# Deformed Wing--Will Not Treat but Need Help



## Oldtimer

Well if I had your good record, I wouldn't treat them either.

The question is begged though, don't really see any way to "help" them that is not considered a treatment. So instead, I'd be thinking about ways to split next spring to make up the loss, if it happens.

I would also consider going there at a time the bees are not flying and moving that hive elsewhere, so your other hives do not get "mitebombed".

And another thing, where did you get your original bees? They have clearly done well without treatment. But if you are surrounded by bees that need treatment and cross mating has been occurring, your luck may be starting to run out. I think you should consider the implications of this and if it is time to introduce some new blood from a quality source.


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## Rusty Hills Farm

> if you are surrounded by bees that need treatment and cross mating has been occurring, your luck may be starting to run out. I think you should consider the implications of this and if it is time to introduce some new blood from a quality source.


This.

Rusty


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## beeware10

2-3 years with no treatment for mites is the magic number before they start to crash. I would be surprised if you can winter 50% by spring. too late for a break in brood rearing and have them build up. there are a number of soft treatments that would be better and less expensive than starting over again.


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## AR Beekeeper

Postie; Do you ever do natural mite fall counts? I would be interested in knowing how yours compare with mine. What does your capped brood pattern look like?

Next spring either make splits and allow your colonies to make a new queen or purchase some from the same stock yours came from, if they still show resistance. If your colonies start to crash you could lose your queen lines very quickly. Some colonies have DWV and crash, other colonies show some deformed wings and continue to survive. If you start to see colonies with shotgun patterns and the adults start looking "shabby," and you are still dead set against treating to save them, add a couple of frame of sealed brood from your other colonies that still look normal. Using drone brood trapping and powdered sugar dusting to reduce the mite load on the adult bees is not quite the same as using coumaphos.

Also, don't you know that it is bad luck to tell how many colonies you have and how long you have gone without winter losses? The bee gods will strike your colonies for sure! At least that is what the oldtimers told me when I started keeping bees.


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## squarepeg

i agree with oldtimer in that it would be prudent to move that hive to safe place until you see what becomes of it. if that's not feasible then reduce the entrance and/or consider using a robber screen and keep a watchful eye on it for any sign of robbing. if it starts getting robbed and you can't move it away consider euthanizing it, (i put mine in the freezer), or taking it off more than 5 miles from your beeyard and shaking it out. 

at it's current strength and with brood it will likely make it into the winter but might not make it through the winter. i use a stethoscope and listen for cluster roar once it gets too cold for the bees to fly. if i hear one go completely quiet i'll bring the frames in and put them in the freezer for use with next year's splits. 

it sounds like the queen in that one could be suffering damage to her ovarioles due to a high virus load and her ability to lay is failing. it's not likely that they'll be able to replace her this late in the season. i believe this to be the cause for most of the losses i incur over the winter. 

if your brood is solid and healthy in the other hives i wouldn't worry too much about seeing an occasional bee with dwv in them.

not having any losses so far is amazing so you are no doubt working with good bees in a good location. your corner of tennesse looks like good habitat for feral bees and those may be contributing survivor genes via their drones to your queens. making splits or catching swarms are easy ways to replace a loss here and there. i'm also curious about where you got your bees to start with.


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## squarepeg

i should have been a little clearer about 'move that hive to a safe place'. that would mean outside of flying distance of any neighboring bee yards. i used to have a place like that but it has now become my outyard. these days i wouldn't move a hive if it started collapsing, but rather deal with it by euthanizing or shaking it out, whatever becomes necessary to prevent robbing.

postie, your old posts indicate that you started in 2012, did you mean to write you will be going into your 4th winter instead of your 6th? is the colony with lots of dwv one of the first hives you started with?


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## postie

To back up a bit....I had a "loaner" hive in 2010 and kept it for someone that year then gave it back...I have to count that year because I didn't kill those bees...lol I also did not DO anything of any significance as far as "beekeeping" that hive, but I did catch the bug and wanted to be a beekeeper. Those bees went back to their owner during the winter of 2011 after I was given some equipment to try my own bees. 

The stock of bees I started with, that most of my bees have grown from (other than swarms not of my own), came from 2 3lb. packages of Georgia bees (which I would never advise is the best way to begin...lol). When I opened the package for install, instantly a little black bug came out first, before even a bee. I say to my mother (also now a beekeeper)..."look at that bug, this box has bugs in it besides bees!" I now know it was the almighty hive beetle...although even from that time to now, hive beetles have never been problematic at my location. I run very hot hives, in full sun, barely ventilated if at all, and good water sources set about various locations.

The colony in question in this thread is from a split last year...and has done quite well, even making a couple of supers of honey in a drought. In reading an article in Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education about raising bees using 3 deep brood boxes as opposed to 2, I decide to give it a whirl. Though the study was done in Indiana (a bit cooler than my area), I was wondering if 3 deeps would produce more bees to go into winter STRONG. So, on the extra deep went. They loved the extra room and there was plenty of brood throughout summer, but again...we have been over 2 months without rain with only 1 small shower about a week ago. In fact, we only received some satisfactory amount of rain during the month of July ONLY! Brood is dwindling a bit now and I inspected my 3 box experiment. 

2 honey supers completely dry...top deep brood box had 3 center frames with brood (all stages) with very solid pattern but only baseball sized, other frames empty and a lot of Deformed Wing bees...middle deep brood box again with about 3 frames of brood, very solid pattern, about 2 softball widths in size on both sides, good number of bees with barely any deformed wings (saw just a few) and overall bees were of good size, color and health...bottom deep box-did not inspect as bees in yard getting too active to risk robbing (I can only work 2 hives each outing without robbing problems this time of year)...front porch-bees coming in with some pollen, no deformed wings walking around porch and many bees flying in and out normally.

The largest portion of bees with the horrid wings were in that top deep box...it was just problematic. I removed it, placing the three frames with brood in the box below and storing other empty frames. Placed feeder on top and will be diligent in helping them build stores. I will go back and inspect the very bottom deep box within a few days, but the neighboring bees were crystal clear it was time to stop inspecting for today.

It is unlikely that I will euthanize the bees...I would reserve that for obviously foul brood but also maybe for extreme laying worker situations...otherwise I try to help them survive or combine them with something that will. I've been a state inspector for 2 years and hesitate to suggest killing bees. Moving them is out of the question as I only have so much property and mayors here are pretty ill tempered about bees.

So, it would be 4 to 5 years from beginning stock to these unwinged bees. And, I am not boasting about no losses...I know very well they are coming...this may likely be the year (we are even having serious summer deadouts here)...but the longer I can say no losses, the more resistant I'm thinking my bees may be...which is my ultimate goal.

One last thought....were we ever to reach a state of disaster, where we are on our own to care for bees with no "products" available...resistance would mean everything. I've rambled but I don't think I was very clear in my original post that this colony was being run in a different way with the 3 deeps...that aspect was an epic failure for me so now I'm sorting it out.


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## squarepeg

"This forum is for those who wish to discuss Treatment-Free Beekeeping, not for them to be required to defend it." (from the unique forum rules, please respect them)

postie, thanks for clarifying. 

i think it's fair to assume that the queens in your hives are now 2 or more generations beyond the original package queens that you started with and very hybridized with whatever bees are local to your area. being that close to a national forest make me think that there would be a significant presence of feral survivors contributing resistance qualities to your apiary.

my guess is that your bees are showing stress in part due to the lack of good nutrition caused by the drought this past season. it is by belief that immunity to viruses is bolstered by substances the bees get through their diet, and your weather there may have resulted in shortfalls in that regard. you mentioned feeding syrup, did you provide protein supplements as well?

i'm not sure that the adding third deep would have been a big factor, and i wouldn't let the results of one colony convince me of how helpful or not using a third deep is for you. i am using a single deep and three mediums as an overwintering configuration, which is the space equivalent of 3 deeps.


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## dsegrest

I think a lot of European Beeks cage the queen long enough to make the colony go broodless. The brood break, along with screened bottom boards would help a lot. It's a shame you aren't willing to give them a shot of OAV while they are broodless though. Your bees are not survivor stock anyway if they die.


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## beemandan

Late in the season to do any sort of brood break...your bees are surely making winter bees now and stopping that would make matters worse, in my opinion. Better to have sickly winter bees than no winter bees.
Since you've chosen to go tf you should ignore the treatment suggestions and let the bees run their course...again in my opinion. If they do collapse and it is sometime during the winter....that should take care of the mites too.
Good luck.


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## dsegrest

beemandan said:


> Late in the season to do any sort of brood break...your bees are surely making winter bees now and stopping that would make matters worse, in my opinion. Better to have sickly winter bees than no winter bees.
> Since you've chosen to go tf you should ignore the treatment suggestions and let the bees run their course...again in my opinion. If they do collapse and it is sometime during the winter....that should take care of the mites too.
> Good luck.


Unless the Beek is standing buy to close up the hive, the dead or dying hive will be robbed. Spreading the mites throughout the apiary.


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## beemandan

dsegrest said:


> Unless the Beek is standing buy to close up the hive, the dead or dying hive will be robbed. Spreading the mites throughout the apiary.


In the dead of winter when they often finally collapse....nobody's flying here. Nobody's robbing. By the time the weather breaks any mites in the hive are dead.


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## dsegrest

beemandan said:


> In the dead of winter when they often finally collapse....nobody's flying here. Nobody's robbing. By the time the weather breaks any mites in the hive are dead.


Don't know if Athens is colder than Charlotte, but we seldom have 2 weeks in a row where the bees don't go out some at least in the afternoon.


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## squarepeg

beemandan said:


> In the dead of winter when they often finally collapse....nobody's flying here. Nobody's robbing. By the time the weather breaks any mites in the hive are dead.


that's usually how it plays out dan. i've had very few robbing events so far, and those were dealt with before they got out of hand.

desegrest, if you reread the post, about all the hive in question has in it is about 6 frames of brood so not broodless at this time.


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## postie

If I had another farm animal would I treat??? Well...the answer is pretty well "No". I treat my dogs and cats, but of course I do not eat them nor any of their products. I do have fowl...chickens and guineas and such...Occasionally in the past 1 time a year they might get a worming, but are quarantined, and I am 3 weeks without eggs (a little long to wait but better safe than poisoned). Most years I do not treat the birds at all and simply sell them at 2 years of age and replace them...what the next folks want to put in their bodies is entirely up to them...I do not leave new owners unaware. Any meat I eat comes from a treatment-free local farm. But, now to quarantine a colony of bees and not allow them to come or go or bring anything in or make any honey or wax for an extended period would be quite an undertaking, don't you think? If I treat bees, then I might as well go buy honey at the grocery store or from a "standard" beekeeper. 

And it is true that if they die, they are not resistant stock...which is exactly why they should perish and leave the resistant stock (other colonies) behind to carry on their resistance! Not every one of my colonies is resistant I'm sure...I've been very lucky and diligent up til now, but it is time for the weak to go it's way and the strong to stay on another year. I surely hope that means all of them, but one never knows what they may find in the Spring. I do have one colony that is from a feral swarm...they are not a very nice group, but I borrow brood from time to time to boost along other colonies earlier in the season.

Who knows what lies ahead....there sure are good replies on here and I will be watching this colony closely. As for the 3rd deep...it was just a curiosity for me and it is interesting to see how they managed those boxes compared to the 2 deeps I always run. I won't base any kind of results on just adding another box...could have been a deep super for honey for all the bees knew...lol

I am a Beek who is always standing by...my bee yard is about 20 yards from my back sliding door...I don't miss a trick! 

I will be winterizing another 3 colonies today...will be checking everybody's wings for sure to see if this is something widespread or not. Will send out a sentence or two when I know something.


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## postie

Robbing....I do have the occasional robbing event, depending on what I am doing in the bee yard (like staying too long or leaving something open in the Fall). I have not had the crisis of a strong hive robbing out a weak hive just out of the blue...BUT---since all my colonies are so close to the house, it's easy enough to beat on a pan and either stand with the water hose showering into the air (consider this a thunderstorm) or turning on a sprinkler for awhile (consider this a nice summer shower), I have always been able to put a halt to robbing pretty quickly.


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## beemandan

dsegrest said:


> but we seldom have 2 weeks in a row where the bees don't go out some at least in the afternoon.


 In winter mites depend on the bees' cluster temp....the bees die...and the mites will die just as quickly. I'm not saying it is a perfect plan, just in the present situation the most hoped for.


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## ToeOfDog

snl said:


> Incorrect, OA does not embed into the wax........


My dog went to the Vet for surgery. He said the anesthesia was a poison but not to worry as the liver would remove the poison in a week- most of it in a day. There will be no lifetime contact with the poison.

At the grocery store you can buy a bug bomb. It is an aerosol can the emits a fog of poison that covers every nook and cranny in the house. Much like an OA fogging, everything hard is coated with poison and everything soft it sinks into. The poison is there forever or til it breaks down then you have the resulting chemical components. As i wonder thru the house I will continually come into contact with the poison on a daily basis.

What is the difference? Temporary Internal VS forever external contact. 

Let take humans for instance. Would you sprinkle a half cup of Sevin Dust powder on your bed and sleep on it every night without changing the sheets? What is the difference in this and fogging a hive with poison?

Wax is complex fat. Fat is lymphophilic which means it absorbs chemicals, especially orgophosphates. Look up the term. 

Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?

I only feed sugar in a case of extreme emergency. The PH of sugar is about the same that AFB likes to rapidly grow in. The PH of honey is much lower so by adding sugar you are creating an environment the AFB can flourish in. Sometimes when you play with gas you get burned. Does OA change the PH in the hive?

Welcome to the TreatFree subforum.


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## dsegrest

[
Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?

I only feed sugar in a case of extreme emergency. The PH of sugar is about the same that AFB likes to rapidly grow in. The PH of honey is much lower so by adding sugar you are creating an environment the AFB can flourish in. Sometimes when you play with gas you get burned. Does OA change the PH in the hive?

Welcome to the TreatFree subforum.[/QUOTE]

Adding a splash of vinegar to the sugar water will change the PH and make it more like nectar/honey. The OA is supposedly not fat soluble so it doesn't affect the wax. Not sure if it changes the ph in the hive. Not sure it matters except that a lower PH causes the mites to "lose their grip".


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## snl

ToeOfDog said:


> Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?


OA is naturally occurring in the beehive. While it is true that OAV temporarily elevates those levels it is equally true that OAV treated hives return to their pre-treated OA levels shortly after treatment.


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## Richard Cryberg

"Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?"

pKow = -0.7

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcsneng/neng0529.html


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## Rader Sidetrack

Oxalic acid does not 'poison' mites. It is a mechanical irritant - in other words it cuts the soft parts of the mite's external body, and as a result the mites get dehydrated and die. 

Reference: http://www.kyagr.com/statevet/documents/BEELINES-SEPTEMBER-2015.pdf


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## Harley Craig

dsegrest said:


> Your bees are not survivor stock anyway if they die.


 That is the most asinine statement I think I have ever read on here ! Based on that do you propose that a colony never dies to be considered survivor stock? That's like saying a cancer survivor never dies.


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## snl

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Oxalic acid does not 'poison' mites. It is a mechanical irritant - in other words it cuts the soft parts of the mite's external body, and as a result the mites get dehydrated and die.
> 
> Reference: http://www.kyagr.com/statevet/documents/BEELINES-SEPTEMBER-2015.pdf


That's a new one to me. Everything I've read and heard says it enters thru the pads of the mite's feet into their "blood" system thus killing the mite.


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## Little-John

I'm having difficulty understanding why someone who is intent on being treatment-free is seeking help when their bees are dying.

The whole ethos of treatment-free beekeeping (as I understand it) is to breed from residual survivor stock - but in order to have survivors, bees must die. That, after all, is the basic concept behind being a 'survivor'.

I know this may sound weird - but large numbers of deaths ought to actually be welcomed by treatment-free enthusiasts, as the higher the number of mortalities there are, the more chance there becomes of a survivor queen emerging. A bitter pill to be swallowed, indeed.

And, as it's only the queen that plays any part in this Natural Selection dynamic, I've never been able to understand why treatment is considered verbotten for the sterile workers, who - by definition - play no part whatsoever in this game of genetic roulette.

