# HITS method of mite control



## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I expect that most of us have heard of the ‘Bond’ or ‘Live and Let Die’ method of mite resistance selection.
I would like to propose a new term for a different one. I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method. Going forward, I will try to use this term when responding to those who make statements such as ‘I don’t see mites, I don’t test for ‘em and they aren’t a problem’.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

Where's the like button?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Andrew Dewey said:


> Where's the like button?


1 user agrees


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## dphillipm (Mar 27, 2013)

Mr. bush doesn't agree.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

I know Mike doesn't agree. And he puts his health certificates up for all to see... His book(s), web site and participation on BeeSource and other internet bee sites (Dee's Organic Beekeepers List and BeeMaster that I know of) have helped many, many people. Gotta wonder, doesn't he run many more colonies than the 23 that were inspected in 2012?

It seems to me the main thrust of HITS is not recognizing that mite infestation exacerbates colony loss in a variety of ways. It seems problematic to say "The colony died of X" when X might not have been a problem for the colony had Varroa not also been present.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

dphillipm said:


> Mr. bush doesn't agree.


I find it surprising that ol' W even has an opinion on the subject.......


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Andrew Dewey said:


> It seems problematic to say "The colony died of X" when X might not have been a problem for the colony had Varroa not also been present.


Here’s one analogy.
I’m in an auto accident and hurt my arm. Friends tell me to get it x-rayed. Nope, says I…it ain’t broke….I’ve broken bones before, so I can tell. A couple of weeks later it is even more swollen and painful. Another week passes and I start running a fever. Must just be the flu….darn that arm is swollen and painful. Gangrene? No way….that arm ain’t broke. A week later I die in bed. They do an autopsy and discover fluid in my lungs. Cause of death….pneumonia.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

I tend to think the Varroa mite problem has echoes in the introduction of rabbits in Australia in 1859. At the time, their initial response was to do nothing about them. 

I believe those who choose to ignore varroa mites or insist they're not "really" a problem for honey bees are paving the way for a similar outcome.


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

Sure, they are a problem, probably the biggest one. And one without an effective solution. I'd rather work on the things I can control than worry about the things I can't. Bees are going to die either way.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

But varroa can be controlled. There are all manner of methods, from strong chemicals to specialized hive furniture and everything in between.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I think HITS applies where mites are an issue. I think evidence provided by Mr. Bush points to him not really having a mite issue which I bet he would address if he had in some manner.


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

Unfortunately, mite treatments or not, the viruses transmitted by Varroa have found their way into native pollinators. Pathogen spillover.

We need to beat the mites and their viruses.


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## dnichols (May 28, 2012)

It is difficult to face the fact that we cannot beat the evil Varroa the bees need to. Spraying, applying, misting, fogging only prolongs the inevitable. Selection is the only true cure. The problem is as soon as hygenic behavior is selected properly it gets watered down by less hygenic genetics via open mating. 

Unfortunately the process of biological selection takes time and sacrafices and unfortunately humans don't like to wait or sacrifice


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Natural history has shown us that biological selection might just as easily choose the mites over the bees. That kind of thing has happened countless times in geological history.

So much of apis mellifera's development has been directed by humans - its distribution over the world, the creation of so many of its subspecies. It's really our "fault" so to speak that honey bees as we know them even exist in the Americas for instance; likewise, it's our "fault" as it were that varroa has ended up in all these places. The "natural" component to the relationship between bees and varroa, at least in the New World, is already well out the window.


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

> But varroa can be controlled. There are all manner of methods, from strong chemicals to specialized hive furniture and everything in between.


When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating. I really don't care about natural, I care about what gives the most reward for the least effort. 

Treat=bees dying anyway, possibly making stronger mites and weak bees.

Don't treat= bees die anyway, possible making stronger bees.

Head in sand? maybe, but Forum rules won't let me say where I think pro treatment people have their heads stuck.


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## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

Aerindel said:


> When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating. I really don't care about natural, I care about what gives the most reward for the least effort.


This past winter my losses were 0%. Estimated average losses for my local club....40%. Am I *that* much better of a beekeeper. No way. I treat. Most all of the losses were the typical booming hives in August-September, then small dead clusters with plenty of honey.

It sure is good bees aren't cute. Don't construe this as me saying my bees are my pets because they're not, but imagine saying, "I'm not treating my dog for heartworm, I'll let him die and then keep buying dogs trying to find one that's able to fight it off."

I really liked one of Randy Oliver's recent articles in which he said, and of course rightly so, that the ability of a colony to keep mite counts low is all in the the genetics and they're all coming from the queen. It's daft (my word, not his) to sacrifice all those workers and their working colony because the genetics of the queen are subpar. Treat the hive and replace the queen. Keep monitoring. Lather, rinse, repeat until you find those great queens.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

What do the pro-treatment guys have to say about a 30% annual loss of bees? Lets have the opinion of those running over 100 hives only. John


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Well first of all a "loss" is a pretty loosely defined term but if the definition refers to the total hives lost in a spring to spring year the 30% figure is actually quite manageable assuming that the other 70% are strong hives. With that scenario you could easily make increase if you wanted.


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## beehonest (Nov 3, 2011)

I like what one guy said on here. Beekeeping vs beehaving. Beekeeping you obtain bees and watch after them feed them and treat them when needed and keep them alive. Beehaving you obtain bees and they sit in a hive and you have them till they get sick and die, which they will, and then obtain more bees repeat.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Dan , I like it, a well chosen moniker.

Crazy roland


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beehonest said:


> I like what one guy said on here. Beekeeping vs beehaving. Beekeeping you obtain bees and watch after them feed them and treat them when needed and keep them alive. Beehaving you obtain bees and they sit in a hive and you have them till they get sick and die, which they will, and then obtain more bees repeat.


Those are not the only two options. There are, in fact, beekeepers who don't treat, and who keep bees alive. There are beekeepers who treat and whose bees die.

It requires a certain Head in The Sand attitude to ignore these facts.

Or so it seems to me.


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## beehonest (Nov 3, 2011)

My head is in the hive seeing whats happening not in the sand. What ever floats your boat I just get tired of having treatment free crammed down my throat.


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## Joseph Clemens (Feb 12, 2005)

"Treatment Free"? I am certainly not treatment free, I graft larvae to grow queens. I manipulate frames and combs to facilitate growing and dividing colonies, to produce more colonies. I sometimes feed sugar syrup, and pollen substitute. I frequently open hives and examine their combs to determine how they are doing. I have and sometimes still do, used _Bt _to help control wax moths. I sometimes feed copper gluconate as a nutritional supplement. I've even been known to swap combs from one hive of bees to another, and vice versa. I use some plastic foundation, some beeswax foundation, and some without any foundation at all. Some have horizontal wires, some crossed wires, and some fishing line; others with no supplemental support at all. And I could probably go on for much longer, just describing the many different "treatments" I provide my bees, to help get them to perform as I'd like.

I have not, as yet, resorted to any treatments that are usually referred to as, "hard chemicals". However, I do lose colonies all the time, every time someone comes to pick up a nuc or queen to start their own colonies with, or requeen one.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Not treating can't "make stronger bees". If your bees have a genetic hygiene trait, they have it. If they don't, they're not going to somehow develop that gene spontaneously because you let them die a long, slow, miserable death. The idea that not treating leads to "stronger bees" is an illusion, based on a misunderstanding of how evolution works.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Fair point melliferal, but most of it lies on finding a hive that does survive, then base your stock off them, which may bottleneck them but whatever floats your boat right. The way I look at it, treated or not, people select for their best hives, and even in a treatment program, you're strongest hives are probably that way because they're more mite resistant so to blindly say treating is going backwards is not very accurate. That being said, by treating you may keep a lot of dogs around that dilute the gene pool as far as resistance goes, but at least you're keeping some diversity around.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beehonest said:


> My head is in the hive seeing whats happening not in the sand. What ever floats your boat I just get tired of having treatment free crammed down my throat.


I understand, but bear in mind that treatment free beekeepers are a minority among beekeepers, and they probably get tired of being addressed as if they were idiots who have no rational basis for their beliefs. Witness this thread, whose only purpose appears to be to denigrate those who do not share the beliefs of the majority.

I don't deny that there are foolish and shallow people who take a simplistic view of treatment free beekeeping, and they are even more annoying to treatment free beekeepers than they are to you, for reasons that should become obvious with a moment's thought. But there are foolish and shallow people on the other side of the fence as well, who think all you have to do is hang some strips in your hives, dump in the antibiotics, and all will be well forever.

Of course there are successful beekeepers on both sides of the fence, and I certainly don't automatically think that those who treat are foolish. But I do think that trying to use bug poison to kill bugs on bugs is not a practice that can be sustained forever. The process is inherently damaging to the bugs we want, and the bugs we don't want seem to rapidly develop resistance to each new bug poison. I think most intelligent folks can see the difficulty there. I doubt anyone really likes the treatment treadmill, but many can't risk stepping off. They have families to support with those bees, and they know that developing resistant bees is a process fraught with death and destruction. When the Bee Weaver company started their program to breed resistance to varroa, they began with 1000 hives and lost most of them over the first winter. But now, many years later, they'll sell you a queen that at least in some areas, will produce a colony that can survive mites without treatment. These are not yet perfect bees, but denying that such bees exist is a pretty fair example of Head-in-Sanditis.


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

> If they don't, they're not going to somehow develop that gene spontaneously because you let them die a long, slow, miserable death


No they aren't, thats the point. You let bees with bad genes die. 

Its just like playing poker. You keep the cards you want, you trade in the ones you don't. You have no control over what the new cards will be but there is always a chance that it will be better, and as long as you hang onto the best cards every time and only discard the low value cards you will eventually get a full house.

A treatment free program without any breeding program will never lead to stronger bees, but it least it won't lead to stronger mites.

Treating is like playing poker blind and bluffing every time. If the other players (mites) have crappy hands then you will win, if they have a good hand, you lose. Over time the bad players run out of money and stop playing and only the good players are left and because you never look at your cards you never become a better player. Eventually you will end up at a table facing against all the best players and they will clean you out.

Now, if treatments where like a gun and you could shoot and kill the other players any time you started losing it wouldn't matter but until the come up with a treatment that kills 100% of mites you can't do this.

I can't believe I have to try and explain this, haven't we seen every single species that we use a less than 100% effective treatment on grow stronger!? Have you never read a book on the history of parasites or disease in your life?! Why is it that Penicillin and quinine are no longer used even though at one time they where miracle drugs?

Don't they teach evolution in school anymore? Heck in my biology class we created DDT resistant fruit flies in only a couple of months! We went from 90% effectiveness to less than 1% by doing nothing but treating them and letting the survivors breed. I'm sure thousands of other classes have preformed the same basic experiment.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Not treating can't "make stronger bees". If your bees have a genetic hygiene trait, they have it. If they don't, they're not going to somehow develop that gene spontaneously because you let them die a long, slow, miserable death. The idea that not treating leads to "stronger bees" is an illusion, based on a misunderstanding of how evolution works.


You're misunderstanding the basic idea. No one with any sense believes that bees will magically develop desirable traits. The idea is that by treating, you prop up undesirable genetics in the bees, and develop resistance in the mites. By not treating you expose bees to selective pressure; the weak bees die (or are requeened with genetics from survivor colonies) and you do not expose the mites to the selective pressure of acaricides, so they do not develop greater resistance. 

You breed from your best bees. Where do you think hygienic traits came from? The genes were in the pool, but the line had to be developed by someone who applied some sort of selective process to the bees.

This is basic animal husbandry; human beings have used the process for thousands of years, long before Darwin. The great thing about bees, compared to other livestock, is their high reproductive rate. This means that selective breeding of bees is a much faster process than, say, selective breeding of horses.

But if you treat, you will find it more difficult to breed for these desirable traits, because the treatment can mask the response of the colony to varroa pressure. Some scientists have chosen to breed for certain marker behaviors, but this is a somewhat artificial approach. The most direct approach to breeding for survivability is to select for survival, not for single traits such as brood removal or hygienic grooming. In my admittedly inexperienced opinion, true survivability will probably turn out to be a cluster of anti-varroa behaviors.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Nowhere in my definition of HITS is treatment or treatment free mentioned. Knowing the enemy is my point. The importance of understanding the magnitude of damage caused by varroa and recognizing the level of infestation seem to have been lost in many circles.
Survival is only one measure of success. An important one, to be sure. A heavily parasitized colony of bees may survive from season to season but no matter what else, its vigor and health are severely challenged.


Aerindel said:


> When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating.





jmgi said:


> What do the pro-treatment guys have to say about a 30% annual loss of bees? Lets have the opinion of those running over 100 hives only. John


I treat…but don’t consider myself ‘pro treatement’. I believe others should choose their individual path. But….I am troubled by the pro ignorance group. Those who suggest that if the problem is ignored…..it will disappear. Way too oversimplistic, in my opinion.
I hate using percentages. I don’t think I have enough hives for those types of measures to carry any real significance. Having said that….for those who insist….15% is pretty close to my year to year losses. But like many backyard beekeepers I am able to open and personally inspect every hive several times each season. If I ran 5000 hives that wouldn’t be possible…and surely my failures would go up. If I had 10 hives in my backyard, I would expect 0% if I teated for mites and around 30% if I didn’t. In addition to survival…I believe that if I didn’t treat, my honey production would fall substantially and the overall health of every hive would decline. I’ve run a tf yard and that is what I saw.


Roland said:


> Dan , I like it, a well chosen moniker.


Thanks Roland.


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## beehonest (Nov 3, 2011)

Rhaldridge I am not necissarily pro treatment. I observe and treat when needed, just like I do with my children and pets. I think I and beemandan are on the same page. As beekeepers we are trying to keep them around. When we see a problem and do nothing and just let them die, that is not benificial to them or us. Those same bees if treated can get over thier sickness just as me or you and still be around. I am not saying by any means to just routinly treat. I am saying when theres a problem do what you can to fix it, help them don't let them die a cruel death.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Aerindel said:


> No they aren't, thats the point. You let bees with bad genes die.
> 
> Its just like playing poker. You keep the cards you want, you trade in the ones you don't. You have no control over what the new cards will be but there is always a chance that it will be better, and as long as you hang onto the best cards every time and only discard the low value cards you will eventually get a full house.
> 
> ...


Except nature isn't a closed system. In a lab, you can ensure all of a breeding population is treated, and therefore know for certain that only the resistant ones have survived and begun to breed. You can't do that with bees - there's no way to ensure the entire breeding population has been lethally infested with mites. But with bees, even that is only _half_ the problem.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> You're misunderstanding the basic idea. No one with any sense believes that bees will magically develop desirable traits. The idea is that by treating, you prop up undesirable genetics in the bees, and develop resistance in the mites. By not treating you expose bees to selective pressure; the weak bees die (or are requeened with genetics from survivor colonies) and you do not expose the mites to the selective pressure of acaricides, so they do not develop greater resistance.


There are a few problems with this. Chief among them is that hands-off beekeeping does not involve selective breeding. That's what I'm referring to as the illusion. Bees aren't like, say, single livestock animals - like cows. You don't let the cow with the undesirable trait breed; the cow gets sick, it dies, it's genes stop there - period. 

Simply letting unresistant colonies die isn't nearly the same thing as selection. It can't be, for the simple fact that you're not actively culling unresistant stock or removing it from the breeding population. "Letting them die" means that while you're deliberately looking the other way waiting for them to choke, they're as busy as bees ever are - swarming as much as possible, casting as many drones as they can out into the wind. Therefore, you are not in any way concentrating the mite-hygienic gene in your local breeding population; it will remain effectively status quo. There is a _small_ change over time; but it's not large enough for you to notice, and it's not dependent on what you're doing - any more than it is dependent on what treated bees are doing. And don't forget that all this time, the mites as well will be changing to be able to survive and possibly thrive despite "mite-hygienic" behavior. There's a reason noticeable species-wide evolution tends to deal in thousands-to-millions-of-years timescales.

Even making splits from your apparently-coping stock isn't actually doing the job. Remember that all your workers are only half-sisters; if the hygiene trait came to your queen via drone, a large quantity of your eggs are actually _not_ hygienic, and if one of those eggs becomes the new hive's queen - congrats, you have a non-resistant colony; but you won't know it, because it came from a resistant colony and therefore contains little to no mites, lending the illusion that it's resistant. And given the treatment-free philosophy of not even bothering to check because "the bees will work it out on their own", you'll _never_ know - until in a couple of years when they finally succumb. And in that time how many swarms have they cast? How many splits or nucs did you make?

Natural selection takes eras. Anything you do to speed up that process is unnatural selection. Which is perfectly fine; but why are you making all those colonies suffer needlessly? VSH queens are available. Heck, they're even available in your favorite flavor, if like me you prefer Carniolans over Italians or (inexplicably) vice-versa? If you really want to make a short-term impact on the breeding stock you're contributing to your area, why not buy some of these queens that are _observed_ laying VSH bees, and re-queen infested colonies with them? It will save you a whole lot of time and an immeasurable quantity of *life* that would otherwise be condemned to misery and empty death.

ETA: For what it's worth, hygienic traits were not discovered and cultivated by people leaving beehives to sit and then simply holding onto and splitting the hives that didn't die. People _had_ been doing that, for decades. They even made packages out of these bees and had the audacity to advertise them as "mite resistant", based on nothing but a chain of pure assumption.

Varroa Sensitive Hygiene, and other hygienic behaviors as developed by Dr. Spivak for instance in Minnesota, were actual _behaviors_, and were cultivated by actually getting into the colonies, and watching what the bees were doing from hour to hour, day to day. VSH bees aren't merely "resistant" to mites or somehow just so manly-hardy that they thrive strongly despite mites just hanging off them; bees can't "resist" mites any more than humans can develop a "resistance" to dog bites. VSH bees were observed in the act of opening and removing mite-infested capped brood, and then several series of controlled experiments were conducted in order to discover whether this behavior is a genetic trait. When it was, this led to a controlled breeding experiment, which is essentially still ongoing, and involved such unnatural processes as artificial insemination. VSH could never have been cultivated by the Bond method - it would never have even been discovered, not in our lifetimes.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

A big, bodacious colony of bees in the spring will likely be a seriously infested colony in the fall.

A large cluster of bees going into winter is no assurance of survival if they are heavily parasitized.

A lack of visible DWV isn’t an indication that your bees aren’t infested.

An empty hive at winter’s end is much more likely a result of varroa collapse than an abscond.

A small cluster of dead bees in an overwintered hive may appear to be starvation or exposure but the underlying reason that the cluster was small and lacked the vigor to survive is probably varroa.

Collapse by every other cause is influenced by varroa.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

I think the HITS rant is a direct insult to a large body of Beeks and am surprised that it is allowed.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

I believe that Brother Adam said you really need around 100hives to make any progress on breeding because of open mating etc. I should also point out that if you do manage to breed resistant bees you may not like the result if you are not carefully selecting. Resistance could come in the form of agressivness or increased swarming or smaller populations that produce less honey etc.

In any case I think beemandan's point was varroa is a problem whether you treat or not and whether you bother to look or not.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

I think for those who successfully have kept there colonies without miticides should be called MITP. (Money in the Pocket.) Maybe not as catchy but better on the bottom line.

Workin on your genetics toward coexistence is the logical choice for beekeepers now and the future generations of beekeepers. 

Yes I see mites. I saw 3 in inspections yesterday. Sure keeping your head in the sand is dumb, but breeding for tougher mites using treatments is pretty..........ya.

Sure varroa is a problem but the solution is clear and chemicals natural or not are not the long term answer.

Anyone on here who thinks you can beat or out treat a force of nature like varroa is two sandwiches short of a picnic. You have to work with it, understand it, and use the bees natural tendencies to fight against it. Making a better bee. 

Out of 57 colonies this winter (treatment free since 2004) I lost 5. 
3 were five frame nucs, 2 were hives. Due to splitting I am up to 74 already. 

Using our honeybees best defense against them "artificial swarming".

We all have a choice some will stick there (HITS) some will slow down progress treating, and others lusby, bush, Webster, Williams, and others will pave a way to a future where varroa are no longer a major concern.

(Don't get me wrong some of my best friends treat.) But who always agrees with there friends 100% of the time right?


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

HITS for years is short term for a winter horse show circuit ...Horse Shows in the SUN ...this is a totally new meaning but seemingly a good one.

In human and pet medicine parasitic vectors can be controlled by the HITS method but it happens when the parasite is no longer in balance with the host and the host population dies off to the point that the parasite has no host to keep it going. Then the parasite population does diminish, the host population starts to thrive and the cycle starts again. I guess it depends where in this ongoing cycle you step in, and whether you are siding with the host or the parasite, as to whether you think HITS is working or not

I am new to bee keeping...but to my mind the difficulty is that the host and parasites are both insects so what kills one tends to kill the other and that makes things a bit tricky...especially when their life cycles are so closely aligned It is further complicated when one wants to harvest honey for medicinal and food uses so contamination is also an issue.

It was mentioned that they don'y have varroa (and the associated virus) in some areas. Where did this problem start? What are the geographical boundaries of its distribution?

Can environmental parameters such as temperature, CO2 levels etc be manipulated to favour bees over mites or is the mite such a good parasite that the parameters are closely aligned?


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

julysun said:


> I think the HITS rant is a direct insult to a large body of Beeks and am surprised that it is allowed.


Nah, it's fine. Barry allows rants from the other side of the fence, as long as it's civil, and those rants insult a much larger body of beeks.

You can't take this stuff personally, even when it's borderline ad hominem. And I can almost guarantee that if you got the worst ranters in a room together, they'd be a lot more polite than they may seem to be on this forum. The medium encourages conflict.

Anyway, even when the message is insulting, you can still make reasoned arguments against it.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Kamon Reynolds said:


> I think for those who successfully have kept there colonies without miticides should be called MITP. (Money in the Pocket.) Maybe not as catchy but better on the bottom line.
> 
> Workin on your genetics toward coexistence is the logical choice for beekeepers now and the future generations of beekeepers.
> 
> ...


I don't think anyone who treats has an eye toward eradicating mites. I think most of us know it can never be done.

