks for the update.


----------



## lharder

So it looks like spring has finally sprung. With the winter breaking I managed to look at all my sites over a couple of days. 

Bad news first. My one site that was under tremendous robbing pressure last fall, had poor winter survival. Of the hives that survived into winter, only 2 out of 6 production hives, and 5 out of 8 nucs survived. I lost maybe 7 production hives before winter, so pretty bad. 

Then at one of my nuc sites. I had 17 out of 29 survive. The poor survival was partly my fault. Inadequate stores coupled with lack of decent weather to check them in February/early March. Lost some nice clusters...

However at my other nuc site, I had 44 or 48 survive. Many light on stores that I will top up tomorrow. I couldn't scrounge enough from heavy hives to top everyone up. I had lots of very good or competent clusters. Pretty pleased overall. 

That late cold snap really drained the overall food stores in my hives. Probably coincided when brood was being started. I probably should have cracked them open even during the harsh weather to check stores at this crucial period. It was cold and miserable though.

At my mating sites, I had 10 of 14 production hives survive at one, and 12 for 12 at the other one. The last result was a pleasant surprise. How different from my problem site. No problem with stores here. The overall quality of the clusters was pretty good. Only one micro cluster. Most of these have survived at least 2 winters. My oldest living hive system made it through their 5th winter.


----------



## Litsinger

lharder said:


> So it looks like spring has finally sprung. With the winter breaking I managed to look at all my sites over a couple of days.


Thanks for the update, LHarder. I am impressed you are able to manage that many hives. With just a couple hives and setting out swarm traps, I already feel quite busy this Spring. Best of luck to you in the weeks ahead as the weather hopefully turns the corner.

Russ


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## lharder

That is part of the learning curve. Dealing with some numbers. Isn't the number about 300 full sized hives that one person should be able to deal with? I'll be starting another 100 nucs this year (this year compressed to 2 rather than 3 months), putting in another spring site, with maybe a goal of about 150 full sized hives next year.  All this so I have numbers to work with and be a local dominant player genetically. I'll be furiously making top and bottom boards the next while, checking for food regularly, setting up a site, a bit of spring sampling. All sorts of efficiencies are needed. And that's not all. Other things are afoot that I can't talk about yet...

We are getting some decent flying weather 15 to 17 C in a couple of days. Things are changing fast.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Other things are afoot that I can't talk about yet...


Thank you for your feedback, LHarder. I will wait with baited breath to find out about the things you are not at liberty to share yet...

Have a great day.

Russ


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## lharder

I have all bear fences activated now. For my Heffley sites where my 2 year old colonies reside, I did some cluster assessments which I can match with my late summer brood mite counts. 6 of 21 surviving clusters had 3 frames or less of bees. 2 micro clusters. The rest were mostly in 1 full box with an occasional 2 boxer. My longest surviving colony that struggled out of last winter is now gang busters again. I had 2 colonies that I was unable to take brood samples because there wasn't a sample to take that are in at least one full medium box of bees, one with 2 boxes. Last fall I had one have with no brood whatsoever that I assumed was queenless and doomed. I took their honey and doomed them. Now I am wondering if I killed a hive particularly good at a brood break. 3 of 4 with 20% plus mite counts were still living, 2 on 2 or 3 frames, but one with 2 boxes of bees. Meanwhile 2 of 3 hives with very low counts survived, in 1 box clusters. I won't go on with this preliminary analysis, but suffice to say mite count is not tightly correlated with survival. Not for this group of hives. None the less I have a few nice low mite, nice spring cluster hives to work to make queens from this year. 

I think I may be seeing evidence of a brood break and mite cleanup for some hives. Perhaps the timing of the break is slightly different for different hives and this causes error in my results. Just throwing that out there. Future sampling will resolve this. I also will do a few spring samples to compare spring mite counts of those hives with low counts in the late summer with those with high counts. 


I was going to start helping some small clusters with some bees, then decided why would I jeopardise valuable queens with manipulations at this stage. The micro clusters will have to wait for help at this point. 

I think at this point we can see how completely unnuanced world view we have about mite/bee/virus interactions. There is so much to learn from untreated bees.


----------



## Gray Goose

AvatarDad said:


> Seeing the quote about equalization reminded me of the 2 Keith Delaplane lectures I've seen recently.
> 
> Dr. D, who heads up the UGA bee lab, has a grant to study polyandry, and is excited about the new project. I'm not going to steal his thunder and I don't have access to his slide-deck, but one of the discussion points talked about during his lecture was how equalization can mimic the effects of polyandry (multiple mating).
> 
> So, the research shows that queens who mate with more males have generally better outcomes... better growth, better pest resistance, better disease resistance, better foraging. So, unless we artificially inseminate, how do we make sure our promiscuous queens mate with 30 dudes? (Anyone answering "buy them a drink" will be banned by Squarepeg for a week... I'm just saying... don't do it)
> Thanks
> Mike


Mike, What if you had 2 queens with 10 patra lines each. Make several daughters of each in their own Apiary, All normal stuff to this point. Now put one of each line into the same "Hive" , a 2 queen setup. I ran 2 queen setups in the 80s it was big fun, too big, scary at times, so I backed out of it. Often had 4 deeps of brood and 10 supers, but it was with more prolific queens. if the Ankle biters and the VRSH line are less prolific maybe a 3 medium brood, with 8 supers and a 2 medium brood on top would manageable. I have a couple long double deep hives I may try this in this year. Start one at each end. the long hive takes the height issue out, so that takes one of the worst issues away. I personally am not keen on moving brood from hive to hive in the whole apiary, Seems fraught with other "features". 2 Different patra line queens put together making a "super organism" seems a good test/compromise.
GG


----------



## BigBlackBirds

lharder said:


> I won't go on with this preliminary analysis, but suffice to say mite count is not tightly correlated with survival. Not for this group of hives. None the less I have a few nice low mite, nice spring cluster hives to work to make queens from this year.
> 
> 
> I think at this point we can see how completely unnuanced world view we have about mite/bee/virus interactions. There is so much to learn from untreated bees.


I do some sampling these days but not really much. From the mid 90's until a few years ago, i would sample all of the time, alcohol wash and sticky boards seemed to be my life. Just a couple of thoughts that may or may not apply for you---- queen age seemed to mean a lot relative to fall mite samples when it comes to *just* winter survival. it seemed that the vast majority of 1st year queens would survive even with a relatively high mite load. however, come spring other parts of the story sometimes unfolded. many of those colonies start to crash and never develop into a true production hive. while other hives go crazy, simply outrun the mites thru the summer, produce a large crop but then crash before the next fall even arrives; that seems to be the biggest percentage. and then there are those colonies that can go forward with a high mite load, survive the winter, maintain some level of acceptable productivity and not crash that fall. those are the interesting ones; imagine that is where we will see future work with virus resistance play. when we talk about queens heading into their second winter it was different ball game. high mite loads in the fall corresponded to plenty of them not making it thru winter. but as a side note i'll say that was at the stage when the stock for vsh was being selected. at this point in the game there should be way more bees holding a level of mite resistance than what we had to work with 15+ years ago


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## Litsinger

BigBlackBirds said:


> I do some sampling these days but not really much. From the mid 90's until a few years ago, i would sample all of the time, alcohol wash and sticky boards seemed to be my life. Just a couple of thoughts that may or may not apply for you---- queen age seemed to mean a lot relative to fall mite samples when it comes to *just* winter survival. it seemed that the vast majority of 1st year queens would survive even with a relatively high mite load. however, come spring other parts of the story sometimes unfolded. many of those colonies start to crash and never develop into a true production hive. while other hives go crazy, simply outrun the mites thru the summer, produce a large crop but then crash before the next fall even arrives; that seems to be the biggest percentage. and then there are those colonies that can go forward with a high mite load, survive the winter, maintain some level of acceptable productivity and not crash that fall. those are the interesting ones; imagine that is where we will see future work with virus resistance play. when we talk about queens heading into their second winter it was different ball game. high mite loads in the fall corresponded to plenty of them not making it thru winter. but as a side note i'll say that was at the stage when the stock for vsh was being selected. at this point in the game there should be way more bees holding a level of mite resistance than what we had to work with 15+ years ago


LHarder and BigBlackBirds:

Just wanted to comment that I really appreciate this information- fascinating stuff trying to correlate mite loads to long-term survival. While I have just started trying to keep systematic records of mite drops at regular intervals, it is sobering to note that it might not be easy (even long-term) to see any particular straight-line trends emerge between relative mite load and colony success.