What one is constantly hoping for is a favourable chance genetic mutation, which will occur (or not), regardless of any treatments which may happen to have been given prior to it's formation.

LJ


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## Little-John

ToeOfDog said:


> Wax is complex fat. Fat is lymphophilic which means it absorbs chemicals, especially orgophosphates. Look up the term.
> 
> Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?


Somebody doesn't know their chemistry ...



> 3. Since it is not lipid (fat) soluble, it will not build up in the wax of the combs.
> 
> http://scientificbeekeeping.com/oxalic-acid-questions-answers-and-more-questions-part-1-of-2-parts/


LJ


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## rkereid

It's amazing that you haven't lost any hives in 5 years. I think you should get used to the fact that hives will die out. It's a normal part of the process. If you have 12 hives, they won't all be perfect every year. One deadout of 12 hives is still a very good survival rate. Watch them and keep them from being robbed, or move them like others have said, but don't feel bad if it dies at this point. If you have a lot of DWV, the bees are not dealing with the mites, I would want them culled from my stock.


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## squarepeg

little-john, i had pretty much the same point of view as you when i first started, i.e. why not pinch the queen, treat the workers, requeen with better stock, ect? then others with more experience related examples of colonies recovering from what appeared to be a terminal infestation and going on to be productive. 

i've since seen that scenario play out for myself, and i've come to think about the colony more in terms of it being a superorganism the traits of which are determined as much or more by the multiple drones involved than by just the queen. i've also come to view the hive as containing a complex ecosystem of (some presumably beneficial) organisms, the mix of which could be potentially be altered in an adverse way with the introduction of treatments.

as for the op reaching out for help, i didn't take it as a 'what can i do to save my colony' plea, but rather a post by someone that has adopted an approach seeking to share and discuss their experience with others doing the same in a forum set aside for specifically that purpose. it 'almost' worked out that way.


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## Harley Craig

squarepeg said:


> it 'almost' worked out that way.


 Hey if this was horseshoes or hand grenades, it would have gotten points at least LOL I always like to ask them if they share/ask for veal recipes on vegan forums LOL


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## squarepeg

"i'm surprised, and yet not surprised" - oldtimer


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## jbeshearse

Don't see it in the list:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009754



Richard Cryberg said:


> "Do you have documentation that OV is not absorbed by wax/fats?"
> 
> pKow = -0.7
> 
> http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcsneng/neng0529.html


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## squarepeg

postie, just to clarify on euthanization, i haven't actually had to do that yet. 

a few novembers ago i discovered a colony that had dwindled down to a couple of handfuls of bees. this colony still had the queen, a tiny bit of capped brood, and some capped honey. 

i'm not sure why it did not get robbed out but i didn't observe robbing and there was no evidence of it in the hive. i'm starting to get the impression that the stock i am working with has a relatively low propensity for robbing, and that may be part of its survival 'strategy'.

i did an alcohol wash on the dwindled colony and found the infestation rate to be about 100%. i determined that this one had absolutely no chance of surviving winter so i shook it out. after shaking it out i realized that it would have been much better to have put it in the freezer and killed the mites as opposed to letting the remaining bees possibly take them into other hives.

so when i speak of euthanization, it mostly applies to colonies that are pretty much already goners anyway, and would be done to prevent the spreading of the mites as well as protecting the comb against moth and beetle damage.


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## jwcarlson

Why would you ever euthanize? Maybe the unicorn queen is finally in your boxes! 

Seriously... how can you know that they wouldn't have pulled through?


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## Harley Craig

jwcarlson said:


> Why would you ever euthanize? Maybe the unicorn queen is finally in your boxes!
> 
> Seriously... how can you know that they wouldn't have pulled through?



he said it had a 100 % mite infestation, I'd say that is reason enough, would you expect that high of rate with only a handful of bees left to recover?


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## Oldtimer

Not sure the TF forum is the right place for some of that but I'll answer what I can within the rules.

Sugar feeding, PH, and AFB. AFB only multiplies in the larval gut. There is no concern it may flourish in sugar syrup. If larvae are given food that has been made using sugar syrup, it has been converted in the nurse bees glands to royal jelly and PH adjusted. 

OA, acidity in the hive, and AFB. OA is not compatible with being absorbed chemically into wax however it does acidify the hive generally. But it is not bonded in any way and PH returns to normal over a few days or weeks. In relation to AFB, this is not an environment to make it flourish. But most likely has negligible effect either way.


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## squarepeg

Harley Craig said:


> he said it had a 100 % mite infestation, I'd say that is reason enough, would you expect that high of rate with only a handful of bees left to recover?


of course not, especially in november and after killing frosts.

jw, i'm not sure how you can put 'unicorn queen' and 'seriously' in the same post with a straight face, but i suppose i deserve that for busting your chops with that beestudent comment some time back. i apologize. truce?

in my reply to little-john i touched on why i think it goes above and beyond what a good queen can contribute. that said i believe i'm observing improvement in my stock over time as i graft queens from my best colonies and allow the winnowing process to select out the others.


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## jwcarlson

Harley Craig said:


> he said it had a 100 % mite infestation, I'd say that is reason enough, would you expect that high of rate with only a handful of bees left to recover?





postie said:


> Colony is strong, plenty of bees and plenty of perfectly normal, healthy bees, and still brood coming along, though reduced. Eggs were scarce enough that I will recheck in just a few days to be satisfied there is a Queen present as the season is now late.


?

Are we talking about the same hive?



squarepeg said:


> but i suppose i deserve that for busting your chops with that beestudent comment some time back. i apologize. truce?


I have no beef with you squarepeg, I don't remember the beestudent comment , however. Now I want to find it, must have been pretty good.


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## postie

First off Little-John, as president of my local association, I feel that one of the most important aspects of my leadership role is to assure ANY beekeeper, new or old, that "NO QUESTION IS A DUMB QUESTION"...now hasn't everyone heard this most of their lives? I have the experience of a 5 to 6 year beekeeper, not decades of observation and learning, therefore I still have some very rudimentary questions to ask. I came to a forum, located the proper category, and asked a valid question. Intent on being treatment free? Yes. So does this mean there are no other means of caring for bee colonies? No. I was thinking there might be other answers besides treatment, such as manipulation of frames or boxes or brood or bees, or even the relocating as suggested earlier. Anyone can throw on a hazmat suit and fog their bees up with malignant toxins...that becomes a matter of which product works when and which drugs the bees have habituated to so that they no longer work...and then actually EAT, or worse, SELL honey from these hives.

And as for my bees dying...hardly. The colony is very strong and very full of bees...it happens to have had an extra experimental box on the hive that contained an abnormally large amount of bees with Deformed Wings. Where exactly would you suggest I go to ask questions about such things? The EPA? Local Extension Office that regulates/defines chemicals? The nearest GMO farmer and beekeeper? Seriously...it is just a pet peeve of mine to insinuate to someone that they have asked a dumb question. I did notice you did not have any advice/suggestions/opinions for my bees.

Squarepeg, I understand about the euthanization. I was called out to inspect an apiary earlier in the season and the lady had a hive with only about a cup full of bees, make that a cup full of workers and maybe more than a cup full of drones....lol. She had several frames in one box with a massive amount of drone cells, and obviously queenless. It was clear the colony had been at this for a LONG, LONG time. That was a case where I politely explained to her the reasons behind getting rid of those bees. She has reorganized everything and is now doing well...it's a hard thing to do, but I would do that rather than let a small number simply suffer on and starve to death or worse. Thank you for your explanation...very kind.

Solid rain all of today until a little while ago (its called too little too late)...but I was able to check the top box of one more colony and get their feeder on...I did not inspect, it was just a cursory look-see. I did not see any deformed wings this time...will know more again tomorrow.

One other note...I feel so fortunate to have had colonies do well for this length of time. It has allowed me to learn a lot...but please everyone--do understand that I know hives will die off...in fact, I know that I might go out next Spring (or before) and have only some, or no bees at all. When I mention that my hives have survived thus far, it is in no way a boast. The loss rate last winter from middle TN to upper East TN was 70-100% and they expect the same (or worse if that's possible) this year...not much promise of a healthy winter for the bees.


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## Oldtimer

Just out of interest, please get back in spring and report how this all ended up. You have me, and no doubt others, curious now.


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## rwurster

If you're having trouble with mites at this time of the year and you're TF all you can do is see if the colony is alive in the spring, end of story. Caging a queen for... 3 weeks at this time of year :lpf:brood breaks at this time of year :lpfnot feasible for where I am). I'm not sure what your climate is in TN however I would consider 2 options, 1. Use OAV, I'm not into letting a colony die from mites if not necessary anymore and 2. Plan on how you're going to use the comb for splits next year. 

I will say I haven't treated my main comb building/queen making apiary for 3 years, I lost 1 queen right side of a split to mites last week out of the 15 hives there. All other hives are still booming. The hive I lost was a dink from the beginning and it barely drew comb, barely had a brood nest, and didn't put up any stores. I tried to pinch the queen, and could never find her lol. It was such a poor colony that I had a giant black widow living on the last two frames of the box and it ate bees all day, I've never seen that happen. I did a sugar roll and there were plenty of mites but the hive wasn't worth saving, I thought winter would do the trick but the mites got the better of them and I showed up during the robbing party. Having drawn comb to use in the spring is priceless, so plan on how to utilize it next season, or "treat" them. :kn:


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## Arnie

Subscribed. I would be very interested to find out how this works out for you in the spring.

One thing I have seen about TF that squarepeg and some others talk about is the necessity of leaving the bees enough of their honey so they don't have to be fed and don't stress over stores. GM Doolittle was a proponent of always having at least 3 full frames of honey on the bees at all times.
I think with the drought you may not be able to do that, but it is food for thought( forgive the pun).

Next year I plan on adding a 4th medium box to my 2 backyard hives as extra insurance for their good health. I will find out how that helps them.

There was a thread here recently in which a beekeeper was offered a couple hives that had not been worked for 10 years but still had bees in them. One was a 3 deep hive and the other had 4 deeps. I think that might have been significant in their survival.
Also, I heard another story about a guy who keeps bees but never takes honey. He keeps them in 3 or 4 deeps. And they survive just fine with no help.

I'm probably wrong but it seems logical that they will do better with no food-related stress.


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## beemandan

Arnie said:


> One thing I have seen about TF that squarepeg and some others talk about is the necessity of leaving the bees enough of their honey so they don't have to be fed


This, in my opinion, isn't limited to tf.


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## postie

Where I live in upper east TN, the weather is like living in 3 or 4 different states at once. It is terribly unpredictable, really anytime, but especially wintertime. I do everything in my power to make sure the bees have NO LESS than 60 pounds of stores for winter. I place a fondant that I make at home (it contains nothing but sugar and water and options for Honey B Healthy or vinegar or other essential oils--these are only options), but there is no high fructose corn syrup or other inert ingredients found in bakery fondant. It is boiled a certain way and whipped and cooled to form a soft solid. I make cookie sheet size pieces, cut them in half and cover most of the top of the frames with the fondant (which is poured onto wax paper for support).

One, the bees seem to have quite a time shredding the wax paper.  Two, the fondant covers enough surface area that if the bees do fall short on stores (or think they have because they haven't moved to one side or the other), food is available. I do know that if we can get days even into the low 40's, the bees will move around very well for food, even up to the top to enjoy some fondant....this, in turn, also helps to save honey stores for the cluster.

In looking thru my colonies and also these forum posts...I'm more and more convinced that squarepeg maybe hit the nail on the head...stress from poor nutrition. That I can work on!


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## Arnie

beemandan said:


> This, in my opinion, isn't limited to tf.


Agreed.


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## Delta Bay

> Colony is strong, plenty of bees and plenty of perfectly normal, healthy bees, and still brood coming along, though reduced. Eggs were scarce enough that I will recheck in just a few days to be satisfied there is a Queen present as the season is now late.


If the brood is that sick I would pull all the capped brood and replace with empty brood combs. You could leave one comb of open brood to pick up some of the mites on the adult bees and remove once it is capped. If they make it through the winter it may be a plan to change the queen out.


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## jadebees

I had a hive with dwarf wing virus, and it had a remission , after I started early spring protein/ amino acid suplements. This was before my usual wintergreen-peppermint-spearmint oil spring feeding. Those oils disrupt mite reproduction, without being dangerous. Buy organic,it works as well. The easiest way to feed the protein: get branched chain amino acid, iso lueciene group. Soy protien isolate. Vitamin blend from the vet supply. Make a thin paste of protien powder , make it about 2/3 -3/4 sugar, add 2 or3 amino acid capsules, and 1/4 teaspoon vitamins powder. I squeeze it onto the topbars with a ketchup or mustard bottle, .97 cents at the dept store..Bees love it, I WAS ASTOUNDED! Dwarf wing bees vanished in about 10 days, with all the spring mites still in there. Its well worth more trials, if it works for TF, spread the word.


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## Oldtimer

Jadebees are you saying that your treatment kills the DWV but does not kill the mites? And you have tried it on one hive only?

I am not sure there may not have been other factors at play here, you may have to treat with it more than once to see if you get consistent results.


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## jadebees

It was not intended to be a treatment, it was a way to give the bees very high quality protien. As you may notice, that blend has no fiber, and can make up for the poor quality of early spring pollen. Here, that is grasses, juniper, and pine. Not exacly the best food, but they collect it. DWV may be related to protien or nutrition deficiency issues, and the suplement seemed to make it go into remission. I am not treatment free, I use a miticide in Fall. Essential oils in Spring. But... I keep it to the minimum needed to control mites. I usually have some mites, some colonies tolerate them better than others. So I notice when a symptom,(dwv), seems to go away. I dont have enough hives to do a trial, but I do encourage anyone to try it. The bees thrive on that protein, so no harm done if it's a fluke. The bees still do better. All my hives get the protein, but only 1 had DWV bees this year. It just seemed to be a bonus for doing it.


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## Oldtimer

Thanks that's good info. Just, be interesting to gauge the effectiveness of the supplement on a few more hives with DWV. I'm no researcher but what I have been able to understand from what I've read, is that once infected with DWV, it's pretty much over for that individual bee.

Thing would be, if you are able to replicate the results, to then try to isolate which particular ingredient is doing the job. Some of those things you list are not available where I am.


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## jadebees

The ingredient that works is the better health of the bees. This area has very poor quality spring pollen. It's basically high desert. All the ingredients are available at a good health food store. They are to boost protiens for careless vegans. You can use vit.c & b tablets instead of livestock vitamins too. I just added it because pollen & nectar contain vitamins and minerals. It would be great if I stumbled onto a helpful thing, by beekeeping in a marginal area. Try it on yours.


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## Arnie

jadebees,
Is branched chain amino acid iso luciene group all one thing or is that multiple items? And you use regular soy protein powder? Thanks


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## jadebees

Isoluciene, luciene and a few other amino acids are the ones most commonly at a low level in pollen. They are called branched chain amino acid. If an amino acid is lower than another, protein can only be produced after digestion till that amino acid is gone. Many plant protiens have an out of balance protein. And many pollens are not complete food for bees. The proteins may be there, but will not fully re-assemble into bees. Or anything. The excess is lost, the rest of the digested protein isn't used. Same for people, the eggs you eat become ...you. Thats why vegans have to be careful to eat properly. Soy protien isolate is common. I use the one from the store, get the plain one, just protien. Commercial brood patty uses soy flour. This is the plain extracted protien. Perhaps it supplies the nutrients needed to better heal up from the parasite bites. It seems to me that if the hive's malnourished they cant replace and heal the mite damage as well. That was my theory, no proof, of course.


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## marshmasterpat

First I am totally ignorant about most bee diseases. So how is deformed wing virus spread. Through the honey, bee to bee contact, stays in the wax, etc.?? Do they know? 

If you have a hive with a high percentage of DWV, would caging the queen, carrying the hive a good 100 yards, 1/2 mile, mile away and do a shake out be of benefit? 

If the bees with the problem (showing deformed wings) has the highest antigen titer and you get rid of those, you cannot be hurting the hive and might be reducing the rate of spread through the hive. I doubt if they have deformed wings they would make it back. 

It is a treatment some might say but I would not classify it as that.


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## Slow Drone

Bee to bee contact Marshmaster.


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## squarepeg

marshmasterpat said:


> So how is deformed wing virus spread.