How do we know this? Because we've BTDT. Varroa mites are to bees what ****roaches are to us - and as we all know, there's just no killing ****roaches. That's why pest control companies are called pest _control_ companies, and not pest eradication companies. The fact is, although roaches can't be completely got rid of, they can be controlled to the point where they're not an issue anymore. They're definitely there, but they're not active or populous enough to spread disease.

The alternative is to let roaches flood the house and only allow people who don't get sick to breed, and...continue to live in a veritable bath of roaches. Yay.

Now of course, just like with mites, there's natural methods of treatment if chemicals bother you. They shouldn't - technically everything in the world is a chemical - but if you're concerned about chemicals that may be caustic or toxic to humans, there's chemicals that aren't. There's also mechanical treatments - for instance, roaches can be controlled by diatomacious earth. Any roach (or any insect for that matter) that walks through diatomacious earth _will_ die, there's no avoiding it and there's no such thing as developing a resistance because its method of action is purely mechanical (can a person "resist" dying from hypovolemia?). There are such mechanical treatments available for bees as well, that mites simply can't resist or "become stronger" from as long as they're varroa mites.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Varroa Sensitive Hygiene, and other hygienic behaviors as developed by Dr. Spivak for instance in Minnesota, were actual _behaviors_, and were cultivated by actually getting into the colonies, and watching what the bees were doing from hour to hour, day to day. VSH bees aren't merely "resistant" to mites or somehow just so manly-hardy that they thrive strongly despite mites just hanging off them; bees can't "resist" mites any more than humans can develop a "resistance" to dog bites. VSH bees were observed in the act of opening and removing mite-infested capped brood, and then several series of controlled experiments were conducted in order to discover whether this behavior is a genetic trait.


The problem with this approach is that it assumes that there is a single genetic trait that is a silver bullet against varroa. You can order VSH queens, it's true, but here on this forum you can find mention of beekeepers who used these queens and still had colonies killed by mites. These traits are *assumed* to be markers for survival, and they are chosen for development because they are easy to assess from observation. In a way, it's like looking for the car keys under the streetlight, when you're not really sure you dropped them there. I'm not saying these are bad bees, they are certainly a step in the right direction, but they are not a panacea.

By the way, the favorite analogy used by those who think you can't breed resistance to varroa is "you can't breed sheep that are resistant to wolves." There's an interesting video here about a process that resulted in resistant bees, a process which did not involve the procedures you refer to above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQhwc3Rt-g0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cbCZOCyD-c




melliferal said:


> When it was, this led to a controlled breeding experiment, which is essentially still ongoing, and involved such unnatural processes as artificial insemination. VSH could never have been cultivated by the Bond method - it would never have even been discovered, not in our lifetimes.


Well, I imagine that's true, but as these bees have not proven to be a panacea, that is something of an irrelevancy. In any case, it isn't yet feasible for beekeepers to II all their stock, so as soon as that VSH queen is used for an open mated queen production operation, or superceded or you split, the resulting colony is no longer descended from controlled genetics.

What do you say to beekeepers who claim that their bees no longer die from mite pressure, and that this was due to letting inferior genetics die out and breeding from survivor colonies? Do you think they're all lying?

In particular, I like the example of Tim Ives, who has about 150 hives in northern Indiana and does not treat. He told me that when he first began keeping bees, about 12 years ago, he used packages, and suffered anywhere from 50 to 90 percent losses every winter. A few years in, he started collecting local swarms, and splitting from the best of these. His losses over the last few years have averaged about 8 percent. He still doesn't treat and he still doesn't feed, same as he did when he had those huge losses. I'm scratching my head trying to think of some explanation other than a change in genetics for his success.

The great thing about bees from the viewpoint of animal husbandry is their very high reproductive rate. There's nothing wrong with buying in resistant stock; I've already done so, and this is my first year. But the sovereign indicator of survivor stock is survival.

We'll see.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Varroa mites are to bees what ****roaches are to us.


Ah, no. Unless you've got ****roaches the size of small dogs that hang on you from birth and suck your blood.

In which case, don't invite me over.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

rhaldridge said:


> Athe size of small dogs that hang on you from birth and suck your blood.


Not to put too fine a point on it...but....they hang onto bees before they are born...kinda like rat sized ticks on a fetus.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

So how do pro-miticide users view the successes of beekeepers like Kent Williams, Kirk Webster, Michael Bush, and Dee Lusby just to name a few. 

Some elaborate hoax? They got lucky? It's too much work? It takes to much management?

When it is the commercial beekeepers who are taking the hardest hits (by far) and using miticides. "I" would be rethinking my beekeeping management paradigm.

No matter what "size" the mite.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

> I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method. Going forward

I'd like to propose the same term for people who think that continuing to disrupt the ecology of the hive, continuing to contaminate the entire world beeswax supply with poisons and continuing to perpetuate bees whose genes are weakening the species will result in the salvation of beekeeping... the name fits perfectly...

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoursimplesteps.htm
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033188
http://www.beeuntoothers.com/index.php/beekeeping/gilliam-archives


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Ya and while were at it we should stop taking antibiotics and medications because we are breeding weaker and weaker humans... Lets face it, you can argue that chemicals are contrary to ecology etc, and you'd be right, but so is pretty much every human activity. Heck organic farming is contrary to the natural ecology of the field, but in my opinion it's better than foraging for food.

Now don't get me wrong, I try to avoid as many chemicals as possible in the field and the hive, but I will treat when needed, and with so called "soft" chemicals as much as possible. I'm sorry though I don't want feral bees, I want fat happy overly productive bees I can rob from.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

Michael Bush said:


> > I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method. Going forward
> 
> I'd like to propose the same term for people who think that continuing to disrupt the ecology of the hive, continuing to contaminate the entire world beeswax supply with poisons and continuing to perpetuate bees whose genes are weakening the species will result in the salvation of beekeeping... the name fits perfectly...
> 
> ...



:thumbsup:


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> The problem with this approach is that it assumes that there is a single genetic trait that is a silver bullet against varroa. You can order VSH queens, it's true, but here on this forum you can find mention of beekeepers who used these queens and still had colonies killed by mites. These traits are *assumed* to be markers for survival, and they are chosen for development because they are easy to assess from observation. In a way, it's like looking for the car keys under the streetlight, when you're not really sure you dropped them there. I'm not saying these are bad bees, they are certainly a step in the right direction, but they are not a panacea.


But again, most of us have come to understand as I pointed out that eradication is not a viable goal, and so it doesn't need to be a complete panacea. It doesn't need to destroy 100% of the mites. Any method merely needs to reduce them to manageable levels.



rhaldridge said:


> By the way, the favorite analogy used by those who think you can't breed resistance to varroa is "you can't breed sheep that are resistant to wolves." There's an interesting video here about a process that resulted in resistant bees, a process which did not involve the procedures you refer to above.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQhwc3Rt-g0
> 
> ...


This is exactly what non-treaters face. The so-called "mite resistant" colonies they claim to be selecting for, although they're really acquiring them by chance, can become non-mite-resistant at any moment due to a swarm or a supercedure. What's saved in the meantime by queening immediately with a known-VSH bee rather than waiting for a superqueen to accidentally bumble into your hives are generations and generations of bees that won't be suffering under a mite infestation while you wait for them to slowly and agonizingly "die out naturally".



rhaldridge said:


> What do you say to beekeepers who claim that their bees no longer die from mite pressure, and that this was due to letting inferior genetics die out and breeding from survivor colonies? Do you think they're all lying?


Absolutely not; I think every single one of them honestly believes that's what's happened. I don't believe treatment-free beekeepers are charlatans.

What I do believe, however, is that they're making an assumption they simply have no actual evidence for, which they actually _cannot_ have evidence for, and which further is actually _unlikely_ to be true because bees kept out in the world simply can't be genetically controlled in that way - certainly not to the levels claimed by some (one other beekeeper I've read either in this forum or another has claimed to have personally communicated with "thousands" of non-treating beekeepers who evidently never lose ANY colonies "to mites"). There can be any number of reasons a given hive doesn't die over the winter, even a mite infested one - perhaps the infestation is not serious enough to break them at that point in time. Perhaps the colony happens to have little to no mites at all purely by chance, or due to factors outside the bees' genetics. Perhaps in their regions there happens to be a pathogen which kills out or controls mites - awesome! Perhaps weather is a factor. Perhaps residual pesticide traces in the wax of the brood cells can be at a level for the time being lethal to mites but not to the bees. Perhaps a particular strain of mites developed a natural genetic mutation which is killing them off or causing them not to properly incubate. Perhaps only a couple of colonies have hygienic behavior, and the drift of some of the workers to other hives has resulted in those hives being cleaned out temporarily, but not becoming factually "mite resistant". I could go on and on; really there's a multitude of reasons why a person could be having great luck with colonies that aren't dying over the winter. There are ways to test for many of them; but unfortunately that never happens with treatment-free beekeepers. They decide pre-emptively that they've genetically cleansed their stock because that's what they intended to do and they collected no evidence to suggest _otherwise_ because they don't see the need to collect such evidence, and anyway the result is just as good so it's all the same to them. The term is "confirmation bias".

Varroa mites first came to the US some 30 to 40 years ago and they hit _hard_. There have been treatment-free beekeepers even since then, and that method has _not_ resulted in a generally-resistant stock in all that time. If their method really worked without question, everybody would be doing it. It's not exactly like Checkmite+ has this huge lobby among beekeeping associations and is trying to repress the truth about chemical-free beekeeping. The fact is, most beekeepers have just come to accept mites as there. Like drought or small hive beetle, you help your bees deal with them. Some choose chemicals, some choose IPM. Some choose a combination.

Some choose to ignore them. It's certainly your prerogative to do so - don't get me wrong at all; it's not like I can tell you what to do and I wouldn't care to try. You could say it works for you, that your hives are just uber-colonies that are so hardy that they're practically ready to conquer the Earth and enslave mankind, well how can I say any different? I haven't been to your apiary and anyway, I want your bees to survive so it's all good. But if you say it works for you BECAUSE X, Y, and Z, and there's logical or factual problems with that argument, those problems need to be pointed out.



rhaldridge said:


> In particular, I like the example of Tim Ives, who has about 150 hives in northern Indiana and does not treat. He told me that when he first began keeping bees, about 12 years ago, he used packages, and suffered anywhere from 50 to 90 percent losses every winter. A few years in, he started collecting local swarms, and splitting from the best of these. His losses over the last few years have averaged about 8 percent. He still doesn't treat and he still doesn't feed, same as he did when he had those huge losses. I'm scratching my head trying to think of some explanation other than a change in genetics for his success.


You're finding it difficult to think of reasons why a beekeeper had significant losses when he first began, and experienced decreased losses over time? A little imagination yields a few possibilities. You say, likely because he told you, that the "only" thing he's done differently after all those years was switch from packages to swarms, am I right? And I don't doubt for a moment that he wasn't trying to deceive you when he said that. But we can't really know that's objectively true, and it's _extremely_ unlikely that literally nothing else about his beekeeping has changed, isn't it? It's that confirmation bias thing again. His beekeeping seemed to improve after he switched from packages to swarms, so the connection got made and the significance of that change becomes petrified in his memory; whereas other changes that didn't immediately seem to have an effect - changing a brand of paint, changing the source of wax foundation (or going foundationless); changing the wood his hives are built out of, the Earth changing weather patterns in his region over time, locals using more or less pesticide/herbicide; these are all things which may not have seemed to have an effect, or which he may not have even been consciously aware of, but which might've been pertinent; he does not remember them because at the time they appeared inconsequential. 

But let's assume he's completely right: Package genetics *absolutely* change from year to year, just like swarm genetics are different for each swarm; so it's not like he was getting the same faulty genetics with his packages year after year after year. Can you think of any reason aside from genetics that swarms have a higher survivability than packages? Any reason at all? I've already thought of several, but I'd like to hear your thoughts first.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> I'd like to propose the same term for people who think that continuing to disrupt the ecology of the hive, continuing to contaminate the entire world beeswax supply with poisons and continuing to perpetuate bees whose genes are weakening the species will result in the salvation of beekeeping... the name fits perfectly...


Pssst, you know that thing - the whole never-touch thing, where you never check or treat for mites, and the "weak" colonies just die and the stronger ones "naturally survive" and all that? The bees already do that all by themselves, in the trees. What are you hoping to achieve by making them do it in artificial hives?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

There seems to be a sizable group who are convinced that that HITS is somehow pro treatment. How many times do I need to repeat myself?
I was simply troubled by the large number of, mostly new, beekeepers who seem not to recognize the impact varroa have.
Three steps.
1 I don't see 'em
2 I don't count 'em
3 They aren't a problem 

I'd like to believe that even most tf beekeepers understand that varroa are a problem. Am I mistaken? Do you really believe that they aren't? 

I can honestly say that I don't care if you are tf. My distress comes from those who've lost their bees and are willing to accept any explanation that doesn't include mites. I see it here on beesource. I get calls. They come up to me at meetings and farmers markets. ...all too often describing classic mite collapse. And the moment you ask about mites they start shaking their heads....no. Why is that?
I can honestly say I don't understand it. 
You can take your tf/treatment arguments elsewhere. That horse has been beaten countless times. 
Somebody...please....explain to me why any beekeeper would totally turn a blind eye toward the most serious pest we have?


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

It has nothing to do with chemicals, otherwise it would be called chemical free. Nor is it hands off. It is simple selective breeding for better bees instead of better mites. 

And we are racially altering how we use antibiotics in humans because we _have_ bred vastly stronger bacteria that can effect humans. 


The wolf analogy is idiotic, you can't spray sheep with something that kills wolves, you can't build a fence that keeps out mites, nor are sheep in danger of being eliminated by wolves since sheep have evolved for millions of years to be wolf "resistant" (smarter, faster etc.)

Nor does evolution take eras to happen, like I said, we created DDT reistant fruit flies in my high school biology class in one term! The rate of evolution is dependent on the life cycle of the species, more generations = more potential change. This is why creatures with short life cycles can evolve very quickly, and why it's much much easier to make stronger mites than stronger bees and to make stronger bees than stronger people.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Ya and while were at it we should stop taking antibiotics and medications because we are breeding weaker and weaker humans... 

And if we humans were livestock, I would agree. But we are not livestock.

>Pssst, you know that thing - the whole never-touch thing, where you never check or treat for mites, and the "weak" colonies just die and the stronger ones "naturally survive" and all that? The bees already do that all by themselves, in the trees.

To the degree that they can with us constantly bringing in weak, not acclimatized genetics and watering down the ones that do survive. And that is my source for bee genetics... the ones that have survived already.

>What are you hoping to achieve by making them do it in artificial hives? 

I don't make them. I let them. What do I get out of it? Healthier bees in my hives and I stop watering down the genetics in the trees resulting in them being healthier besides.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Aerindel said:


> Nor does evolution take eras to happen, like I said, we created DDT reistant fruit flies in my high school biology class in one term!


You did not create them. According to your description they were already there; you merely directly killed all the non-resistant ones, so that all that was left to breed were already-resistant flies.

I'm not questioning the mechanics which led to that result; they're well documented. And I'm also not questioning that that's what no-touch beekeepers THINK they are doing by letting weak hives die out. I'm just pointing out that they're wrong - that's not actually what they're doing.

A dead fruit fly cannot pass on its genes.

A weak colony that is being strangled to death by mites can have as many as a couple of tortuous years to freely pass on its genes (through swarms and drones) before it finally takes the dirt nap.

It's not the same thing at all. The method accomplishes nothing. Or at least, it does not accomplish what you think it accomplishes.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> I don't make them. I let them.


Unless your method of making increase consists exclusively of setting out a complete, empty hive and letting swarms move in entirely of their own accord, you make them. Of course they will stay; but you put them there at the beginning. Why?



Michael Bush said:


> What do I get out of it? Healthier bees in my hives


Stop there; that is a circular argument. Whether the bees in _your hives_ are "healthy" or not is only an issue because you've decided to put them in _your hives_; otherwise it wouldn't matter because there'd be no "your hives", right? So why "maintain" (for lack of a better term) artificial hives at all? The bees do just fine in the trees. The Bond method is all they do out there; it should be the perfect solution for you. What's actually missing from their tree-lives that you provide by putting them in "your hives"?



Michael Bush said:


> and I stop watering down the genetics in the trees resulting in them being healthier besides.


Genetics cannot be 'watered down'; the metaphor doesn't even make sense.

According to your theory of beekeeping, the bees should do just fine by themselves in the trees. Why do you think "your" artificial hives result in healthier bees than leaving them in the trees would result in?


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

who said helthier than bees in trees? He said healthier bees period. My question is if they can live a long time in a tree without treatments, why can't they live in a box that long without treatments? I understand we don't rob trees, and that is going to have some effect, but if we are judicious about it why couldn't bees live in a box hive as long as in a tree?


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Stop there; that is a circular argument. Whether the bees in your hives are "healthy" or not is only an issue because you've decided to put them in your hives; otherwise it wouldn't matter because there'd be no "your hives", right? 

I do not understand your point.

>So why "maintain" (for lack of a better term) artificial hives at all?

Honey. Wax. Bees. Queens...

> The bees do just fine in the trees. The Bond method is all they do out there;

Yes.

> it should be the perfect solution for you.

It is.

>What's actually missing from their tree-lives that you provide by putting them in "your hives"?

Absolutely nothing except that I manage them so that the swarms end up in my hives, and the surplus is in my hives and I can feed them in a severe drought.

>Genetics cannot be 'watered down'; the metaphor doesn't even make sense.

Sure it does. If you look at a gene pool, you can narrow that gene pool to strong bees, or you can "water down" that gene pool with weak genetics.

>According to your theory of beekeeping, the bees should do just fine by themselves in the trees. 

Of course.

>Why do you think "your" artificial hives result in healthier bees than leaving them in the trees would result in? 

I don't. But if I don't bring in weak genetics I don't weaken the ones in the trees. Mine are healthier because I let them be healthier by letting the weak die and by allowing the natural system of flora and fauna that live in the hive to be healthy. The ones in the trees are healthier for the same reasons IF I stop watering down the gene pool with weak genes.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

I guess I'm just curious then. It's ok to use antibiotics etc on humans because were not livestock, I can get there obviously. My question then is do you think we are dooming ourselves because our genetics will get weaker and weaker, or are we able to compensate with technolgy/science or whatever. If the former I don't know what to say, if the latter why can't we do the same with livestock? Do you treat all livestock the same? If you have a horse that gets sick do you not treat it? If you have a problem with bot flies do you just let them go?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Can anyone explain why it was necessary for this thread to be co-opted for the same, tired, old, useless debate of treatment vs tf?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Harley Craig said:


> who said helthier than bees in trees? He said healthier bees period. My question is if they can live a long time in a tree without treatments, why can't they live in a box that long without treatments? I understand we don't rob trees, and that is going to have some effect, but if we are judicious about it why couldn't bees live in a box hive as long as in a tree?


It's impossible really to know how long bees are actually living in a tree. We already know for a fact that swarms will readily take up residence on abandoned comb; so how do you discern whether those bees you see in the tree year after year are the same bees, or whether the colony dies every now and then and the hive is co-opted by a swarm from elsewhere?


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Apologies, it's unseasonably hot and I must be irritable and argumentative. I'll leave off with I agree with you that whatever your philosophy is varroa shouldn't be ignored. It's here, it affects bees, deal with it (however it is you do that), and be aware of it at least.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> Can anyone explain why it was necessary for this thread to be co-opted for the same, tired, old, useless debate of treatment vs tf?


I debate may be old, tired, and useless to you but I've never done it yet. I didn't get my turn!

But okay. To be fair, though, I think it's a matter of perspective. In your initial post you implied that people who do the "live and let die" method of mite control are wrong. Since most "tf" beekeepers use precisely that term to describe what they do, they're going to surmise you're talking about tf, so they will defend tf. Which will bring detractors, and the argument proceeds from there.

One thing I think almost everyone can agree on is that *ALL VARROA DESERVE TO DIE!!!!!* even if that is sadly impossible. In a fire, if at all practical.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

It would be wonderful if one could say all beekeepers care deeply about their bees and would do anything to keep them healthy.

People keep bees for different reasons and have vastly different amounts of time to spend with their bees. I have great respect for the people who are thinking about getting into beekeeping and then conclude that they don't have the time to do right by the bees.

As I have said before location is huge - both as a determinant of any local bee population and the environment that the bees live in.

In my area, truly local bees are hard to find as numerous colonies (I'm guessing between 35-40,000 into my County) are imported for pollination each spring. Those imported bees overwhelm the DCAs, potentially diluting any attempts at breeding I might make. [There is a drop of 100+ hives down the road about 4 miles from my home.]

In other areas local bee populations interbreed with Africanized bees. Are those resultant bees better able to coexist with mites? Ah, my answer would be yes. Are those bees unmanageable? I say "No." do the TF Bees I'm keeping now have some African lineage? It wouldn't surprise me.

Understanding what is going on in the hive is crucial. Depending on your available time to learn about bees, you could easily blame a hive lost in winter to being stuck where there were no stores when a cold snap hit. But if you've got time and knowledge you start asking more questions: Why was the cluster so small that it got stuck in an area where there were no stores? The search for answers is ongoing, someone will always be there to say "you didn't take this into account."

HITS is recognizing that mites are a terrible problem for bees and pretty much unless you do something about them (that is consistent with your philosophy) your bees will probably die. It is not saying that mites are the end of the learning curve. Obviously there are many factors that contribute to an area being either a good or a challenging place to keep bees. It is simply saying that mites can't be ignored.

I'm delighted that there are beekeepers like Kirk Webster who go about their business keeping bees and continually learning about them. I don't have unlimited time to devote to my bees - they are a hobby for me and I have other interests. The prudent course for me is to 1) keep an open mind and 2) to somehow absorb some of the vast information on bees and beekeeping that is coming out.

In the end all I hope to do is keep my bees as healthy as I am able to, using the resources at my disposal including whatever human intellect I may possess.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

melliferal said:


> I debate may be old, tired, and useless to you but I've never done it yet. I didn't get my turn!


Trust me on this…you will get countless opportunities. It pops up regularly. Lots of folks go away mad. Nobody changes their mind.



melliferal said:


> In your initial post you implied that people who do the "live and let die" method of mite control are wrong.