Enjoyed reading the dialogue, though I had to read through both of your posts a few times each to feel confident I had taken it all in.


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## lharder

BigBlackBirds said:


> I do some sampling these days but not really much. From the mid 90's until a few years ago, i would sample all of the time, alcohol wash and sticky boards seemed to be my life. Just a couple of thoughts that may or may not apply for you---- queen age seemed to mean a lot relative to fall mite samples when it comes to *just* winter survival. it seemed that the vast majority of 1st year queens would survive even with a relatively high mite load. however, come spring other parts of the story sometimes unfolded. many of those colonies start to crash and never develop into a true production hive. while other hives go crazy, simply outrun the mites thru the summer, produce a large crop but then crash before the next fall even arrives; that seems to be the biggest percentage. and then there are those colonies that can go forward with a high mite load, survive the winter, maintain some level of acceptable productivity and not crash that fall. those are the interesting ones; imagine that is where we will see future work with virus resistance play. when we talk about queens heading into their second winter it was different ball game. high mite loads in the fall corresponded to plenty of them not making it thru winter. but as a side note i'll say that was at the stage when the stock for vsh was being selected. at this point in the game there should be way more bees holding a level of mite resistance than what we had to work with 15+ years ago


I have been slow to the sampling game as one can waste lots of time if it isn't carefully considered. I had my bees intensively sampled as part of a study and looking at the results, was not sure how meaningful the early counts were. I'm somewhat happy with the sampling I am doing, hives going into their 2nd winter (or more) allowing mite infestations to build where they are meaningful. I still see some holes especially if some of the hives are using a brood break at that time. Am I sampling prior to or after a brood break? I will do a few brood samples in May or so to compare hives with high fall counts with those with low. If I find high spring counts I may induce a brood break, then another with a queen cell from the better performers. Gradually I want to paint a picture of overall mite population dynamics in my tf system. I don't do any counts on my first year starts as of yet. Rather let viruses and mites take out the most susceptible the first winter. If I was a better beekeeper my survival would have been in the 90% range with these hives this year. I may do a few random samples to fill in that gap. The missing data is virus data. Hopeful I can start doing that. I did get some baseline data from 2 years ago just the other day. As well as some microbiota data that is in an unintelligible form. I need to know who is doing that work so I can talk to them.


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## lharder

Litsinger said:


> LHarder and BigBlackBirds:
> 
> Just wanted to comment that I really appreciate this information- fascinating stuff trying to correlate mite loads to long-term survival. While I have just started trying to keep systematic records of mite drops at regular intervals, it is sobering to note that it might not be easy (even long-term) to see any particular straight-line trends emerge between relative mite load and colony success.
> 
> Enjoyed reading the dialogue, though I had to read through both of your posts a few times each to feel confident I had taken it all in.


Besides identifying excellent low mite hives to raise queens from, part of this work is show other beekeepers what actually happens in terms of bee survival with various levels of mite infestation. We can also use this information to show (compared to colony performance without any resistance) that even a 20% brood infestation after 2 years is better than complete hive destruction seen with other non resistant hives. In terms of mite production, resistant hives produce far less. Also to show that tf keeping ultimately leads to resilient stock. I had one beekeeper panic about a 12% mite infestation (after treatment). He thought he was going to lose these bees for sure even after he treated with formic acid. Lo and behold they were just fine and may have been even if not treated. Its not a death sentence for a hive. Meanwhile I had a hive with low mites not survive. Perhaps we can use this information to shift the conversation to other things, like viruses, the impacts of bee importation on local bee genetics, and the viral environment. And of course how we all should be finding and selecting for mite resistance in our own stock.


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## crofter

Sampling may be scientific methodology but I think interpreting the results is an art form! So many possible parameters to consider.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Perhaps we can use this information to shift the conversation to other things, like viruses, the impacts of bee importation on local bee genetics, and the viral environment. And of course how we all should be finding and selecting for mite resistance in our own stock.


LHarder: Great reply, and I think that all of us (TF or not) are looking forward to the day when varroa becomes a mere nuisance or even better, an afterthought (like tracheal mites). I appreciate reading about the work that you are doing, and I am hopeful that one day I can make some confident predictions of colony success based on the mite drop data.

Have a great weekend.

Russ


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## lharder

crofter said:


> Sampling may be scientific methodology but I think interpreting the results is an art form! So many possible parameters to consider.


Agreed, and scrutiny of sampling is part of that analysis. These results lead to more questions. But expanding the scope of discussion is a good end result.


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## lharder

Checked on one of my nuc sites. This is the one I had some hives starve. I think of the 30 I had out there, only one was an obvious deadout because of small fall size. The starve outs were definitely that. Some had a bit of stores below, but the boxes the clusters were in were devoid of stores. If February wasn't so cold, I could have done much better, probably close to 90 % survival like my other nuc site. Some of the late starts I assumed would need help and put a feeding rim with 3.5 kg of fondant right on the cluster at the beginning of winter Of these, 6 of 7 made it with small spring clusters, but all with brood. Some could use a shake or so of nurse bees, but will probably build on their own if left to their own devices. I looked at the bottom boards of the dead outs and found only a few mites. Reduced the box number on a couple of nucs that were not strong enough to take care of their winter set up. I did give one nuc a shake of bees. Kind of half heartedly as this was a strong nuc going into fall. With the number of hives I have, it may be better to let nature do its work. Its sister going gangbusters next door on 12 frames. Pollen coming in and brood present on all remaining 17 nucs.


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## lharder

So queen rearing season begins. I placed my first batch of cells yesterday and will place another batch a week from now. Will place about 20 a week and be done placing cells half way through June, depending on the interest in my nucs. Almost all my hives are in their permanent locations. Just some dribs and drabs left. Almost all overwintered nucs have been placed in big boxes. I am still making them like a banshee. I installed a new site which s about 1/3 full already. 

The bees are really taking off. Even the weak sisters last put in big boxes have 5 frames of brood. I will have trouble keeping up to them. It was so nice to have lots of bees to work with making up nucs. I put so much strain on one site last year, draining them of bees. 

So my strategy this year is to use strong hives with early fall brood mite counts of less than 10 percent and survive at least 2 years. My longest surviving hive was at 8 percent for perspective. She is doing well this year. My strongest 2 year survivor had a mite count of about 15 percent. I have a few in the 2/3/4 percent, and these will be over represented in the queen rearing. I will be requeening hives with counts over 20 percent. Nature has already taken some of these out of the equation this spring, and I don't believe there is a strong hive with fall mites counts in this range. There was one, but the queen disappeared with no brood. I will simply kill the queen, come by at 9 days and destroy all the queen cells and give them a frame of open brood from a good hive. An extra long brood break. 

So there may be a 2 yr threshold resolving for my location for thriving bees. It is probably around 15 percent fall brood count. My medium term goal is to shift the distribution curve to be mostly under 10 percent. It is interesting to see how the genetics of poor hives is weeded out by nature over time. Death isn't necessarily needed. Weakened hives do not reproduce or put out very many drones. There were also failures at lower mite counts. I believe there is more going on than mites, and these failures indicate susceptibility to other factors such as viruses. I have an article in progress, and when it is published at will provide a more complete data set and outcomes here. 

Just as a casual observation I am observing some chewed out drone brood. Indication of bees at work.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> I believe there is more going on than mites, and these failures indicate susceptibility to other factors such as viruses. I have an article in progress, and when it is published at will provide a more complete data set and outcomes here.


LHarder:

Excellent post. I apprecaited reading the specific matrices that you have developed for evaluating your propagation efforts- that is a very helpful jumping-off spot for those of us who are not yet at the point of moving past survival. 

I also look forward to reading your article, and I assume you will be kind enough to post it here?

Thanks again for the update and the selection details- very helpful.

Have a great day.