"The severe symptoms of DWV infections appear to be associated with Varroa destructor infestation of the bee hive[1] and studies have shown that Varroa destructor harbors greater levels of the virus than are found even in severely infected bees. Thus V. destructor may not only be a concentrating vector of the virus but may also act as a replicating incubator, magnifying and increasing its effects on the bees and on the hive. The Varroa mite has been demonstrated to cause the frequency of deformed wing virus to increase in frequency from 10 percent to 100 percent. It is the single greatest factor in the decimation of bee colonies worldwide.[3] The combination of mites and DWV causes immunosuppression in the bees and increased susceptibility to other opportunistic pathogens and has been considered a significant factor in honey bee colony collapse disorder.[4]

The virus may also be transmitted from queen to egg and in regurgitated food sources, but in the absence of V. destructor this does not typically result in large numbers of deformed bees."


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deformed_wing_virus


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## marshmasterpat

Slowdrone and squarepeg - Thank you both, learned something useful today.


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## Barry

I've been doing a little experiment this year. I had a swarm move into some empty boxes I had sitting out this spring. Decided to put them on new frames with PF 100 foundation installed. They drew out the comb real nice and eventually gave me 20 deep frames of SC. About two weeks ago I checked in on them and there was a huge amount of open cells on the comb. At a time when I would expect to see back filling of honey already started, a huge amount of newly laid eggs were in those cells.

Now today, the top box had the outer frames filled and capped, but the center 6 and the complete bottom box had no honey and a lot of the brood had emerged but what was still there had major mite damage. A lot of open cells with chewed larva. A few new emerged bees walking around with DWV. I just don't see this hive making it very far into winter. Still a lot of bees, but obviously struggling with the ravages of mites. It's obvious to me that SC alone does not keep a hive from the damages of mites.


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## Oldtimer

Barry said:


> It's obvious to me that SC alone does not keep a hive from the damages of mites.


Whew! At last I am not the only one!


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## beemandan

Oldtimer said:


> Whew! At last I am not the only one!


Yeah...there are a couple of us non believers.


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## Barry

I've never had a hive before that was completely SC, so decided it was time. With the plastic, it was an easy way to get there and test this out. The whole mite maturing time versus the bee time being shorter thus . . . ., didn't work out with my hive. I'll continue to follow those that are giving it their best to be TF and see what I can learn, but I'm going to have to rethink my approach.


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## beeware10

also there have been controlled tests done by universities with the same results.


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## Oldtimer

Couple things about that. TF and SC tend to be viewed as the same, but they are not. Me anyway, I am a total believer that TF bees exist, and that certain climates exist that are conducive to TF beekeeping. That much is obvious if we believe what some people here report and I think we can believe them.

The part I don't buy into is when SC has been promoted as a total panacea. Like Barry I was able to get some hives with virtual 100% SC in the brood nest and it did not save the bees.

As to the scientific studies, I'm going to side with the SC guys, I believe all the published studies had flaws. Regardless, if SC really worked you would statistically expect some of those studies to give positive results for SC, but they all went the same way.


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## JWChesnut

Others would do well to read the journal article
*Parasite Pressures on Feral Honey Bees (Apis mellifera sp.). *
Thompson CE, Biesmeijer JC, Allnutt TR, Pietravalle S, Budge GE (2014)
PLoS ONE 9(8):
e105164. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105164
http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0105164

This study was of parasite infections (DWV, BQCV, Nosema Apis and Cerana) in hives throughout England. A unique feature of this study was the pairing of feral colonies with managed colonies at the same locations, and a subset measurement of *TREATMENT Free Managed* colonies. 

The study quantified viral loads with DNA techniques, this allowed them to study infection rates in colonies across 6 orders of magnitude. In other words, the study could quantify the level of infection, not just observe the clinical signs of distressed bees.

The result for DWV -- Feral bees have *significantly higher DWV virus* loading than managed bees, the difference is 3 orders of magnitude. Treatment free domestic bees have t*he same high loading of DWV* as the feral bees.








The figure below shows DWV titer in Feral and Managed colonies by individual sample. Higher bars == worse infection. Notice the TF colonies had high titer for DWV. Also observe that not all feral bees had similar titer, some feral colonies had not yet expressed DWV. In my interpretation, feral colonies die out constantly, and this huge mortality event is replaced by fresh swarms that are not yet symptomatic for DWV. Give them time and they contact the virus (from mites) and succumb.


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## rwurster

I've never really believed small cell really did much in the way of mites, I always thought it was cool that I had regressed bees that could use small cell. I've backed off it in the past few years and have used nothing but natural comb.


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## jadebees

Most of my bees are feral swarms, so they are at whatever size, variable, the colony makes. I use mostly Warre hives, so most colonies get to make all their comb. I see no difference between those, and the bees put into Langstroth gear. The mites do not care what those bees are in, or on. Some colonies suffer less, even with mites. Others, the mites are a nightmare and rapidly weaken them. I have 1 Lang on plastic, ( I adopted it) and the hive was treated twice in 4 years. It had to go on the regular treatment cycle just this year. Its daughter splits are always attacked immediately. I'm mystified about that. Some hives are just much more resistant, but it's not always transfered to splits. Some, just are resistant. Unless they are having problems or show many mites I will skip treatment. But that wont work for all bees. I'm at a point that I kill those mites rather than let them run the bees down.


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## Barry

Here are a couple of shots from my SC hive.









DWV looks like this . . .









A hive with a high mite load looks like this . . .









and this.


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## Harley Craig

Here is a foundationless frame of august brood this yr . This was an overwinterd nuc I bought off of a guy last yr that doesn't do treatments. They showed some DWV last yr and had a lot of crawlers and swarmed this yr. This comb came from the swarm


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## e3eridani

Hello,
But as to me, death and birth, that is a medicine in case of pandemic. And it will continue like that until some tolerance appeared due to Gen mutations/variations.
And it is the difference between feral and managed bees. Feral are going through natural selection and managed will stay dependable on beekeepers.


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## aunt betty

Was treatment free in my mind until I discovered that feeding bees sugar syrup is a treatment. After that the whole treatment free ideology was gone. Poof. Asking what can I do about a disease but don't want to treat the disease...is AA talk I'm sorry.  

If I'm seeing dwv I'll select some sort of medicine ie: organic acid treatments (I picked MAQ's)


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## jadebees

Poor bees! That is what mites do. Its bad when that much brood is affected. Dwv doesnt seem to express without mites, if they had mites they still have the virus. It seems to need mite bites to grow. Some of the whiteish deposits on the cell edges are left after mite infected bees hatch. They seem to want to leave it, unlike the cappings which get re used. They are visible in your photo.


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## Barry

A little surprised I've not had a reply from the more seasoned TF beekeepers on here. The SC has been such an integral part of being TF for many years. I'm curious if the conclusions I came to are flawed in some way.


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## Juhani Lunden

Barry said:


> A little surprised I've not had a reply from the more seasoned TF beekeepers on here. The SC has been such an integral part of being TF for many years. I'm curious if the conclusions I came to are flawed in some way.


I have always had 5,3mm cells, and I really admire a person who does a test and after results changes opinion in such a matter.


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## Dan the bee guy

Barry said:


> A little surprised I've not had a reply from the more seasoned TF beekeepers on here. The SC has been such an integral part of being TF for many years. I'm curious if the conclusions I came to are flawed in some way.


Not seasoned TF beek but studying to be one. this year I got two different bees one was carnys +VSH the other were BeeWeavers. it seems the carnys had trouble drawing out the small cell but the beeweavers did a great job. also the mite counts were about the same 10 to 14 mites 1/2 cup of bees. the carnys got treated the beeweavers did not. now just waiting to see how it turns out. also the beeweavers didn't show DWV.


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## jwcarlson

Barry, in the middle picture where the bees are emerging. Are the emerging bees dead?


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## Barry

Yes, they are.


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## jwcarlson

Thanks, haven't seen that in person. How does that correspond to the DWV sightings in your experience?


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## crofter

Barry do your bees draw out the PF foundation fairly flawless over the _whole frame_ or are there wandering _ridges_ of odd and deformed cells mixed with some drone. I dont see this happen when they draw out the larger cell plastic. My bees are not pure anything but seem Carni type with dark queens. Not TF so cant comment on that aspect.


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## Juhani Lunden

JWChesnut said:


> In my interpretation, feral colonies die out constantly, and this huge mortality event is replaced by fresh swarms that are not yet symptomatic for DWV. Give them time and they contact the virus (from mites) and succumb.


I wish such an elegant study would be done in every US state. Are there any studies about where in US exists real wild bee colonies, a population of colonies, which dominates flying drones of that area?


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## Barry

crofter said:


> Barry do your bees draw out the PF foundation fairly flawless over the _whole frame_ or are there wandering _ridges_ of odd and deformed cells mixed with some drone.


I was very impressed with this hive. 20 deep frames were drawn out and 85% kept to the cell pattern. I had a few spots of drone comb, but basically very uniform 4.9 comb. I would get the wandering ridges everywhere when I tried using SC wax foundation. Probably only got 20% SC at best.


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## Barry

jwcarlson said:


> How does that correspond to the DWV sightings in your experience?


It's not a common sight. Usually I see a lot of uncapped cells with pupa chewed on along with crawlers with deformed wings. Either these few bees with their tongues out are so deformed that they couldn't crawl out or the last few evenings where it got down in the 40's was enough to do them in. I still have a large gathering force of bees but the nurse bee population has dwindled due to the mite infestation. I think they're in panic mode.


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## Oldtimer

What happens in severe mite infestations is you get more than one foundress mite going into one brood cell plus high DWV levels. The baby bees having been sucked on by more mites than allows them to stay healthy, attempt to emerge but don't have the energy to complete getting out of the cell, they die, often with the tongue poking out. Part emerged larvae with the tongue out is diagnostic for heavy mite load.


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## JWChesnut

Juhani Lunden said:


> I wish such an elegant study would be done in every US state. Are there any studies about where in US exists real wild bee colonies, a population of colonies, which dominates flying drones of that area?


Are you asking about quantitative virus titer vs. bee genetics, management and origin. It is my understanding that studies with that comparison are being conducted and will be published.

The Mikheyev "Museum Sample" study of the Arnot Forest bees (this paper is cited as "Seeley", but he is the fourth author) provides some perspective.

I don't think the "Museum Sample" study is quite as compelling as the folks seeking the proof of bee micro-evolution to resistance have assumed.

The reason for my skepticism is the substantial appearance of "Arabian" and "African" mitotypes in the modern sample. This is described as "immigration". I would expect this represents escaped domestic bees that are derived from BWeaver and similar ad hoc domestications of non-European queen lineage.

In this interpretation, the "Arnot" forest is in a continuing "bottleneck" and the repopulation of the forest is benefiting from African bees escaping from semi-domestic Texas importation. The "Museum Sample" study thus documents the relative extinction of wild bees, and their replacement with exotic origin imports.


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## Juhani Lunden

JWChesnut said:


> It is my understanding that studies with that comparison are being conducted and will be published.
> 
> .


That would be great! 

In the "Museum Sample " study they somehow came to the conclusion that the bees had not gone extinct, but if I remember it correctly, they could not be sure of that.

If this new(coming) study does not find low DWV levels in most of the wild be population, then your interpretation is that the "wild" bee population is a population of swarms which dies and new swarms come in place. 
I think it is logical.

If some bees would be resistant to viruses, or the effects of viruses, would they have high titres or low titres?


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## JWChesnut

The "Museum Samples" study concluded that the relict wild population did not go extinct, because relatedness between historic and current Ithaca wild bees was greater than between current wild bees and an "outgroup" of domestic bees from other US regions. 

The same comparison found that domestic present day bees were more closely related to wild bees in Ithaca than to the museum historic bees -- indicating active gene flow into (and out of?) the wild Ithaca population.

The study concludes:
First, all other wild bee populations that were monitored
during the arrival of Varroa have gone through major
bottlenecks, but none have actually gone extinct reference: 10,11,35,36.
Second, the present-day Ithaca wild bee population maintains
mitochondrial genotypes not associated with commercial bee
races (Fig. 3), which would be lost in an extinction event.
Although these lines of evidence are circumstantial, they all point
to continuous persistence of a population in a state of
immigration-selection balance.​
The first postulate (no other bees have gone extinct) seems contradicted by the Santa Cruz Island extinction, and mitigated in practice by continuous immigration from the domestic colonies.
The second postulate (strange African and Arabian mitotypes) are stated as "non-commercial" when the mitotypes of exotic Texan introductions are not explored.


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## Harley Craig

Barry said:


> A little surprised I've not had a reply from the more seasoned TF beekeepers on here. The SC has been such an integral part of being TF for many years. I'm curious if the conclusions I came to are flawed in some way.


not seasoned, but in my limited experience I see no difference, the only advantage I've seen with SC is they seem to grow faster from small colonies, as a smaller cluster can cover more brood per sq in. The difference is minimal though.


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## Juhani Lunden

JWChesnut said:


> The "Museum Samples" study concluded that the relict wild population did not go extinct, because relatedness between historic and current Ithaca wild bees was greater than between current wild bees and an "outgroup" of domestic bees from other US regions.
> 
> The same comparison found that domestic present day bees were more closely related to wild bees in Ithaca than to the museum historic bees -- indicating active gene flow into (and out of?) the wild Ithaca population.


Aren´t these two a bit contra dictionary?

In Ithaca they make a comparison between historic wild bees and wild bees of today.
In other US places they make a comparison between current wild bees and "outgroup of domestic bees". Can you compare such pairs?

Mitochondrial line goes extinct in domestic bees when a queen rearer chooses not to take grafts from a line of hot or swarmy (Texas or Arabian) bees. And if they are not considering Texas introductions as possible sources for strange mitochondrial lines, that is a mistake.


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## 1102009

Harley Craig said:


> not seasoned, but in my limited experience I see no difference, the only advantage I've seen with SC is they seem to grow faster from small colonies, as a smaller cluster can cover more brood per sq in. The difference is minimal though.


mentor:
one third sc
one third feed
one third beekeepers management

sc bees have close fitting tergits


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## Oldtimer

SiWolKe said:


> one third beekeepers management


Please explain that part


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## 1102009

Oldtimer said:


> Please explain that part


What I learned in 5 month now:
-strong splits, feeded immediately until having many foragers
-control of having well build small cells in broodnest, put burred( right term?) on the outside.
- unlimited broodnest
- support drone cells (10%) on every comb the whole year through as varroa trap
-no chemical treatment
-prevent robbery by small entrance , feeding in the evening, feeding of all colonies at the same time
-mark boxes where bees do hygienic behavior
-no exchange of honeycombs or brood
- combine if the first def bees are seen, so they will have more bees for cleaning
...........


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## Oldtimer

Thanks, makes sense.


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## Barry

SiWolKe said:


> mentor:
> one third sc
> 
> sc bees have close fitting tergits


Please explain this part.


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## marshmasterpat

Barry - How many large commercial operations are in your area? 

Do you have lots of feral bees in your area or to be even more clear/lots of swarming colonies?

Seems like your area might have above the average issue with deformed wing virus. Hot spots occur at times with quite a few diseases.


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## Barry

No commercial in my area. I used to buy the occasional queen from a commercial guy about 15 miles from here who had a couple thousand hives, but he and his wife passed away and that business is no more. I don't think Roland's bees make it down this far.

Feral bees? Certainly plenty of unmanaged bees in cavities other than Langstroth hives. Most cutouts I do are first year bees. A few have nests that have been there for several years, but no guarantee the bees are the original bees.


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## mbevanz

The spring swarm was at least last years queen or older. Hives with older queens seem to crash this way. Seems like the queen becomes infected and her eggs are infected? I am no scientist, and maybe this is not possible, but even the queens the hives try to make from these older(infected?) queens are superceded over and over. Hives that have young queens from healthy mothers, and queens from stock that we think show some viral resistance seem to be working the best for us. Maybe a young healthy queen hived on the small cell next spring would show different results? 
We treat across the board and feed when necessary.


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## 1102009

Barry said:


> Please explain this part.