I certainly didn’t intend any such implication. I actually believe there is some merit in the method. I don’t think it should be the universal approach….and I would strongly suggest that folks who employ it make objective measurements to assess their results (no HITS). I always admired Dann Purvis who stepped on his bees hard and bred from the survivors.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

melliferal said:


> It's impossible really to know how long bees are actually living in a tree. We already know for a fact that swarms will readily take up residence on abandoned comb; so how do you discern whether those bees you see in the tree year after year are the same bees, or whether the colony dies every now and then and the hive is co-opted by a swarm from elsewhere?


You can't with all of them, but with some of them you can. I am getting ready to do a trapout, that a good friend of mine has been watching for 10 yrs, they are in a tree 10 ft from his deck and he watches them everyday. I asked him the very question is it possible that new swarms have moved in each yr his reply was they start moving on warm days before the snow melts and don't stop said they swarm once or sometimes twice a yr and the only reason he wants them out of the tree now is he's afraid the tree is going to come down on his house and doesn't want the bees harmed.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Andrew Dewey said:


> I'm delighted that there are beekeepers like Kirk Webster who go about their business keeping bees and continually learning about them.


A perfect example. Treatment free...but I'd wager that he wouldn't claim that varroa aren't a problem.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Mr. C said:


> Ya and while were at it we should stop taking antibiotics and medications because we are breeding weaker and weaker humans... .


When I was a kid, my parents didn't have insurance, therefor we NEVER went to the Dr. I can't remember the last time I took antibiotics, now a days, we see the same thing we are talking about in humans when Dr's prescribe antibiotics for no real reason and people don't take them long enough to kill all the bacteria only leaving the resistant bacteria to survive. That is how things like MRSA came about.  Same thing happens in livestock, certain wormers on the market will do absoutly nothing for goats because for decades people wormed them by the season, not the need. If we treat a hive for ANYTHING and don't kill EVERYTHING the pests that survive because they are more resistant are the only ones left to breed


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

That's generally true; but I don't think it applies in the case of things like IPM. Take drone comb, just for one possible instance. Mites lay most (but not all of course) of their own eggs in the fat juicy drone larvae; they're capped, and you remove them. and freeze the frames, thereby killing the drone brood and mites. Since 0 of the mites on the frames survive the process, and none of the mites that weren't on the frames were exposed to any part of the process, there's no way for mites to resist that kind of thing the way a bacterial strain can develop a resistance to an antibiotic through sublethal contact.

For another thing though, I completely disagree with medication as a matter of course. I've recently seen a video series (you can tell it came from some old VHS tapes) from some university's beekeeping program, that shows someone demonstrating installing a package, and immediately sifting a spoonful of terramycin all over the backs of the package bees. That seems like exactly the wrong thing to do, to me; I've never once even bought, or considered buying, terramycin. Likewise, I tend to recommend the book "Beekeeping for Dummies" for any beginners or prospects, but the book does seem to advocate feeding fumagilin as a prophylactic rather than a treatment and I tell people I recommend the book to that I personally strongly recommend against that.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> But let's assume he's completely right: Package genetics *absolutely* change from year to year, just like swarm genetics are different for each swarm; so it's not like he was getting the same faulty genetics with his packages year after year after year. Can you think of any reason aside from genetics that swarms have a higher survivability than packages? Any reason at all? I've already thought of several, but I'd like to hear your thoughts first.


Well yes, there are lots of reasons. A couple-- swarms are thrown from hives that are healthy enough to reproduce. A primary swarm has a proven queen. And there are others.

However, you aren't understanding the specific situation. Here's a quote from an email he sent me:



> June 02' got my first hive. 03'-07' purchased 54 packages of bees losing 50-90% each year. 2007' put out 40 swarm catch boxes caught 15 mostly feral swarms. Winter 07/08 only lost one of the swarms and but lost all the package bees.


That is not a gradual change. I think such an abrupt change means a bit more than "he got better at keeping bees."

In any case, I don't think it's all genetics. Tim is a semi-fanatical anti-sugar guy, and at some point he went to 3 deep brood nests to avoid any necessity for feeding. He uses a form of nectar management as well that helps him avoid swarming in spite of his massive hives. But I think the main reason his bees do so well without treatment is that his hives are not being disrupted by chemicals that can be injurious to bees. It's hard to get this across to folks who treat, because they believe sincerely that what they are doing is helping their bees. I think there's pretty strong evidence that things like CCD and generally unthrifty colonies are the result of many factors, and while acaricides may temporarily knock back mites, they might well be doing enough harm to the bees that the present level of mortality has become the new normal.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> Well yes, there are lots of reasons. A couple-- swarms are thrown from hives that are healthy enough to reproduce. A primary swarm has a proven queen. And there are others.
> 
> However, you aren't understanding the specific situation. Here's a quote from an email he sent me:
> 
> ...


It _suggests_ more; but how do we know without a control? He said he started his very first hive mid-summer, and in less than a year's time somehow decided to expand to over 50 HIVES based on confidence attained from half a year's beekeeping experience. What was he thinking? That's frankly outrageous to me. Hey maybe he was up to it, but t's a trial by fire at the very least; no reasonable person could have expected anything less than significant losses for the first couple of years. In those circumstances, I don't doubt that already-healthy swarms stood a significantly better chance in his bee yards than brand new queens and the sudden transition makes sense.



rhaldridge said:


> In any case, I don't think it's all genetics. Tim is a semi-fanatical anti-sugar guy, and at some point he went to 3 deep brood nests to avoid any necessity for feeding. He uses a form of nectar management as well that helps him avoid swarming in spite of his massive hives. But I think the main reason his bees do so well without treatment is that his hives are not being disrupted by chemicals that can be injurious to bees. It's hard to get this across to folks who treat, because they believe sincerely that what they are doing is helping their bees. I think there's pretty strong evidence that things like CCD and generally unthrifty colonies are the result of many factors, and while acaricides may temporarily knock back mites, they might well be doing enough harm to the bees that the present level of mortality has become the new normal.


My own method was to always leave a medium of honey on top of my double-deeps for winter. I did have to feed a couple of times, but not that often when I started leaving more liberal honey stores than many old-timers suggested. And my Carniolans usually tended to tighten their own belts in the fall, which helped immensely as well. There's more than one way to skin that particular cat - whatever floats your boat is what gets you going.

But I do feed packages. To use a euphemism, brand new just-mated queens aren't "built" to come back to no comb, no stores, no cells to lay in. They have to be helped. Couple that with the fact that the adult workers in the package were not prepared to swarm when they were shaken, did not come with their own minimal but crucial "internal" stores of honey or whatever other physiological changes workers experience before swarming (if the queen stops laying and slims down for the swarm it seems logical to me to think that workers might have their own preparations, whatever they are), and what you get is a bunch of bees that's basically in critical condition and require some TLC above and beyond your responsibilities toward an established hive or even a swarm - and I think the shake-and-forget method your friend seems to believe in is just incompatible with that kind of increase is all.


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## briangutz (May 20, 2011)

melliferal said:


> That's generally true; but I don't think it applies in the case of things like IPM. Take drone comb, just for one possible instance. Mites lay most (but not all of course) of their own eggs in the fat juicy drone larvae; they're capped, and you remove them. and freeze the frames, thereby killing the drone brood and mites. Since 0 of the mites on the frames survive the process, and none of the mites that weren't on the frames were exposed to any part of the process, there's no way for mites to resist that kind of thing the way a bacterial strain can develop a resistance to an antibiotic through sublethal contact.


I believe IPM does apply. When removing green drone frames you are selecting mites that prefer worker cell size.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

I don't think there is such a thing as a mite that prefers a particular cell size; and I think this is supported by the fact that you can use your drone frame over and over and you can clearly see that you're still pulling out all kinds of mites, time after time - those mites left that laid and hatched in the worker cells, keep laying more eggs on the drone frames. If it were true that the mites left on the worker cells _preferred them_ over drone cells, then there would come a time after only a few uses when the drone comb just wouldn't pull any mites anymore, and my experience doesn't reflect that; in fact if it were true, I don't think drone frames would've taken off at all in the apicultural community. Why use this frame, which takes away from the total volume of useful comb in your hive, if it actually doesn't work?

It seems to me that mites don't "prefer" any particular cell size, as long as they can fit in it. I believe the reason they choose drone cells is simply because they select food by volume, and drone cells contain the most food.

ETA: to be clear: there is a large _initial_ drop after the first use or two of the frame because you've eliminated a great deal of the breeding population. But, after that you've got a more or less steady population of mites, as evidenced by looking in the frames themselves and/or counting mites by whichever counting method you like best. But the steady population is _low enough_ that your colony can live with it without the problems that come with rampant infestation. Remember: control, not eradication.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

Harley Craig "If we treat a hive for ANYTHING and don't kill EVERYTHING the pests that survive because they are more resistant are the only ones left to breed"

TB of all things is becoming resistant in many locales, or so I read in the news. Because, it is reported, the treatments are *only partially or incorrectly used*. The USMC required you to take a penicillin pill before liberty in the mid 50s. They built a brand of clap that cannot be killed with a stick! Do you think all beeks know how and use meds correctly? If you do I have a few items for sale! :digging: :lookout:


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> That's generally true; but I don't think it applies in the case of things like IPM. Take drone comb, just for one possible instance. Mites lay most (but not all of course) of their own eggs in the fat juicy drone larvae; they're capped, and you remove them. and freeze the frames, thereby killing the drone brood and mites. Since 0 of the mites on the frames survive the process, and none of the mites that weren't on the frames were exposed to any part of the process, there's no way for mites to resist that kind of thing the way a bacterial strain can develop a resistance to an antibiotic through sublethal contact.


Wow. I don't mean to make fun, but you do understand that mites also infect worker larvae, right? If you kill all mites that preferentially choose drones, and leave the mites that preferentially choose workers, what do you think you are breeding for?

Certainly the mechanism is different than the pressure from antibiotics... but weren't you the person complaining about people not understanding how evolution works?

I'm also a little dubious about claims that drone trapping is an effective survival strategy. Some studies do support it in the short term, (affects mite counts) but the BeeInformed survey showed no significant difference in colony survival between beekeepers who practice drone trapping and those who don't. It's not very good data, because the sample is only a few thousand hives, but I tend to go with actual data in making management decisions.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> It _suggests_ more; but how do we know without a control? He said he started his very first hive mid-summer, and in less than a year's time somehow decided to expand to over 50 HIVES based on confidence attained from half a year's beekeeping experience.


I'm sorry. If you can't comprehend what you read, then I can't give you any more attention. He bought 54 packages over 5 years.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Exactly we see it with all facets of treatment so why would it be any different for bees


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> Wow. I don't mean to make fun, but you do understand that mites also infect worker larvae, right?


I thought I'd communicated that pretty clearly when I said "Mites lay most (but not all of course) of their own eggs in the fat juicy drone larvae". You even included that entire sentence in your quote just now, so I'm quite confused as to how you can have missed it. The rest of that post only makes sense if the existence of mites laying in worker larvae is assumed. I am curious: what did you think that sentence meant, if not that I am aware that mites also lay eggs in worker larvae?



rhaldridge said:


> If you kill all mites that preferentially choose drones, and leave the mites that preferentially choose workers, what do you think you are breeding for? Certainly the mechanism is different than the pressure from antibiotics... but weren't you the person complaining about people not understanding how evolution works?


I'm not convinced there's such a thing as mites that preferentially choose worker larvae, as I explain above. Most of the comb in any hive is worker comb; it's a statistical inevitability that some mites will lay eggs there, which is enough to explain why it happens.



rhaldridge said:


> I'm also a little dubious about claims that drone trapping is an effective survival strategy. Some studies do support it in the short term, (affects mite counts) but the BeeInformed survey showed no significant difference in colony survival between beekeepers who practice drone trapping and those who don't. It's not very good data, because the sample is only a few thousand hives, but I tend to go with actual data in making management decisions.


I don't want to try and promote it as a be-all, end-all strategy; it's relatively new, and in this argument what matters is the theory of operation. As I've indicated before, I only treat problems as they appear; I don't use even IPM as a matter of course.

If you are using actual data in making management decisions, I'm not sure why you've committed to non-treating (if that's indeed what you've done; I could have misunderstood your personal philosophy). There's all kinds of anecdote by non-treaters about how they hardly ever lose a colony; but the plural of anecdote is not "data". There is in fact little objective and controlled data available out there. If, by engaging in X practice you consider yourself to be "collecting your own data", that's acceptable, and it's also what I would call my own use of drone frames.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> I'm sorry. If you can't comprehend what you read, then I can't give you any more attention. He bought 54 packages over 5 years.


As I just demonstrated, you're not immune from this particular malady. I'll admit I was wrong about the outrageousness of his activity; but I stand by my assessment that buying packages and not feeding them was bound to result in some dead packages; whereas swarms are practically designed to establish new hives without being "fed"; it's their raison d'etre.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds (Apr 15, 2012)

melliferal said:


> But again, most of us have come to understand as I pointed out that eradication is not a viable goal, and so it doesn't need to be a complete panacea. It doesn't need to destroy 100% of the mites. Any method merely needs to reduce them to manageable levels.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beemandan said:


> Trust me on this…you will get countless opportunities. It pops up regularly. Lots of folks go away mad. Nobody changes their mind.


Hey now. I changed my mind in mid-thread in the one about leaving bees alone. I said I couldn't see the point of mite counts unless you planned to treat for mites.

Then some smart person pointed out that if you had a hive that was thriving in spite of high mite counts, that might be a good queen to breed from, as it could indicate some sort of equilibrium achieved. But if you didn't do counts, you wouldn't know what was going on. So I decided if I were someday to get past my primary education and start purposefully breeding bees, I'd have to start making mite counts.

Of course, right now I'm still in kindergarten.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> As I just demonstrated, you're not immune from this particular malady. I'll admit I was wrong about the outrageousness of his activity; but I stand by my assessment that buying packages and not feeding them was bound to result in some dead packages; whereas swarms are practically designed to establish new hives without being "fed"; it's their raison d'etre.


Frankly, it was unclear to me why, if you understood that mites infect worker larvae, you couldn't understand that removing those mites that infected drone larvae was a selective pressure. Say you're right, and mites only preferentially infect drones, and infect worker brood only by accident. Then you have to wonder how mites select drone brood to infect (because obviously they have evolved some mechanism for selecting drone brood) and if the ones that infect worker brood made a mistake. Do you want to select for mites that mistakenly infect worker brood? Because that's what you are doing when you remove drone larvae. 

Tim Ives began to successfully keep bees without treatment once he began to use feral stock. But swarms form only a small component of his stock now. He has 150 or so hives now, and most came from splits-- he no longer buys bees.

You seem to be emitting a cloud of scientific buzz words, without understanding a basic tenet of science. Let's say you form a hypothesis: "If you don't treat, your bees will die." It takes only one confounding instance to render that hypothesis incorrect. If even one person does not treat, and their bees do not die at rates any greater than the rates at which treated bees die, then you have to bid that hypothesis farewell. It Was Wrong. There are now multiple examples of beekeepers whose untreated bees have better survival rates than most who treat, so there is no longer any point to defending the original assertion. Now all you can usefully do is try to figure out why your hypothesis was incorrect.


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

> My question then is do you think we are dooming ourselves because our genetics will get weaker and weaker, or are we able to compensate with technolgy/science or whatever.


There is a lot of evidence that says that we are. The problem comes from viruses that can go through several thousand generations of evolution in a few hours and humans that have technology that can take decades to develop a vaccine or treatment. 

Its even happening with bacteria that are evolutionary slugs compared to viruses. The time period that new antibiotics are effective is decreasing rapidly. We are in serious trouble, especially because a no country would support a live and let die policy yet that is exactly what is going to happen, and in fact is starting to happen now that we have bacteria that are immune to all known antibiotics.

Why is this post about treatment free? Its simple. Your HITS is a direct insult to treatment free beekeepers.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Sheesh! Some folks just can't let go. 
Page after page....long winded posts that never change anyone's mind.

A new term. OAF (Opinions are Forever)

I can say everything that's been said thus far in two short sentences.
Person #1 'Mite treatments are bad.'
Person #2 'No they aren't.'

You've successfully turned this thread into a useless marathon of garbage.
Your work here is done.
Now you should move on and see if you can't trash one somewhere else.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<And that's why I DONT take antibiotics cause I don't want the flu coming around bigger and badder next time.>

And there I go again when I said I was done. The flu is a virus, antibiotics don't affect it. If your referring to flu shots, they prevent the spread of the flu and save lives and actually increase your resistance over time by training your immune system.

<You seem to be emitting a cloud of scientific buzz words, without understanding a basic tenet of science. Let's say you form a hypothesis: "If you don't treat, your bees will die." It takes only one confounding instance to render that hypothesis incorrect. If even one person does not treat, and their bees do not die at rates any greater than the rates at which treated bees die, then you have to bid that hypothesis farewell. It Was Wrong. There are now multiple examples of beekeepers whose untreated bees have better survival rates than most who treat, so there is no longer any point to defending the original assertion. Now all you can usefully do is try to figure out why your hypothesis was incorrect. >

In theory yes, in practice no. This would only actually be true if that one person had enough hives to be statistically significant and not due to random chance. It would also have to be true that all other conditions were controlled properly and the same. The only way you can demonstrate EITHER philosophy is wrong would be by setting up a controlled experiment with treated and untreated hives in the same area, with similar genetics, and a SIGNIFICANT amount of hives in both groups. I could just as easily say that it only takes 1 beekeeper treating with significantly lower losses to demonstrate treatment free is wrong, but I would still be wrong. Even if you run the experiment it would only be valid for that year in that area. Science isn't as clear cut as you'd like to think it is, but it's better than nothing.

Find what works for you in your area with your goals.

I still reccomend being aware of varroa whatever your philosophy, but as much as much I love them they are still just insects, so if you want to let them get squished or coddle them or whatever have fun.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I guess I'm just curious then. It's ok to use antibiotics etc on humans because were not livestock

I actually avoid antibiotics for the same reason I don't use them on bees. They mess with the microbes which are much more important to our health than most people realize.

>My question then is do you think we are dooming ourselves because our genetics will get weaker and weaker

Probably we are dooming the human race in the long run. But a human's value is more than just their value as breeding stock.

> or are we able to compensate with technolgy/science or whatever.

I would say we are not able to compensate.

>If the former I don't know what to say, if the latter why can't we do the same with livestock?

We have proven we can't. Our livestock has more and more issues all the time and we keep trying to keep up with technology... it's not a practical solution.

>Do you treat all livestock the same? If you have a horse that gets sick do you not treat it?

I think it's reasonable to consider horses and insects as very different, obviously. Bees have a typical life span of six weeks. A horse might live 40 years and have a very complex and deep relationship with humans.

>Kirk Webster... A perfect example. Treatment free...but I'd wager that he wouldn't claim that varroa aren't a problem. 

http://kirkwebster.com/2005scan2.pdf

"And now I have another terrible confession to make. Not one as bad and un-American as passing up short-term gain and investing in the future—but still horrible: I have never yet counted even a single sample of mites from any of my bees. I consider counting mites as a way of evaluating Varroa resistance to be fraught with all sorts of shortcomings and difficulties. It's very time consuming and hence the size of the apiary, the number of colonies tested, the gene pool, and the income available all start to shrink. It's also very easy for the results to be skewed by mites migrating from other colonies or bee yards. And it doesn't show which colonies are more resistant to secondary infections--a trait I consider very important."--Kirk Webster, ABJ April 2005, pg 314, Commercial Beekeeping Without Treatments of Any Kind, Part II of Two Parts, Management.

>>Can anyone explain why it was necessary for this thread to be co-opted for the same, tired, old, useless debate of treatment vs tf? 

>Your HITS is a direct insult to treatment free beekeepers. 

Exactly, and it fits treating so much better...


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> >Kirk Webster... A perfect example. Treatment free...but I'd wager that * he wouldn't claim that varroa aren't a problem. *
> 
> 
> "And now I have another terrible confession to make. Not one as bad and un-American as passing up short-term gain and investing in the future—but still horrible: I have never yet counted even a single sample of mites from any of my bees. I consider counting mites as a way of evaluating Varroa resistance to be fraught with all sorts of shortcomings and difficulties. It's very time consuming and hence the size of the apiary, the number of colonies tested, the gene pool, and the income available all start to shrink. It's also very easy for the results to be skewed by mites migrating from other colonies or bee yards. And it doesn't show which colonies are more resistant to secondary infections--a trait I consider very important."--Kirk Webster, ABJ April 2005, pg 314, Commercial Beekeeping Without Treatments of Any Kind, Part II of Two Parts, Management.


Ok MB….we seem to have a disconnect. Where….in your entire quote did Kirk Webster state…or even suggest…that varroa aren’t a problem?




Michael Bush said:


> >>Can anyone explain why it was necessary for this thread to be co-opted for the same, tired, old, useless debate of treatment vs tf?
> 
> >Your HITS is a direct insult to treatment free beekeepers.
> 
> Exactly, and it fits treating so much better...


If you are looking to get insulted…you can manufacture that insult in any number of ways. There was no insult from me in this thread. Sorry you felt the need to invent one.

I appreciate all of your efforts to redirect this thread. The original intent was to catch a few new beekeepers and help them see the importance of recognizing enemy number one. Instead it has become a platform for those who have individual agendas. You’ve really furthered the knowledge of the Beesource beekeeping community.

Good work.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

If I understand the OP correctly, I believe many of you have mssed his intent. Is he saying we should all "open our eyes" and critically test if our beliefs are grounded in truth and fact? As examples:

How do you explain that when feral bees , when removed from a tree after many years, fail quite rapidly when placed in an apiary? So what good is the "Bond" method?

Is it possible that the success of many isolated TF hives is just from breeding a weaker mite? The mite can evolve faster than the bee.

Has any successful Small cell beekeeper switched back to large cell? What happened? Did using small cell select for a different bee that could now survive on large cell?

How does one explain that the vast majority of replacement bees are generated by commercial beekeepers that treat? If they are doing things so wrong, the flow of bees should be the other way..