Russ


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## lharder

I think the mite counting and tracking outcomes is proving useful. My writing is not the best so the editor will have to wrestle it into some sort of shape. May take some time. I will post a link.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> So my strategy this year is to use strong hives with early fall brood mite counts of less than 10 percent and survive at least 2 years. My longest surviving hive was at 8 percent for perspective. She is doing well this year. My strongest 2 year survivor had a mite count of about 15 percent. I have a few in the 2/3/4 percent, and these will be over represented in the queen rearing. I will be requeening hives with counts over 20 percent. Nature has already taken some of these out of the equation this spring, and I don't believe there is a strong hive with fall mites counts in this range. There was one, but the queen disappeared with no brood. I will simply kill the queen, come by at 9 days and destroy all the queen cells and give them a frame of open brood from a good hive. An extra long brood break.
> 
> So there may be a 2 yr threshold resolving for my location for thriving bees. It is probably around 15 percent fall brood count. My medium term goal is to shift the distribution curve to be mostly under 10 percent. It is interesting to see how the genetics of poor hives is weeded out by nature over time. Death isn't necessarily needed. Weakened hives do not reproduce or put out very many drones. There were also failures at lower mite counts. I believe there is more going on than mites, and these failures indicate susceptibility to other factors such as viruses.


I too believe that virus situation is not very bad if hives over 10% infestation are doing well.

Have you heard of the work of Eric Erickson in Arizona? There is something about his work in American Bee Journal 8/2000.
I have read about him only through some articles by Erik Österlund. 
One is here: http://naturligbiodling.eu/blogg/?p=520

When he started his threshold was 15, then was dropped to 10 and after 6 years it was max 6-7%. 

This relates very well what I have discovered.


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## lharder

I haven't heard of his work. I will do some reading. 

How and when do you do your mite counts Juhani? I would guess that a brood count could be different than one taken from adult bees. In theory, with reduced brood nests in early fall, a brood count could be higher than an adult count. Then there were hives with such terrible brood that no brood sample was taken. The adult bee population was ok but I didn't think much of their chances. These all seem to be doing well this spring. I suspect a mite murdering spree was in progress. So many questions...


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> How and when do you do your mite counts Juhani?


sugar shakes from adult bees, mainly just before queen rearing season starts

never done brood infestation counts


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## lharder

Juhani Lunden said:


> sugar shakes from adult bees, mainly just before queen rearing season starts
> 
> never done brood infestation counts


There would be a big difference between your and my results. Typically sugar shakes done now (the start of my queen rearing season) would yield few mites compared to the late summer fall season. I would guess my 15% early fall brood count would be under your threshold if I took a sugar shake now. The bee inspector is going to come in the next couple weeks and maybe I will suggest her try this test case.


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## Juhani Lunden

lharder said:


> There would be a big difference between your and my results. Typically sugar shakes done now (the start of my queen rearing season) would yield few mites compared to the late summer fall season. I would guess my 15% early fall brood count would be under your threshold if I took a sugar shake now. The bee inspector is going to come in the next couple weeks and maybe I will suggest her try this test case.


Could be. But I have also seen cases when sugar shake done in August is less than one done in May. And even taking account nucs made of those colonies.


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## lharder

so far I haven't encountered this but my n is far less than yours. Two years ago the bee inspector did sugar shakes about this time of year and found my mites were only slightly above other operations in the area. My highest was about 3% and that colony died the following winter. I can imagine scenarios like the one you mentioned. I think I have seen my bees do a concerted effort of mite killing in an episode at the time of last years sampling. Very little brood and what there was, was very spotty. No sample to be taken. Yet those colonies were strong this spring. Hope to have a fairly complete description of mite dynamics in my system over time. This spring will do a few comparisons of low and high fall mite colonies to see what they did with the mites over winter. And I should look at the no sample colonies.


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## lharder

I was placing some queen cells today at one of my sites. Since I was there I tried to find and kill a queen of a hive that had a 30 plus percent brood mite count last fall. I couldn't find her, but since I was there I took a brood sample to have a look. 

This hive started slow but seems to be picking up steam. It was a good honey producer last year. 

So I won't be coy and ask for predictions, but I am wondering if a few could pause a bit, make a prediction before reading the result and post it. 

I counted 100 pink eyed pupae and found 0 mites. Must be all in the drone brood.


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## squarepeg

very cool lharder. did you change your mind about requeening that one?


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## lharder

you can call me Leroy. 

Re requeening, confused and a bit dazed. Don't know


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## squarepeg

i'm pretty sure you will figure it out leroy. :thumbsup:


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## Gray Goose

lharder said:


> you can call me Leroy.
> 
> Re requeening, confused and a bit dazed. Don't know


maybe the brood break over the winter gave them the time to groom them out. or they are good genetically and the mites last fall were drift..
I would be confused as well. Any chance they re-queened, either a small swarm joining or superseded on their own? Just when you think you can predict...Thank for sharing.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> I counted 100 pink eyed pupae and found 0 mites. Must be all in the drone brood.


Interesting.
One reason I decided for myself - I don't kill any queen by design. 
Not qualified enough to do it.
Letting mites or winter or accidents to do it.


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## lharder

I've decided to requeen still. A large proportion of my hives had fall mite counts under 10 percent, some under 5 percent and they were strong this spring. My strongest 2 year survivor was around 15 percent and is on 5 medium boxes already. This one was 2x that and not strong this spring. I am letting the 15 percenters ride if strong. 

But it was neat to see this result. An illustration of how much we don't know.


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## lharder

Gray Goose said:


> maybe the brood break over the winter gave them the time to groom them out. or they are good genetically and the mites last fall were drift..
> I would be confused as well. Any chance they re-queened, either a small swarm joining or superseded on their own? Just when you think you can predict...Thank for sharing.


I haven't seen any evidence of alternative explanations, but that doesn't mean they don't happen. Between last fall and spring not much chance of any of those scenarios working out. I'm sure they have mites, that it is in the drone brood, but it seems likely that they did a pretty good job of murdering mites during the winter. It isn't being overwhelmed with them at present. I have the inspector coming by in two days and she is going to do a number of sugar shakes. Maybe I'll take a few brood samples for comparison.


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## lharder

So the inspector came by, did sugar shakes, mites around 3 percent overall with an outlier at 6 percent and .33 if memory serves. Neglected to take brood samples at the same time. Too busy. She also took samples of what we assume are chalkbrood, but we want to know if there is foulbrood. Will also have some info on Nosema. It is around as well as EFB. Her biggest complaint was chalkbrood and that my gaps in broodnest and too much space are contributing. She thought ionizing equipment was a good idea. 

I did end up removing the queen of the hive that had high mites last fall and low mites in worker brood this spring. I will go in again at the end of this week, destroy any queen cells and put in a frame with eggs/larvae, from another low mite survivor. This has been done already for another high mite hive.


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## squarepeg

great report leroy. many thanks for taking time to update us.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> She thought ionizing equipment was a good idea.


LHarder:

Thank you for the update. Is ionizing meant to be utilizing an ozone generator? Is that a commercially-available service in your area?


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## lharder

I should have said irradiated. 300 k away is a facility. May have to rent a trailer.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> I should have said irradiated. 300 k away is a facility. May have to rent a trailer.


Thank you for the update. 

Russ


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## squarepeg

the recent volley of posts pertaining to mike bispham's treatment free experience have been moved to his thread:

https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?309877-Natural-Selection-Management/page8


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## JWChesnut

lharder dropped off the forum on August 9, 2019. Any idea what happened to his efforts ?


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## msl

JWChesnut said:


> lharder dropped off the forum on August 9, 2019. Any idea what happened to his efforts ?


I had been wondering the same, I had checked up on his last check in date about a month back.


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## lharder

Just letting folks know that I am still kicking with plenty of bees. I have lots of brood sample data to share, but not yet. With each year's data accumulation, I have more questions than answers and I am modifying my sampling protocol and hope to have more to share at a later date. I have 2 experiments I plan on implementing this season based on what I observed over a couple of seasons. I am going to be a busy boy. The long term sampling with the UBC lab is still ongoing and plans are being laid for this season. 

On another note I now have a place in the country. A small acreage along the south Thompson river. I have a heated shop, and a 40' container to store bee boxes and manage comb. I am enjoying the occassional rainbow trout from the river (now frozen over after a brief stint of -20 C weather) and have really enjoyed this past fall observing spring salmon spawning along with the chaos associated with it. 

Life is pretty good

Leroy


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## JWPalmer

lharder said:


> Life is pretty good
> 
> Leroy


That says it all.


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## tpope

Yep, life is great. Glad that ya are able to enjoy. Spring time is coming..