Dee Lusby:
Might not then, this be considered a contributing factor for an underlying causitive effect taking place helping to set the stage for today’s problems of disease and parasitic mites? When looked at externally, it’s like body mass has been expanded over a larger surface, but more loosely. Equate this to a suit-of-armour on insects i.e. the exoskeleton. On small insects it is very tight and close fitting. Even with small hot-blooded animals i.e. armadillos this is true. Now look at bigger insects and bigger similar animals. As size increases the plates are not so tight. With bigger honeybees the exoskeleton is looser than the exoskeleton of naturally sized honeybees. The bigger the honeybees get, the looser and less close fitting, the exoskeleton and various body parts become. What this means is that the tergits on the honeybees body, as one example here, are artificially enlarged enough to allow for parasitic mites to crawl under and suck bees blood. Regulate the bees body back to normal size and naturally tighten the tergits and this practice stops!

Well I believe her. 
I don`t know if there is proof.


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## jwcarlson

I thought SC was supposed to be effective because of faster pupae development and tighter quarters for mites when in cell. Now it's because the tergits are tighter together...?


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## 1102009

Hey jw you did your homework 

My own opinion is that natural combs are the best, but for the time being I follow my mentors advice.
That`s because I was awed by the health of his sc bees and their behavior, compared to my first hive, who was managed and treated by a prof beekeeper (30years beekeeping) and died of varroa disease and chalk brood. 

Facts: -they have been through a crisis, varroa reinfestation from a migrating beekeeper, and survived without treatment after being combined in a "hospital" (isolated location).
- they are much more agile than my old bees, which means escaping wasps and hornets
- the watchers are not present on the landing board, but attack behind the entrance. So they are not hunted by hornets
- they fly when temperature is low or there is some light rain
- the AMM F1 queen did a brood brake after her worker bees put out some pupae. Flow and weather had no influence on this.
- in 5 months I have seen 3 mites on bees and no def. bees, no tremor, even no def drones, I`ve seen shotgun brood sometimes and baldheaded pupas in opened cells
- I`ve not cut out drone brood, because they chewed it out sometimes
- there is no difference between the AMMF1 F2 and the Carnicas , the Carnicas are 6 years TF sc, always requeened themselves, the AMMF1 queen has been introduced 2014 from a hobby breeder 15 years TF

We had a varroa year 2014, this year is better. I don`t know what will happen. New location. I live for the moment.


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys

Thought I'd put my 2 cents in on this one. I've had a very positive experience with small cell. Not so much with small cell beekeeping methodology/reasoning.

Through that experience, it quickly became obvious that for a colony to survive mites, it had to:


detect the mites.
effectively and timely destroy mites.
resist mite vectored diseases.
contain mite immigration.

I burned up a decade testing the effects of cell size:

different races/breeds of bees on small cell.
put tolerant small cell bees on natural comb in a top bar hive.
put tolerant small cell bees back on clean large cell size comb.

And the common factor that emerged was that cell size was directly related to the bee's ability to detect and remove sealed up mites. All the various kinds of bees, when switched to small cell size comb detected and removed mites. Not so when they were switched back the other way.

Seeing small cell hives detecting mites was a great discovery. And a great relief, as before that, I'd spent 5 futile years looking for a hive that could detect and damage mites. All my small cell bees detected and removed mites.

But detecting mites is only the first step.

To keep my posts short, I write more later.


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## jwcarlson

SiWolKe said:


> Facts: -they have been through a crisis, varroa reinfestation from a migrating beekeeper, and survived without treatment after being combined in a "hospital" (isolated location).
> - they are much more agile than my old bees, which means escaping wasps and hornets
> - the watchers are not present on the landing board, but attack behind the entrance. So they are not hunted by hornets
> - they fly when temperature is low or there is some light rain
> - the AMM F1 queen did a brood brake after her worker bees put out some pupae. Flow and weather had no influence on this.
> - in 5 months I have seen 3 mites on bees and no def. bees, no tremor, even no def drones, I`ve seen shotgun brood sometimes and baldheaded pupas in opened cells
> - I`ve not cut out drone brood, because they chewed it out sometimes
> - there is no difference between the AMMF1 F2 and the Carnicas , the Carnicas are 6 years TF sc, always requeened themselves, the AMMF1 queen has been introduced 2014 from a hobby breeder 15 years TF


Of course I have done my homework... haven't you?
I think you are, in large part, confusing "good bees" with "SC bees". Projecting onto them what you want to believe as true. Perhaps your mentor now just has much better bees, it certainly sounds like it.



BWrangler said:


> And the common factor that emerged was that cell size was directly related to the bee's ability to detect and remove sealed up mites. All the various kinds of bees, when switched to small cell size comb detected and removed mites. Not so when they were switched back the other way.


I have bees that uncap brood on 5.4mm combs just like they did on foundationless and the 4.9mm frames they have.

By far, my worst mite infested colonies consist of brood areas of one foundationless 10-frame medium plus 10 frames of 4.9mm plastic frames and then 5.4mm supers on top (no brood in the supers).

Mite Drop after Formic Acid:




Not the greatest pictures, but you get the drift. And these were pulled on day 7, so doesn't account for the mite fall of under brood capping kills that trickle in for several days after.

My bees that are frequently uncapping brood are almost entirely on 5.4mm + several (mostly drone) foundationless frames scattered in their three deeps. They didn't have much for a drop after Formic. Perhaps less than 100 mites. I didn't really bother to count, though.

I don't mean to derail the thread and I'm not advocating treatment. I just wanted to believe the SC and TF and all that. 
When you start seeing small cell frames like this:


And drone brood in the same colony like this (151 mites in about 100 drone larva):


The colonies like this will be requeened next spring after (hopefully) successfully surviving another winter.

Now I've gotta get out of here before Barry nails me with another image size violation.


----------



## 1102009

<I think you are, in large part, confusing "good bees" with "SC bees". Projecting what you want to believe as true.>

Maybe they are both.

<I have bees that uncap brood on 5.4mm combs just like they did on foundationless and the 4.9mm frames they have.>

My old hive did it, too.
But too late.


----------



## jwcarlson

SiWolKe said:


> Maybe they are both.


And therein lies the difficulty... somehow seperating and seeing which is why your bees are better. Do you have them 50/50 half on large cell have on small cell? Or maybe 33/33/33 Foundationless, small cell, large cell? BWrangler (possibly not intentionally) sure makes it sound like if you slap any bees onto small cell they'll become mite controlling/brood uncapping fools. The scattered rhetoric associated with the people "selling" SC as a major mite fighting development can't seem to agree on why it works. When you get things this random that come to the same conclusion I'm much more likely to believe that they just happened to finally get the right bees or changed something else that maybe they didn't realize would also help.

Is it faster development or tighter spaces for the mites or tight tergits or them somehow being able to smell the mites better to uncap? How do you rationalize the smell thing? Because the brood is more dense the mites are more dense and they are more apt to sniff them out?

I will say that I like SC for lots of other reasons, look at the amount of brood cells on a deep frame.

If only they'd offer it in plastic sheets...

SiWolKe, please don't take anything I'm saying personally. I am just wondering and asking questions. And I don't really expect you to be able an answer year one... but more for the large audience. 

Also completely derailing the poor OP's thread to hash/rehash a SC debate that's been banged away at here a million times.


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## Barry

Decided to treat this hive with OA dribble. Watching a few bees crawling around on the top of the inner cover, I grabbed this one as I saw the mite on it head. Upon closer examination, there is also one under a tergit. I think I can put this statement from Dee to rest:



> What this means is that the tergits on the honeybees body, as one example here, are artificially enlarged enough to allow for parasitic mites to crawl under and suck bees blood. Regulate the bees body back to normal size and naturally tighten the tergits and this practice stops!





























You can see the mite 3/4ths of the way under a tergit.


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## JRG13

Honestly, I find it difficult to argue about 2-3 tenths of a millimeter sometimes and how much of an affect it has on size.


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys



jwcarlson said:


> I have bees that uncap brood on 5.4mm combs just like they did on foundationless and the 4.9mm frames they have.
> 
> By far, my worst mite infested colonies consist of brood areas of one foundationless 10-frame medium plus 10 frames of 4.9mm plastic frames and then 5.4mm supers on top (no brood in the supers).
> Now I've gotta get out of here before Barry nails me with another image size violation.


JW, thanks for the images and your time. It's great to hear and see that large cell bees can easily detect and remove infected larva. Things are moving in the right direction. Something more to work from.

Back in 90's, no evidence existed that bees could detect and destroy mites. A world wide search was on to find a colony whose genetics could save beekeeping. Individual mites were inspected with a loupe to find even a single mite with damaged legs! When damaged mites were found, the info was published. Only saw it happen twice. Just a few mites with damaged legs. Maybe!

But not so with small cell. It was mite carnage. No loupe needed. Not maybe. But for sure! And no importation and long term breeding program needed to get the right genetics.











These were some of the first images of bald headed brood and mite destruction. Now, a common and accepted fact. Caused quite a stir back then.

Small cell bees detected and removed mites. But those hives were never mite free. In fact, some of the tolerant hives would carry high mite loads, without problems, between brood cleansing.

All hives that can't detect and remove mites die. Fast and quick the TF way. Or slow and poisoned to death the chemical way.

High mite counts always alarm a beekeeper. But they don't necessarily indicate trouble for a mite tolerant colony. Much depends on timing and brood rates.


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys

Mites under tergites?

I setup a hive with a plexiglass cover to determine if mite loads could be visually determined without using trays and counting mite drop, a very tedious task that, after a decade, I'd grown very tired off.

Through the process, I watched many 1000's of mite infested bees from the initial low level infestation, through hive collapse.

The surprise? Few mites were found between the tergites. And then only just before the hive collapsed.

Want to find a mite on a bee? Just look at the posterior end of the thorax, in front of the rear legs. Unlike the abdomen, It's an area that hard for the bees to groom.

And unlike the tergites, it's an area not visible when bees crawl across a plexiglass sheet, making low level mite loads impossible to determine using one.


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## Barry

BWrangler said:


> Back in 90's, no evidence existed that bees could detect and destroy mites. A world wide search was on to find a colony whose genetics could save beekeeping. Individual mites were inspected with a loupe to find even a single mite with damaged legs! When damaged mites were found, the info was published. Only saw it happen twice. Just a few mites with damaged legs. Maybe!


How quickly time flies, and what was unusual is now not so unusual according to reports. I remember this well. There was never any mention of larva being uncapped and chewed down to reach mites in any of the bee forums of the day. Nothing on Bee-l or on sci.agriculture.beekeeping. When SC started being used, that's when this observation and discussion started.

Depending on what I find tomorrow in this hive, I may still "nuke" it to prevent mite spread to neighboring hives. After applying OA, I was walking towards my side door and noticed a dead bee on the ground. Picked it up and saw a mite on it. By all indications, this hive is loaded with mites.


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## Oldtimer

Yes sometimes even if all mites are removed, it is still too late for the hive, depends on whether they have time to get a healthy round of brood out or not. OA needs several shots to get a good portion of the mites so using OA on a bad infestation before winter is also going to slow recovery down as compared to some other treatments.

Re the observations re uncapping, uncapping and larva chewing behaviour is common where I am. This despite mites got here more recently than in the USA, nearly all hives are large cell, and nearly all hives are treated.


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## jwcarlson

So what's the explanation as to why SC triggered this behavior?


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## 1102009

> And I don't really expect you to be able an answer year one...<

No.
And I never said sc are the solution of all problems.

Thanks for the pics, Barry, they are great! 

Allow me one thought about plastic combs:

A bee colony is a unit. They communicate by vibrating the combs, by pheromones and smells (Tautz).
So they, being in darkness on their combs, know where to clean, where to heat, who to groom, where to feed, and so on.

How can they do it on plastic?


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## Barry

I suppose the same way they do it on wax. Plastic has been in use for a long time. There are TF people using plastic.


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## Michael Palmer

SiWolKe said:


> How can they do it on plastic?


A few years ago, I listened to a presentation by Tom Seeley. He was trying to show that Plastic foundation had a negative effect on transmission of the waggle dance. Vibrations are transmitted across the comb, via the cell rims.

Tom said he was sure that plastic would interfere with communication across comb, hoped that it was so, was hoping to find plastic shouldn't be used, and was surprised when it wasn't so. He reported the results without bias. 

Should have put this post in the "Belief in Beekeeping" thread. Seeley is a quality scientist and doesn't operate as accused by MB in that thread. He and others report what they find.


Apidologie 36 (2005) 513-521 
DOI: 10.1051/apido:2005037
Does plastic comb foundation hinder waggle dance communication?

Thomas D. Seeleya, Adrian M. Reicha and Jürgen Tautzb 

a Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
b bee group, Biocenter, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany

(Received 8 February 2005 - revised 16 March 2005 - accepted 16 March 2005; Published online: 13 September 2005)
Abstract - In recent years, plastic comb foundation has become widely used by beekeepers but it has not been studied to see if it hinders recruitment communication by reducing the transmission of the comb vibrations produced by bees performing waggle dances. We used laser vibrometry to compare combs built with beeswax foundation vs. plastic foundation in terms of transmission of dance vibrations. We also used behavioral experiments to compare the recruitment effectiveness of dances performed on combs built with beeswax foundation vs. plastic foundation. We found that combs built with plastic foundation are markedly poorer at transmitting the 250 Hz vibrations produced by dancing bees. Nevertheless, we found no evidence of reduced effectiveness of dances performed on combs built with plastic foundation vs. combs built with beeswax foundation. Evidently, a comb built with plastic foundation provides a fully suitable substrate for waggle dance communication.


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## Oldtimer

Been wood and wax all my life but changed the hives to plastic last year cos that's what the customers want. I don't think they wintered as well and this was confirmed in the first spring round when I got to the few wood and wax ones that were left, opened them and first thought was wow they look a bit better, then saw they were the wood framed ones. Rest of the season don't think it makes any difference.


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## 1102009

Thanks for answering me, Barry, Michael.
That`s very interesting.
Since there are two types of plastic frames, foundation and drawn foundation, do you know of a difference?

I`m asking, because when my friends regressed their bees, one of them did it on drawn plastic.
The wax regressed bees were able to build small cells in later generations, the plastic regressed bees could not.
But there could be other reasons.


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## Barry

jwcarlson said:


> So what's the explanation as to why SC triggered this behavior?


Went back and looked through the archives of the discussion group we had back then and this is what Erik Osterlund said:



> The most important factor concerning cell size is not the impact on the mite or its reproduction, but on the traits of the bee and bee colony. In first place the enchanced cleansing behaviour reported by different beekeepers using small cell size. If the bees are cleaning out or at certain intervalls disturbing the reproduction of the mites by so called premature uncapping of the brood, then how fast the mites reproduce is not of such importance as seemed to be stressed by most scientists.


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## 1102009

Question to you Barry:

<Decided to treat this hive with OA dribble. >

Do you have treated hives and TF at the same bee yard?
I would maybe do the same as you did but change the location and not put back the hive into the bee yard until having a new queen and being TF again.
Does it matter?

This morning I read in another thread someone having sc and lc bees in the same apiary.

What happens if there is bee drift?


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## Barry

I have just this one hive here at the house, but it sits along the same fence as my neighbor who has several TF hives on her side. I did notice a few days ago that there were bees flying from each others hives, into each others hives. We're going to go through her hives today and see whats up. Her last inspection showed some opened cappings with chewed larva but not as much as mine and she still had a good amount of good brood, unlike mine. She's open to treating with OA as well if things warrant it.

There's bee drift even over the fence between SC hives!


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## jim lyon

SiWolKe said:


> Dee Lusby:
> Might not then, this be considered a contributing factor for an underlying causitive effect taking place helping to set the stage for today’s problems of disease and parasitic mites? When looked at externally, it’s like body mass has been expanded over a larger surface, but more loosely. Equate this to a suit-of-armour on insects i.e. the exoskeleton. On small insects it is very tight and close fitting. Even with small hot-blooded animals i.e. armadillos this is true. Now look at bigger insects and bigger similar animals. As size increases the plates are not so tight. With bigger honeybees the exoskeleton is looser than the exoskeleton of naturally sized honeybees. The bigger the honeybees get, the looser and less close fitting, the exoskeleton and various body parts become. What this means is that the tergits on the honeybees body, as one example here, are artificially enlarged enough to allow for parasitic mites to crawl under and suck bees blood. Regulate the bees body back to normal size and naturally tighten the tergits and this practice stops!
> 
> Well I believe her.
> I don`t know if there is proof.