I may be crazy, but I believe the OP is asking us to work a little harder and find the logical and truthful explanation for what we are observing, and not just the conclusion we wish to find.

Crazy Roland


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> Frankly, it was unclear to me why, if you understood that mites infect worker larvae, you couldn't understand that removing those mites that infected drone larvae was a selective pressure. Say you're right, and mites only preferentially infect drones, and infect worker brood only by accident. Then you have to wonder how mites select drone brood to infect (because obviously they have evolved some mechanism for selecting drone brood) and if the ones that infect worker brood made a mistake. Do you want to select for mites that mistakenly infect worker brood? Because that's what you are doing when you remove drone larvae.


In an earlier post I mentioned that my own theory is that mites appear to select drone brood preferentially only because they're naturally drawn to the largest available amount of food. Obviously mites don't think in terms of "this is a worker cell, that is a drone cell"; they don't discern other than "bigger cell = more food = more successful mites". Again, just my guess; it may not be true. However, the idea that drone frames end up selecting for mites that "prefer worker cells over drone cells" is demonstrably false simply by virtue of the fact that a drone frame can be used time after time after time in the same hive and mites continue to end up in the drone brood no matter how many times you've done it. Anybody can demonstrate this at any time for themselves.

Now as to why or how mites can "accidentally" end up in worker cells, this is actually a fairly simple problem - there's only so much drone comb that exists naturally in a hive; it's by far the minority. Now the hive is _tremendous_ in size from the mite's perspective; a particular mite which has detached from an adult bee and is ready to lay eggs, may have found itself in an area of the hive bereft of drone cells, in which case it really has no choice but to lay in worker brood. Or, a mite may have however or other lost the competition for nearby drone cells (i.e., other mites got there first) and so they must settle. And normally these cases are the majority, simply because only 20% or so of a hive's cells are drone cells. Now enter your entire frame of drone comb, which is Happy Fun World Land for mites; it's like the Mite God looked down upon them and said "There are many mansions in my big green frame house", and they tuck in eagerly because there's plenty of room for all. Of course, not all the mites are gotten simply because those mites waaaaay over on the other side of the hive just can't get to the drone frame in time (aren't even aware it's there, frankly) and as usual have to settle. Unfortunately, you can never get all the mites using this method (as a function of Fick's second law). However, you don't have to, because almost any bees can deal fine with _some_ varroa just like they always have _some_ nosema.

However, supposing there are indeed mites that favor smaller cells and using the drone comb effectively eliminates drone-cell-layers from the population. This is actually an evolutionary disadvantage for the mites, because you physically can't raise as many new mites in a worker cell (there's just not as much space, or food), and this physical limit on the quantity of mite reproduction might as well be its own mechanical control, because it necessarily results in fewer mites, which may keep the mite count to a tolerable level for the bees all by itself without the need for continuous treatments of other kinds. The recent foray into "small cell comb" is based upon this theory - the comb is even smaller than modern worker comb, considered too small for mites to rear sustainable numbers of brood in (although as far as I know right now it's just in the hypothetical stage, I'm not aware of any hard numbers on the effectiveness of "small cell" just yet and I've never tried it myself).


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<I think it's reasonable to consider horses and insects as very different, obviously. Bees have a typical life span of six weeks. A horse might live 40 years and have a very complex and deep relationship with humans.>

Thanks, that's what I figured, I didn't want to assume what you meant when you said livestock. I tend to disagree that we are going downhill, but that's a matter of opinion. We see a lot more problems simply because we are better at keeping people alive, but we are getting to the point of even correcting genetic problems (they cured a form of genetic blindness last year with gene therapy amongst other examples).

as to HITS, I think that you can treat or not and have your head in the sand, but I would hardly lump everyone together as such, which is probably a point beemandan is trying to make. There are plenty of people out there cognizant of the future that treat currently. If you ignore all short term goals you probably won't make it long term.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<However, supposing there are indeed mites that favor smaller cells and using the drone comb effectively eliminates drone-cell-layers from the population. This is actually an evolutionary disadvantage for the mites, because you physically can't raise as many new mites in a worker cell (there's just not as much space, or food), and this physical limit on the quantity of mite reproduction might as well be its own mechanical control, because it necessarily results in fewer mites, which may keep the mite count to a tolerable level for the bees all by itself without the need for continuous treatments of other kinds.>

Probably should be a different thread, but it sounds like time for more research. Mites reproduce more in drone brood because of a longer capping time, not more food. That's how some African bees effectively control mites, they have a shorter capping time for brood. I can't remember how mites choose cells, should look that up, but it may be pheromones rather than size, different brood let of different odors, which is one way bees identify and remove infected brood.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Roland said:


> If I understand the OP correctly, I believe many of you have mssed his intent. Is he saying we should all "open our eyes" and critically test if our beliefs are grounded in truth and fact?


Part of it, for sure Roland.

I was at a two day beekeeping get together a couple of weeks ago. Many new beekeepers. During the course of the meetings, two separate, new beekeepers approached me and asked for ideas on why their hives failed. Both described classic mite collapse. In both cases I asked about mites. In each case they immediately became defensive. Both claimed that they didn’t see any mites in their hives. I won’t tell you about the beekeeping techniques both described….as surely some here will view it as an insult.

And yet, it has nothing to do with tf or treatment. Some will say….I treated last fall with product X. But if you ask what their mite load was after treating….they still get offended

I see posts every week on Beesource along the same lines. I have folks walk up at the farmers market….same thing.

And I ask myself…..why would they readily accept any explanation for their hive collapse….as long as it doesn’t involve varroa? Varroa are our greatest enemy. Their impact ripples through every other failure. And yet…there seems to be this great denial. They’ll happily accept starvation, nosema, wax moths, and on and on….but no way it was mites. How does that sort of thinking happen?

I can truly say….I am amazed.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> You've successfully turned this thread into a useless marathon of garbage.
> Your work here is done.
> Now you should move on and see if you can't trash one somewhere else.


Question: when you started this thread, and posted that post #1, what did this thread look like after three days, in your mind's eye?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Mr. C said:


> Probably should be a different thread, but it sounds like time for more research. Mites reproduce more in drone brood because of a longer capping time, not more food. That's how some African bees effectively control mites, they have a shorter capping time for brood. I can't remember how mites choose cells, should look that up, but it may be pheromones rather than size, different brood let of different odors, which is one way bees identify and remove infected brood.


I did not know that. If that's true, then forget the food amount parameter; but interestingly it's doubly-disadvantageous for mites that would (hypothetically, mind) "prefer" worker cells over drone cells. The lack of physical space now coupled with a less-than-ideal amount of time under the cappings. I'd think we would want to select for such mites if feasible.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> Varroa are our greatest enemy.


I also think so.

Sorry for the way your thread is turning out. You wanted a debate on why varroa is bad, not the best way to deal with it. That would probably be a less contentious and more informative thread.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Sheesh! Some folks just can't let go.
> Page after page....long winded posts that never change anyone's mind.
> 
> A new term. OAF (Opinions are Forever)
> ...





beemandan said:


> I expect that most of us have heard of the ‘Bond’ or ‘Live and Let Die’ method of mite resistance selection.
> I would like to propose a new term for a different one. I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method. Going forward, I will try to use this term when responding to those who make statements such as ‘I don’t see mites, I don’t test for ‘em and they aren’t a problem’.


This is a very interesting thread to me, a lowly 60+ post new guy who hasn't yet had time to bury my head in the sand. You obviously have had time to do that after years and years and around 3100 posts. Odd that although you started this thread, this all apparently bores you. I'm still in the "sponge" stage just soaking up info. The one thing I do see wrong with your conclusions are that I've never heard anyone, no matter which camp they are in, claim mites are not a problem - not one. And, they are out there I'm sure, but I can't recall anyone actually claiming that treatments have no detrimental side affects. I won't "treat" unless there's a problem. My mind's not made up yet on how I will treat when problems do arise.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beemandan said:


> And I ask myself…..why would they readily accept any explanation for their hive collapse….as long as it doesn’t involve varroa? Varroa are our greatest enemy. Their impact ripples through every other failure. And yet…there seems to be this great denial. They’ll happily accept starvation, nosema, wax moths, and on and on….but no way it was mites. How does that sort of thinking happen?.


I really haven't seen that. Maybe it's because I live in a fairly small town, but as far as I know, everyone in our local bee club treats for mites-- though the club president did tell us beginners that we might have more trouble with SHB than mites, because he felt there was effective treatment for mites. And if I've seen anyone claiming that mites are not a problem here on the forum, I don't remember it. Maybe I just filter out foolishness when I see it. I have seen folks say that mites are no longer a serious problem for them, but I don't recall anyone claiming that they are not a problem in general.

Maybe what you didn't foresee when you started the thread is that your acronym HITS was likely to be taken personally only by TF beekeepers. Obviously, if you treat for mites, then you recognize that they are a threat, or you wouldn't treat.

Since I won't treat, I'm pretty sure mites will be my biggest challenge. In fact, I've said right here on this forum that I fully expect to lose a lot of bees in the process of learning how to keep bees without treatment. But I'm confident that it can be done, because other people are doing it.

You seem to be complaining about the existence of stupid people. I don't see the point. The stupid are always with us, and they can't be fixed. To me, a thread about the merits (or lack thereof) of systems of beekeeping is a whole lot more interesting than folks whining about a human condition that will never change.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

*Rhaldridge* "To me, a thread about the merits (or lack thereof) of systems of beekeeping is a whole lot more interesting than folks whining about a human condition that will never change." :applause:


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>Ok MB….we seem to have a disconnect. Where….in your entire quote did Kirk Webster state…or even suggest…that varroa aren’t a problem?

I did not say he said they weren't a problem. But he does not monitor them which I believe meets your definition of the "Head in the Sand" method. He also does not treat for them. He is also on 5.1mm cell size...

>How do you explain that when feral bees , when removed from a tree after many years, fail quite rapidly when placed in an apiary? 

Large cell foundation.

>So what good is the "Bond" method?

It gives me hardy stock that does not "fail quite rapidly" at all.

>Is it possible that the success of many isolated TF hives is just from breeding a weaker mite? The mite can evolve faster than the bee.

Of course. I am quite certain that is part of the whole equation, but then I bring in outside bees from time to time and I'm sure that would upset that as a overall theory for success being just about less virulent mites.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoursimplesteps.htm#notreatmentupside

>Has any successful Small cell beekeeper switched back to large cell? What happened?

http://bwrangler.litarium.com/un-regressed-bees/

>...mites continue to end up in the drone brood no matter how many times you've done it.

It may take a few hundred times to note any difference. Or even a few thousand. Until you've done it thousands of times repeatedly, I don't see how you can say for sure.

The research on the subject has shown the following:

1) given the same kind of larvae in large and small cells (either all drone or all worker), the mites prefer the large cells.
2) given both kinds of larvae in the same size cell (either all large drone or all small worker) the bees prefer drones.

This would indicate there are two factors at work in the decision process. One is cell size, and the other some kind of pheromone attraction. Dee's theory on why the mites are infesting workers in Apis mellifera when they only infest drones in Apis cerana, is the "psuedo drone" theory. In other words the Varroa mistake the large worker cells for drone cells, hence their confusion. They do not make this mistake in Cerana cells. Cerana worker cells are 3.77 mm and their drones are 4.69 mm. Since size is one of the reasons for preference, it makes sense that smaller sized cells would lead to less confusion on the part of the Varroa looking for drones. I would rather continue to reproduce the mites who can tell the difference, cells that help clarify that, and bees who can survive the mites without my interference.

In the past decade of traveling to bee conferences and talking to the scientists out there, almost all of them have expressed the basic sentiment that if we had just ignored the Varroa (such as Head In The Sand method) and never treated we would already be past all of this, but we didn't...


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Joel_T said:


> You obviously have had time to do that after years and years and around 3100 posts.


Am I to understand that you believe that the more posts one has or the longer one has been posting….. the more closed their minds are?



Joel_T said:


> Odd that although you started this thread, this all apparently bores you.


My disappointment is that the thread has turned into the same argument that has raged countless times. There is absolutely nothing new in the debate that you are following so closely. After you’ve been through it a dozen times you may find it less exciting. 

Many of those who might benefit from discussion about the lifecyle, parasitic effects and various failure symptoms will not wade through all of the clutter to find any useful information.



Joel_T said:


> The one thing I do see wrong with your conclusions are that I've never heard anyone, no matter which camp they are in, claim mites are not a problem - not one.


It is a regular occurance here and amongst many beekeepers. I’m not going to continue to repeat myself but will this once, again, state that there is a sizeable segment of beekeepers who are readily willing to accept any other diagnosis….and I find that amazing.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

rhaldridge said:


> You seem to be complaining about the existence of stupid people......To me, a thread about the merits (or lack thereof) of systems of beekeeping is a whole lot more interesting than folks whining about a human condition that will never change.


OMG! ....start a thread to that effect then.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Am I to understand that you believe that the more posts one has or the longer one has been posting….. the more closed their minds are?


Maybe not closed minds, but conclusions have likely been made.




beemandan said:


> My disappointment is that the thread has turned into the same argument that has raged countless times. There is absolutely nothing new in the debate that you are following so closely. After you’ve been through it a dozen times you may find it less exciting.


Probably true..... that is, if I've come to conclusions. You're forgetting, I'm new so there's a lot new.




beemandan said:


> Many of those who might benefit from discussion about the lifecyle, parasitic effects and various failure symptoms will not wade through all of the clutter to find any useful information.


I will.




beemandan said:


> It is a regular occurance here and amongst many beekeepers. I’m not going to continue to repeat myself but will this once, again, state that there is a sizeable segment of beekeepers who are readily willing to accept any other diagnosis….and I find that amazing


I believe you, I just haven't seen that degree of avoidance yet.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> It may take a few hundred times to note any difference. Or even a few thousand. Until you've done it thousands of times repeatedly, I don't see how you can say for sure.


Well yeah but come on, that pendulum swings both ways doesn't it? It also remains to _really_ be seen whether your method of stock rearing is going to be long-term effective as opposed to having an exaggerated but ultimately short-term effect, doesn't it? Doesn't seem to make you any less confident.

By the way - putting your bees on small cell? That's artificially regulating the size of your comb - like using a drone frame. It's IPM. 

IPM is _totally_ treatment, dude. YES IT IS! Any bees from any of my hives, and even the (admittedly few) swarms I've allowed to build foundationless comb for experiment's sake, always built standard cell. When they swarmed, I could tell you with 99% confidence they would naturally build standard cell wherever they ended up! I've even witnessed another beekeeper doing a cutout where the comb was _standard cell[/url]. Yes, I'm aware of the argument that way back in The Day, bees naturally built what we call small cell today. But, nowadays most bees would have to be trained back down to it (there's even an intermediate size created specifically to facilitate this process). Of course, once trained, bees will continue to build small cell on their own thereafter. But the fact of that initial training and the fact that it's done to correct what the beekeeper sees as problems (of whatever kind) in the colony makes small cell TOTALLY a treatment, so HA! Welcome to the club and I'm glad you've come to your senses, Brother Michael!*** 


***This post may be slightly less than entirely serious_


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beemandan said:


> OMG! ....start a thread to that effect then.


I don't want to make you mad, because I enjoy your posts and often learn something interesting from them.. but consider how it looks from the outside. First you start a thread to complain about stupid people who don't realize that varroa are a threat. Now you're complaining because stupid people didn't stick to talking about your original complaint.

That's a lot of complaining.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> But, nowadays most bees would have to be trained back down to it


You think bees can be trained?

By the way, I would avoid trying to patronize Michael Bush, if I were you. It makes you look extremely uninformed.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

rhaldridge said:


> First you start a thread to complain about stupid people who don't realize that varroa are a threat.


First...I don't necessarily think that these people are stupid. Uneducated....Misinformed? Maybe.



rhaldridge said:


> Now you're complaining because stupid people didn't stick to talking about your original complaint.


No comment


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

melliferal said:


> Well yeah but come on, that pendulum swings both ways doesn't it? It also remains to _really_ be seen whether your method of stock rearing is going to be long-term effective as opposed to having an exaggerated but ultimately short-term effect, doesn't it? Doesn't seem to make you any less confident.
> 
> By the way - putting your bees on small cell? That's artificially regulating the size of your comb - like using a drone frame. It's IPM.
> 
> ...


_

Have I misconstrued the general meaning of "treating" bees for varroa? I just can't put drone cell management and small cell strategies in the same category with fumigating bees (insects) with insecticides._


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> You think bees can be trained?


Actually yes, in a certain sense, as some curious scientific studies have suggested! But that's kind of a different topic. For this particular concept; I use the term loosely. The gist of it is, there are a great many bees that will actually not naturally create small cell comb when left to their own devices, and have to be compelled to draw and use it, at least initially. Their behavior _can_ be modified in this way; it's sort of the same way the drone frame guides the bees into creating an all-drone-cell panel of comb, which is certainly (or at least bloody likely) not what they'd do on their own. Perhaps "training" is not the best word for this kind of thing; it's merely the closest I could immediately think of. If the terminology is confusing, my apologies.



rhaldridge said:


> By the way, I would avoid trying to patronize Michael Bush, if I were you. It makes you look extremely uninformed.


The thread was starting to get...sting-ish, so I injected some levity. I will presume Mr. Bush has a sense of humor until he gives me reason himself to think otherwise.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Joel_T said:


> Have I misconstrued the general meaning of "treating" bees for varroa? I just can't put drone cell management and small cell strategies in the same category with fumigating bees (insects) with insecticides.


I get that; I can concede that when most people hear the word "treatment", the first thing they might think of is a chemical of some kind, natural or otherwise. I'm using it in kind of a clinical sense, where "treatment" applies to anything a physician or health care provider gives or prescribes to a patient to correct a condition. Most often that's medicine; but sometimes it can be other things like physical therapy, psychological counseling, a walking aid, or what have you - non-chemically-based treatment. Does that make sense?


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## VolunteerK9 (Aug 19, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> >
> In the past decade of traveling to bee conferences and talking to the scientists out there, almost all of them have expressed the basic sentiment that if we had just ignored the Varroa (such as Head In The Sand method) and never treated we would already be past all of this, but we didn't...


I'm glad these same scientists arent/werent the ones tasked with creating vaccines for small pox, polio etc.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

melliferal said:


> I get that; I can concede that when most people hear the word "treatment", the first thing they might think of is a chemical of some kind, natural or otherwise. I'm using it in kind of a clinical sense, where "treatment" applies to anything a physician or health care provider gives or prescribes to a patient to correct a condition. Most often that's medicine; but sometimes it can be other things like physical therapy, psychological counseling, a walking aid, or what have you - non-chemically-based treatment. Does that make sense?


Yes that makes sense. There are essentially 2 different approaches that the word "treatment" alone doesn't separate. Bad word to use by itself........ needs to be modified by "mechanical" or "chemical" maybe.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

VolunteerK9 said:


> I'm glad these same scientists arent/werent the ones tasked with creating vaccines for small pox, polio etc.


There's a difference. Chemical treatments don't innoculate the bees against the mites, among other things (it's the other things I worry about) they just weaken or kill the mites. Maybe somebodies working on a "vaccine." Have to be a small needle


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## VolunteerK9 (Aug 19, 2011)

Joel_T said:


> There's a difference. Chemical treatments don't innoculate the bees against the mites, among other things (it's the other things I worry about) they just weaken or kill the mites. Maybe somebodies working on a "vaccine." Have to be a small needle


I understand that, but what I was implying is the problem isnt going to simply disappear by ignoring it.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<This would indicate there are two factors at work in the decision process. One is cell size, and the other some kind of pheromone attraction. Dee's theory on why the mites are infesting workers in Apis mellifera when they only infest drones in Apis cerana, is the "psuedo drone" theory.>

A while back I seem to recall reading a study (I think emailed over Bee-L) indicating that varroa do in fact infect cerana worker brood also, but as in the case with melifera preferentially target drone. I'll have to look again.

<You think bees can be trained?>
Definately. In fact researchers train them all the time with different scented artificial nectar. There's even a group using them to detect landmines because they smell better than dogs, can be trained faster, are cheaper, and are far less likely to set of said land mine than a guy walking a dog on a leash.

I forget who said it, but yes if we had completely ignored varroa we would likely be at some sort of equilibrium by now, but that doesn't mean we'd necessarilly be happy with what we had left. How many people would be broke in the meantime, how much would the genetics have been bottlenecked, how would the bees act? It's plausable that if we had done nothing then the Africanized bees would be all that would have been left and taken over more territory voided by the European bees that died.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Perhaps part of the reason I equate the two is that I haven't sworn off of either. For my own part, I don't treat when no problem exists; I'm not a prophylactic kind of person. How's the saying go, don't fix something that isn't broke? Yeah, I dig that. My experience is that bees generally do okay without needing much of that kind of intervention.

But, we all have bad days. Nature is nature; there's too many variables to count, and at some point for whatever reason a colony might be dying from something that on any ordinary day it typically handles without too much fuss, or it might have had the simple bad luck to catch something that I can't afford to let sit in my apiary while the bees work it out on their own - like EFB or small hive beetle. On these uncommon occasions, I will intervene to save the life of the colony or the general health of the yard. Usually it only takes a temporary course of intervention to get things back to normal. That's the word I'll use - *intervention*. It can cover all kinds without being confusing.

It's a sliding scale. I'll start with mechanical methods, moving up to chemical treatments as a last resort. And among chemical treatments, I'll use a natural substance as long as there is one - you know what I mean, oils or natural acids or extracts or whatever (these forums are a decent resource for suggestions along those lines).

If it looks like a colony is so weak that it would need continuous treatment to stay upright, I'll requeen it if there's time; otherwise I'll requeen it immediately in the spring (assuming it survives).

That's how I roll. It works for me - in my experience it's sustainable, and I could've made more bees every year, even taking the losses into consideration. YMMV.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

VolunteerK9 said:


> I understand that, but what I was implying is the problem isnt going to simply disappear by ignoring it.




I see what you mean. I think he was suggesting that scientists were saying chemical treatments weren't going to make the problem go away but rather exacerbate it.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

VolunteerK9 said:


> I understand that, but what I was implying is the problem isnt going to simply disappear by ignoring it.