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> I have more questions than answers...


Leroy:

Good to see you back on the board and to hear that your TF efforts continue. I will look forward to reading about what you are observing and what sort of decisions you will make as a result.

Also, congratulations on getting the place out in the country- I for one share your affection for the solitude and natural beauty it affords.

Best of success to you in this coming season.

Russ


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## lharder

Things are ramping up with pollen coming in sporadically. Still cool and windy most days so not much opportunity to forage. There supposedly is a couple of nice days coming. Yeah right...

On the rare occassion I have been able to dig into the hives and take some brood samples. Sometimes there has been little to no sealed brood to take a sample from. This is site specific. I have managed to take a few samples at a time when there is less than a medium frame of sealed brood. The worst sample was 3 mites in a sample of over 100 larvae, the best, zeros. Another I found a single juvenile mite, another a single adult mite. I have not seen a reproducing mite family yet. It should be noted that these sample were take from colonies occupying a 6 frames to more than a box. If one assumes most of the mites are in the brood, there are not many mites this time of year. 

The brood is mostly quite spotty with a mix of life stages. Interesting. It seems they haven't made up their minds to ramp things up. 

That said I have a few colonies that are filling their space, one strong nuc in particular that is filling 3 6 frame boxes to overflowing already. The weather was iffy and they were feisty so no attempt was made to take a sample. Overall am pleased with what I am working with this year. Mostly my work is shaking a few bees into the few very small clusters to help them through early spring. 

Other projects around the place is a bit of habitat restoration along the river bank. Am establishing some natural vegetation along the river to reduce erosion. This year trying willow stakes inserted into moist soil that will hopefully sprout and take off. Will introduce some Saskatoon berries as well to the upper part of the bank. At high water the willows will reduce water velocity along the bank and provide cover for migrating salmon fry as they make they way downstream. 

Today I also have 8 bareroot trees to plant as well as various berries some native. This to support mead and other adventures. Still have 1/3 or the fruit obtained last year sitting in the freezer. The mead produced so far has been a hit. 

Cheers

Leroy


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## lharder

So I moved bees around today and am set up for both the production hives and the queen rearing site. Since it was warm today, I was able to dig into a couple of hives and take a brood sample. In the process discovered a queenless hive. Sign, a goner. 

Anyway I pulled 240 sealed brood between them roughly half and half larvae/pupae. Found 1 mite on a larvae. Still no mite families. Think in total must be in the range of 700 brood pulled and no mite families yet this spring. I'll tell you when I find them. Still no drones in process. 

Heavy pollen coming in. Drones are around the corner.


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## Litsinger

Leroy:

Glad to have you back with regular posts- sounds like your evaluation and breeding efforts are starting to pay-off.

Best of success to you this year- looking forward to your continued contributions to the forum.

Russ


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## lharder

Don't know if I am making headway re genetics, just establishing what the bees can and cannot do and unravel the black box a bit. Learned lots last year and may be beginning to understand my up and down journey. Lets just say there are perils in an unlimited brood nest where there is lots of drone comb on foundationless frames. At least for my bees. I am going to change that. I have bought a bunch of queen excluders. Some colonies did fine, but not enough. Started colonies that do not produce drones faired much better, even excellent even though they were in theory at the same starting point as the colonies I used to steal bees and brood from.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Don't know if I am making headway re genetics, just establishing what the bees can and cannot do and unravel the black box a bit.


Well even this is a worthwhile effort in my humble opinion. 

I do appreciate you posting as it is helpful to read about other's experiences in evaluating colonies in a TF context. 

Like you, I have learned a few lessons of my own while running unlimited brood nest- and they have led me to make some management changes in my apiary this season too.


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## lharder

So I found a mite family 2 days ago. Still low mite numbers. Yesterday I pulled 270 larvae and pupae from 2 samples and found 1 mite.


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## lharder

I found a couple of anomalies the last few days. One with 6% mite infestation and the other %10. The 10% a 2 winter survivor. Will keep an eye on these ones, resample. If necessary will do a brood break, drone brood removal, pinch the queen and split up into nucs with different genetics. Other hives still less than 1 %


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## GregB

lharder said:


> One with 6% mite infestation and the other %10. The 10% a 2 winter survivor


These two maybe at the end of their line unless you take measures.


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## lharder

They appear healthy now, but probably not later on. Will sample again to make sure there isn't a sampling anomaly, which would be interesting in itself.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> They appear healthy now, but probably not later on. Will sample again to make sure there isn't a sampling anomaly, which would be interesting in itself.


Starting with such mite levels, they should logically collapse later on.
Hopefully, these are measurement errors, but most likely that is what really happening - mite is building up into the 2nd/3rd season.
Which is already great if some bee is able to contain it on its own for 2-3 season (but then needs some help to reset again).


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## lharder

Mostly the bees seem to reset to very low mite numbers by early spring. I just pulled 300 plus brood from 2 samples and didn't find a mite. The hives are just capping the first drones, not enough for a sample, and I suspect the mites in these hives are there. I will resample the anomalies a little later both worker and drone brood. At the time I will cull drone brood from those hives. Foundationless comb can be a curse and a blessing.


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## lharder

Did my first drone brood sample. 3 mites in 71 larvae pulled. Too young for mite families. Same colony, no mites in worker brood, and an alcohol wash yielded no mites for 195 bees.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> Did my first drone brood sample. 3 mites in 71 larvae pulled. Too young for mite families. Same colony, no mites in worker brood, and an alcohol wash yielded no mites for 195 bees.


How in a world people ever get these low numbers?


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## lharder

I just watched one of Randy Olivers presentations on varroa. He stated generally that hives can survive their first winter without treatment, but the following year they begin with more mites and get overwhelmed sooner. Clearly, with my bees, this statement is nonsense. I have been tf for a fairly long time, and if this was the case, my system would have been overwhelmed a long time ago. Instead, I find a system reset to zero in the spring with mite pressure building later on. They are definitely not perfect (may never be) and I am attempting to document their limitations, and contribute to development of a useful management model.


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## AR1

lharder said:


> I just watched one of Randy Olivers presentations on varroa. He stated generally that hives can survive their first winter without treatment, but the following year they begin with more mites and get overwhelmed sooner. Clearly, with my bees, this statement is nonsense.


Randy is in Cali, and pollinates almonds. Whole different world. What might work wonderfully elsewhere will not cut it in his conditions. 

His measures of mite drift are eye-opening.


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## lharder

Yes but he generalizes to bees everywhere. Context is important.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> Yes but he generalizes to bees everywhere. Context is important.


And he really shouldn't.

But, on the other hand, people are looking for magic answers - without certain generalizing there can be no answers at all.
There will always be the same old vague non-answer - "it depends" and "beekeeping is local".

And so if one is about sorta/kinda science (looking at Randy), there is no way around the generalizations and conclusions (else this entire science is useless).


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## AR1

I look


lharder said:


> Yes but he generalizes to bees everywhere. Context is important.


I look at it the other way around. If he can make it work in his abysmal conditions, it should work in my conditions.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Did my first drone brood sample. 3 mites in 71 larvae pulled. Too young for mite families. Same colony, no mites in worker brood, and an alcohol wash yielded no mites for 195 bees.


Encouraging results, Leroy. Glad to have you posting your findings here.


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## lharder

GregV said:


> And he really shouldn't.
> 
> But, on the other hand, people are looking for magic answers - without certain generalizing there can be no answers at all.
> There will always be the same old vague non-answer - "it depends" and "beekeeping is local".
> 
> And so if one is about sorta/kinda science (looking at Randy), there is no way around the generalizations and conclusions (else this entire science is useless).


If his model doesn't fit, then it isn't science. If one looks away because of inconvenient inconsistencies, it isn't science.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> If his model doesn't fit, then it isn't science. If one looks away because of inconvenient inconsistencies, it isn't science.


Leroy:

Just for the sake of conversation and fleshing this idea out, I like the way that Roger Patterson describes the dynamics of a honey bee colony. He observes (and I paraphrase) that, _"we are dealing with biology - as such we are always talking about ranges and overarching principles but rarely absolutes."_

Meaning studies and observations of lifeforms can be carried out with the same rigor of any other branch of scientific inquiry relative to the method, but the results will rarely have the same precision as a study of Newtonian physics (for example).