If this were true then one would only have to transfer her stock to another geographical area, use small cell and everything would be sunshine and roses. I am not aware of anyone outside the southwest that have duplicated what she is doing. Dees bees are in the desert southwest and by all accounts, their temperament reflects the wild swarms of the area and such bees typically love to swarm. Her definition of a successfully managed apiary is hers. I seriously doubt that what she is doing would work anywhere in Germany or anywhere else with extended winters.


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## Barry

Here is my 20 hour mite drop on my small cell hive. :scratch:


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## Michael Palmer

Barry said:


> Here is my 20 hour mite drop on my small cell hive.


Whoa!


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## AR Beekeeper

Barry; I think the chewing out of pupa started being discussed when Harbo and Harris started their selection for bees that showed what was then called SMR, or Suppressed Mite Reproduction. Up to that point the only work being done that used brood removal by the bees was on what we know as Hygienic traits, done by Spivak at the U. of Minnesota.


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## BWrangler

Hi AR and Everyone

Marla Spivak's work was done about 6 to 8 years after the early small cellers thrashed out broodnest cleansing, different but somewhat overlapping concepts.

When I first put 16 large three deep box hives on small cell, all hives showed broodnest cleansing. But not all broodnest cleasning were timely or effective enough to prevent hive collapse. Out of those 16 hives on 4 small dinks survived the winter.

That precipitated a trip to Tucson where:


i got to work Africanized bees firsthand.
saw my first usurpation swarms a decade before being recognized and studied.
visited with the Lusbys.
my son, who had been working commercial bees all his life, decided there were better things to do.
Ed Lusby convinced me to continue with the 4 dinks.

And I did.

And those bees just got better. Through time they became better at it and eventually demonstrated mite tolerance. Beekeeping was good. And I never lost a hive to mites after that first year.

After the bees stabilized, I bought a wide assortment of commercially available queens and put them on small cell. Again, all initiated broodnest cleasning. And like before, some were a magnitude better at it than others. And some would begin a brood cycle earlier. All but one hive survived the mites without treatment.

That one hive was special. It was a cordovan queen I purchased as a novelty along with the others for the test. It had the prettiest bees I've ever seen with bright orange chitin and blonde hair. They were prolific brood rearers. And absolutely the gentlest bees I've ever worked. And I've worked a bunch! 

Although those pretty bees engaged in broodnest cleansing, it was neither timely or effective. They were very disease resistant carrying a 100 times more mites than most hives do before collapsing. But the mites got them in the end.

Barry, your bees look a tad orange and are blondish.


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## Barry

We'll see what happens. If they make it, I'll be a monkey's uncle. If they die, I still have a complete hive of SC, so I'll try it again next year with different bees and see what happens.


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## Fusion_power

I don't think I've seen anything like that since 2004 when I started switching to mite tolerant bees. I have 48 day mite drops that are nowhere near that heavy.


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## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> . Out of those 16 hives on 4 small dinks survived the winter...•Ed Lusby convinced me to continue with the 4 dinks.


So it never came to your mind that the reason for your bee survival is something else than SC.

For some odd reason all 3 links you gave in your post nro 99 do not work. They worked couple days ago. Perfectly, all of them. I red them. And there you wrote that all SC bees survived and all in large cell died. I did not see any mentioning about 75% winter losses. A bit irresponsible to me.


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## BWrangler

Hi Juhani and Everyone

> So it never came to your mind . . .

You bet it did.Like everyone else at the time, I thought genetics were the key. And finding/selecting a line of mite tolerant bees was an obsession connected to my commercial beekeeping.

And I had some success with selection. My bees could maintain a mite load a magnitude lower than the best commercial bees. They would live a season longer than the average hive. But eventually, like all untreated bees at the time, they would die.

After Marla Spivak's work, I'm sure I was selecting for SMR although it hadn't been defined at the time.

>  I did not see any mentioning about 75% winter losses. . .

Actually I didn't mention 75%. That's your figure.

I mentioned 90%! As going from 48 deep boxes filled to overflowing with bees and honey, down to 4 dinks that would fit in a couple of boxes is closer to 90%. In fact, as a commercial beekeeper I would have shaken them out on the ground and not messed with them. Ed Lusby convinced me otherwise.

It was thought that taking these huge losses was a necessary step to get the right kind of genetics.

Turns out, after introducing all those different queens, that taking those huge losses to get the right kind of genetics wasn't necessary. The right kind of genetics were the rule rather than the exception in the US.

> you wrote that all SC bees survived and all in large cell died . . .

Throughout the last 15 years, I've written a bunch about small cell and natural comb. And yes, all my large cell hives died from mites without treatments. And all my small cell/natural comb hives survived the mites without treatments excepting the cordovan.

Mite tolerant bees can live long enough to have other problems though. And after a dozen hives through a decade without treatments, Almost lost them to malathion. Built them up again. And lost them to CCD.

>  A bit irresponsible to me.

Could be. But your assessment might be premature. I suspect you've read a few fragments of what I've written and haven't got the whole picture. If you're interested, this is a good place to start:

Small Cell

Be sure to read the Details section. And thanks for the heads up on the broken links. They work fine today. Not sure what the problem was.

It was 1996 when I first started exploring small cell. Few were interested in the concept until Barry setup BeeSource to promote an open discussing about small cell and published Lusby's manifesto there. That was the spark that got Dadant to produce small cell sized foundation. And the rest is history.

Barry, can you believe we've been at this for almost 20 years!


----------



## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> Actually I didn't mention 75%. That's your figure.
> 
> I mentioned 90%! As going from 48 deep boxes filled to overflowing with bees and honey, down to 4 dinks that would fit in a couple of boxes is closer to 90%. In fact, as a commercial beekeeper I would have shaken them out on the ground and not messed with them. Ed Lusby convinced me otherwise.
> ...Lusby's manifesto...


Bad thing I could not check the details when the links did not work, seems that I concentrated my readings on the results part:
"The results were obvious:
◾all large cell hives needed treatment to survive. They would have died without it.
◾mite tolerance increased in the natural comb top bar hives. Some mite damage was visible but all survived.
◾all small cell hives thrived without treatments."

So even with 90% losses the only thing needed to solve the problem is small cells. That is not a logical conclusion. Cordovans did not survive with small cells. So even you admit there is something else.


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## lharder

Sounds like a classic adaptive genetic bottleneck to me. Looking at my own bees, it looks like they aren't yet capable of making a cell down in the 4.9 range in foundationless frames. They are in the 5.1/5.2 range in their second season of foundationless. If you made them build small cell on foundation, they could probably do it, but would they bring the mite resistant characteristics of sc bees with them? Perhaps not. They may need to go through a selection process. Those that build smaller comb on their own may survive, those that don't may perish. Perhaps it bodes poorly for me.


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## BWrangler

Juhani Lunden said:


> So even you admit there is something else.


Yep, even me. 

Back in #90 I wrote:

_Through that experience, it quickly became obvious that for a colony to survive mites, it had to:
_


_detect the mites._
_effectively and timely destroy mites._
_resist mite vectored diseases._
_contain mite immigration._
​
When on small cell sized comb, *all* my bees were able to detect and remove mites. Some were a magnitude better than others at it. And all but one, were able to survive the mites.

When on large cell comb, none of my bees were able to detect, remove, or survive the mites without treatment.

Yes, I found other factors were involved. And that's why I did all that experimenting. Those results got me in trouble with the small cell zealots who followed Barry and I as early adopters of Dee Lusby's ideas.

More to the point of this thread on my next post.


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## Barry

BWrangler said:


> When on small cell sized comb, *all* my bees were able to detect and remove mites. Some were a magnitude better than others at it.


That's the way it was. I never saw this on my LC bees. Of course I always treated my LC bees.



> Those results got me in trouble with the small cell zealots who followed Barry and I as early adopters of Dee Lusby's ideas.


Some of Lusby's ideas. We did question some of them! 😊


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## BWrangler

Hi Barry and Everyone

>Some of Lusby's ideas. We did question some of them! 😊

Yes, we did. In fact I thought small cell was a straw man and genetics were the real source of the Lusby's success.

Other's in the SW US also had some success against the mites. The USDA, with Lester and Hines, had developed mite resistant bees down there. And run a trial test with cell size in the Dakotas.

Thinking genetics, I tried to get some stock from them. Though interested in a trial, they eventually decided that the risk of inadvertently spreading Africanized bees northward was too great.

So, it was back to figuring out how to make a simple and cheap small cell size foundation mold. I figured a small cell foundation mill was just too expensive for such a dubious concept. And never actually made the mold.

Thanks to you and Dadant, I obtained small cell foundation in 1999 and put it in 2 hives. I suspect that Dadant knew something we didn't at the time. And that's just how many sheets of small cell foundation it takes to get one acceptably drawn out frame of small cell size comb. 

I didn't expect much. But when I saw the bald headed brood and damaged mites, it was like getting knocked out and waking up in a new world!



a decade worth of daily, weekly and monthly mite counting.
organic acids, essential oils, fgmo, neem oil, grapefruit leaves, sugar dusting, alternative treatments.
reams of world wide research on mites and miticides.
a shelf full of expensive chemicals.
very expensive breeder queens.
lots of time selecting, crossing, tracking bee genetics.
​
All for naught!

Using small cell sized comb initialed a behavioral change that went far beyond my wildest genetic based imaginings. The whole test yard was put on small cell that next year. And my beekeeping changed forever.

I owe much to Ed and Dee Lusby. Without them, I'd still be counting mites and buying expensive breeder queens. And I suspect that like many others who are still on that same path, I'd be far from having mite tolerant bees.

So, I regressed them. Or attempted to anyway which created more questions than answers. And that's where the rubber met the road leaving lots of skid marks and heavy smoke.


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys

Back to Deformed Wing--Will Not Treat but Need Help.

So, the bees are sick. They will probably die without treatment, So why not treat? Is there are valid reason?



avoid chemical contamination.
get feral/regressed bee genetics.
use the Bond method of selection.
it's a moral issue.
remain pure in the eyes of small cell zealots.

Contamination? Avoiding chemical contamination is a good reason. But there are ways to treat, with substances that don't contaminate, and have only minor adverse side effects on the treated bees.

Oxalic acid can be dribbled or fumed. Dribbling is my favorite. And be careful when fuming. The fumes are very noxious. And there's a significant fire hazard.

Sugar dusting works but is very disruptive and labor intensive.

Regression? My small cell experience shows there's no need.

Bond? It works. It's brutal. But it requires lots of hives. If a Bonder looses 90% of his hives, what are the chances of getting survivors with just a few. And with a just a few survivors, what are the chances of creating a genetic bottleneck.

Been there. Done that. Really painful. Lots of work. Very expensive. Not nice or fun with just a few hives.

There are easier ways to get mite tolerant bees.

Moral issue? The real moral issue is why would anyone not treat a creature they're responsible for when it's sick. If the same same methods were used to treat sick livestock or pets, their owners would go to jail. Could it be that beekeepers care less, or are less responsible than others involved in animal husbandry?

Some beekeepers actually think that their treatment free methods are the moral high ground. And yet I suspect, I hope, when they get sick, it's 911 rather than letting natural selection refine the genetic pool.

If treatment is a sin, I hope the bees, but even more so, the beekeeper's children can find a new home!

Remain Pure? Yep. Treat and you've committed adultery with the daughters of the queen of Babylon. That is the government, drug companies, universities, education, the new world order, and everyone even remotely related to the great conspiracy directing the fall of western civilization. 

Kidding aside, is not treating more about the beekeeper or about the bees?

There are situations when a hive's death is a necessity. But a hive dying from mites isn't it.

Mite sick bees? Need help? It's simple. Treat them or they die.


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## Barry

This needs to be a sticky! I used to be one of those that held the hard line thinking I was a turncoat if I didn't remain "pure". I've since realized there is no such thing as a perfect marriage!  And one does more harm filtering everything as if there was such a thing.


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## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> Need help? It's simple. Treat them or they die.


That's what I wanted to hear. Straight talk and no small cell praise. 
This is good advise Postie.

Your bees will not behave in a different manner just when you put them to on small cells. For some mysterious reason it works with BWrangler (after 90% losses) but don´t count on it, usually it doesn't.


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## BWrangler

Juhani Lunden said:


> Your bees will not behave in a different manner just when you put them to on small cells. For some mysterious reason it works with BWrangler (after 90% losses) but don´t count on it, usually it doesn't.


I beg to differ. From my experience, I'd be surprised if someone else's bees didn't behave differently when on small cell. But much depends on those other 3 factors mentioned earlier. And I suspect there are other hives, and maybe whole areas where the bees might react much like that cordovan hive did.

Juhani, obviously your bees didn't respond to small cell or you wouldn't make such generalized and authoritative statements for others based just on opinion.

If one's bees are sick from mites and they need help, treat them. But I've found a better way that works in most cases. It's a way where bees seldom get sick enough from the mites to need help. And it has worked for others in different circumstances.

There aren't any guarantees. Just like treating bees ultimately fails. This approach could hit a wall.

The mystery? Here's my take on it.

And unlike small cell beekeeping, which is at best very demanding and difficult, if not impossible, natural beekeeping is easy.

I'll leave it there.


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## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> ... statements for others based just on opinion..


Based on numerous scientific studies.



BWrangler said:


> And unlike small cell beekeeping, which is at best very demanding and difficult, if not impossible, natural beekeeping is easy.


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## Oldtimer

BWrangler said:


> Just like treating bees ultimately fails.


Who told you that one?


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## biggraham610

Fusion_power said:


> mite tolerant bees.


We have a WINNER!!:thumbsup: G


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## Fusion_power

It did not happen by accident bigG. I got my share of bumps and bruises such as losing every colony I had in 1988 to tracheal mites, rebuilt up to @30 colonies and lost all of them again in 1993 to varroa mites. The first time I was able to get Buckfast bees which are highly tolerant to tracheal mites. Unfortunately, they were totally susceptible to varroa hence the 1993 wipeout. It was not until 2004 that I finally spotted a highly mite tolerant queen in a swarm I caught the previous year. Not only were they very tolerant to varroa, they carried a ton of other useful traits such as foraging early, late, and in very cool weather and in general were highly industrious bees. They were also very prone to sting and carried several other traits straight from Apis Mellifera Mellifera genetics. But when I crossed queens with drones from Purvis' queens, I got a winning combo that was highly mite tolerant, very industrious and gradually toned down the stinging tendency. They still have a multitude of flaws, but I have not treated any of my colonies for mites since the fall of 2004. I took a mite count 2 years ago and had 15 mites in 48 days from one of my better colonies.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

BWrangler said:


> Hi Guys
> 
> Back to Deformed Wing--Will Not Treat but Need Help.
> 
> So, the bees are sick. They will probably die without treatment, So why not treat? Is there are valid reason?
> 
> 
> 
> avoid chemical contamination.
> get feral/regressed bee genetics.
> use the Bond method of selection.
> it's a moral issue.
> remain pure in the eyes of small cell zealots.
> 
> Contamination? Avoiding chemical contamination is a good reason. But there are ways to treat, with substances that don't contaminate, and have only minor adverse side effects on the treated bees.
> 
> Oxalic acid can be dribbled or fumed. Dribbling is my favorite. And be careful when fuming. The fumes are very noxious. And there's a significant fire hazard.
> 
> Sugar dusting works but is very disruptive and labor intensive.
> 
> Regression? My small cell experience shows there's no need.
> 
> Bond? It works. It's brutal. But it requires lots of hives. If a Bonder looses 90% of his hives, what are the chances of getting survivors with just a few. And with a just a few survivors, what are the chances of creating a genetic bottleneck.
> 
> Been there. Done that. Really painful. Lots of work. Very expensive. Not nice or fun with just a few hives.
> 
> There are easier ways to get mite tolerant bees.
> 
> Moral issue? The real moral issue is why would anyone not treat a creature they're responsible for when it's sick. If the same same methods were used to treat sick livestock or pets, their owners would go to jail. Could it be that beekeepers care less, or are less responsible than others involved in animal husbandry?
> 
> Some beekeepers actually think that their treatment free methods are the moral high ground. And yet I suspect, I hope, when they get sick, it's 911 rather than letting natural selection refine the genetic pool.
> 
> If treatment is a sin, I hope the bees, but even more so, the beekeeper's children can find a new home!
> 
> Remain Pure? Yep. Treat and you've committed adultery with the daughters of the queen of Babylon. That is the government, drug companies, universities, education, the new world order, and everyone even remotely related to the great conspiracy directing the fall of western civilization.
> 
> Kidding aside, is not treating more about the beekeeper or about the bees?
> 
> There are situations when a hive's death is a necessity. But a hive dying from mites isn't it.
> 
> Mite sick bees? Need help? It's simple. Treat them or they die.