Well, no, but don't you think it's worth wondering if what most folks are doing to mitigate the problem might be prolonging it, or maybe even making it worse?

Beekeepers have had a similar problem before, and the solution didn't turn out to be ever more virulent acaricides. Remember tracheal mites? I wasn't even a beekeeper then but there was much gloom and doom talk about what we were going to do about them, and many treatment schemes were proposed and implemented. You don't hear much about tracheal mites any more.

Why is that?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Didn't tracheal mites more or less wipe bees from the face of Britain? Nobody treated at that time, either.

I know that the trach-resistant bees were initially cultivated in Britain, but I seem to remember that all the necessary bees had to be imported.

Now we have the benefit of the past to go by. Standing by and allowing all your own bees to die, let alone all your region's or country's bees, in the hopes that someone, somewhere might develop a resistant strain someday so you can start keeping bees again from the beginning is a valid strategy but it's also a bit like sucking on a lemon. How about I keep my own bees alive in the mean time, and then just switch to the new, more resistant bees when they've been developed? Is there any reason that can't work?


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

http://www.beesource.com/resources/...heal-mites-in-north-dakota-a-five-year-study/


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Hey don't get me wrong - it's great that suppression developed, even if they couldn't find out exactly why. But that very definitely didn't happen in the UK - all of their bees died before they were able to develop this suppression. Nature is fickle like that.

In this situation, I would of course be doing my occasional treatments; and then as soon as it became apparent that there were bees with a natural suppression tendency, I'd get 'em and replace mine.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>...what I was implying is the problem isn't going to simply disappear by ignoring it. 

Ah, but I think it will, just like the tracheal mite problem disappeared as soon as everyone ignored it. And they did not all die.

>By the way - putting your bees on small cell? That's artificially regulating the size of your comb

I'm perfectly happy with just letting build their own cell size. I have no desire to regulate the size of their comb. I have several thousand foundationless frames and quite a few top bar hives with no foundation or frames. But if I'm going to use foundation, I'll use the size they would have built, instead of the artificially enlarged size in common usage.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Interesting piece on Brother Adam here:

http://www.beekeeping.com/articles/us/adam.htm

I think his career demonstrates that breeding better bees is the answer to many if not most problems, given decent management practices.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >...what I was implying is the problem isn't going to simply disappear by ignoring it.
> 
> Ah, but I think it will, just like the tracheal mite problem disappeared as soon as everyone ignored it. And they did not all die.


Having managed a commercial operation at the time we were infected with both trachael and varroa there were few similarities in the impact that the two had. Trachael was always a tough diagnosis and there were no widespread bee crashes like we saw with varroa. I never did treat and I don't recall even having any excessive losses that I could blame on trachael mites. I dont doubt there were some losses but from my perspective it was mostly just a big scare with the USDA running around demanding that infected hives be depopulated to try to stop the spread. The very fact that trachael turned out to be such a minor problem in such a short period of time I believe is part of the reason that varroa caught everyone so off guard. I remember concluding in my own mind that I wasn't going to get too excited about varroa until I actually saw some damages and boy did we ever see damage. Seems like we saw something like 2/3rds of our bees crash in the fall after our first positive diagnosis a few months earlier and even more dead by the following spring. Many folks posting on here who are so quick to condemn the beekeepers who treat have actually had the experience of seeing and understanding the impact of having your livelihood put at risk. We have learned a lot about how to deal with varroa, we have evolved in our perspective, in our management and in our treatments yet we still get branded as being part of the problem. Mr. Bush claims all the scientists he speaks to, feel we should have done nothing. Perhaps we would have been but I don't recall anyone dispensing that advice at the time and interestingly enough through it all our business has grown and prospered. Can anyone really make the case that my decision was wrong?


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## WLC (Feb 7, 2010)

Jim:

In my opinion...

If you're running a business, you have to follow best/standard practices.

No argument there.

However, Mike is making a very important statement.

Honeybees are resilient. It's part of their genetics.

I've posted about the incredible find that Honeybees can incorporate virus sequences into their own genome, becoming chimeric, and becoming resistant to viruses like IAPV, KBV, and DWV.

Mike isn't wrong. Nether are you.

WLC.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> Ah, but I think it will, just like the tracheal mite problem disappeared as soon as everyone ignored it. And they did not all die.



In the meantime, the period in which everyone was not "ignoring" tracheal mites, did not result in super-unbeatable tracheal mites.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> He is also on 5.1mm cell size....


Since you bring it up....according to Kirk Webster's website

http://kirkwebster.com/index.php/a-...moving-all-treatment-from-commercial-apiaries

_Now I have combs with worker cells throughout the natural size range (5.1-5.4 mm), and my foundation mill prints out a 5.2 size pattern.
_But then Kirk Webster is keeping EHB...and as any reputable entomologist will tell you that this is the natural cell size for them.



Michael Bush said:


> In the past decade of traveling to bee conferences and talking to the scientists out there, almost all of them have expressed the basic sentiment that if we had just ignored the Varroa (such as Head In The Sand method) and never treated we would already be past all of this, but we didn't... .


Ridiculous.



Michael Bush said:


> But if I'm going to use foundation, I'll use the size they would have built


So….you’re not pushing 4.9mm and all of the pf1xx foundation any longer?
Good for you.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Incidentally I believe a lot of varroa treatments are also effective on tracheal mites... they are acaracides after all and the acids like Formic and oxalic acid acid work because of the increased surface area to volume ratio on the mites... they may be more effective on tracheal than barrow, though I don't know of any specific testing offhand.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>But then Kirk Webster is keeping EHB...and as any reputable entomologist will tell you that this is the natural cell size for them.

Which is why he still has Varroa issues. But I find it interesting when I have conversations about "natural cell size" with "reputable entomologists" that the conversation goes like this:
mb: "If you let bees build what they want what size cell will they build?"
entomologist: "5.1mm"
mb: "and if you let the bees that are raised on the 5.1mm cells build what they want what size will that be"
entomologist: silence
mb: "would you like to know? I've done this many times."
entomologist: "not really... no"

Yet many of us have done this experiment with quite a different result than 5.1mm But even if it is 5.1mm why are we still using 5.4mm?

>So….you’re not pushing 4.9mm and all of the pf1xx foundation any longer?
Good for you. 

I've never pushed anything. PF120s are nice if you want to use plastic one piece frames and foundation and don't want to deal with Varroa. Foundationless is nice if you don't want to mess with plastic and want natural sized cells and clean wax. 4.9mm wax is nice if you really want to use wax foundation and don't want to deal with Varroa. I've always been about choices.

>In the meantime, the period in which everyone was not "ignoring" tracheal mites, did not result in super-unbeatable tracheal mites. 

It greatly lengthened the time from when the tracheal mites arrived to when they were not a problem anymore. I was not UNTIL we quit treating that the problem went away. Treating did not make it go away. In the meantime, luckily, the treatments were not systemic pesticides either.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> It greatly lengthened the time from when the tracheal mites arrived to when they were not a problem anymore. I was not UNTIL we quit treating that the problem went away. Treating did not make it go away. In the meantime, luckily, the treatments were not systemic pesticides either.


That seems like supposition to me. I didnt ever treat for trachael. I suppose they were a "problem" but I never took the time or went to the expense to treat because it was so difficult to assess a level of infestation or an economic threshold or for that matter even a sure fire way of reducing infestations.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> It greatly lengthened the time from when the tracheal mites arrived to when they were not a problem anymore. I was not UNTIL we quit treating that the problem went away.


"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc". It's actually _impossible_ for us to ever know that for sure. It wasn't until after women got the right to vote that the US began to develop nuclear weapons, but I'm pretty sure that's coincidental.

If you catch a cold, and then first notice that you're starting to get over it right after eating a bag of Doritos, that doesn't suggest that Doritos cure colds (or that lack of Doritos causes them).

ETA...which is too bad, because Doritos are pretty good and it would be great if we could actually be prescribed them.


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## tommysnare (Jan 30, 2013)

Aerindel said:


> When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating.
> 
> :thumbsup:


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## coopermaple (Aug 30, 2009)

tommysnare said:


> Aerindel said:
> 
> 
> > When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating.
> ...


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## Rick55 (Aug 1, 2010)

I don't treat, last year 10 going into winter 10 coming out. This year 34 going into winter and 26 comIng out this spring, 2 of those where lost because of mouse guards got moved.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

melliferal said:


> "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc".


Agreed, the logic does seem skewed. What reason would there be for beekeepers to make vastly different treatment (or non treatment) decisions for one than the other if there weren't vast differences between how hives were impacted. It would, in fact, be more logical to choose not to treat with varroa because so many beekeepers were having success in not treating trachael mites. I know we (and many others) did....and paid a steep price.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

If doing nothing about mites is best, then why are we not over run with feral swarms? Feral hives do exist, but they are few and far between.

Half of our operation is in 30 plus year old comb, so thick that the bees continually chew portions down to the midrib and draw it out again. The bees in all new equipment on dadant/kelly foundation do no better or worse than the old comb. We mintain an observation hive/bee tree that was stocked with feral bees. It did worse than the managed hives.

What do I believe? As the Zen Buddhists(I think it is them) would say"I don't know". As soon as you "Know", you stick your head in the sand.

Crazy "I don't know" Roland


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Aerindel said:


> When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating.


That's a fair argument; but I say, that's not as bad as it sounds. If you do the math, with a 30% loss coming out of winter you can split as few as half of your surviving colonies and you've still _made_ bees by the end of the year. Admittedly only just - but you can always split more than 50%. Point is, 30% is definitely in "sustainable" territory. 

But when we're talking about the 30% average, we're usually talking about migratory commercial operations reporting that sort of thing. The word on the street is that sideliners and hobbyists who are practicing engaged beekeeping aren't losing like that very often, even ones who treat. Of course, my street's not your street, so you may be hearing different.


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## Aerindel (Apr 14, 2012)

I guess I see it this way, I haven't seen any numbers that say that treatment free is worse than treatment.

Maybe they exist, but I haven't seen them. 

If both systems are equal in loss rates I choose the simplest option, which is why I don't use treatment and I don't use foundation. I honestly don't know if that gives my bees a better chance at survival or not, but it IS easier and cheaper and until someone can prove that treatment free is substantially worse than treated hives I choose the simpler path.

Now, I will admit I'm no expert when it comes to bees, but evolution and epidemiology has been an area of study of mine for a long time and like the laws of physics it has certain principles that you can apply across the board without knowing the specifics.

I do know that according to current epidemiology that treated pathogens almost always grow stronger with treatment over time. This is a FACT that has been demonstrated over and over again and which all the pro treatment people seem to completely ignore. I have yet to hear anyone explain why mitecides are different from say, DDT. Even ignoring the side effects the fact is that insects became resistant to it after only a few years.

If mites are not developing resistance than they will be almost unique among lifeforms on this planet, which seems highly unlikely to me. 

Even if it provided 99% effectiveness at preventing mite related hive death it would STILL be unsustainable because of selective breeding. 

Unless you literally do not believe in evolution or the observations of resistance development over the last sixty years you cannot deny these facts. 

What we really need to do is stop moving bees around the country, stop managing them in a way that demands artificial feeds, stop treating the bees like a slave labor force and manage them like livestock. 

Thats right, I'm proposing none other than the destruction of all commercial beekeeping and pollinator dependent monoculture farming.

And I know absolutely no one is going to want to do this but this just fine because it is going to happen wether you believe in it or not, and it may happen soon. There is going to be a crash and things like interstate bee transport and miticide treatments are going to become illegal. It wouldn't even matter at this point if everyone stopped treating or not, the whole system is too out of balance to survive.

Anyone who wants to keep on beekeeping is going to need to learn how to do it the old fashioned way.

Its not a threat, its a warning. Industrialized bee keeping is doomed, just like a host of other industries that could not face changing times. That is the real head in the sand syndrome.

Or, I'm completely wrong, which all in all, would probably be a good thing for everybody.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<do know that according to current epidemiology that treated pathogens almost always grow stronger with treatment over time. This is a FACT that has been demonstrated over and over again and which all the pro treatment people seem to completely ignore. I have yet to hear anyone explain why mitecides are different from say, DDT. Even ignoring the side effects the fact is that insects became resistant to it after only a few years.>

I think you are misinterpreting here or maybe I'm mireading what your writing. If by stronger you mean likely to become resistant to chemicals, well sure. But it sounds like you are implying they will become more virulent, which is a different thing entirely and not necessarily true (though one of many possible outcomes). House flies became resistant to DDT sure, but were they then stronger? Were they even more virulent? I don't seem to recall any talk of superflies spreading any more disease then they did previously. It's entirely possible that the method of resistance that the mites come up with has a metabolic cost and actually makes them weaker and slower to reproduce.

<Unless you literally do not believe in evolution or the observations of resistance development over the last sixty years you cannot deny these facts. >

Well I literally teach evolution, and isn't also true that the bees put selective pressure on the mites as well? Does that mean that the bees are automatically doomed because the mites will definately get stronger and become unstoppable? There are many possible outcomes and equilibriums that could be possible with a host/parasite situation. It is possible that the bees and the mites adapt to coexist at some level, but also possible is a boom and crash scenerio, an overall lower bee population, or an overall lower mite population. I'm sure some I haven't thought of. Heck it could be a different equilibrium in different locations too and half of those suck for beekeepers. Don't assume left on it's own that evolution is going to come out the way you want.

The only thing that will guarantee failure is never changing and adapting, so if going back to the "old way" of keeping bees means keeping everything the same as they were 50 years ago (or however long), good luck with that. You might also want to look at the history of bee disease and see all the different crashes there were under the old system as well.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> mb: "If you let bees build what they want what size cell will they build?"
> entomologist: "5.1mm"
> mb: "and if you let the bees that are raised on the 5.1mm cells build what they want what size will that be"
> entomologist: silence
> ...


Now you've taken to inventing dialogs with 'reputable entomologists'. I love it.
Any reputable entomologist would tell you that, when left to their own devices, bees will build a wide range of cell sizes. They would tell you that 5.1- 5.2 would probably be midrange (excepting drone cells) for EHB and 4.9 for AHB. And if you suggested that bees would follow some sort of Lamarkian evolutionary process in subsequent generations....any reputable entomologist would laugh until he/she passed out.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>"Post hoc, ergo propter hoc". It's actually impossible for us to ever know that for sure

Yet all the scientists I know believe that is exaclty what happened. We stopped treating and natural selection did the rest. There are not a lot of other theories that would explain it.

>If doing nothing about mites is best, then why are we not over run with feral swarms? 

Because we keep watering down those genetics with bees that can't survive without treating.

>Feral hives do exist, but they are few and far between.

That has not been my experience, nor many of the people I know. Thereare many feral colonies. There are fewer for many reasons.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm#feralbees

>Now you've taken to inventing dialogs with 'reputable entomologists'. I love it.

Wow. I've never invented a dialog with anyone. I have seen this dialog repeated several times by me and others with several entomologists. Since they all went the same, I don't see much point in naming names.

> And if you suggested that bees would follow some sort of Lamarkian evolutionary process in subsequent generations....any reputable entomologist would laugh until he/she passed out. 

Interestingly, Baudoux, who was the biggest proponent of enlarging the bees thought he proved Lamrakian theory because of that sequence of events. After he enlarged them to 5.4mm they would only go back down to 5.2mm rather than back down to the size they were when they were on 4.4mm foundation (commonly used at the time in Italy and Belgium). Again he didn't do the next step and see that the smaller bees would go smaller again. This is not Lamarkian. It is not genetics (although recent advances in epigenitics sound pretty Lamarkian to me...) it's just that bees build cells based on their own body as the measuring stick. Bigger bees tend to regress back to smaller, but it takes a couple of turnovers of comb to get there.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm#whatisregression


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## NewJoe (Jul 1, 2012)

Mr. C said:


> I guess I'm just curious then. It's ok to use antibiotics etc on humans because were not livestock, I can get there obviously. My question then is do you think we are dooming ourselves because our genetics will get weaker and weaker, or are we able to compensate with technolgy/science or whatever. If the former I don't know what to say, if the latter why can't we do the same with livestock? Do you treat all livestock the same? If you have a horse that gets sick do you not treat it? If you have a problem with bot flies do you just let them go?


I think the confusion comes in when we think that by treating ourselves we weaken ourselves. The fact really is that when we treat for pest in ourselves (bacteria for instance), we do not weaken ourselves, but we STRENGHTEN the parasite. Once upon a time when I was a child a shot of penicillin at the Dr. would cure almost anything....now you would be just as well off with a shot of water...penicillin now will not even touch the parasites. So what does that tell me? It tells me that the parasites will always be with us....and when we treat it makes the parasites evolve into stronger parasites.

As far as the bees go, I am new enough not to really have any self-proven facts to work from, but I do believe that the more natural we let the bees be for a longer period of time the better off they will be. I think that letting them build there own wax (get size wax and number of drones they need)...letting them gather there own food...letting them swarm (gives natural brood break)...in other words let them be bees with only minimal manipulations by us....in the long run would be better for the bees and the beekeepers.....I agree that the short term may be a little more difficult, but from what I am seeing around here is that the short term is very difficult already for those that treat heavily also.

just my $.02...take it with a grain of salt


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<I think the confusion comes in when we think that by treating ourselves we weaken ourselves. The fact really is that when we treat for pest in ourselves (bacteria for instance), we do not weaken ourselves, but we STRENGHTEN the parasite. Once upon a time when I was a child a shot of penicillin at the Dr. would cure almost anything....now you would be just as well off with a shot of water...penicillin now will not even touch the parasites. So what does that tell me? It tells me that the parasites will always be with us....and when we treat it makes the parasites evolve into stronger parasites.>

Read the above post again, is the bacteria actually stronger or just resistant to penicillin? Does penicilin resistant staph bacteria do any more damage than any other untreated staph infection? Bacteria resistant to penicillin is not necessarily more deadly, just harder to kill with penicillin. They still prescribe penicillin, it is still used as one of the antibiotics in rotation. The problem was that it was the ONLY antibiotic for a while. Now that time has passed many bacteria are again susceptible to penicilin because the selective pressure was removed and resistance often has a cost associated with it and thus is selected against in the absense of pressure. 

<in the long run would be better for the bees and the beekeepers>
Possibly better for bees (depending on how you measure success), not necessarily better for beekeepers who have different goals than the bees and different goals from each other as well.


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## D Semple (Jun 18, 2010)

Aerindel said:


> What we really need to do is stop moving bees around the country, stop managing them in a way that demands artificial feeds, stop treating the bees like a slave labor force and manage them like livestock.
> 
> Thats right, I'm proposing none other than the destruction of all commercial beekeeping and pollinator dependent monoculture farming.
> 
> ...



:scratch:


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## NewJoe (Jul 1, 2012)

Mr. C said:


> < not necessarily better for beekeepers who have different goals than the bees and different goals from each other as well.


Mr. c,

Now this part of your reply I agree with....I guess if the goal is to make more honey and more bees for profit. "different goals than the bees"

If the goal is the long term "keeping" of bees and helping the bee population worldwide, I would say that something similar to my ideas of letting the bees be bees would be beneficial.


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## WBVC (Apr 25, 2013)

"What we really need to do is stop moving bees around the country, stop managing them in a way that demands artificial feeds, stop treating the bees like a slave labor force and manage them like livestock." Unfortunately more often than not "livestock" is also pushed to the limits when being raised for commercial production. One thing that complicates bee management is that one doesn't have much control, if any, on what the bee does or where it goes once out of the hive.

In other circumstances "resistance" tends to develop when "treatments" are used inappropriately....wrong dose, wrong duration, wrong length of time and wrong frequency. When this happens the chances of the "organism" being targeted will have a better chance of selecting for a genetic trait that is not affected by the selected treatment and multiplying up a resistant population.

So one point of view would be to treat aggressively or don't treat at all....it is that middle road that is most likely to lead to resistance.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

NewJoe said:


> Mr. c,
> 
> Now this part of your reply I agree with....I guess if the goal is to make more honey and more bees for profit. "different goals than the bees"
> 
> If the goal is the long term "keeping" of bees and helping the bee population worldwide, I would say that something similar to my ideas of letting the bees be bees would be beneficial.


That may be some peoples goal, but I bet the bulk of the people here have more selfish reasons for keeping bees, at least in part. I know I do. Besides they aren't native this side of the pond anyway (honeybees that is).

Now I'm curious again, which part of my post don't you agree with? (I'm guess I'm assuming here by the way you phrased the above, apologies if I'm mistaken)


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## mac (May 1, 2005)

NewJoe said:


> Mr. c,
> 
> Now this part of your reply I agree with....I guess if the goal is to make more honey and more bees for profit. "different goals than the bees"


 I think bees and beekeepers have the same goal make more bees and honey the profit motive is different. Beekeepers for money bees to swarm and get through winter.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

You got me there motive would be more accurate, but don't forget pollination, bees are just there for the meal ticket!


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Since ‘recreated’ dialogs seem to be ok….from countless exchanges with new beekeepers…

Newbeek ‘I lost my hive(s)
Me ‘What happened?’
NB ‘Wax moths got ‘em’ (or shb, disappeared, froze, starved with a full super….etc)
Me ‘What about mites?’
NB ‘Didn’t have any.’
Me ‘Of course you did.’
NB Chest proudly stuck out…tone usually reserved for an errant six year old ‘Nope..I run small cell (or foundationless, or tobar…etc) so mites weren’t a problem.
NB ‘By the way…do you have any bees I can buy?’
Me ‘Nope…sold out.’


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Michael Bush said:


> Yet all the scientists I know believe that is exaclty what happened. We stopped treating and natural selection did the rest. There are not a lot of other theories that would explain it.


All the scientists you know believe that is exactly what happened, based on what evidence, the coincidental timing? Scientists don't _usually_ accept that kind of thing as evidence; but OK. However, you're still talking about tracheal mites, which are not varroa mites.