And then you have the whole genotype/phenotype interaction- what may be scientifically-sound and relatively repeatable in the California almond orchards may not translate to the same genetics located in the Eastern woods or on the Canadian prairie. 

Therefore (in my humble opinion) we can't necessarily dismiss out-of-hand an observation that Randy makes in his situation using relatively rigorous studies only on the basis that it does not comport with our observations.

But likewise, I think it is a mistake for Randy (or any of us for that matter) to project our observations and results on anyone else, particularly those whose regional genetic picture, climate, bee density, etc. are widely different than our own.

Like I said, not trying to argue- just hoping to encourage a thoughtful discussion on the topic.


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## lharder

Its not the observations but the universal conclusions made from a narrow set of observations. Of course Randy has to treat more because he places his bees under incredible stress taking them to almonds, and exposing them to who knows what viruses. Then he calls tf keepers and bond cruel Pure hypocrisy or a huge blind spot. I have no patience for it. 

I would like to see some acknowledgement that there are healthy bee systems (ie Arnot feral bees) and unhealthy ones (migratory beekeeping tied closely to industrial agricultural systems) and the rest of us in between. Frankly a keeper in such a setting has little to say about how to keep bees healthy except in their context.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> Frankly a keeper in such a setting has little to say about how to keep bees healthy* except in their context.*


Well, like it or not but many of us have contexts rather close to Randy's.

I gave it an honest 5 year effort.
Not working too well for me - the TF part.

And so exactly - I want to know each and every context to the letter before I try to copy the methods.
At the moment, Randy's methods are what I am willing to study up next.
At least he has the numbers and charts to study and decide if they make sense or not, for me.
Who provides the compatible alternative exactly? I don't know of these people.

I wish someone told me up front -
"OK, so you are in a densely populated suburban bee population with heavy annual imports.
Your TF chances are slim to none".
This kinds of honest, context-based prescriptions I would much rather prefer.



> Conclusion: expected 5 year TF survival probability at my place is 15%.











GregV's Alternative way to keep (have?) bees.


And for the fun of it - here is a sample of the real Primorsky bees in the compatible format. Just mutts of mostly C-lineage - like the mutts I posted above - pretty much the C-lineage mixed in with the O-lineage in various proportions. Don't get me started about the "pure Russians" or "pure...




www.beesource.com


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## lharder

I agree that getting the same negative results doing the same thing points to a different direction. 

My strategy was always to see what could be done tf and back away with brood breaks etc if necessary.. If I remember correctly, you have lots of foundationless with deep frames. I'm guessing you have lots of drone comb in your hives? I think in a marginal situation this could be a recipe for disaster from what I have observed within my own hives. In your situation I would be controlling what kind of comb in the broodnest (need an excluder), doing drone brood removal, and possibly a brood break and bringing in some vsh queens. These are strategies I will employ on my identified red flag hives. Once you get some stability you can start selecting for bees that deal with mites well.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Its not the observations but the universal conclusions made from a narrow set of observations.


Good points- I think if we are not careful, we can all fall into this trap- positive or negative.


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## lharder

Just did a sample of 2 year survivor. It is filling 2 medium boxes, and I took a worker brood sample, a drone brood sample and did a sugar shake. 

No mites in the sugar shake with a half cup of bees. 
0 mites in 112 pupae pulled
I did find one mite family in the 46 drone larvae/pupae pulled. 

The other hive I sampled had 3 mites in the sugar shake, 1 mite in 100 worker brood pulled, no drone sample yet with this hive. The interesting thing about this hive is that I found 8 chalkbrood mummies during sampling. Maybe the added benefit of brood samples, monitoring for brood disease.


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## lharder

I have taken about 30 samples since the middle of March. I have gone through and have red flagged 3 hives with higher mite counts than their peers and another with chalkbrood. I will be providing and removing drone comb to reduce the number of drones in the hive and also prevent those hives to contribute to the drone pool.


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## lharder

Yesterday I resampled a red flagged hive that had an early 10% brood infestation. By this time they have lots of drone brood. I got 10 mites with the sugar shake (a little over 3%), about 13 % in the drone brood, and 0 mites in the worker brood. I pulled all the drone brood, and gave back one drone frame. I will be pulling drone brood from this hive along with a brood break later on if needed 

Another hive sampled had 0 mites in the sugar shake, 0 mites in the worker brood, and 0 mites in the drone brood, which was considerable. Will be grafting soon from this hive. 

As I go along here I am reorganizing the brood nests, removing partial frames of drone brood and putting them above the excluder and providing a labeled drone comb in the middle of the brood nest. I feel like I haven't been comparing apples to apples, with the idea that the type of comb available to bees changes mite dynamics. So I want to standardize it and see how the bees utilize it. With red flagged hives I will pull drone comb and replace regularly, reducing mites and genetic influence on the drone space.


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## lharder

Found another hive with 0 mites in the worker brood, drone brood and in a sugar shake. Another hive that I red flagged with higher mites, had low mites in the brood, that after I pulled a frame of capped drone brood that I put deliberately there. It was an ad hoc sample so will see if that trend continues.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> about 13 % in the drone brood,


lharder,
What is the methodology to be used when counting the mite infestation in the brood?
Thanks.


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## lharder

I find sealed brood, cut out a chunk with about 150 sealed cells, or 60 or so with the drone and take them home. 

Under a stereoscope I gentle uncap each cell one by one. If there is a mite they often try to scurry out at this point. I use a dental tool to pull out the pupae/larva checking them for mites, then look in the cell for any residual mites and juvenile mites. I put the larvae in one pile, the pupae in another and note each mite and mite families as I find them. 

I also note how many frames of sealed brood, and frames/boxes of bees. I have added doing sugar shakes to this procedure.


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## GregB

What about a quick and dirty estimate done in field?

For example, the same 60/150 cells can be estimated by just being cut through and visually estimating at the infestation % (for example, 3x3 square when cut out should expose just about that many cells for a quick visual count).
IF the infestation is low, the cut-out can be plugged right back in (minus the killed in the process brood).


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> I also note how many frames of sealed brood, and frames/boxes of bees. I have added doing sugar shakes to this procedure.


lharder:

Good feedback. Pleased to read about your encouraging results.

As I was reading about the various assays you are undertaking, I wonder if you have been evaluating for uncapping/recapping behavior when checking for mites?

While certainly more 'quick-and-dirty' than the precise protocol you have developed, Dr. Seeley sent me this idea, which I thought was pretty good:

_"I do not know if there is a standard protocol for this assay, except that researchers like to sample ca. 100 capped cells from the frames of capped brood in a colony. This can be done by pressing a patch or two of duct tape down onto a frame of capped brood in a colony, then pulling it up and studying the undersides of the cells’ cappings. By sampling 100+ cell cappings, one can get a good estimate of the % of cells that have been capped and recapped. 

A cell capping that has been capped and recapped is recognized as follows: "The recapping behaviour can be easily detected as a hole in the spun cocoon of the pupated larva ranging in size from one mm to the entire area of the cap. The hole is subsequently covered over with wax by the adult bees. This hole can be seen as a dark, matte spot on the underside of the cell cap distinct from the glossy coating of the cocoon.” 

This is a quote from the paper that I have attached. Fig. 1 in this paper contains excellent photos that show more clearly than the above words about how to recognized cells of mite infested brood that have been uncapped and recapped. I hope you find that your bees are controlling the Varroa mites in this way."_


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## lharder

GregV said:


> What about a quick and dirty estimate done in field?
> 
> For example, the same 60/150 cells can be estimated by just being cut through and visually estimating at the infestation % (for example, 3x3 square when cut out should expose just about that many cells for a quick visual count).
> IF the infestation is low, the cut-out can be plugged right back in (minus the killed in the process brood).


My eyes couldn't do this You really need to pull them out to get a thorough assessment. Otherwise you will miss mites. Certainly for a quick assessment I would focus on the drones. A sugar shake/alcohol wash is probably fine for quick assessments. I'm trying to get a more detailed/nuanced view of what is going on. In terms of management it has turned out to pretty useful.