TREAT! Don't breed from them but treat! Replace the queen and you can start again. Nature kills off the weakest, but the beekeeper can simply replace the old queen with another and start over. Don't let that hive die, cost you money and potentially give your other colonies more mites.


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## lharder

But if a single colony, or a few has problems and dies, the comb doesn't go away, the honey they have made doesn't go away either. Nor do the boxes and frames disintegrate. All those resources can be distributed to surviving hives, the ones who deserve them. If I lose a hive, I have a whole bunch of nucleus colonies that will fill the gap. Propping up weak individuals is a poor allocation of resources. Spend time on winners. 

But I do consider cross contamination and mite overload as an issue. Failures of a certain scale may need robbing screens to lessen pressure on surviving bees.


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## Barry

For those trying to get going and may only have a couple of hives, they don't have the extra bee resources. That's where treating becomes very important in the road to TF.


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## BWrangler

Hi Oldtimer and Everyone



Oldtimer said:


> Who told you that one?


It's from my own commercial beekeeping experience. I wasn't told. I was telling. 

I've worked commercial bees in one way or the other since 1968, those golden years before mites. And I've worked them longer than that after the mites. Finally cut all my commercial connections in 2009. During that time I've seen:



mites develop resistance to multiple miticides.
university and government research driven by the search for the next miticide.
commercial beekeepers loose the majority of their hives to mites while following approved protocols.
these kinds of loses occur every 3 to 5 years.
beekeepers resort to every possible combination of illegal pesticides/dosages to keep their livelihood viable and fail.
average pesticides contamination in beeswax increase above levels that were toxic 2 decades ago.
hives so contaminated that it was practically impossible to rear/mate viable queens in them.
beekeeping operation so contaminated that working in or contact with the honey house, bee truck, freshly washed protective gear made me ill.
beekeepers become rabid when verifiable product testing is suggested to document/market purity. They know what they're done.
the EU ban pure US honey because of it's contamination.

I've watched beekeepers, from every region of this country, go down the pesticide treadmill. Went a good distance down it myself. Been there. And sadly done that. Experienced good short term results. Suffered really bad long term consequences.


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## Oldtimer

Well that's a pretty full answer! And a sad one, but thanks.


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## Lauri

Barry said:


> For those trying to get going and may only have a couple of hives, they don't have the extra bee resources. That's where treating becomes very important in the road to TF.


So, so true!
I don't understand folks that are so hard & fast TF in the beginning, (Other than ignorance) but hey, I did it when I started too.

The idea and lure of being 'organic' is very appealing, but quickly put a stop to those $100. bills flying out of my pocket. But it's not just the money. I firmly believe treating is the way_ towards_ treatment free beekeeping. TF status is_ transitional _& comes with hard work and experience.

I've seen SO many that are never are able to successfully over winter their few hives, yet feel OK about buying new bees from unknown sources with an unknown history. Another year of Blind beekeeping. I see them do this year after year after year. Come spring, the excitement of getting 'another chance' is thrilling and the pain & disappointment of the past season's failure quickly fades. 

If I bought bees again, I'd immediately treat them for mites, requeen with local or like/harsher climate (June mated) queens from a knowledgeable producer with proven survivor, health & mite resistance performance, get rid of any frames of comb with unknown history & commercial agriculture exposures.
THEN you can work towards TF or in my opinion, a more realistic goal of Treatment _Reduced_. 

With some experience, you can cull out poor genetics without allowing the colony to suffer and dwindle away & without allowing mite infested hives to spread throughout your apiary and into the surrounding area. 

If you want to get quickly to this status of self sufficiency & less need for treatments, learn to rear your own queens. Spend a few bucks and get some good breeding stock. Without a good supply of queens with excellent genetics and the traits you're looking for, you're trying to climb a mountain with one hand tied behind your back.


If they are available to you (At the right time of the season), Capped queen cells are an under utilized resource that are inexpensive & can be _miracle workers_. New genetics and a brood break that will clean, reboot and revitalize a troubled colony. There are lots of options other than treating, but when it comes to treating, I never say never.

Not everyone wants to go to the trouble of queen rearing or they only need a few queens each season.
If you have someone local that has a good program, you are very fortunate.
But if you want to expand to more than a few hives, learning to rear your own queens gives you a huge advantage. 

They say having the freedom to fail creates innovation. I have more hives than I want and can rear all the queens I want. I've had the freedom to fail, to push bees to extremes just to see how they react. Just to educate myself. But I rarely fail. The results have been enlightening to say the least. 
My biggest problem is I have too many bees, have grown quickly and almost larger than I can handle by myself. I'm not complaining. It's a good problem to have.











My experiments have been harsh, Not that I actually_ tried_ to kill them off, but I wouldn't have batted an eye if I'd lost some colonies. I'm always short of frames of good drawn comb and I'd welcome the extra resources to distribute to other growing colonies.


I believe I'm truly impartial when it comes to beesource debates. I have no conflict of interest in my stated opinions. I don't sell treatments, I don't sell partial frames of foundation, I don't sell sugar blocks or protein patties. I'm not looking for new customers to sell queens to. I share that info with you just to show you what worked for me. And if I find my experience changes, I have no issue with posting I was wrong. But generally it's never simply a case of being wrong. There are usually just details that were not taken into consideration in the first assessment. And there is always room for the 'New & improved' version  


Here's a current video of one of my colonies with the bees apparently inspecting the dropped mites (After fall treatment) and making sure they are all dead. Watch the bee on the left early on grab a mite and bite it. This is the kind of behavior that encourages me my genetics are promising. Good genetics are a transitional step toward less need for treatments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwF6N7v4TWE


Here's the colony they were out of:
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ral-cell-hives-management-(1-2-whisky-barrel)

Disclaimer: I have not read through this entire thread. So if my post is a little out of place, please excuse me.


----------



## Joel

BWrangler said:


> Hi Oldtimer and Everyone
> I've watched beekeepers, from every region of this country, go down the pesticide treadmill. Went a good distance down it myself. Been there. And sadly done that. Experienced good short term results. Suffered really bad long term consequences.


We are a small fish in the commercial pond. What I have seen in the big operations the past couple of years is like a silent scream of what you are saying. We have done a ton of work using the bond method. One big issue we always had was finding fresh mite resistant stock to avoid inbreeding. I don't feel like we can run fast enough on that treadmill to keep up with what's coming on. Is there a picture in your mind of what a commercial operation would or could look like to be successful "long term" or do you believe the scale has tipped to far and we will be looking at a different model to produce the mass amounts of produce needed to feed an ever growing population? As humans We used to walk, then we road horses, then we drove cars. When we were walking had someone proposed the car we could have never dreamed of interstates, stop lights, gas stations etc. to make transportation successful. When we look beyond cars we have a hard time imagining what is next but the time is coming we should, we must. ARe you able to see some of what we are not imagining about beekeeping today that we should, being able looking back almost 50 years, where do you see the paradigm shift that stops the slide?


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## lharder

Barry said:


> For those trying to get going and may only have a couple of hives, they don't have the extra bee resources. That's where treating becomes very important in the road to TF.


Probably every beekeeper should have a couple of nucs on standby, and a couple of buddies with nucs on standby. Cooperation/local regional self sufficiency is more important than treating, as is taking time to source decent stock. Plus if you only have a couple of hives, chances are you will be buying bees, treating or not. If you have a couple of extra nucs in the spring, then they can be sold, paying for the hobby.


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## BWrangler

Hi Juhani

>Based on numerous scientific studies.

I've just read your site which documents your journey toward treatment free beekeeping. It's very interesting.

Occasionally, there have been popular articles about your work here in the US. But your site details the work and time frame you've been involved in the process.

And it's a good read for anyone interested in treatment free concepts.

I appreciate reading it because so many of the situations, methods, decision points, results, joys and sorrows of my genetic push for mite tolerant bees are common to your experience. Some thoughts:

You decision to minimally treat rather than stopping all treatments was a good. That was my approach until all treatments were stopped with small cell. Then, as you suspected, it was the fittest that survived. It was just a lucky few that survived. And building up from them created a genetic bottleneck which almost wiped them out again.

Ah the Russian Bees! I bought two breeder queens from the USDA's initial release. Very interesting and different bees. Slow mite build up. Almost completely resistant to mite vectored diseases. Would bite and pull hair before stinging. Very keen sense of smell. Aggressive but not mean. Often demonstrated thelotoky. Could carry unbelievable mite load for quite awhile before collapsing.

The long, hard, tiring, almost endless grind. Say goodbye to joy and fun. Counting mites and watching bees struggle just isn't, especially after the gazillionth time.

You say stubborn. My wife says obsessed.. 

The loss of control, as one disaster or another almost wipes out years of work.

Wondering about epigenetic effects.

Waning beeyard resilience.

Releasing that more control doesn't always produce the better results.

The joy in eventually finding a measure of success seeing uncapped brood and damaged mites.
​
And that's were our experiences diverge.
​>Based on numerous scientific studies . . .

Based on what I've read, I'll respect your opinion. You know what's best for you and your bees.

But if it were me, I'd keep trucking. But put a few, say 3 hives on small cell comb:



use Mann Lake's PF-100s.
don't bother with any small cell ide
manage them like the rest of your hives 
use oxalic if they need it.
​
The combination of your bee's genetics and small cell might just be what your looking for. It might cut those last 12 years off the timeline.

If not, you've lost nothing except the cost of the frames.


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## Oldtimer

Noble goal LHarder but seems that (sustainability) is already the goal for most TF beekeepers but they are failing. Problem being that many TF beekeepers are new, so lack the experience needed to successfully run nucs and have a plan and expanding bee population to meet those losses. That's because the last bee survey showed nearly 50% of TF hives were lost last year. We know there are some successful TF beekeepers with lower losses, who are self sustaining. Which means that other beekeepers have higher than 50% losses, we might assume they would mostly be the newer ones and just don't know how to recover from their losses. The other way we can confirm folks are not self sustaining is the constant Beesource chatter about buying new bees. 

The comment re buying bees regardless whether one treats or not, I don't think gives quite the full picture. It may apply to beekeepers who attempt to treat but don't do it properly. However the bee survey also showed that beekeepers who treated with Apivar only lost a little more than 20% of their hives, and to me this would mean that most of those operations would be pretty sustainable even the small ones, barring a few who got unlucky and had a total or near total loss. IE, if a guy has 5 hives and looses 1 (20%), it would be a fairly simple thing for him to get back to 5 over the next year and in fact will probably find himself with more than 5, by design or accident.


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## Riverderwent

"Releasing (sic)[Realizing] that more control doesn't always produce the better results."

Three things I know are humbling, having honey bees, having children, and the weather.


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## Arnie

This should be a sticky.

This morning I was going to the post office and a block from my house one of my neighbors was building Top Bar hives in his garage. So we talked bees a little. One thing that struck me was him telling me that the first year or two he didn't need to worry about mites. He had no idea how to test for mites or any plan to treat them. I told him a little about my own bitter experiences not taking the mites seriously enough. 

I hate to think of him going through the same discouragement and disappointment I did.


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## Riverderwent

"I would appreciate any ideas concerning this and possible upcoming colonies as far as ways to help them or opinions otherwise."

Don't change your general approach. (You did not need me to tell you that.) If you have a very small hive to combine or can get a local spare queen, get rid of this queen as soon as practical. Go back to two deeps.


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## BWrangler

Hi Joel and Everyone

Commercial beekeeping is a tough business at best. To be successful a beekeeper, like his bees, has to be:



resourceful. 
adaptable. 
resilient. 

It's important for a beekeeper in the business of bees to:



really know why he's in the business. 
realistically evaluate whether the bee business is going in the right direction. 
and if not, a good plan to get there. 

It's just too easy to keep doing the same old things, the same old way, and expecting different results in these changing times.

The future? I've had my head in the bee boxes so long, I can only see about 9 5/8 inches one way, 16 1/4 the other way. And on a good day, 19 7/8 inches. 

But, Joel, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Even now, human needs are pushing resources and the environment to it's limits. Scarcity will drives costs higher. Marginal operations will disappear.

Unmoderated climate change will push the direction of change one way, The availability of a cheap, non-carbon energy source like thorium fission could push it the other way.

It's interesting to ponder.


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## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> But if it were me, I'd keep trucking. But put a few, say 3 hives on small cell comb:


I´ll keep on trucking, that's for sure.

The reasons not to have SC are practical:
- in breeding efforts all hives must be handled equally, there cannot be two cell sizes
- in Finland SC foundation cannot be bought, I don´t want to pay import taxes and freights or make my own foundation
- if SC measures (4,9-5,1) are suitable in Texas, 5,3mm is just right for Finland (latitude is the same as Alaska), bees get bigger in the north


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## Fusion_power

Bwrangler's description of events leading to his bees maintaining themselves sans treatments is a classic hard Bond method of letting the bees succeed or fail on their own. Small cell in this context may have some effect, but the evidence he presents is far stronger that genetics are the most important part of bees living treatment free. Berry and Seeley both tried small cell with the intent of proving whether it worked as described. The conclusion was unanimous that small cell alone does not enable survival in the face of mite pressure. From external evidence, it is easy to speculate that quite a bit of mite tolerance is epigenetic, in other words, not hard coded in the genome, but a series of traits expressed and emphasized genetically as a direct result of environmental interactions.

Bwrangler, would you care to expand on the genetic tolerances of the bees you trialed over the years?


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## BWrangler

Hi Fusion_power

I will. But they will be more general than specific as I tossed all those detailed records, a cabinet full of treatments and everything dealing with mite treating long ago.

It was very hard for me to do at the time. Some may consider foolish, as they represented so much effort, time, and documented my first few years with small cell.

But there comes a time in everyone's life when it's time to move on. After my transition from a conventional commercial, to small cell, to a natural hobby beekeeper, those records simply had no more value.

Before small cell, my Wyoming mutts and almost every commercially available selections were tried. Most followed the average path:



single to low double digit natural mite drop by the end of the first season.
low double to high double/low triple drop by the end of second season.
worst colonies succumb with pms late second season.
survivors drop double digits to triple digits and succumb end of third season.
best hives dropped a magnitude fewer mite, survived an extra season without pms.

Some stock that was consistently better than average was the Harbo, Mn Hygienic, New World Carniolan.

I added 2 lines of Russian stock when it became available. Mite drop decreased by a magnitude lower than my best hives. PMS completely disappeared.

At about the same time, I put a couple of hives on small cell. Saw the mite cleansing behavior. And switched the test yard over to small cell that next season.

After big loses, a build up from the survivors, and a dozen hives stabilized on small cell. I introduced a few queens from the major queen producers. Mite drop:



for the best hives was never more than the low single digits all year.
the worst hives would start in low single digits, end up in the high 10 to low 20s, survive without treatment or pms.
over time the worst hives got better at it with mite drop never getting out of the 10s.
rarely, a few bees with DWV would be seen from a single hive at the end of the season.

The most tolerant bees were a Russian purple line x New World Carniolan. But they were fiesty. I stopped counting mites a couple years later.

Eventually these hives were put in a friend's commercial migratory yard.

After 2 years, that commercial yard was collapsing from mites and suffering from undetermined maladies which at the time were though mite related. My commercial friend was in the midst of his silent scream.

Yet, my hives appeared fine. I retrieved them. Did some quick sampling. Monitored the mites. Thought everything was great.

It was, as far as mites and mite vectored diseases were concerned. But I should have known better. There was something other than mites and pms brewing in that yard. And it would eventually kill my bees.


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## Oldtimer

AFB?


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## Riverderwent

"There was something other than mites and pms brewing in that yard. And it would eventually kill my bees."

What? What?


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## beemandan

Fusion_power said:


> Small cell in this context may have some effect, but the evidence he presents is far stronger that genetics are the most important part of bees living treatment free.