Every source I can find on the subject indicates that when the varroa mite first arrived in the United States in the late 80's, within a few years it had simply eradicated feral honey bees. *All* feral colonies, _everywhere_ in the country. There wasn't a living natural colony to be found in the US at that time. Contemporarily, 50% of all managed colonies in the US were similarly decimated. According to the relevant article from here on Beesource, the huge losses were early, during the period when *nobody anywhere was treating* their bees despite warnings from agricultural experts about the known effects of this mite as observed during its spread around the world. It is a historical fact that the final acceptance by beekeepers of the necessity to intervene is all that stopped the entire American honey bee population from being completely exterminated. As many here have pointed out, treated bees are still infested with mites even after treatment; but what this means is that the bees continue to be pressured to develop resistance even in treated colonies. If they had continued to do nothing, there would've been no beekeepers within a few short years.

You're saying, there now exists strains of bees, including feral colonies (which have been re-seeded by swarms from managed colonies) that are resistant to mites, or at least are able to shrug off a bad infestation. If that's true, it's only because treating beekeepers kept a large enough population of colonies alive long enough for some of them to begin to develop this resistance or hardiness. 

And the wide-spread continued re-proliferation of self-sustaining wild colonies is due to beekeepers who continue to treat and maintain large numbers of bees of varying "resistance levels". This _enriches_ the genetics of the honey bee population, it doesn't "water it down". Your tunnel-vision on the trait of hardiness against mites is keeping you from considering the larger picture, which is that there are a whole lot of other traits out there, _important_ traits, _crucial or necessary_ traits that are just as vital to the overall health of the honey bee population. All of those entomologists you talk to _should_ also be keenly aware that letting all bees just die unless they're of the tiny percentage that is completely self-sustaining against the mites could just as easily doom the honey bees in either the short or long term as the eventuality of never developing mite resistance at all.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> Yet all the scientists I know believe that is exaclty what happened. We stopped treating and natural selection did the rest. There are not a lot of other theories that would explain it.


I thought it was all about cell size. Which is it...cell size or genetics?


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

I'm kind of wearing out on this thread, but there is something I'm curious about.

If you leave aside the question of whether or not treatment is an effective method of exterminating mites, does anyone really believe that acaricides are good for the bees? Is there anyone here who would put these substances into a hive if they were not somewhat desperate to do something about varroa? I think most of us would be willing to admit that these substances are also toxic to bees, and that using them is akin to chemotherapy-- many folks believe that the alternative to using them is death for the hive. In the case of chemotherapy, treatment is almost as likely to kill you as to cure you in many cases. (I realize this is not a very good analogy, but what I'm trying to do here is get across the _desperation_ of the approach.)

As an example, somewhere up the line, in this thread or another recent one, I posted a study that showed several sublethal effects of a couple of common acaricides that remain in the comb as residue post treatment. Among these effects were a lengthening of the time brood spends in the cell, making for higher reproductive success for varroa. 

If you think about it, the viability of acaricide treatment as a longterm strategy is at best dubious. As several folks have pointed out, the mites have a higher reproductive rate than the bees and can evolve resistance to the effects of these toxins faster than the bees can. I think it fair to say that treatment is an attempt to stave off disaster for one more year, and as the winter just past demonstrated very clearly, it didn't work very well for a lot of beekeepers.

I'm doubtful that desperation is a good basis for any sustainable form of agriculture.

I've said this before, but I look at hive health like I look at the maintenance of junkers. I've driven a lot of junkers over the years, and kept some of them alive for amazing lengths of time without spending much money on them. I recently sold an 89 Caprice, still running. I still own an 84 318i BMW, and a 97 Camry. What I've noticed about these complex mechanical systems is that a certain amount of dysfunction will be tolerated, and the car will still run. One little thing can go wrong, and you can still drive it. Two or three things, if they're relatively minor, and the thing will still limp on down the road. But inevitably, if you keep ignoring these various small matters, a time will come when the car won't run well enough to get you where you need to go, and then you're badly screwed, because you can't be sure which thing to fix in order to get it going again in the mediocre way you've become accustomed to. It's an instance of synergistic failure.

What I believe is that the real Head in the Sand management approach is to believe that varroa are the main enemy of hive health. True, they are bad; they're like a bad coil that is only intermittently strong enough to make the engine run without sputtering. The car might still run, as long as you don't try to run it with the headlights on. But if your spark plugs get fouled, you're walking. Or the ignition wires get old and start leaking voltage, or any of a number of other problems that by themselves would not keep the car from running... to some extent.

I'm sorry to be so long-winded, but what I'm trying to say here is that those who have evolved management techniques that allow them to not treat for varroa, are probably doing almost _everything_ right. They have the their hives running on all cylinders, with a strong spark, clean fuel and plenty of it, and they have not allowed any preventable degradation of the complex living mechanism that is the hive. Those who have tried treatment free beekeeping and failed are doing one or more things that are wrong. I don't see how a logical person can arrive at any other conclusion.

It is demonstrable that some beekeepers do not treat for varroa, and their hives do not die. I don't know how else to explain this fact. You can argue about whys and wherefores, and you can even attribute it to luck, I guess. 

But I prefer to believe that we make our own luck.


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## NewJoe (Jul 1, 2012)

guess I am convinced now, If we don't treat, our bees will die. Also If we do treat our bees will die.

Now I get it!


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Every source I can find on the subject indicates that when the varroa mite first arrived in the United States in the late 80's, within a few years it had simply eradicated feral honey bees. *All* feral colonies, _everywhere_ in the country. There wasn't a living natural colony to be found in the US at that time.


I'm going to have to ask you for citations (that are not opinions) on that one. You know, real data.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Since ‘recreated’ dialogs seem to be ok….from countless exchanges with new beekeepers…
> 
> Newbeek ‘I lost my hive(s)
> Me ‘What happened?’
> ...


Countless exchanges? "...Chest proudly stuck out…_tone usually reserved for an errant six year old_ ‘Nope..mites weren’t a problem.'" If your intent wasn't a snide recreation I'd have to ask why you didn't take what they said at face value. Did you inspect their hives?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Best I can do as to something more weighty than passing mentions is this paper from Michigan State.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Joel_T said:


> If your intent wasn't a snide recreation


There was a touch of sarcasm in my post. I mentioned in an earlier post that most of the HITS folks weren’t stupid. Misinformed more likely. That misinformation was the direction I had pointed that particular sarcasm. Sorry if you took it literally.

Those numerous new beekeepers insisted that mites weren’t a problem. The truth is they were told by others that their beekeeping technique would eliminate mites as a problem. They looked no further. It actually happens all the time. For whatever reason….those beekeepers had no idea whether or not mites were a part of their colony collapse…..and after all…though it has gotten lost in the noise…..that was the original message in this thread.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Mr. C said:


> You got me there motive would be more accurate, but don't forget pollination, bees are just there for the meal ticket!


Well this brings up another thing, which is that dependency for survival by one species on the well-being of another is one of those things that just happens in nature. Many flowers evolved to be pollinated by insects like bees. Some flowers can even only be pollinated by bees. If bees die off significantly, so do those flowers, because they don't contain the machinery necessary to cope with a lack of insect pollination.

Right now the honey bee population, kept and feral, is still not as strong as it ideally should be; bees aren't _safe_ from total collapse as a species yet, at least in certain parts of the world including the mainland US. Should we then, recognizing that bees and bee-pollinated plants are a weak, teetering, unsustainable, or at the very least unreliable source of food, and just abandon them to die, instead shifting our concentration to building more of our diet from non-bee-dependent plants and animal sources? That's "live and let live", is it not? Bees are too much hassle, so screw 'em and let's eat something else. That's the logical progression of the Bond method.

But I like bees. So I keep them around, despite the hassle. Despite their disparate "weaknesses", I like them and I keep them alive as best I can. Analogous to the way flowering plants' survival is dependent on the health of bees, it isn't somehow "unnatural" or evolutionarily unacceptable for honey bees to become dependent in some ways (like, for instance, protection from mite collapse) on another species, like humans. Heck, we already do it by maintaining artificial hives; the Bond method logically demands that any swarm which is unable to find and maintain sufficient enough shelter on their own to create a thriving colony SHOULD be naturally killed off by exposure to elements or starvation or what have you, thereby selecting for the most capable genetics in that regard. But even those of us who promote the "Bond method" don't do that; we arbitrarily decide that taking a swarm and placing it into an already-known-suitable shelter rather than letting it find one on its own is acceptable practice. Sometimes we even create "artificial swarms", in which we move from the beginning of the process directly to the end of the process without ascertaining whether a particular colony has the gear to survive the process on its own.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Best I can do as to something more weighty than passing mentions is this paper from Michigan State.


The author does not support his opinion regarding feral colonies dying out completely with any data at all.

I thought you said you had sources.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> Right now the honey bee population, kept and feral, is still not as strong as it ideally should be; bees aren't _safe_ from total collapse as a species yet, at least in certain parts of the world including the mainland US. Should we then, recognizing that bees and bee-pollinated plants are a weak, teetering, unsustainable, or at the very least unreliable source of food, and just abandon them to die, instead shifting our concentration to building more of our diet from non-bee-dependent plants and animal sources? That's "live and let live", is it not? Bees are too much hassle, so screw 'em and let's eat something else. That's the logical progression of the Bond method.


The problem with this hysterical summation of the situation is that it is demonstrably false. All untreated bees are not dying. The "logical progression" of the Bond method is not dead bees, it is resistant bees. Beekeepers are succeeding at using this technique to get healthy bees. It does your credibility no good to insist otherwise.

You should read up on Brother Adam, and what he did to revitalize British beekeeping after the tracheal mite disaster. Hint: it wasn't an acaricide.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>I thought it was all about cell size. Which is it...cell size or genetics? 

For Tracheal mites? Genetics. For Varroa mites? Cell size. For winter survival in cold climates? Genetics. For productivity in your local climate? Genetics.

Of course there is no getting away from genetics as contributing to any success at anything to some degree or another. But it never got my bees past Varroa issues on large cell comb. On large cell comb VSH all died. Russians all died. Italians all died. Carniolans all died.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beessctheories.htm


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> The author does not support his opinion regarding feral colonies dying out completely with any data at all.
> 
> I thought you said you had sources.


I did. That paper was one such. You don't think it's good enough, but that doesn't make it not a source, it just makes it not good enough.

That feral bees were almost if not completely exterminated by varroa's introduction is more of a "common knowledge" thing, but it's fair to point out that common knowledge is occasionally wrong. Just because nobody apparently reported finding any feral colonies after that point means only that: nobody reported finding any. The colloquial literature of the time suggests however that the beekeeping industry at the time was _scrambling_ to find out how to deal with varroa mites. The way our sector tripped over itself to get into the pants of the Russian bee when its natural mite resistance was discovered makes it unlikely in the extreme that if pockets of naturally-resistant feral hives were discovered in the US there wouldn't have been a big deal made of it.

Unfortunately for our discussion, I don't have access to late 80's-early 90's copies of American Bee Journal and/or Bee Culture, which is where all the hard data would've been published regarding colony losses during the treatment-free period after varroa first arrived in the US. However, this "common knowledge" of a significant decimation is held among people who lived through it and did read those magazines. They all definitely got the impression that it was disastrous; so unless the entire beekeeping community has a "reading comprehension problem", then it's probably safe to accept that impression as valid enough for our purposes.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> For Varroa mites? Cell size.


We've already gotten genetics that handle tracheal mites. We've got cold climate bees. 

All of this talk amongst beekeepers here....and pretty much everywhere....on selection for mite resistance/tolerance is a waste of time and energy?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Hey, Mr. Bush - I can tell you for sure, in principle using small-cell is exactly the same to me as using drone-cell; it's a mechanical control. As I've pointed out, I'm down with that - I'd be willing to try it. And if it results in fewer or no mites, then I'll be happy never to use a drone frame, IPM bottom board, or MAQS again. I would likely _strongly_ advocate for beekeeping supply companies to make a plasticell version, but that's just my own preference.

But that's not selecting for resistance. If small cell is all it is, then even the most pampered mite-treated colony around can be graduated down to small cell and never have to worry about mites no matter what their genetic "resistance".


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> I did. That paper was one such. You don't think it's good enough, but that doesn't make it not a source, it just makes it not good enough.


I asked for actual data. Apparently an opinion expressed as fact without supporting data is a "source." If that were a rational way to cite sources, I could claim that the moon is made of green cheese. Plenty of "sources" for that assertion.



melliferal said:


> That feral bees were almost if not completely exterminated by varroa's introduction is more of a "common knowledge" thing, but it's fair to point out that common knowledge is occasionally wrong. Just because nobody apparently reported finding any feral colonies after that point...


Again, you are making an assertion without any supporting data. Where did you read that this was true?



melliferal said:


> Unfortunately for our discussion, I don't have access to late 80's-early 90's copies of American Bee Journal and/or Bee Culture, which is where all the hard data would've been published regarding colony losses during the treatment-free period after varroa first arrived in the US.


Now you're attempting to move the goal posts. The question at hand involves feral colonies. No one denies that managed colonies were badly affected, and I would assume that many if not most feral colonies were also badly affected. But your assertion was that all feral colonies disappeared, and even though this would be impossible to prove, you have not even attempted to do so.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> I asked for actual data. Apparently an opinion expressed as fact without supporting data is a "source."


It was not an opinion, it was a recitation. "Yesterday I ate poached eggs for breakfast" is not made an "opinion" by virtue of my not having documentation. You don't have to believe anything without evidence, naturally - nor could you be expected to; but statements are not divided into either "data" or "opinion".

But I'm rather puzzled about this. Take the following statements:

"Every entomologist I've talked to has said they believe tracheal mites would never have been a problem if we hadn't been treating them"

and

"Every source I can find says that the introduction of varroa mites wiped out the feral bee population in the US."


The first you don't question; the second you attack. Why?






rhaldridge said:


> Again, you are making an assertion without any supporting data. Where did you read that this was true?


It is an "inference", made from the fact that no such reports can apparently be found. 



rhaldridge said:


> Now you're attempting to move the goal posts. The question at hand involves feral colonies. No one denies that managed colonies were badly affected, and I would assume that many if not most feral colonies were also badly affected. But your assertion was that all feral colonies disappeared, and even though this would be impossible to prove, you have not even attempted to do so.


You're choosing to fixate on feral colonies, because you want to push a technical point as a distraction from the larger discussion. That feral colonies were wiped out was merely a supporting argument not the main subject, which is of course our managed colonies. I considered it a relevant fact because at the time, managed colonies were derived from feral colonies and therefore could be considered a representative sample of their genetics. If you disagree that the feral colony loss angle is supported enough to use, then I'll stop using it. But I won't shift the focus to it because it's more convenient for you to attack than other supporting arguments I've made, of which there are many.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >But it never got my bees past Varroa issues on large cell comb. On large cell comb VSH all died. Russians all died. Italians all died. Carniolans all died.
> 
> http://www.bushfarms.com/beessctheories.htm


No survivors to breed from? I am left wondering where you found bees to repopulate your hives to begin your small cell program.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

rhaldridge said:


> The author does not support his opinion regarding feral colonies dying out completely with any data at all.
> 
> I thought you said you had sources.


I'd think that Zachary Huang, and/or Michigan State University would be pretty reliable sources. Maybe contacting them would give you leads to data you could more easily embrace.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

melliferal said:


> It was not an opinion, it was a recitation. "Yesterday I ate poached eggs for breakfast" is not made an "opinion" by virtue of my not having documentation. You don't have to believe anything without evidence, naturally - nor could you be expected to; but statements are not divided into either "data" or "opinion".


In fact, they are. Statements made without supporting data, in my book, are mere assertions, It is your opinion that you ate poached eggs. You might be an insane person who mistook cooked yams for poached eggs, or perhaps you were the unwitting victim of a conspiracy to feed you fake poached eggs. Without an independent witness, I have no way of being sure. In such a trivial instance, I'd take your word for it, out of basic civility. The troubles bees are having do not strike me as trivial, and therefore I require more corroboration before I can take anything you say about them seriously.

Your problem here is that you have invoked scientific rigor, and are now complaining that you are being held to that standard.



melliferal said:


> But I'm rather puzzled about this. Take the following statements:
> 
> "Every entomologist I've talked to has said they believe tracheal mites would never have been a problem if we hadn't been treating them"
> 
> ...


I have no way of knowing if the first statement is true, and have not commented on it. I know the second statement to be untrue, and it took very little searching to come up with a valid and scientifically rigorous study which showed that at least some feral populations survived the onset of varroa. What makes it even funnier is that if you had bothered to look for this study, it would have supported some of your other opinions.




melliferal said:


> It is an "inference", made from the fact that no such reports can apparently be found.


It's an invalid inference. See above. 





melliferal said:


> You're choosing to fixate on feral colonies, because you want to push a technical point as a distraction from the larger discussion.


No no. *You* asserted the total loss of feral colonies to support your thesis that if we don't poison our hives to save them, we will soon be eating nothing but potatoes and other non-pollinated crops. Remember? I do. The thrust of your argument, if I understand it, is that we must intervene to save the bees. But if some bees survive without intervention, that pretty much shoots your argument down in flames. I agree that feral colonies are a red herring, but it was one that you brought into the discussion. There are beekeepers keeping bees alive and productive without treatment, and *that* is the irrefutable counterpoint to your argument.

Okay, I guess I've had my fun with the feral bees and I'm running out of rope to feed you. Google "Tom Seeley" and "Arnot Forest"


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Joel_T said:


> I'd think that Zachary Huang, and/or Michigan State University to be pretty reliable sources. Maybe contacting them would give you leads to data you could more easily embrace.


Well, I know his statement regarding feral populations is untrue, due to the work of Tom Seeley at Cornell. I try to go with statements supported by data, rather than restatements of widely-held opinions, if I have a choice.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

Bees with the trait were initially bred by the USDA Honey Bee Breeding, Genetics and Physiology Laboratory in Baton Rouge, LA from colonies in which mite populations grew only slowly.[1]

1. ^ a b Harbo, J., and R. Hoopingarner. 1997. Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in the United States that express resistance to Varroa jacobsoni (Mesostigmata: Varroidae). Journal of Economic Entomology 90: 893-898.

So, it is not HITS. There are some experimental validity to the idea that some hives show slower growth of mite populations. Maybe it is hits. :lookout:


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## Wisnewbee (Apr 8, 2011)

The "Unmoveable Object" (treating) vs the "Irresistable Force" (TF). Everyone always digs in their heels. 

I don't believe that was what this thread was about, as explained by Beemandan. It's about the deniel of a beekeeper to admit that Varroa mites are a problem. 

Case in point. (the names have been changed to protect the innocent)

I was on the chat one evening and we were taking about our bees building up. A beekeeper in Texas posted pictures of his hives. The pictures showed hives almost void of bees. I asked a couple of questions to the guy about his bees and hives, such as "where are all the bees?" This was in April, and his hives should have been busting at the seams with bees. Several other people chimed in and we started a diagnosis of his bees condition. These were overwintered hives that had only a handfull of bees remaining, and had large amounts of pollen and honey in the hives. I asked if he had done a mite count. He said he had, and only had 1 mite. I asked, 1 mite or 1% mite load? The guy stated 1 mite. I asked what method he used to sample. Visual. "I only saw 1 mite, that's all there was. I don't have a mite problem. The problem isn't mites." He had never done a correct sampling. I tried giving him resources on sampling. This beekeeper was in denial. Because he couldn't see them, they weren't the problem. The beekeeper stated he was going to call his state inspector and have him look and advise him what was wrong. Good call on his part.

Two days later I was again on chat. This beekeeper came on. The first thing he did after seeing me on was to apologise to me. To his credit, he did this publicly. He explained that the state inspector came out and did a mite sample. (Can't remember if it was an alcohol wash or powdered sugar roll, sorry) It turns out the bees were heavily infested with varroa and had collapsed. It was an eye opening experience for the beekeeper.

I believe that Beemandan was referring to this type of beekeeper when he came up with HITS. Deniel of a problem does nothing to advance a solution to the problem.

Is there a magic bullet out there that can fix this? NO! Will the solution be a one size fits all? Most likely not. There is too much enviromental variety for that. Selecting from survivor stock is a good place to start, but some have to survive first. If you're not monitoring mite levels, how do you decide which queens to graft from? You won't know which bees are doing a better job. Monitoring is not treating.

I learned how to keep bees from a commercial beek with 35 years experience. He is very successful. Can his business survive without treatments? Nope. That's why I decided this year to change the genetics of my operation. Every hive is being changed over to VSH. Will this allow me to go TF? Most likely no. Will I be monitoring my mite loads? Heck yes! Letting my bees die from mites is not an option. I'm trying to build a fulltime beekeeping operation. That requires bees. Would I like to be able to get queens from successful TF operations? Of course I would, but it's not easy. MB isn't doing queens this year. Others didn't respond to PM's about getting queens from them. (the others are nameless intentionally) Will the VSH queens I'm getting work out in my northern location? Don't know yet, but I have to start somewhere. I'm also going from migratory to a stationary operation. These and other things that TF sideliners are doing will hopefully combine to allow the reduction or elimination of most treatments.

Varroa mites are a problem! Hives in the USA are infested with Varroa mites. Admit it. From there, we can work on a solution. Deny it, and it doesn't matter which side of the treatment fence you are on. All you'll be doing is putting money in the pockets of the package producers.

Wisnewbee
Honey Luv Farm


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> In fact, they are. Statements made without supporting data, in my book, are mere assertions, It is your opinion that you ate poached eggs. You might be an insane person who mistook cooked yams for poached eggs, or perhaps you were the unwitting victim of a conspiracy to feed you fake poached eggs. Without an independent witness, I have no way of being sure. In such a trivial instance, I'd take your word for it, out of basic civility. The troubles bees are having do not strike me as trivial, and therefore I require more corroboration before I can take anything you say about them seriously.


So you _are cognizant_ of the problem with statements like "thousands of natural beekeepers I've spoken to aren't experiencing losses".



rhaldridge said:


> Your problem here is that you have invoked scientific rigor, and are now complaining that you are being held to that standard.


Not at all; I ask only for consistency. It was long ago in the thread that I invoked scientific rigor, and it led nowhere; the march of unsupported anecdote proceeded apace. Now that it is convenient, quite suddenly you protest an "unsupported assertion" on my part; still no word on anyone else.



rhaldridge said:


> I have no way of knowing if the first statement is true, and have not commented on it. I know the second statement to be untrue, and it took very little searching to come up with a valid and scientifically rigorous study which showed that at least some feral populations survived the onset of varroa.