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## lharder

Litsinger said:


> lharder:
> 
> Good feedback. Pleased to read about your encouraging results.
> 
> As I was reading about the various assays you are undertaking, I wonder if you have been evaluating for uncapping/recapping behavior when checking for mites?
> 
> While certainly more 'quick-and-dirty' than the precise protocol you have developed, Dr. Seeley sent me this idea, which I thought was pretty good:
> 
> _"I do not know if there is a standard protocol for this assay, except that researchers like to sample ca. 100 capped cells from the frames of capped brood in a colony. This can be done by pressing a patch or two of duct tape down onto a frame of capped brood in a colony, then pulling it up and studying the undersides of the cells’ cappings. By sampling 100+ cell cappings, one can get a good estimate of the % of cells that have been capped and recapped.
> 
> A cell capping that has been capped and recapped is recognized as follows: "The recapping behaviour can be easily detected as a hole in the spun cocoon of the pupated larva ranging in size from one mm to the entire area of the cap. The hole is subsequently covered over with wax by the adult bees. This hole can be seen as a dark, matte spot on the underside of the cell cap distinct from the glossy coating of the cocoon.”
> 
> This is a quote from the paper that I have attached. Fig. 1 in this paper contains excellent photos that show more clearly than the above words about how to recognized cells of mite infested brood that have been uncapped and recapped. I hope you find that your bees are controlling the Varroa mites in this way."_


This is great thanks. I wonder if it can be done with drone cappings. They are thicker and tougher than worker. I have seen lots of ancedotal evidence for vsh behaviour. I have some nice photos of uncapped pupae. This time of year there is little going on in the worker brood, but later in the year it may be more useful as the mite pressure increases. I am going to try it. 

The interesting thing about detailed observations is the nuance of it. For instance, I note mite families with probable reproductive success. But not all mite families are the same. Some are really weak compared to others. Is this a result of physiological resistance of some sort on the part of some bees? Could be a third leg of resistance in addition to vsh and grooming behaviours.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> For instance, I note mite families with probable reproductive success. But not all mite families are the same.


If you haven't seen it already, this research from Conlon et al of Dr. Kefuss' genetics provides a lot of insight about mite reproductive behavior and also poses more thought-provoking questions about mite reproduction in resistant colonies:









(PDF) Selection for outbreeding in Varroa parasitising resistant honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies


PDF | Parasitism is expected to select for counter‐adaptations in the host: driving a coevolutionary arms race. However, human interference between... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate




www.researchgate.net


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## GregB

lharder said:


> My eyes couldn't do this You really need to pull them out to get a thorough assessment. Otherwise you will miss mites. Certainly for a quick assessment I would focus on the drones. A sugar shake/alcohol wash is probably fine for quick assessments. I'm trying to get a more detailed/nuanced view of what is going on. In terms of management it has turned out to pretty useful.


Why, certainly you can pretty easily see the significant enough infestation (see live example pic).
Even less infested cells - a quick go through the cut-through cells with a hive tool (or a tooth pick) removing the larvae should work - to count the infested/non-infested cells and get your infestation estimate.

And you can pretty easily estimate the lower level infestations too - just count the cells in the transect - infested/non-infested - get your estimated %. It does not need to be perfect - it is an estimate.

Basic point is this - you do not need to take the sample home and work it on the table.
A transect through the comb does the same - a sample of cells to inspect (which can be done in field). Anyhow, working on the table is convenient. Just with me, I prefer things done in field and on the spot.


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## lharder

GregV said:


> Why, certainly you can pretty easily see the significant enough infestation (see live example pic).
> Even less infested cells - a quick go through the cut-through cells with a hive tool (or a tooth pick) removing the larvae should work - to count the infested/non-infested cells and get your infestation estimate.
> 
> And you can pretty easily estimate the lower level infestations too - just count the cells in the transect - infested/non-infested - get your estimated %. It does not need to be perfect - it is an estimate.
> 
> Basic point is this - you do not need to take the sample home and work it on the table.
> A transect through the comb does the same - a sample of cells to inspect (which can be done in field). Anyhow, working on the table is convenient. Just with me, I prefer things done in field and on the spot.


I think it is almost too late by the time I saw infestations to that level, context dependent of course. If I saw that I would be cutting drone comb out of that colony. I am not sure where my thresholds will be with drone infestation. I have already removed most of the drones from the worst performers coming out of spring. Those hives will not be allowed to reproduce and will be requeened. Now I will be monitoring hives for mite buildup during the year. I will be removing drones and maybe a brood break to those that are making mites at a greater rate than their peers. Those doing ok will be allowed to play out as potential reproductive units next year. I want to reduce the mite pressure on the better hives.


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## lharder

I sold a nuc a few years ago. This person put them in a top bar hive and they survived the first winter with no treatments and little intervention. The following year or two, they swarmed and his hive count went from 1 to 3. He has continued to this time sometimes having 2, sometimes 3 hives. All without treatments. He has one very strong hive that threw off 2 swarms. Not having room, he gave them to me. The first bees at my new place. 

I would say this is almost a feral bee situation. Minimal management, fixed cavity space, swarming with a brood break. It seems swarms that escape me, if they find a good tree hollow, are quite likely to be successful. The relative success with minimal headache raises questions about my system and how I can improve it. The changes I have implemented should reduce the stress on 2nd year colonies but keep some selection pressure on the system. .


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## GregB

lharder said:


> I think it is almost too late by the time I saw infestations to that level, context dependent of course.


In this instance, I caused this terrible brood infestation artificially.
This was a brood-less/queen-less resource hive where I was raising queens.
So I inserted a comb with eggs into to for the queen making.
What happened is what you see in the picture (even some queen cells got infested).
So yes - very easy to see the terrible infestation level.
One can easily see 2-3 mites in some of the cells (this is above normal 1 mite/cell).

Seeing this brood cross-section, I thought - it is easy enough to cut out a similar brood chunk from most any hive and count the mites exposed by similar brood cross-cuts.
For example, 5-10 mites found in 100 cross-cut cells could be a high mark - pretty much you can safely assume this entire brood chunk can be culled as already highly infested.
1-2 mites found in 100 cross-cut cells cells could be a low mark - the comb chunk can be just inserted back into the frame.

So, if the sample brood chunk is standardized - say, it is 100mm x 100mm - then one can quickly, in field, estimate the levels of the brood infestation.

The perimeter of this 100x100 square will have certain # of cells; these cells can be inspected on-site.
Based on the infestation exposed by the cut, you can estimate the infestation contained within the 100mm x 100mm brood square (I should go and count the # of cells in such square - I don't know what the expected #s are).

Why does this matter?
I am thinking at certain levels of brood infestation, you can basically forecast that the colony is doomed. If so, the entire capped brood of such unit can be just removed; the colony made brood-less (from capped brood) and then either let them to, hopefully, recover on their own OR apply a single brood-less OA treatment.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> The relative success with minimal headache raises questions about my system and how I can improve it.


lharder:

Good update- I share your thoughts of regularly reevaluating my approach to try to hone in on what specific management techniques are required and/or value-added and which are not. While I can't be certain, I expect the 'right' answer may be quite location and genetic-background specific.


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## lharder

GregV said:


> In this instance, I caused this terrible brood infestation artificially.
> This was a brood-less/queen-less resource hive where I was raising queens.
> So I inserted a comb with eggs into to for the queen making.
> What happened is what you see in the picture (even some queen cells got infested).
> So yes - very easy to see the terrible infestation level.
> One can easily see 2-3 mites in some of the cells (this is above normal 1 mite/cell).
> 
> Seeing this brood cross-section, I thought - it is easy enough to cut out a similar brood chunk from most any hive and count the mites exposed by similar brood cross-cuts.
> For example, 5-10 mites found in 100 cross-cut cells could be a high mark - pretty much you can safely assume this entire brood chunk can be culled as already highly infested.
> 1-2 mites found in 100 cross-cut cells cells could be a low mark - the comb chunk can be just inserted back into the frame.
> 
> So, if the sample brood chunk is standardized - say, it is 100mm x 100mm - then one can quickly, in field, estimate the levels of the brood infestation.
> 
> The perimeter of this 100x100 square will have certain # of cells; these cells can be inspected on-site.
> Based on the infestation exposed by the cut, you can estimate the infestation contained within the 100mm x 100mm brood square (I should go and count the # of cells in such square - I don't know what the expected #s are).
> 
> Why does this matter?
> I am thinking at certain levels of brood infestation, you can basically forecast that the colony is doomed. If so, the entire capped brood of such unit can be just removed; the colony made brood-less (from capped brood) and then either let them to, hopefully, recover on their own OR apply a single brood-less OA treatment.
> [/QUOTe}
> 
> I have done something similar with a queen rearing set up later in the year. Its why I think queens should be raised earlier before mite numbers can compromise the queen rearing system. Sam Comfort uses bees from his mating nucs that have undergone brood breaks for his queen rearing system.
> 
> One has to be a little careful with thresholds. A high mite count on the last little bit of brood raised before winter is not so serious if most of the bees have been raised before this. On only a few observations, I have low mites in the brood of nucs. The last little bit of brood is another matter as all the mites converge on them. Not much brood, and not that many mites in the big scheme of things. I will be doing more sampling of nucs this year. I have been keeping track of how much sealed brood there is during sampling just to keep things in context.