Indeed! Unless I'm mistaken, Kirk Webster reported huge losses his first seasons tf. Eventually those losses moderated and leveled off to acceptable numbers. He doesn't use small cell. I believe he does run 5.1...which I do think is close to natural size....for European honey bees.


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## BWrangler

Hi Oldtimer, Riverderwent and Everyone

Slow motion CCD, the results of virus overloads, got them. You can read more about it here and here.

My thriving hives got innoculated with the viruses when they were split, and frames exchanged, while in the commercial migratory yard which was collapsing. And I didn't help matters much when, noticing a general, but not specific decline in vigor, I trashed the yard and requeened. 

CCD has been used as a catch all phrase. Some beekeepers even doubt its existence, that is until they experience it! It's unique and unlike any other beekeeping pest or disease.

And it's subtle and sneaky until just before the hives perish. Looking back, my bees were symptomatic a year before they perished. I just didn't know it. And attributed what I saw, in a few hives, to other things.

Randy Oliver has played with CCD and has some very interesting observations.


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## BWrangler

Hi Beemandan and Everyone

The genetic component is important. Good genetics are what control the viruses.

Before small cell, I watched hives collapse with a small to moderate mite load. And I saw hives, like the Russians that could carry a tremendous mite load, without symptoms, through several seasons before suddenly collapsing.

After small cell, a rare hive would have a few DWV crawlers even though they cleansed the broodnest, had a very small mite load and survived.

Was broodnest cleansing all about Dee Lusby's regression which is primarily genetically focused? Or was it simply some function of cell size? So, a half dozen surviving small cell hives were put back on large cell comb. I un-regessed them.  It was a small test, with few hives, and no detailed mite counts.

On large cell, broodnest cleansing essentially stopped. By the end of the first season, a few hives proved very susceptible with numerous crawlers and minor pms. They would have perished without treatment. I treated them. Put them back on small cell. And they did fine without treatments.

But for me, the most important factor was broodnest cleansing. Without that, even my best hives eventually succumb to the mites.

Is cell size some kind of epigenetic factor. It sure could be. But I'm a simple guy. Complex genetics make me dizzy. And I tend to think in terms of behaviour and function.


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## Harley Craig

BWrangler when you speak of brood nest clensing. Does that appear as bad shot brood. I have started to notice this yr that a few of my colonies started showing signs of " shot brood" I would also see cells being uncapped at the purple eye stage. Then after a couple of cycles it was wall to wall brood again. Didn't know if this is fact brood nest clensing. or queens working through clumps of too closely related drone semen? I also notice that it happens more on the edges of the brood nest while the center always looks fairly evenly laid with minimal opened cells.


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## Juhani Lunden

BWrangler said:


> I added 2 lines of Russian stock when it became available. Mite drop decreased by a magnitude lower than my best hives. PMS completely disappeared.
> 
> At about the same time, I put a couple of hives on small cell. Saw the mite cleansing behavior.


Two major changes at about the same time



BWrangler said:


> The most tolerant bees were a Russian purple line x New World Carniolan.


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## jwcarlson

Harley Craig said:


> BWrangler when you speak of brood nest clensing. Does that appear as bad shot brood. I have started to notice this yr that a few of my colonies started showing signs of " shot brood" I would also see cells being uncapped at the purple eye stage. Then after a couple of cycles it was wall to wall brood again.


Interested to hear the opinion on this as well, as I have noticed some of mine do similar.

BWrangler, what's your overall opinion of your Russian lines as far as honey production and swarminess?


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> Noble goal LHarder but seems that (sustainability) is already the goal for most TF beekeepers but they are failing. Problem being that many TF beekeepers are new, so lack the experience needed to successfully run nucs and have a plan and expanding bee population to meet those losses. That's because the last bee survey showed nearly 50% of TF hives were lost last year. We know there are some successful TF beekeepers with lower losses, who are self sustaining. Which means that other beekeepers have higher than 50% losses, we might assume they would mostly be the newer ones and just don't know how to recover from their losses. The other way we can confirm folks are not self sustaining is the constant Beesource chatter about buying new bees.
> 
> The comment re buying bees regardless whether one treats or not, I don't think gives quite the full picture. It may apply to beekeepers who attempt to treat but don't do it properly. However the bee survey also showed that beekeepers who treated with Apivar only lost a little more than 20% of their hives, and to me this would mean that most of those operations would be pretty sustainable even the small ones, barring a few who got unlucky and had a total or near total loss. IE, if a guy has 5 hives and looses 1 (20%), it would be a fairly simple thing for him to get back to 5 over the next year and in fact will probably find himself with more than 5, by design or accident.


Backup (redundancy) is a key characteristic of sustainable systems. If you want a sustainable apiary, then managing nucs and splits is a core skill regardless of the type of beekeeping one does. Treating, in my humble opinion is not. I started with one nuc last year and bought 4 queens immediately and began some more. When they started laying I felt considerable relief, as I could now overcome my mistakes and some vagaries of nature. And I learned so much going through the process about core concepts of beekeeping. So much more useful than treating. If I stood pat and treated, I could have lost the queen because of lack of overwintering ability and still have lost everything. As it turned out, I did lose the original queen and one of her daughters. She was from Hawaii. The winter hardy ones I brought in did fine. Now I could have taken the same basic approach and treated. I would have been about in the same place, perhaps a little better numbers. So what was the core concept that gave me 1st year success either way? Increase or treating? 

One has to be careful in following the logic of averages. Especially in situations of genetic plasticity that going tf entails. Its much more useful to follow the trajectory of systems, and to group them properly. Compare 1st year beeks with 1st year beeks etc. For instance TF could be going to from 75 to 60 to 50 % losses depending on the experience class (bees and beekeeper). Does a 50% loss in this situation indicate failure or the lack of sustainability?


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## BWrangler

Hi Harley Craig

Uncapping at the purple eye stage was an indication of broodnest cleansing. At first, when the hives were full of mites, it was easy to spot as whole patches of brood would be uncapped that way. When I first saw this, I removed a couple brood frames and inspected the contents of all brood cells and counting mites. It's an interesting experiment.

Later, as a hive got better at it and was able to keep the mite load low, it would appear like shot brood as the bees located and removed the contents of widely scattered infested cells. A this stage, I also removed and inspected a couple frames of brood like I did before.

Eventually is was hard to detect the level of broodnest cleansing visually, as there weren't very many cells of the same age, uncapped. The only real way to tell was by using a sticky board and looking closely for chewed out pupa parts and damaged mites.

I've never seen bees uncap only brood at the purple eye stage for any other reason than broodnest cleansing.

Back when we were hashing this out, Barry photographed an instance where bees uncapped purple eyed brood during a wax moth infestation. I'm not sure where those images are now.

Other things can cause spotty brood though. Inspect them closely.


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## Barry

They're right here!


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## BWrangler

Hi Iharder and Everyone

>So what was the core concept that gave me 1st year success either way? Increase or treating?

Or maybe you were just lucky!  That's saved my hide a time or two!

Kirk Webster describes your concepst as resiliency. He's got a website somewhere out there and writes better than I can.

It's an important concept as beekeepers face one new challenge after the other. A new one comes along about every decade or so. And success with the last one doesn't guarantee success with the next.

After taking a beating, I kicked tracheal and varroa mites in the pants. Then, CCD kicked me in the pants.


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## marshmasterpat

jwcarlson said:


> Interested to hear the opinion on this as well, as I have noticed some of mine do similar.


Have some in my place that do the same, despite good resources in the hive.

Great thread


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## Juhani Lunden

Harley Craig said:


> I would also see cells being uncapped at the purple eye stage.


I saw a lot opened purple eye brood only in the beginning years of TF experiment when the bees were by no means resistant. Things were going for the worse for several years. For some unknown reason I have not seen opened purple eye brood later. 

I however have seen opened younger brood. This brood is capped but still in the larvae stage. I have even taken a picture of bees dragging such a drone out. 
One explanation came to my mind: If bees are opening larvae in the quite late phase of purple eyes it is too late. If they detect varroa earlier, it is more efficient. 

I have also seen some chewed capped brood. Maybe they remove the opened brood faster, and that is why I don´t see it in the just opened phase.


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## Harley Craig

Thanks, This has been an eye opening thread. Typically when one starts seeing " shot brood" I suspect most guys would probably re-queen thinking they had a queen problem but we need to look deeper into the problem before we jump to any conclusions. I am glad that I had the convictions I did to let it ride and see the problem disappear on it's own. I pulled a comb of sept drones from one of my worst ofenders and after carefully uncapping and removing 200 drones I only found 2 mites and they were in cells by themselves, and by that time the shot brood had pretty well went away. so my bees seem to handle it well. Time will tell


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## Oldtimer

Did they handle it by themselves, or did you help them with oxalic acid?


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## Harley Craig

Oldtimer said:


> Did they handle it by themselves, or did you help them with oxalic acid?



by themselves. I have only ever used oxalic acid once and I lost those bees my first winter. I wasn't paying attention late in fall and they got robbed out and starved.


This is what it got back to by 3rd week of august. A month and a half prior it was severe shot brood


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## squarepeg

i had a short lived wave of a small number of devitalized drone brood getting hauled out of a few hives along with a very few dwv and crawlers that only lasted a week or two. i believe this corresponded with the first rounds of late summer/early fall brooding of wintering bees. afterward i found frames of pretty solid capped brood as harley is reporting, and there have been very few dead brood or sick bees seen since. in all but one or two hives the populations and stores are looking very strong here at the end of our fall flow.

these casual observations lead me to believe that the mites in my hives are impacting the drone brood much more so than the worker brood, and that the impact on the worker brood is low enough as to not result in any observable die offs or dwindling.


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## crofter

Squarepeg would that drone brood pulling equate to the first round of brood (after a brooding lull) being a catch basin for varroa? With VSH bees it sounds like it would be a good chain of events!


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## squarepeg

crofter said:


> Squarepeg would that drone brood pulling equate to the first round of brood (after a brooding lull) being a catch basin for varroa? With VSH bees it sounds like it would be a good chain of events!


indeed frank, that's basically what i think is happening. 

although the infestation rates are approaching 10% in these hives the mites don't seem very interested in the worker brood and/or the bees are having no problem outbreeding the mites. 

it might also be that the viral load is low, that what viruses are are present are less virulent, that the bees have effective immunity against the viruses, or some combination of these and/or other factors.

at any rate an excellent fall flow has my colonies stronger and my hives heavier this year compared to last year with only a couple of the starter colonies a little low in numbers. but even these smaller starters are bigger than some five frame nucs that i've overwintered in the past, so i guess we'll see what winter brings.


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## 1102009

Great thread, thank you all for the information.

















There was a brood brake in August in this hive after they had some problems. This I did two splits, one in June, one in July, maybe one too much, but the queen in this hive is my best one yet. Still the same queen.
You see some chewed out cells and one cell with a baldheaded pupae.


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## Barry

Looks like all the spotty brood from my hive. What's happening with all those empty brood cells? New eggs in there? Mine stayed empty. Even though I treated with OA, the hive is doomed as no new brood is being raised.


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## jwcarlson

SiWolKe said:


> There was a brood brake in August in this hive after they had some problems. This I did two splits, one in June, one in July, maybe one too much, but the queen in this hive is my best one yet. Still the same queen.
> You see some chewed out cells and one cell with a baldheaded pupae.


To what do you attribute their ability to find mites and chew them out?

I've got pictures from a colony that overwintered last year for me their brood looked like that... lots and lots of uncapping.


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## Lauri

Maybe it's just me, but I don't want bees that wait until the capped brood is infested before turning their attention to the mites. I want them to deal with phoretic mites & not let it get to this level. I expect it is the virus levels & sick pupa that the bees are recognizing, not necessarily the mites them selves. Spotty brood and uncapping like this is not a good sign of VSH behavior, it's a sign things have progressed way too far.

It's like a bodies own immune system not recognizing cancer before it's too late.


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## Oldtimer

Barry said:


> Looks like all the spotty brood from my hive. What's happening with all those empty brood cells? New eggs in there? Mine stayed empty. Even though I treated with OA, the hive is doomed as no new brood is being raised.


Does not have to be doomed. If you think the mites are sorted, give it a frame or two of good brood from another hive to see them through. The queen may not be laying because the hive is in a dire state, so ensure the brood you give them is point of hatch, to get new bees in there quickly.


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## 1102009

Most of the combs looked like that:









@ Barry: yes, the cells are filled with eggs. One week later I saw no eggs and young brood but the queen ( marked) was there, so I assumed a brood brake. No superseding was done.

When I got them I saw some phoretic mites on bees but no def.wings.
Later in the year no mites and def. were seen. They go into winter very strong now.

@ Lauri: Yes, mites being killed beforehand would be wonderful, next year, if my bees will survive winter, I will check mites with my microscope. 

If I ever need a new queen maybe I will buy one from Alois Wallner who selects bees "killing varroa".

@ jw.: mentor and me think, the strength of the bee colony is the most important factor, meaning they have enough bees for cleaning.


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## Harley Craig

Lauri said:


> it's a sign things have progressed way too far.
> 
> It's like a bodies own immune system not recognizing cancer before it's too late.



Is it? How is it too far if they clean it up and the start of my winter brood looks like the pic I posted above. My worst offender of DWV last yr was one of my better honey producers this yr


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## 1102009

Well bees attacking mites is great, but what about other diseases?

Is hygienic behavior not necessary and normal behavior in bee colonies?

Last year my (treated,but weather too cold, so treatment was in vain) hive defended itself by hygienic behavior, too, but too late. Just like Lauri said about recognizing cancer to late.
They even attacked mites and did grooming on the landing board.
I saw one bee picking off a mite and throwing it of the board.
I did 10 sugar shakedowns every 2 days, shaking off 800-1000 mites , the bees helped me, but too late.
Should have put the capped brood into my freezer and shaken the defect bees on ground like Clayton said, maybe the would have had a chance.
They died in March in a cold spell.


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## Lauri

Harley Craig said:


> Is it? How is it too far if they clean it up and the start of my winter brood looks like the pic I posted above. My worst offender of DWV last yr was one of my better honey producers this yr


That's just my opinion about not wanting the bees to wait so long before the capped brood gets so infected they are uncapping at a rate it ceases to allow the colony to grow. 

In your case, I would have a hard time believing there were no changes in your colony to allow it to go from the point of DWV to superstar.. I'd guess the original queen was superceded & they got a reboot somewhere along the way.


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## Harley Craig

That is a very good possibility Lauri either way they handled it and I ended up with more honey than I could use or give a way to friends and family so I had to sell some so I am tickled pink with them


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## Lauri

Harley Craig said:


> That is a very good possibility Lauri either way they handled it and I ended up with more honey than I could use or give a way to friends and family so I had to sell some so I am tickled pink with them


That's great!
I just like to get down to the details of exactly why. Inquiring minds want to know 
So it can be replicated for planned management methods


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## squarepeg

i had several colonies that were expelling devitalized drone brood as they were beginning the late summer brood up of wintering bees. there were also a few dwv and crawling workers noticed on the ground at that time. all of that lasted for a week or two and then stopped. mite counts were taken on two of those hives and approached 10%. inspections at that time showed about 5 - 10% of the worker larvae being uncapped and chewed up. 

the two colonies that were sampled got inspected again yesterday and appear to be healthy and have put up adequate stores for overwintering. one of these two has 6 winters under its belt with a continuous queenline and has been reasonably productive in most of those years.

the pertinent question is: why do some colonies overcome such adversity while others do not?


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## Harley Craig

squarepeg said:


> i had several colonies that were expelling devitalized drone brood as they were beginning the late summer brood up of wintering bees. there were also a few dwv and crawling workers noticed on the ground at that time. all of that lasted for a week or two and then stopped. mite counts were taken on two of those hives and approached 10%. inspections at that time showed about 5 - 10% of the worker larvae being uncapped and chewed up.
> 
> the two colonies that were sampled got inspected again yesterday and appear to be healthy and have put up adequate stores for overwintering. one of these two has 6 winters under its belt with a continuous queenline and has been reasonably productive in most of those years.
> 
> the pertinent question is: why do some colonies overcome such adversity while others do not?