Yes, but you didn't know when you first decided to object, did you? You had to look - fortuitously, you found some useful information. But you didn't have it at the time you decided to object to _my_ sweeping unsupported assertion and not others.

Or maybe you did already know? In that case, it looks as if in your opinion (note: this is a correct use of the term opinion), an unsupported assertion is unacceptable when you know it to be wrong (as in the feral bee case), but allowable when you just do not know for sure (as in the claim that entomologists are of a certain consensus about treatment of mites). Is that right?

A link to what you found would be nice if you feel it's something pertinent; I immediately provided one for you when you asked after all.



rhaldridge said:


> What makes it even funnier is that if you had bothered to look for this study, it would have supported some of your other opinions.


Would have supported? Is there any reason it wouldn't still support these other assertions now? Now I'm really hoping you'll provide a link. If, as you say, this thing you found disproves the feral bee assertion but supports other points I've made, I can't wait to read it.



rhaldridge said:


> It's an invalid inference. See above.


It is invalid - I think. I've already conceded that. But, it was reasonable at the time. It's invalid now because you found positive information that suggests otherwise.



rhaldridge said:


> No no. *You* asserted the total loss of feral colonies to support your thesis that if we don't poison our hives to save them, we will soon be eating nothing but potatoes and other non-pollinated crops. Remember? I do.


No, I don't remember saying anything about "poisoning" hives; feel free to post a quote.



rhaldridge said:


> The thrust of your argument, if I understand it, is that we must intervene to save the bees. But if some bees survive without intervention, that pretty much shoots your argument down in flames.


It doesn't, because the loss of feral colonies was only a single supporting example. By proving it invalid, you remove it; but it doesn't make the argument invalid because I've provided several unrelated supporting examples.

For instance, in the same post in which I originally used feral colony loss, I also first invoked another, completely independent supporting argument, which is the problem of a _genetic bottleneck_ - the concept that if you reduce the bees' available pool of genetic diversity too far, the species will fail even if all the bees that are left can survive mites. The underlying theme here is that mites aren't the only threats bees face; a small amount of bees with a specific mite resistance survive, but all they have is other bees with essentially the same genes as themselves to reproduce with. So if they ever encounter a threat from EFB (say) and they don't have any particular genetic resistance to EFB, they'll never be able to assimilate that gene through breeding - the gene no longer exists in the breeding population. They'll have to wait for an EFB resistant gene to once again spontaneously mutate into existence in a way that is compatible with life; and that kind of thing happens when it happens - exposure to EFB by itself will not hasten the mutation. In the meantime, EFB can wipe out the varroa mite surviving stock. And since they are the last surviving honey bees...of course, again EFB is just an example here; the second punch could be anything,

The invalidity of the supporting argument that "all feral hives were wiped out" does not make the genetic bottleneck problem invalid. 

But in either case, you did misunderstand the "thrust" of my main argument - which is not that everyone _must_ intervene, but more that us poor interventionists ain't so bad. My main argument is that Michael Bush's assertion - varroa intervention necessarily "weakens" honey bees in general by "watering down" the genes of the breeding population - is flawed. I offered several rebuttals: one was that not-treating killed off all feral bees. You say you've found evidence it did not, so we can call that rebuttal invalid. Other rebuttals that have not been shown invalid (to date at least) are that concentrating on a single trait when "selecting" a population is bad conservation policy due to the problem of genetic bottlenecking; that treated bees interbreeding with local resistant strains maintains a source of crucial non-mite-resistance related gene diversity that is vital for species health; that the choice to call his method "live-and-let-die" is based on a subjective and arbitrary definition of what counts as an unacceptable intervention; and that bees relying on humans for protection from varroa mites for instance is no more unnatural or unsustainable than flowers relying on bees for their own reproduction (this kind of interaction between two specie is in fact so common we have a specific term for it; "mutualism").


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

rhaldridge said:


> Well, I know his statement regarding feral populations is untrue, due to the work of Tom Seeley at Cornell. I try to go with statements supported by data, rather than restatements of widely-held opinions, if I have a choice.


Did Seeley debunk Huangs suggestion of heavy ferral losses altogether or just find exceptions to it? I can't find much but exceptions - Arnot Forest stuff.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Joel_T said:


> Did Seeley debunk Huangs suggestion of heavy ferral losses altogether or just find exceptions to it? I can't find much but exceptions - Arnot Forest stuff.


I don't think there is any doubt that most feral colonies perished during the early years of the varroa invasion, but this is very different from "almost totally wiped out"

Huang says:



> Because A. mellifera colonies almost always die within two to three years after mite infestation, if not treated, feral bee colonies (unmanaged colonies in the wild) in U.S. were almost totally wiped out by this mite around 1995, less than a decade after it was introduced to the USA (around 1987).


There are two problems with this assertion. The first is the notion that colonies almost always die if untreated. Numerous beekeepers have demonstrated otherwise. The second is the notion that feral colonies "were almost totally wiped out by this mite..." Seeley found that this was not true in Arnot Forest. One might argue that this is an exception, but lacking other data, that argument is based on an unsupported opinion.

Maybe someone has demonstrated that feral colonies were almost all wiped out, but as far as I know, that hasn't been done. I don't fault anyone for this. It is exceedingly difficult to prove a negative: "No feral colonies survived." I can't even come up with an acceptable protocol, because even if Seeley's study was duplicated in other areas, someone would always argue that the results reflected exceptional situations.

There's anecdotal evidence for the survival of some feral colonies, but... we've just witnessed a display of unscientific thinking, in which anecdotes that support the poster's position are happily accepted, and those that contradict it are subjected to scientific skepticism. 

My personal feeling, which I cannot support scientifically, is that most feral colonies died, but not all. I believe that these survivor colonies have now reproduced and spread through suitable habitats, and that while there are fewer now than there were 30 years ago, this is only partly due to varroa. There are other factors, chief among them habitat loss. Seeley theorized that the Arnot Forest ferals were able to survive, even though they were infested, due to their relative isolation from each other, and from commercial apiaries, and there may be truth to this, because part of his study showed that the Arnot Forest bees were no more likely to survive without treatment than the usual suspects.

I can say that the State of Florida believes in the existence of feral swarms, because their best practices forbid beekeepers to keep swarms without requeening ( an admonition based on fear of AHB) and they maintain trap lines along major highways, also to check for AHB.

Of course, I'm a believer in the resiliency of the species, and I base this belief on the fact that they have already survived for millions of years, and (no doubt) many previous calamities. They are remarkable creatures.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Wow, it takes another Cheese-head to attempt to return the thread to it's intended direction. Good example, Wisnewbee.
Clearly life in denial is sweet, until the crash.
Crazy Roland


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Wisnewbee said:


> Varroa mites are a problem! Hives in the USA are infested with Varroa mites. Admit it.


Thank you for a thoughtful post.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Back to one of my original questions.
Why is the idea of mites so taboo?
Some people will happily accept nosema, starvation, exposure, pesticides, wax moths, chalkbrood…..and practically anything else.
But asking about mites seems off limits.
Any thoughts?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

beemandan said:


> Back to one of my original questions.
> Why is the idea of mites so taboo?
> Any thoughts?


Opinions on a variety of unrelated topics fill page after page of this thread with long winded posts.
Yet, it appears that even offering an opinion on one of the original questions is verboten.
Go figure.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Dammit Jim, I'm a beekeeper, not a psychologist! 

It certainly is curious that out of all the possible problems so many people single out varroa as being an overexaggerated problem. It must be the result of something that happened before I started beekeeping, so I have no insight.

Perhaps they are old beeks who were around when varroa first arrived and personally predicted it would amount to nothing; so now it's primarily an ego thing. Perhaps they are young but their mentors were such people, who specially counseled them never to take varroa for an answer.

Perhaps mites emit a biotic agent that makes humans think It's Not Mites. They are evil, irredeemable little red hellcreatures and I wouldn't put it past them.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Well mites are something you can control, no one (normally) wants to be to blame for the death of their bees. It's much easier to one's ego to claim it was something out of your control. Those that do control in some way whether they count mites or not (genetics, mechanical, chemical, small cell or whatever) don't want to admit it didn't work, i.e. I failed. I failed last year, I didn't take care of the problem soon enough, I lost hives because of it. There I said it, who's next.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Back to one of my original questions.
> Why is the idea of mites so taboo?
> Some people will happily accept nosema, starvation, exposure, pesticides, wax moths, chalkbrood…..and practically anything else.
> But asking about mites seems off limits.
> Any thoughts?





beemandan said:


> Opinions on a variety of unrelated topics fill page after page of this thread with long winded posts.
> Yet, it appears that even offering an opinion on one of the original questions is verboten.
> Go figure.



The idea of mites isn't taboo. I see you believe that but don't know why. 100% of those I've read or talked to agree mites are a problem and 100% of those also disagree on the methods to deal with them. That'll probably continue long after mites are a problem, when that comes to be.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

melliferal said:


> It certainly is curious that out of all the possible problems so many people single out varroa as being an overexaggerated problem. It must be the result of something that happened before I started beekeeping, so I have no insight.
> 
> Perhaps they are old beeks who were around when varroa first arrived and personally predicted it would amount to nothing; so now it's primarily an ego thing.


Well that would be me but it changed my mind pretty quickly and I wasn't alone. I remember my dad in the early 90,s watching me pull full boxes of honey off of our scale hive by the honey house and wondering how it was possible for a hive to make that much honey and have virtually no bees in the entire hive. I said "we've got whole yards like this dad". Sure did make pulling honey easy though.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

Yeah, the bigger they are the harder they fall, I found out last year how true that is, hives that produced 175-200 lbs. were the first to collapse. The big hives never even made it to winter, only some of the weakest made it to spring. John


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Joel_T said:


> The idea of mites isn't taboo. I see you believe that but don't know why. 100% of those I've read or talked to agree mites are a problem


Read post 169 by Wisnewbee. This is not at all uncommon, in my experience. 
And, in addition to the level of denial being pretty high, in my opinion, there is a perception that mites aren’t really a big problem….as this next quote shows.



melliferal said:


> It certainly is curious that out of all the possible problems so many people single out varroa as being an overexaggerated problem. It must be the result of something that happened before I started beekeeping, so I have no insight.


In all honesty, and I’m not being critical, I believe that a large part of the new beekeeping community underappreciate the impact of varroa.

I must admit that I wasn’t’ keeping bees in the prevarroa days but I’ve talked to many who were and read enough to know that they were devastating and still are. All you need to do is ask any big beekeeper about the problems they faced before varroa….and most will tell you an occasional outbreak of AFB.
Ask Jim Lyon…I bet he would make a fair comparison between the days before varroa and today.




Mr. C said:


> Well mites are something you can control, no one (normally) wants to be to blame for the death of their bees. It's much easier to one's ego to claim it was something out of your control.


And I think this quote touches on the denial part. I’m not a psychologist either but have been a keen follower of human nature for many of my sixty plus years. 

Having said that…many of the other maladies that seem an acceptable explanation for beekeepers’ losses are also contollable. What would make varroa more embarrassing?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

jmgi said:


> Yeah, the bigger they are the harder they fall,


Another very common lament.....
'They were my strongest hive(s) last year! And now they're gone.'
How many times has this been repeated?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

jim lyon said:


> Well that would be me but it changed my mind pretty quickly and I wasn't alone.


I expect most people did. But, there's always a few...


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>That feral bees were almost if not completely exterminated by varroa's introduction is more of a "common knowledge" thing, but it's fair to point out that common knowledge is occasionally wrong. 

And in this case it is wrong. I know many people making a living removing bees and many of these are small, long term survivors. Many of them are on this board.

>Hey, Mr. Bush - I can tell you for sure, in principle using small-cell is exactly the same to me as using drone-cell; it's a mechanical control.

No. It's the opposite of giving the bees artificially large cells which gives the Varroa a reproductive advantage. You can accomplish the same thing by LETTING them build natural comb.

> I would likely strongly advocate for beekeeping supply companies to make a plasticell version, but that's just my own preference.

They do. It is PF100s (deeps) and PF120s (mediums) from Mann Lake.

>But that's not selecting for resistance. If small cell is all it is, then even the most pampered mite-treated colony around can be graduated down to small cell and never have to worry about mites no matter what their genetic "resistance". 

Exactly.

>No survivors to breed from? I am left wondering where you found bees to repopulate your hives to begin your small cell program. 

My first small cell bees were just commercial stock on small cell comb. The survived Varroa fine (unlike the ones on large cell). After that I started collecting local feral survivors to breed from for bees that would winter in my climate.

But back to the original "HITS" as a synonym for the "Bond Method" topic, if we stop treating and we breed from those that do well under those conditions we can get bees that do well on their own. Varroa or not, we still can't get bees that do well without treating unless we stop treating to find the bees that do well without treating and stop watering down the genetics with bees that can't survive on their own.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> But back to the original "HITS" as a synonym for the "Bond Method" topic


They are only synonyms if one feels the need to twist it, enabling them to promote a personal agenda....whether tf or not.
HITS has nothing to do with tf/treatment. It is about objective knowledge.....you can choose to have it or choose to fly blind. 
It is just that simple.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> Varroa or not, we still can't get bees that do well without treating unless we stop treating to find the bees that do well without treating and stop watering down the genetics with bees that can't survive on their own.


What?! Make up your mind. If small cell is the solution who cares about the genetics? Which is it?


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> In all honesty, and I’m not being critical, I believe that a large part of the new beekeeping community underappreciate the impact of varroa.


It seems perfectly possible. Us new people started keeping bees when varroa was already something being "coped" with, so to us huge and sudden losses may seem kind of "normal" and expectable, when they really aren't (or shouldn't be). We don't know what it's like to be keeping bees excellently for years and then suddenly be losing them left and right like that.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Michael Bush said:


> >No survivors to breed from? I am left wondering where you found bees to repopulate your hives to begin your small cell program.
> 
> My first small cell bees were just commercial stock on small cell comb. The survived Varroa fine (unlike the ones on large cell). After that I started collecting local feral survivors to breed from for bees that would winter in my climate.
> .


I don't mean to belabor this point (and your always courteous reply is appreciated) but isn't it fair to say that had these commercial sources taken the advice of the scientists you quoted who felt that it was a mistake to ever treat and suffered total losses as you did that perhaps you and many others might have dropped out of beekeeping entirely? I think there is a good chance that survivors no doubt would have eventually emerged and at some future date we may well have all been the better for it but would it have been worth the carnage to get to that point? For us the decision was easy and ironically we sold a lot of our treated bees to a beekeeper who is always being hailed over on the tf forum.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

melliferal said:


> It seems perfectly possible. Us new people started keeping bees when varroa was already something being "coped" with, so to us huge and sudden losses may seem kind of "normal" and expectable,


What, in my mind, makes matters worse is the perception that the only mite failures are huge and sudden. The thinking might be that mites unchecked cause huge and sudden failures, then when we get them ‘under control’ they’re no longer a problem. But that is absolutely wrong. You may be able to reduce the miteload to a level that doesn’t bring about a total collapse but they are still a significant parasite. As a result every other pressure that our bees face is faced with a weakened bee population. Overwintering, EFB, nosema etc, etc are all substantially bigger challenges as a result of the pervasive effect of mites ‘under control’. 

And if we ignore mites….and ‘the wax moths got ‘em’ (or whatever), then we destined to repeat those failures and never understand the whole picture.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

<>But that's not selecting for resistance. If small cell is all it is, then even the most pampered mite-treated colony around can be graduated down to small cell and never have to worry about mites no matter what their genetic "resistance". 

Exactly.>

Has anyone ever tested the reproductive success of mites in smaller cells? If that is all there is to it, it should be pretty easy to demonstrate. Mite reproduction is why the savanna bee in Africa became resistant fast, shorter capping time led to less productive mites. We know that varroa prefers drone brood, but I have a hard time believing they would choose not to reproduce because the cells are smaller, especially since cerana cells are smaller too no? (I tried finding cell sizes for cerana again no luck so far) Seems to me that it would be pretty easy to incubate a frame of brood of various cell sizes to see differences in reproductive success of varroa.

I seem to recall reading that many bees fail to regress and die when trying to switch over, sounds a lot like bond selection to me.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Another very common lament.....
> 'They were my strongest hive(s) last year! And now they're gone.'
> How many times has this been repeated?


I've heard that approach as a business model before. Don't leave ANY honey - the bees are expendable - a couple hundred pounds of honey will offset all new package expenses.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Mr. C said:


> Has anyone ever tested the reproductive success of mites in smaller cells?


It has been tested several times.
The only people who found smaller populations of mites on smaller cells were the people who didn't count them.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

Mr. C said:


> <>But that's not selecting for resistance. If small cell is all it is, then even the most pampered mite-treated colony around can be graduated down to small cell and never have to worry about mites no matter what their genetic "resistance".
> 
> Exactly.>
> 
> ...


There _are_ studies on that. If I recall correctly, the percentage of sterile mites born/hatched (whatever it is) in smaller worker cells was higher than those in larger drone cells. I just recently read this....... 

http://bees.msu.edu/2012/varroa-repro/


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Joel_T said:


> I've heard that approach as a business model before. Don't leave ANY honey - the bees are expendable - a couple hundred pounds of honey will offset all new package expenses.


That's awful.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>What?! Make up your mind. If small cell is the solution who cares about the genetics? Which is it? 

I made up my mind a decade ago and I've consistently said the solution for Varroa for me was cell size. I've stated several times in this thread alone, why I care about genetics, but I will reiterate since you have asked again. I care about genetics because the world of bees does not revolve around just Varroa. There is the whole picture. I want bees who are surviving and thriving without treatments for anything, and the only way to get that is to not treat for anything. As far as Varroa, not treating, alone, did not work as they all died. Small cell and natural cell changed that outcome for me. I still prefer local survivors for my source stock as they are not only succeeding without treatments (on natural sized comb) but they are living in my climate and succeeding there. Plus I'm sure everything related to bees and their health has a genetic component to it including Varroa. I'm also sure everything related to bees and their health has a pro-biotic component. It may be the microbes have more to do with their health than genetics. But, since most treatments affect the microbes, the only way to promote that is to not treat.

As far as the "Bond Method", if I have bees that can't survive Varroa on natural comb, I don't want to perpetuate them.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

melliferal said:


> That's awful.


Yea - learned that in a beekeeping class. I guess that's called "tw", treating the wallet. :scratch:


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Joel_T said:


> There _are_ studies on that. If I recall correctly, the percentage of sterile mites born/hatched (whatever it is) in smaller worker cells was higher than those in larger drone cells. I just recently read this.......
> 
> http://bees.msu.edu/2012/varroa-repro/


That is because of longer capping time on drone brood, which allows more mites to develop to maturity (my understanding anyway). What I was looking for was a study more like this.
http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/20081124_18

I don't have access to the full article, but it sounds like mites prefer larger sizes, but reproduce just as well in smaller ones.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Joel_T said:


> There _are_ studies on that. If I recall correctly, the percentage of sterile mites born/hatched (whatever it is) in smaller worker cells was higher than those in larger drone cells. I just recently read this.......


The studies conducted by Delaplane/Berry at UGA, Ellis/Hayes at UF and Seeley at Cornell have been discussed and argued in other multigazillon page threads. Do a search. 
Please....if you feel the need to repeat it....start a new thread.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Here….I’ll even spoonfeed them to ya.
Just take it outside……please.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...all-Cell-Studies&highlight=small+cell+studies
http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ell-Studies-quot&highlight=small+cell+studies


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> As far as the "Bond Method", if I have bees that can't survive Varroa on natural comb, I don't want to perpetuate them.


Just so we're clear on this....I haven't said anything against the Bond Method......ever.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>>I expect that most of us have heard of the ‘Bond’ or ‘Live and Let Die’ method of mite resistance selection. I would like to propose a new term for a different one. I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method.
>I haven't said anything against the Bond Method......ever. 

Maybe you were misunderstood. I think most of us were under the impression that was the beginning of this discussion--a renaming of the "Bond Method" as "HITS". Perhaps you are describing a different "method" than the "Bond Method"? Maye you should clarify.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Joel_T said:


> Yea - learned that in a beekeeping class. I guess that's called "tw", treating the wallet. :scratch:


No kidding. I mean, obviously it's _possible_; it's what all beekeepers did before Langstroth (an all too often unsung genius, I think). But even leaving aside the moral question - ugh - I can't believe it's actually more profitable. If it was, I suspect the Langstroth-type hive would never have caught on, let alone become the modern standard.


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

Michael Bush said:


> >>I expect that most of us have heard of the ‘Bond’ or ‘Live and Let Die’ method of mite resistance selection. I would like to propose a new term for a different one. I want to call it the Head in the Sand (HITS) method.
> >I haven't said anything against the Bond Method......ever.
> 
> Maybe you were misunderstood. I think most of us were under the impression that was the beginning of this discussion--a renaming of the "Bond Method" as "HITS". Perhaps you are describing a different "method" than the "Bond Method"? Maye you should clarify.


He did clarify, several times, including in the first post. He pretty clearly says he has a name for a different style of beekeeping, i.e. not the bond method, but something else. He only mentioned it as one name for a system, he could have just as easily said pyramiding up, or checkerboarding, or anything else.

He's only said that people aren't recognizing varroa as a problem. The Bond Method doesn't fit this description at all. If you are running the bond method you are probably doing it to get bees resistant to varroa, because you are aware it is a problem and are letting weak hives die because they don't handle varroa. It doesn't fit at all. I've lost count of the times he's restated his post isn't about TF/Treatment or any specific method of husbandry. I don't know where that idea came up, but I've been sidetracked by a lot of comments already myself so who knows. 

I haven't run into the same thing that Beemandan has, but I don't talk to many beekeepers outside forums. I have however heard/read about the same thing he's been mentioning quite a bit.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

Mr. C said:


> That is because of longer capping time on drone brood, which allows more mites to develop to maturity (my understanding anyway). What I was looking for was a study more like this.
> http://www.ibra.org.uk/articles/20081124_18
> 
> I don't have access to the full article, but it sounds like mites prefer larger sizes, but reproduce just as well in smaller ones.