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## lharder

I was given another swarm from the same hive. The mother hive is still booming. How many swarms will this hive throw off? I gave it a frame of brood from mom (the first swarm) to anchor them. It worked. This swarm had quite a few more bees than the first 2. A departure from conventional wisdom.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> A departure from conventional wisdom.


At least around here the swarming dynamics have been quite different from recent past years and I suspect it has been due at least in part to the cooler, wetter spring.


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## lharder

Its dry here. Too dry.


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## lharder

Finally started to do some samples again after a 2 week break. Its been dry here, no nectar for a while and the bees are grumpy. Its thrown a curveball at my nuc starting attempts. My last batch were hit hard by big hives during this dry period. It has rained a bit, nectar is coming in, and I am raising queens again after a 1 week break. 

Anyway, mites are still low. Not detected in 3 of 4 samples, Two samples did not have a sugar wash, nor drone samples. The colony with mites had 2 mites in a sugar wash (300 bees), 2 mites in 60 drone pupae, and 1 mite in 142 worker pupae.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> Anyway, mites are still low. Not detected in 3 of 4 samples, Two samples did not have a sugar wash, nor drone samples. The colony with mites had 2 mites in a sugar wash (300 bees), 2 mites in 60 drone pupae, and 1 mite in 142 worker pupae.


Looking good...


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## lharder

I resampled a colony that I had red flagged earlier. It did have higher mite counts than its peers, about 10 percent in drones, and 4 percent in worker brood. The sugar shake what not outrageous, 4 mites, a little over 1 percent. I removed the frame of drone brood for a second time as I was sampling. 

Anyway, our flow is starting so I shook the brood nest into a single box with only drone comb, putting the brood above an excluder. It will be a semi brood break. Only drones can be produced, which will be removed and sampled as they are capped. I will be doing this to all colonies with high mite counts as I find them.


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## lharder

So I have a bit of story with the red flagged hive described above. I have some time because we are having a record breaking heat wave in BC. It was 47C yesterday, which is almost 117 F. So I can do a bit of bee work first thing in the morning before I retreat home with some samples. 

The first brood sample was the middle of april yielding 10 % mite infestion in the worker brood. It had much higher counts than its peers and was red flagged. 

The second sampling was May 9, which found drone brood infestation of 15 percent, not any in the worker brood, but over 3% in a sugar shake sample of adult bees. At this time I removed capped drone brood. 

On June 16th I sampled again. Drone brood infestation of just under 10%, worker brood infestation of 4 % and a phoretic mite count of just over 1 percent. At this time I shook the brood nest into 1 box with mostly drone comb and started a modified brood break. 

June 28 I sampled again, while removing any capped brood from the single box, and replacing the comb. I removed a frame of drone brood and a frame of worker taking my sample from these frames. The phoretic mite count was 1%, the drone brood was 5% while the worker brood stood at 2%.

So it looks like the measures taken are useful in controlling mites in the short term, and removing drones from the mating space. I have at least one more set of capped drone brood to remove in 2 weeks before I end the brood break.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> So it looks like the measures taken are useful in controlling mites in the short term, and removing drones from the mating space.


Good update, LHarder. Amazing to think that it is over 20 degrees F warmer where you are than here.

Enjoy your posts- looking forward to continuing to read how you progress.


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## lharder

We are getting a reprieve with only 36C expected today. Getting smoky as wildfires are rampling up. As I go through my sites I am deactivating electrical fences. It is so dry out there.


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## GregB

lharder said:


> At this time I shook the brood nest into 1 box with mostly drone comb and started a modified brood break.


So you by design forced some drone brood - such that later you could remove it?

What is the "modified brood break"?


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## lharder

I didn't want to cage the queen or remove her from the colony. So I forced her into a box full of empty drone comb. You can do a brood break by removing all the brood (I would remove only capped brood over a couple of sessions) but I thought that a waste. Instead I am allowing existing brood to emerge, then removing capped brood (mostly drone) from the box with a queen. Not a total brood break. A partial with drone trapping. 

I suspect some colonies with high mites in spring are not good at chewing down mites. In this case brood removal without some mite trapping may not result in phoretic mite populations going down over the course of the brood break.


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## AR1

lharder said:


> I didn't want to cage the queen or remove her from the colony. So I forced her into a box full of empty drone comb. You can do a brood break by removing all the brood (I would remove only capped brood over a couple of sessions) but I thought that a waste. Instead I am allowing existing brood to emerge, then removing capped brood (mostly drone) from the box with a queen. Not a total brood break. A partial with drone trapping.
> 
> I suspect some colonies with high mites in spring are not good at chewing down mites. In this case brood removal without some mite trapping may not result in phoretic mite populations going down over the course of the brood break.


I did not separate the queen, but did do extensive drone brood culling last year. No scientific counts.

One question, if you are separating the queen from the brood, have you seen any queen cells being formed? Maybe if just one box away from the queen that isn't a concern.


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## lharder

AR1 said:


> I did not separate the queen, but did do extensive drone brood culling last year. No scientific counts.
> 
> One question, if you are separating the queen from the brood, have you seen any queen cells being formed? Maybe if just one box away from the queen that isn't a concern.


With my extensive experience with one hive over 2 weeks... I'll let everyone know if they make some queens/queen cells. I would remove them/kill her if I found some. Not interested in these genetics. I should be planting some queen cells from better and see if I can do a transition.


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## lharder

I am doing a thorough round of sampling as this is the time to deal with poor performing hives. I may be seeing some separation in terms of mite production. Of 25 hives recently sampled, 4 or 5 have mite counts a step higher than the others. For comparison 1 hive had a 11 mites per 300 bees, and a worker brood infestation of 7% vs a better hives with 0 or 1 mite in the adult bees and 0 to 1% worker brood infestation. 2 hives have had their brood breaks initiated and will initiate others on my next visit. The goal is to sample all larger hives and do brood breaks where necessary, leaving good performers alone.


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## lharder

lharder said:


> So I have a bit of story with the red flagged hive described above. I have some time because we are having a record breaking heat wave in BC. It was 47C yesterday, which is almost 117 F. So I can do a bit of bee work first thing in the morning before I retreat home with some samples.
> 
> The first brood sample was the middle of april yielding 10 % mite infestion in the worker brood. It had much higher counts than its peers and was red flagged.
> 
> The second sampling was May 9, which found drone brood infestation of 15 percent, not any in the worker brood, but over 3% in a sugar shake sample of adult bees. At this time I removed capped drone brood.
> 
> On June 16th I sampled again. Drone brood infestation of just under 10%, worker brood infestation of 4 % and a phoretic mite count of just over 1 percent. At this time I shook the brood nest into 1 box with mostly drone comb and started a modified brood break.
> 
> June 28 I sampled again, while removing any capped brood from the single box, and replacing the comb. I removed a frame of drone brood and a frame of worker taking my sample from these frames. The phoretic mite count was 1%, the drone brood was 5% while the worker brood stood at 2%.
> 
> So it looks like the measures taken are useful in controlling mites in the short term, and removing drones from the mating space. I have at least one more set of capped drone brood to remove in 2 weeks before I end the brood break.


I was around that hive and found 2 combs of capped drones and 1 worker. I found 10 mites (sometimes multiples) in 49 drone larvae, and 1 mite in 100 worker pupae. The drone mite count went up from 5 to 20 percent from a week ago. All other brood should have emerged by now 3 weeks after brood break initiation.