Simple answer because you let them if mankind were to die tommorow bees would die off in mass the ones that don't would survive and repopulate the earth, we will never get there working against nature


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## squarepeg

probably so harley. and therein lies the problem. there are too many livelihoods at stake for us to suffer a mass die off and pick up the pieces afterward.

some very respected individuals in the field are expressing the view that the upsurge in treatment free beekeepers, (while having good intentions), may be causing problems for beekeeping at large.

the point they make is that this new wave of entry level beekeepers are purchasing commercially produced bees that are lacking in mite resistance and a high percentage of those colonies ultimately collapse and become a source for the spreading of mites to other bees.

i am able to vouch for the fact that my colonies aren't collapsing and getting robbed out, but i think these experts may have a valid concern there. on the other hand it's not very likely that the bees will develop natural resistance unless they are allowed to do so.

i'm not visionary enough to come up with how we get from here to where we would like to be. i do believe it would be worthwhile for some of our researchers to take a careful look at populations of bees that are doing well off treatments and attempt to determine how they are able to do so.

if i weren't so vested in the day job i might consider talking to the entomology folks at auburn about a potential dissertation project. in the mean time i'll have to be content with propagating colonies that appear to be dealing with them mites on their own and with encouraging others to do likewise.


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## biggraham610

squarepeg said:


> in the mean time i'll have to be content with propagating colonies that appear to be dealing with them mites on their own and encourage others to do likewise.


As will I, keep up the good work Squarepeg. :thumbsup: G


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## 1102009

>encourage others to do likewise.<

Thanks, squarepeg! :applause:


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## Harley Craig

squarepeg said:


> probably so harley. and therein lies the problem. there are too many livelihoods at stake for us to suffer a mass die off and pick up the pieces afterward.
> 
> .



yip I get why people treat, I'm just thankful that I don't have to, and I don't have commercial operations near me where we might effect each others goals.


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## beemandan

Harley Craig said:


> I don't have commercial operations near me where we might effect each others goals.


Don't count them unhatched chickens just yet. There's always the day when a new, aspiring tf beekeeper down the road buys some commercial packages.....and goes all noninterventional. There're all sorts of opportunity for folks to have an impact on one another's goals. Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen....


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## jwcarlson

beemandan said:


> Don't count them unhatched chickens just yet. There's always the day when a new, aspiring tf beekeeper down the road buys some commercial packages.....and goes all noninterventional. There're all sorts of opportunity for folks to have an impact on one another's goals. Fingers crossed that it doesn't happen....


Next year might be a rough one in that regard with all the Flow hives coming onto the scene. Will be a good year to have swarm traps up and queens ready to requeen them.


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## deknow

...as I suggested in the 'mighty mite bomb' thread, if there are 2.5 million migratory hives, and there is an annual swarm rare of 1% (some will have less some will have much more)...I think these are fairly conservative numbers.

That would equal 25k unmanaged colonies per year...from real commercial genetics.

I'm not sure why the flowhive, tf, or non intervention beekeepers are considered the source of 'mite bombs'...at least there is anything from intention (which can lead to nothing or anything) to stock selection, to intensive management that the beekeeper who is trying to have bees without treatmen's is at least leaning towards that escaped migratory swarms generally won't have.


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## beemandan

deknow said:


> I'm not sure why the flowhive, tf, or non intervention beekeepers are considered the source of 'mite bombs'...


Dean, it appears as though you've been skimming the thread rather than reading the posts. Maybe go back and actually read the last three....and you'd see that they were focused on Harley Craig's good fortune at not having any commercial beekeepers nearby. I suggested that there were other ways for the same sort of problems.
Or, heck, don't bother.


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## deknow

Dan, thanks for the correction....you are right, I was skimming. I had planned (after reading some of the posts on Bee-L this morning) to go back and post on the mighty mite bomb thread, but this one caught my attention first. Apologies.


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys

> some very respected individuals in the field are expressing the view that the upsurge in treatment free beekeepers . . . a source for the spreading of mites to other bees.

Keeping untreated bees should be a crime. Image all those mites treatment free beekeepers spread around. They put my entire commercial migratory operation at risk.

And I ought to know. I've lost thousands of hives, in 5 different states, at 3 different times and it's cost me plenty!

Treatment free beekeepers should be liable for damages considering how much it costs in time, effort and money to treat and still loose all one's hives to the mites.

Yep! It just brings tears to my eyes thinking about it. And then I get angry.


Now, if you're angry like me, please note that the facts in this case have been deliberately obscured to protect the guilty. Please note this post is entirely tongue and check. And I obviously have too much free time.

And don't despair, a bee truck always runs much faster and smoother when its gears of circular logic are frequently greased and run in reverse.


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## squarepeg




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## biggraham610

:lpf: ......... thats good. G


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## biggraham610

Harley Craig said:


> yip I get why people treat, I'm just thankful that I don't have to, and I don't have commercial operations near me where we might effect each others goals.


Ditto. Best of luck on your continued success Harley.:thumbsup: G


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## squarepeg

squarepeg said:


> i do believe it would be worthwhile for some of our researchers to take a careful look at populations of bees that are doing well off treatments and attempt to determine how they are able to do so.


maybe something here:

http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2015186a.html


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## Harley Craig

biggraham610 said:


> Ditto. Best of luck on your continued success Harley.:thumbsup: G



thanks, I'm not completely there yet, but I'm following the path that those in my area have laid before me who do not treat. A wise man once told me, if you want to be successful at something, find someone to excels at it and do what they do.


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## JWChesnut

squarepeg said:


> maybe something here:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2015186a.html


Paper is titled -- Superinfection exclusion and the long-term survival of honey bees in Varroa-infested colonies

Absolutely fascinating paper (its open access and anyone can read it). Essentially, the authors find evidence that a low impact DWV variant is dominant in a particular apiary of survivor colonies (Swindon, UK). The low impact strain acts as a live vaccine -- and prevents the establishment of the high lethal DWV strain "A" in the colonies. It appears the low lethal DWV is maintained within the colony by bee-to-bee transmission, and the injection of high lethal DWV from Varroa doesn't establish infection.

A deliberate "vaccination" of a crippled DWV variant could be used in this scenario to protect colonies. By extension, it provides an explanation of the utility of "survivor" colonies -- they may be carrying the low-lethal strain and can establish it via bee-to-bee transmission. A screening sample could establish which "survivors" actually carry this micro-biology.


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## squarepeg

yep, and for the first time that i am aware of a potential explanation for why we are seeing lower levels of brood disease and less colony collapse in spite of the higher than 'threshold' infestation rates being reported by some of the contributors here.


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## Lauri

http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/...j2015186a.html

Thanks for the link.

Perhaps some _actual _insight. Kind of makes the lights go on, doesn't it.


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## Harley Craig

so this could explain why my biggest offender last yr for deformed wing went on to be my biggest producer this yr with no treatments?


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## Fusion_power

Should show this to Mike Bispham. His bees aren't surviving because of his excellent beekeeping and outstanding husbandry, they are surviving because he is good at breeding weak viruses to infect his bees.


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## lharder

Fusion_power said:


> Should show this to Mike Bispham. His bees aren't surviving because of his excellent beekeeping and outstanding husbandry, they are surviving because he is good at breeding weak viruses to infect his bees.


Its good husbandry to set the stage for this kind of success. A basic tenant of tf is that a hive ecosystem is fairly complex and that micro evolution plays a role in systems adapting to challenges. Ham fisted interventions are made in more or less ignorance in long term effect, probably reducing redundancy and system self reorganization.


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## Oldtimer

Has Mike got any bees left? Been uncharacteristically silent of late.


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> Has Mike got any bees left? Been uncharacteristically silent of late.


Ha Ha, cruel irony if he has met with problems. Hope not.


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## squarepeg

i think the study adds another dimension to the consideration to the so called 'bond' approach.

a school of thought sometimes posited is to treat only those colonies that reach an infestation threshold beyond which they are likely to collapse if left untreated. the idea is to save the colony long enough to requeen it with more proven genetics.

this strategy presumes the reason for failure is an inadequate expression of resistant traits due to the poor genetics of the queen/drones which can be overcome once the failed worker population is replaced post requeening with better genetics.

but if one considers the genetics of the mites and viruses and accepts there will be something less than 100% eradication of those mite and virus genetics post treatment, then the end result may be to perpetuate more fecund mites and more virulent viruses, i.e. the very ones with a history of bringing a colony to the point of collapse.

luckily for me most my losses occur during the cold of winter so that whatever mites and viruses that may have been present die along with the bees and don't get the chance to propagate.

also luckily for me is that i don't see much robbing with my bees and i'm able to keep a close watch on the hives and take action if needed should it come to that. 

my view has always been that all of us need to be responsible enough with our management so as to not allow our hives to become mite bombs to nearby bees. 

i have mentioned in previous posts that my strategy will be to euthanize a hive that has been weakened beyond the point of no return before robbing and spreading can occur, eliminating not only the bees that didn't have the right stuff, but also the mites and viruses that did.

the other part of allowing for natural deselection (bond) has to do with propagating replacement colonies from those which demonstrate success. in the context of this study it means that we may be propagating less fecund mites and less virulent viruses in the process as well.


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## biggraham610

I love this study, It is answering questions I had. I had a hive that was demoralized with DWV last fall. I let it go. It came out of winter with about a cantaloupe sized cluster, built fast, and it was my strongest producer. Signs of late season mite related issues are almost non existent, this hive will be going in a deep and a half jam packed with bees. Last year, they were down to 3-4 frames, and I wondered whether I should nuc em, I gave them 8 frames and a division board to kill the dead space. Same Queen, same bees. going in strong this year. G


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## 1102009

biggraham610 said:


> I love this study, It is answering questions I had. I had a hive that was demoralized with DWV last fall. I let it go. It came out of winter with about a cantaloupe sized cluster, built fast, and it was my strongest producer. Signs of late season mite related issues are almost non existent, this hive will be going in a deep and a half jam packed with bees. Last year, they were down to 3-4 frames, and I wondered whether I should nuc em, I gave them 8 frames and a division board to kill the dead space. Same Queen, same bees. going in strong this year. G


That encourages me to stay on my path....great info!



> squarepeg: my view has always been that all of us need to be responsible enough with our management so as to not allow our hives to become mite bombs to nearby bees.


And that`s the point.
Doesn`t matter if tf or not, always know about the conditions in your apiary. To go into the hive once a week is necessary for learning, I think. Up to fall.


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## squarepeg

biggraham610 said:


> It came out of winter with about a cantaloupe sized cluster, built fast, and it was my strongest producer. Signs of late season mite related issues are almost non existent, this hive will be going in a deep and a half jam packed with bees.....


sounds like a good candidate to get some queen cells from g!


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## deknow

....except that last year it was a good candidate to treat, feed, and bust up for nucs.


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## squarepeg

.... yes, but now it's an 'overcomer' and may be g's 'best prospect' for propagation going forward assuming it survives winter. we all have to start somewhere....


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## Oldtimer

Maybe. I heard of these scenarios then got excited when at last it happened to me. I had a hive (small cell treatment free) collapse from mites, when I checked it all brood dead and a fistful of bees. Was sure it was toast but true to the bond method I was using at the time I left it. Went back later, to my surprise it was still tiny but appeared to have thrown off the mites, had healthy brood and was recovering. 

I actually wrote the whole thing up in a Beesource post way back somewhere, I thought that finally my bees were cracking it and I had a survivor breeder queen in my hands.

After a time of recovery the hive again started going downhill again and in a few months was properly dead. 

My hypothesis is that the hive initially was badly infested with varroa, which entered the brood cells in big enough numbers to kill all the larvae, every last one. The bees were too weakened to do much of a clean up so the varroa themselves died in the capped cells. Eventually though, with a reduced varroa load the hive began to recover. But still had some residual mites and next time around the hive that had already been through trauma plus likely had quite a virus load, perished.

My thoughts are that this experience was caused more by mechanical means than by actual mite resistance on behalf of the bees. In the US where there are bees with a degree of mite resistance, the same scenario could end up with the total recovery of a hive, as per BG's experience. I don't believe though that it has to be necessary for a hive to go through such a near death experience to prove itself, in fact getting into that situation shows it is not an ideal hive from a commercial perspective anyhow.


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## squarepeg

Oldtimer said:


> I don't believe though that it has to be necessary for a hive to go through such a near death experience to prove itself, in fact getting into that situation shows it is not an ideal hive from a commercial perspective anyhow.


agreed ot. probably better to cull those that get to 'near death' anyway, especially if it is late in the season and they have no chance to overwinter. i've only found myself in that situation on one occasion a few november's ago and i decided to just shake them out. i decided later it would have been better to have put them in the freezer instead and eliminated the possibility of those bees (and mites and viruses) drifting back into the other hives.


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## Lauri

http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2015186a.html

This study has actually _changed_ my mind somewhat about treating so quickly when I see mites. I'm still not willing to let a colony get so infested, mites spread throughout my yard and surrounding areas, but the genetics of a colony that lives with mite loads and still has good health with no spotty brood patterns or dwindling does have it's place in the genetic gene pool.
I knew that already, but this study gives me a much higher understanding of exactly WHY.

I have one 3-4 year old colony in particular like that, I've not grafted from because they don't control the mite population on their own near as well ad my other hives. (Cedar log cut out) But they are a big strong productive and healthy colony otherwise and most certainly can at least wait until late fall for a single annual OAV treatment with no negative consequence for delayed mite knock down. 

Here's info on that colony I collected a few years ago out of a natural hive in a old growth cedar tree. Comb was ancient and dark, so the tree had hosted bees for quite some years. (Cut down during a logging operation)

Here's the video of the extraction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1u1PMZsDtA

We wore our full suits expecting the bees to be quite ticked with the chainsaw work. Although the bees collected on the back of our necks when we were standing in front of the old entrance location, they were surprisingly gentle.
I have not grafted from yet, but they've been a super colony. Large numbers, conservative with their stores, healthy, gentle, great producers. They do NOT control mite numbers well on their own though, although when mite numbers are high, they do extremely well with virtually no DWV issues , no spotty brood patterns or dwindling. I treat them for mites once a year in late summer because I don't believe in allowing mite populations to grow unchecked and spread to surrounding areas.

I may graft from them this next season. I planned to do so the last 2 years for some test daughters, but never got around to digging through the monster colony. (3-4 deeps + supers) After over wintering 3 times or more in great shape, I think next spring it will be time to take a closer look at this queen. (Although she has likely been surperceded by now)

I take several deep frames of honey from this hive each year after the main flow, in spite of the competition for natural resources with my other hives. My carrying capacity is at the limit, yet this hive always produces with a 'break your back' heft check.





































Taking into consideration the difference in virus strains recently explained in the study, it does give me a different overall outlook.

I am almost unwilling to mention this study has changed my mind about being so quick to treat, because some inexperienced folks will take it as simply 'treatment free is the way to go'. And look no further as to the details of the experience necessary to determine likely candidates and circumstances for venturing into a reduced treatment situation.
I've closely monitored this large colony for three years now. It was collected in a remote area in the country with no beekeepers in the vicinity.

_It's NOT a newly purchased nuc with no known history._


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## BWrangler

Hi Guys

I've left quite a trail of links in this thread. Unfortunately, they no longer work as I've moved the site and it has a new address. I'd edit them. But for some reason can't. So, I'll make note of it here.

The end of the url or page name is still the same. The host should be changed from 

bnatural.x10host.com/same page name the same

to

bwrangler.litarium.com/same page name the same


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## jwcarlson

BWrangler said:


> I'd edit them. But for some reason can't.


You only have 24 hours to edit, I think. Then it locks.


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## Oldtimer

Neanderthalls 

Just kiddin ya BW!


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## jwcarlson

Barry said:


> Here is my 20 hour mite drop on my small cell hive. :scratch:


How are these feral, small cell bees doing now, Barry?


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## squarepeg

jwcarlson said:


> How are these feral, small cell bees doing now, Barry?





Barry said:


> Feral bees? Certainly plenty of unmanaged bees in cavities other than Langstroth hives. Most cutouts I do are first year bees. A few have nests that have been there for several years, but no guarantee the bees are the original bees.


feral?

you've made clear your opinion of treatment free beekeeping in previous posts jw. if you must interject here on the subforum at least try shoot for a little accuracy.

as of barry's last report on this colony he planned to knock down the mites with oa and was looking to replace the genetics.


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