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## lharder

lharder said:


> I was around that hive and found 2 combs of capped drones and 1 worker. I found 10 mites (sometimes multiples) in 49 drone larvae, and 1 mite in 100 worker pupae. The drone mite count went up from 5 to 20 percent from a week ago. All other brood should have emerged by now 3 weeks after brood break initiation.


Should say found and removed.2 combs of capped drones and 1 frame of capped worker brood.


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## lharder

I completed sampling one of my sites yesterday. This site I did walk away splits except for one that requeened itself. I did these by shaking all the bees from a given hive onto new comb on a new site, and leaving the comb with brood on the original site. The foragers would go back to the old site and look after the brood. Both hives get a bit of a reset with all the brood being taken away from the queen. 

With one that raised a new queen, I found high mites in the new brood so I am giving another brood break with drone trapping. But by far I am finding low mites. Yesterday in 4 brood samples I found 2 mites. In sugar shake samples I found 2 zeros, 1 mite and 3 mites. I think I have 9 hives at that site and 2 I am giving brood breaks.


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## lharder

lharder said:


> I completed sampling one of my sites yesterday. This site I did walk away splits except for one that requeened itself. I did these by shaking all the bees from a given hive onto new comb on a new site, and leaving the comb with brood on the original site. The foragers would go back to the old site and look after the brood. Both hives get a bit of a reset with all the brood being taken away from the queen.
> 
> With one that raised a new queen, I found high mites in the new brood so I am giving another brood break with drone trapping. But by far I am finding low mites. Yesterday in 4 brood samples I found 2 mites. In sugar shake samples I found 2 zeros, 1 mite and 3 mites. I think I have 9 hives at that site and 2 I am giving brood breaks.


2 sampled were colonies with the original queen and 2 with new queens.


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## lharder

So I took a brood sample from a stronger nuc started this spring. 0 mites from 110 pulled. I will be sampling started hives more often this year to get a sense of this population of bees.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> 0 mites from 110 pulled.


Nice. Glad to read your continued updates.


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## lharder

lharder said:


> I was around that hive and found 2 combs of capped drones and 1 worker. I found 10 mites (sometimes multiples) in 49 drone larvae, and 1 mite in 100 worker pupae. The drone mite count went up from 5 to 20 percent from a week ago. All other brood should have emerged by now 3 weeks after brood break initiation.


Just a follow up on this one hive. I visited the site yesterday, looked at this hive and found only about a half a frame of capped worker. I found 10 mites in 32 larvae pulled. The mites had no choice in the matter as there were no drone brood to take advantage of, though there will be in the coming weeks. 

Its interesting how the mites will move from drone to worker brood and back again depending on what is available. Also when you look at the resources needed to raise drones vs those needed for workers, maybe I shouldn't be using drone comb to trap mites in this situation. May be more efficient to use worker brood. And maybe it says something about the perils of using brood samples to get an accurate assessment of mites. The information is so context dependent. 

In terms of mite management with drone comb removal, it may be possible to manage mites with it. But there must be a continuous source of drone brood about to be capped if you want to keep the mites out of worker brood. This means more than one drone frame is probably needed.


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## AR1

lharder said:


> Just a follow up on this one hive. I visited the site yesterday, looked at this hive and found only about a half a frame of capped worker. I found 10 mites in 32 larvae pulled. The mites had no choice in the matter as there were no drone brood to take advantage of, though there will be in the coming weeks.
> 
> Its interesting how the mites will move from drone to worker brood and back again depending on what is available. Also when you look at the resources needed to raise drones vs those needed for workers, maybe I shouldn't be using drone comb to trap mites in this situation. May be more efficient to use worker brood. And maybe it says something about the perils of using brood samples to get an accurate assessment of mites. The information is so context dependent.
> 
> In terms of mite management with drone comb removal, it may be possible to manage mites with it. But there must be a continuous source of drone brood about to be capped if you want to keep the mites out of worker brood. This means more than one drone frame is probably needed.


Also a clear demonstration of why mites cause so much trouble in the fall. They may have been mostly killing drones during the spring-summer but all the sudden they are killing workers.


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## lharder

I sampled a few of my nucs today. Started with maybe 1.5 frames of bees, 1 frame of brood and given a queen cell. They are now started to fill 12 medium frames with 4 or 5 frames of brood when I sample them. 

The first one had brood mostly emerged, no brood sample. took a sugar shake sample and found 7 mites/300 bees. 

The other 2 I found no mites in the brood (over 150 cells pulled) or the sugar shake. 

I didn't take alot of nuc samples last year, but this is similar to what I found about this time of year last year.


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## lharder

lharder said:


> Should say found and removed.2 combs of capped drones and 1 frame of capped worker brood.


And maybe the final sample of this brood break. Took out 1 frame of capped drone brood, 2 frames worker. Found 0 mites in the sugar shake, 0 mites in the worker brood, and 10 mites in 75 drone cells pulled.


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## lharder

did another brood sample of 2 new nucs started with a queen cell, now on 12 frames. 250 larvae and pupae pulled. 1 mite found. On the other hand a swarm I have now in 4 medium boxes had 30%. Will be pulling brood on that one today.


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## lharder

More samples. 2 more samples from colonies started this year. 0 mites for both of them. Sampled a larger hive that I pulled 4 boxes of honey off. A small batch of drone brood had almost 50 % infestation. Found 1 mite from almost 90 larvae pulled. If this hive survives winter will be making queens from her. At the same site, 3 sisters are not doing anything and are duds. Go figure.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> More samples. 2 more samples from colonies started this year. 0 mites for both of them.


Encouraging results, lharder. As Randy Oliver says, _"zeros are heroes"._


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## lharder

I'm not even sure if these bees are all that special. We don't have lots of mite data from both the treatment and non treatment camps of the divide. Lots of hand waving going on. The lack of seasonal data left lots of questions and gradually I am trying to generate a model based on real data for myself.


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## Litsinger

lharder said:


> ...I am trying to generate a model based on real data for myself.


Same here. I'll look forward to your updates going forward.

Have a great weekend. 

Russ


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## AR1

I su


Litsinger said:


> Encouraging results, lharder. As Randy Oliver says, _"zeros are heroes"._


I suspect, unfortunately, that a lot of these 'zeros' are arriving by pure chance. Randy Oliver's results are encouraging, but only for showing that some small progress can be made. His daughters of 'zero queens' pan out only slightly more often than unselected queens. 

Still, between Randy and the Russians and the ABH, and the various mite-biters and whatnot, I have some hope for the future. If any of these is truly able to resist mites to the extent that they can survive on their own, they will gradually take over the population.


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## lharder

Just a short update. It looks like I will have the same number of hives this spring than last (40 or so) in spite of an incredibly difficult beekeeping year last year. The incredible dryness last spring along with that week of unprecedented hot weather (47 C) put a major damper in my efforts to start nucs. The heat wave was particularly hard on newly made nucs. They did not have the resources to deal with the heat stress resulting in a pile of dead bees and melted comb. The ones that did survive, did not build very well and were not the strongest going into winter. I suspect there may be heat related queen quality issues. Still I have reasonable survival with this group. This group of bees had the lowest mite pressure going into winter. 

In spite of the poor conditions, my use of excluders and standardizing of drone comb has reduced mite pressure considerably and my survival of production hives has climbed to 50%.. Still a bit spotty across sites with excellent survival in some, complete wipe out in others. I did not use robber screens this fall and I regret this decision. I had few fall collapses, with most hives dying in the winter. For hives I intervened with brood removal, I did not have good survival.  However, they did not collapse in the fall. I think I can tweak my methods and get better results. Most of these hives are not from the best lines, as a result of Leroy error when choosing queen mothers. I think I may be getting better in contextualizing how a hive is performing. Not quite so easily fooled or so I hope. This years nucs may have better genetics. Its beautiful weather now. I am about to go cleanup some deadouts.

Have a good spring everyone.


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## AR1

lharder said:


> Most of these hives are not from the best lines, as a result of Leroy error when choosing queen mothers.
> 
> Have a good spring everyone.


Good to hear. What is a 'Leroy' error? Are you Leroy?


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## GregB

AR1 said:


> Good to hear. What is a 'Leroy' error? Are you Leroy?


lharder is Leroy, indeed.


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## AR1

GregB said:


> lharder is Leroy, indeed.


Ah, explains a lot. I have plenty of 'Tom' errors, but have not considered making it a trademark. My errors are plentiful, but not unique.


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