That abstract didn't address the viability of the mite only the quantity. More is not better (for the mite) if they are sterile, as the other article suggested.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Michael Bush said:


> I think most of us were under the impression that was the beginning of this discussion--a renaming of the "Bond Method" as "HITS".


I don't know about *most* of you. Surely a couple of you have chosen that interpretation.


Michael Bush said:


> Perhaps you are describing a different "method" than the "Bond Method"? Maye you should clarify.


The Bond Method…or Live and Let Die is a catchy name.
I, too, wanted a catchy name. There the similarities end.
Look CLOSELY Michael….I used the words *different one *in my first post.
Nowhere did I say …another name for the same method.

How many posts have I made saying exactly that? 
Sorry you’re having difficulty with this.


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## Joel_T (Feb 8, 2013)

beemandan said:


> Here….I’ll even spoonfeed them to ya.
> Just take it outside……please.
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...all-Cell-Studies&highlight=small+cell+studies
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ell-Studies-quot&highlight=small+cell+studies



To save me some time, although I'm becoming very leary of "conclusions" around here, there are so many different ones.... your conclusion (from your multigazzilion sources) is/was?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Joel_T said:


> To save me some time, although I'm becoming very leary of "conclusions" around here, there are so many different ones.... your conclusion (from your multigazzilion sources) is/was?


Oh my….
.
Each study concluded that small cell does not make any significant difference in varroa infestations.

The conventional foundation folks believe that the studies results stand on their own.

The small cell folks believe that the studies are each and all flawed. 

If you want to know which side I'm on....I believe I posted numerous times in both threads.....


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i was pretty much 'head in the sand', mostly because when i started there was so much else to learn that i didn't bother checking for mites.

then this happened:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?275857-autopsy-of-a-dead-out

i won't be treating, but i'll be checking all my production hives this summer and compare the infestions rates to productivity and survival. the worst ones will be considered for splitting and requeening.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I am curious sp....before you took the sample did you think that the cause of the collapse was mites?
And once you realized that it was....did that fact cause you any distress or embarrassment?


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

I went entirely natural cell with many colonies for several years and it simply didn't work for me, I just can't imagine a radical improvement by me going with small cell now instead of natural cell, but then again I have not attempted it. How Mike Bush succeeds with small cell and has no varroa losses is beyond my understanding at this point. John


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

dan, i knew this colony was lagging behind its cohorts last fall, but i just chalked it up to some colonies are better than others, or that doing a walk away split on a nuc probably wasn't a good idea.

these were bees obtained from a supplier that has never treated, and i was finishing up my second season with similar bees with no treatments and no losses.

distress? embarassment? a little i guess. i allow myself mistakes and poor decisions and chalk it all up to the learning curve and getting better at beekeeping.

at the very least, this would make me do a mite count on any laggards. but i will go ahead and test all of my production hives after the honey harvest. i am really interested in 'knowing my enemy', and i'm curious to see what kind of infestation rates these bees are tolerating, as well as how that relates to other observations and measures.

for example, i wish i knew if the several examples of queen failure i had this past winter were in some way mite related. (not a lot of frass seen in the comb, but can't be sure since i didn't do the counts)


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

jmgi said:


> I went entirely natural cell with many colonies for several years and it simply didn't work for me, I just can't imagine a radical improvement by me going with small cell now instead of natural cell, but then again I have not attempted it. How Mike Bush succeeds with small cell and has no varroa losses is beyond my understanding at this point. John


Mr. Bush's apiary may be located in place that's a fortuitous convergence of weather, pest/disease proliferation, and genetic conditions which suit his beekeeping style in a way that can't be duplicated elsewhere.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> i allow myself mistakes and poor decisions and chalk it all up to the learning curve and getting better at beekeeping.


It is good if you can do that. I'm my own worst critic. Having said that, I'm quick to confess my mistakes but have discovered that many folks aren't

I think you are right on target with the testing. Who knows...you may discover colonies with huge miteloads that thrive all the same. Wouldn't that be a kick? 

I'm glad that you've chosen to know the enemy and look forward to your reports.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

thanks dan, i appreciate reading your posts and i think your original post on this thread raises a good point.

there were quite a few first year beekeepers this past winter posting pictures of dead outs and asking for help diagnosing that had not checked for mites, didn't see any mites, ect.

for me, i have a couple of old school (and i say that with respect) beekeepers that i know and who have helped me along, but they do not check for mites either, and aren't sure what the cause(s) of their losses are from.

i don't blame other tf beekeepers for not taking counts if they don't want to. if they have developed methods for not losing too many colonies and can make increase to replace their losses then that's great. i just think it would be interesting to know what infestation rates their hives are tolerating.

i have a feeling that i'll find higher counts are related to colony weakness, poor production, queen failure, winter loss, ect. but hey, it would be a kick if there is no correlation! 

yep, we'll keep you posted.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> i don't blame other tf beekeepers for not taking counts if they don't want to.


Nor do I. It is only when they have failures (treated or not) and are unwilling to accept that mites might have played a role. And if they've done no objective testing, in my opinion, they can't exclude the mite factor.....experienced or new beekeepers alike.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

agreed, can't exclude if not tested, with the caveat that there doesn't seem to be a universally accepted threshold. 

have you determined what % infestation despite treatments will likely result in collapse?

i've seen 2-5% in the fall suggested.


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## Spark (Feb 24, 2011)

Funny thread..... really don't understand it. I can't see how anyone can't believe they don't have mites and then again I really can't see how anyone who does have heavy or even light mite loads can prove that is what killed them. Because they have mites thats what killed them??? Until you can provide a clear test that proves what killed the hive you really can't prove anything. 

I'm not into the sugar roll or any other counting method for mites, they don't live alone and I have seen them on drone larvae seems a huge waste of time to count something that exists and the supposed counts aren't quite exact or perfect plentyy of info about that.

Maybe a wind drift of pesticide happened, build up of pesticide in the comb, maybe a combination of mites and several factors who knows until someone can provide clear and precise evidence of all die offs it's all assumption based. I checked the OP's blog he uses thymol for treating I'm not sure I consider that a heavy treatment I'm in the organic camp with that one similiar to organic gardening principles. I myself haven't used anything but I'm leaning to thymol myself ... I would just like to live in a perfect world free of mites and problems...yes Utopia ..anyone been there yet ..send me a postcard and invite please.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> What, in my mind, makes matters worse is the perception that the only mite failures are huge and sudden. The thinking might be that mites unchecked cause huge and sudden failures, then when we get them ‘under control’ they’re no longer a problem. But that is absolutely wrong.


I've been chewing on this whole "why is it never mites?" question (for once), and I think I might have an idea, and it has to do with this thing I just quoted. Basically, except for seeing mites on bees, I think people genuinely have no idea what the symptoms of a mite kill are.

Think about most bee diseases. I bet you anybody here can tell you _instantly_ what the signs of AFB are if you ask them: sunken, perforated caps, foul smell, ropey goop where pupae are supposed to be. I remember my first beekeeping book, which had a chapter that went over this and other problems - chalk and sacbrood, EFB, nosema, etc. Great big color plates graphically depicting these things. And then I try to think about what it had to say about varroa mites - well, it had color photographs of mites on brood, a mite on an adult bee, and a bee with the deformed-wing virus. In addition to these, I remember the book mentioning that a mite infestation could "weaken and ultimately kill a colony", though it didn't elaborate very much. 

I think it really is a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Every other disease's symptoms are so macroscopic and easy to spot instantly with just a few glances at the comb and the bees themselves; but mites are _hard_ to see. They're TINY and sneaky (and evil). How often do beekeepers inspecting a frame and admiring the beautiful, solid laying pattern then hook and pull out some of that capped brood to see how healthy it is? So, they don't see obvious mites, that means they don't have mites. And a weakening colony - can't it just be a weak colony? Maybe there was bad forage or something, or some insecticide some of them got into, or the weather or the flow has been bad...how do you tell a colony weakened by mites from a colony weakened by chance? Well, by doing a test of course; but when is a test warranted? I don't see no mites. I don't see no deformed wings. Maybe I got the wrong impression from that book I read oh-so-long-ago, and have somehow come to think that it can't be varroa unless they've got deformed wings. So without these obvious signs, why should I think it's mites? And when I'm baffled by a dead-out and I just can't figure out what it was, and you tell me immediately "that's a mite kill", like it should've been so simple to figure out - well darnit, I'm not stupid, I know what mites look like and I didn't see any, so your quick assessment almost sounds like an insult to my intelligence. Perhaps that's what's happening.

The problem is even worse when it's a slow mite kill that's taken a couple of years to end a colony - like you said, it's not always sudden and calamitous. In that case, it might be something like "there were mites, but I know it's not them because there weren't any more this year than there were last year and last year the colony was just fine! Except it really wasn't.

Whether or not people decide to "treat", I think monitoring for mites _should_ be something beekeepers are encouraged to accept as a routine summer chore.

Ironically enough, this whole discussion has something of an alter-ego in a complaint I've made a couple of times, which is people very quickly and easily misidentifying losses as "CCD" that are quite obviously other things, like winter starve-outs or pesticide kills. Some of these misidentifications are political of course; particularly pesticide kills (I've noticed that some people here have simply decided that any discussions about pesticides or pesticide kills belong in the CCD forum and that's that). But it seems to me that the problem more commonly is that people don't know what the heck CCD actually is, aside from a loss. CCD has some very specific markers that make it quite unlike other kinds of dead outs; but these are rarely mentioned in media reports, which usually simplify and just state that the bees are dying in large quantities and leaving beekeepers...I think the usual word is "baffled".

As beekeepers, perhaps we should be a little more engaged, and not be getting our primary information about _anything_ bee-related from journalists and news reports; they're supposed to be getting their information from us. Our industry has its own technical publications, most of the science labs and research organizations that do work with bees have their own websites and make their own news releases and those are the places we should be getting our information from. Not the News at 6 or mypersonalsavetheworldblog.com, each of which, while well-intentioned, has a stake in presenting the story in a certain way that might be misleading.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Some of the denial may come from the fact that everyone knows that living creatures can adapt to hardships, even mites. Don't worry, the strong will survive. How can a little mite be so much trouble? Other animals live with parasites, and co-exist just fine. And then some people say that with small cell and he right genetics, bees will prosper, just leave them alone. My gosh, bees have been around how many Millions of years? Besides, what good does it do to count? They are not accurate anyway. And I take real good care of my hives. so they should handle a few little mites. 

What is missed is that we have an UNNATURAL situation, with an unstable host/parasite relation. It is atypical, and must be handled as such. Until the relationship stabilizes, it is wise to keep ones head out of the sand. 

Crazy Roland


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

Indeed, very little is really "natural" about honey bees by now. We will never know how or under what circumstance the first human first got a taste of honey; but it was perhaps the most momentous encounter in honey bee evolution, which has been pretty much guided by humans since at least ancient Egyptian times; we're talking a few thousand years by this point.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Spark said:


> I can't see how anyone can't believe they don't have mites and then again I really can't see how anyone who does have heavy or even light mite loads can prove that is what killed them.


I think seeing the actual, objective numbers helps to know if mites played a role in the hive failure. With a big infestation you can pretty much conclude that they were the cause. With a moderate load you should accept that they were one of the underlying causes. If the mite load is low you might be safe in thinking that they were, at most, a small factor.
If you don’t do any objective testing….you don’t know doodly.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Thanks for the thoughtful post melliferal.


melliferal said:


> I've been chewing on this whole "why is it never mites?" question (for once),


The purpose of the thread….getting folks to actually consider the issue. If I’m not careful, I might begin to feel vindicated for sticking with this thread throughout its various misdirections.


melliferal said:


> Basically, except for seeing mites on bees, I think people genuinely have no idea what the symptoms of a mite kill are.
> I think it really is a case of out-of-sight, out-of-mind.
> I know it's not them because there weren't any more this year than there were last year and last year the colony was just fine! Except it really wasn't.


These could be part of the problem. But doesn’t explain the hardcore, sometimes resentful denial that some folks have.


melliferal said:


> Whether or not people decide to "treat", I think monitoring for mites _should_ be something beekeepers are encouraged to accept as a routine summer chore.


Or at least some regular chore.


melliferal said:


> Ironically enough, this whole discussion has something of an alter-ego in a complaint I've made a couple of times, which is people very quickly and easily misidentifying losses as "CCD" that are quite obviously other things, like winter starve-outs or pesticide kills.


A good comparison and….a pet peeve of mine as well. I think some people want to believe that their hive failed as a result of some mysterious ailment that has no identifiable solution…..and that, to use your word, even baffles the experts. This removes any responsibility from the beekeeper. This could be part of the angry responses to the suggestion of mites.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Roland said:


> Until the relationship stabilizes, it is wise to keep ones head out of the sand.


At the risk of taking this thread off topic….
In my opinion, Apis mellifera and Apis cerana were probably a single species at one time. A c is the natural, evolutionary result of the relationship with varroa mites. Had there been no beekeepers and only feral colonies when varroa were distributed into the range of A m, then in the long haul the only honeybee would be something equivalent to A c.
If survival is the only measure….then we should simply abandon A m and import A c.
End of problem.


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## mac (May 1, 2005)

beemandan said:


> Some people will happily accept nosema, starvation, exposure, pesticides, wax moths, chalkbrood…..and practically anything else.
> But asking about mites seems off limits.


Do you have any scientific data to back up this claim??? Sources please. THAT'S A JOKE


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

mac said:


> Do you have any scientific data to back up this claim???


First we have to give it a descriptive term...such as mitaphobia...and then begin making counts.....
And an extension of mitaphobia......countaphobia.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

dan, when during the season do you recommend doing counts and what kind of numbers are you looking for?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> dan, when during the season do you recommend doing counts and what kind of numbers are you looking for?


Late summer when the mite population is high but before they start making winter bees. About a half cup of bees from the brood frames...I use powdered sugar now...not as accurate as alcohol but good enough. Counts in double digits need treating.....which is usually all of them that have been queenright all season.


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## melliferal (Aug 30, 2010)

beemandan said:


> These could be part of the problem. But doesn’t explain the hardcore, sometimes resentful denial that some folks have.


As I said, it might just be that, since they think they know what a mite kill should look like (but don't realize they're wrong), and they've determined for themselves that it wasn't mites, you telling them "sounds like a mite kill" might sound to them like you're questioning their competence as a beekeeper; like you'd asked them "You _did_ check to make sure there was a queen, right?" They might be especially put off since they've actually looked at the hive and you haven't, so it doesn't make sense to them you that you should be so confident while they're scratching their heads.

But as you say, they don't have the same reaction when it's suggested that it might be something equally as "obvious", so I really don't know. 



beemandan said:


> At the risk of taking this thread off topic….
> In my opinion, Apis mellifera and Apis cerana were probably a single species at one time. A c is the natural, evolutionary result of the relationship with varroa mites. Had there been no beekeepers and only feral colonies when varroa were distributed into the range of A m, then in the long haul the only honeybee would be something equivalent to A c.
> If survival is the only measure….then we should simply abandon A m and import A c.
> End of problem.


But no! How then could I justify using my nifty forum name? I spent so much time thinking it up!


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

many thanks dan. when do they start raising winter bees in south ga? ne ga?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> many thanks dan. when do they start raising winter bees in south ga? ne ga?


If I had to put a date range on it....I'd say between mid Sept through mid Nov....depends a number of variables.
I don't keep year round beeyards in south GA but would guess it runs a couple of weeks later than ne GA.....as springtime buildup around Unadilla runs about two plus weeks ahead....and I expect if you went as far south as Tifton/Valdosta it'd be three to four weeks.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

melliferal said:


> But no! How then could I justify using my nifty forum name? I spent so much time thinking it up!


Yes....that would need to be taken into account. Ah well....back to the drawing board.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood dan, i didn't realize you moved them up in the spring. i'm probably about on the same schedule as you here in jackson co.

i still had brooding in late sept./early oct. last fall.

i was going to try and do my counts sometime midsummer, during the dearth, when the brooding slows down.

i've got one hive in particular that's had dwv crawlers all spring, i'm guessing i'll get a high count on them.

thanks again.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

squarepeg said:


> when during the season do you recommend doing counts and what kind of numbers are you looking for?


This is where it gets kind of tricky. Assuming a 1/2 cup 300 bee sample. In the spring when hives are full of brood I would consider anything running 3 or more is trouble brewing and if your mite control going into the winter was good it isn't unrealistic to expect a lot of negatives or 1 mite readings. By mid August you are probably still in good shape if you are staying somewhere in the high single digits. In our area from mid August to mid September immediately upon removing the last honey supers is the real sweet spot for mite control with your product of choice. I prefer thymol but a case can certainly be made for Formic, Hopguard, or even an Amitraz product for those who choose that route. The thymol treatment has kept our numbers down in the single digits until they are broodless when an oxalic application will really hammer them. Coupled with a spring brood break that has been our program, simple, safe, and effective and the honey tests free of any residual contaminants. This spring I did ether rolls on 50 actively brooding prospective breeders and found a total of 3 mites. I am sure many more would have been found a month earlier when there was little brood in the hive. In short there are no absolute numbers in mite counting, the time of year, amount of brood and a little sample deviation must always be considered but by adding all your information together a broad picture should emerge of what your true varroa picture is.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

great post, many thanks jim.

sounds like you've come up with a great program there.

did you have many losses last winter?


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

We had about 5% attrition through the summer, most of those probably poorly mated queens and a little under 5% winter losses this past year.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

pretty respectable jim.


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## Tenbears (May 15, 2012)

I got an Idea. lets treat the mites for bees that way the bees will become stronger, and the mites weaker. then we can zap them all with kosmose rays. oh wait that may disturb the vision of the mites, No, No, The bees! My way is best I would never do anything wrong! No it's mine, To do it any other way would mean I am not a good bee keeper and I am a great beekeeper thus My way is the only possible way. 
How about we all keep accurate non bias records and attempt to discern which method works best. while weighing the long term effects on bee health and mite resistance. As of today it is still ALL speculation with NO hard scientific research to document any of it. The fact is we do not know for sure that chemical treatments will make the mites more resistant, and the bees weaker. As exposure to compounds that do not kill the bees may very well offer them a genetic resistance to said Chemicals at a pace more rapid then the target species. a switch up system targeting mites could offer the bees dual resistance, and not afford the same resistance to the mites. 
although due to the rapid turn over of a bee population a genetic change within the bee species would occur within decades, as opposed to centuries for humans. I would think, that an approach in that direction aforesaid may offer an acceptable outcome in much faster time. In any event there is certainly no harm in pursuing as many avenues to resolve the mite problem as available.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

edited after rereading post


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## Spark (Feb 24, 2011)

beemandan when you can prove a large mite infestation or a low mite infestation, and by all means count to your hearts desire, is the cause of anything disruptive to the hive by all means post all significant data for the forum scientists. What I'm saying is that no one has proven without a doubt that it is just mites that have killed a hive or any other factor. There are those that say Nosema is a factor by itself but really could it be just the nosema or maybe it was the additional equation of mites living in the hive. 

So prove me wrong and state for a fact with proven data it was just mites or one of the other hive problems that exist in the hives you mention. I don't really care if people bury their head in the sand as you call it because we are allowed to have our own opinions but we are also allowed to ask for proof of insinuation. The onus is now on you to prove with significant data that mites are the only conclusive evidence as to the one factor of bee decimation.

I do believe mites are a huge factor of decimation but also think only when in conjunction with other hive pests, diseases or otherwise.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

spark,

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?275857-autopsy-of-a-dead-out

what more proof do you need?

i'll go out on a limb and say that i believe that my mite count proves beyond a doubt that is was primarily mites that caused this hive to dwindle beyond recovery. their dead because i shook them out.

mites did this. there may or may not have been associated secondary problems. mites did this.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

From the Oldtimer on another thread:

"Mite counts do not reveal virus levels in hives, and it is viruses do the real damage.
Having said all that I fully recommend anyone starting out does mite counts. You need to do this to learn about mite population dynamics.

But what I do now, is go by what's actually happening in the hive, and this will be the combined effect of mite levels, virus levels, and ability of the particular bee in that hive to deal with these things.
The big giveaway a hive is in trouble is PMS (parasitic mite syndrome) in the brood. You will see some abnormal looking cappings, and when you poke a stick in the larva is dead. There will also be dead larvae that didn't get to the capping stage. Some of them look like sac brood, and some of them are still white. If you poke a stick in & do a ropiness test, they don't rope, so you know it is not AFB.
Visible PMS in the brood indicates the hive is at a critical level, regardless of what the mite count says, as PMS is an indicator of the combined effect of mites plus viruses. Most bee larvae can tolerate one foundress mite in the cell with it. When mite population builds to the point that many worker larvae have two, or more, foundress mites in the cell with them, they cannot cope. the mites, plus their viruses, kill the larvae. This starts a downward spiral that can be pretty quick. Less larvae hatch, the hive gets smaller and has less brood. Mites are forced to go even more to a cell with the larvae, soon little / no brood survives to hatching, the hive dies.

The other main thing I look for is DWV, an easily seen mite associated virus."

The thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?282912-Leaving-Them-Alone/page5

Oltimer is one guy who knows what he is talking about! My experience with the newly arrived mites over the last 3 years matches what he is saying. And my bees have very desirable characteristics; however, they haven't yet demonstrated a great ability to withstand mites without 'assistance'.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

beemandan said:


> At the risk of taking this thread off topic….
> In my opinion, Apis mellifera and Apis cerana were probably a single species at one time. A c is the natural, evolutionary result of the relationship with varroa mites. Had there been no beekeepers and only feral colonies when varroa were distributed into the range of A m, then in the long haul the only honeybee would be something equivalent to A c.
> If survival is the only measure….then we should simply abandon A m and import A c.
> End of problem.



Funny you should mention cerana, though I've heard it before. Due to my living on a rock half way to Asia, I have had the opportunity to visit several southeast Asian countries along with Korea and Japan during the past few years. 
Flowers are plentiful; however, bees are very rare at least where I've traveled.
I had a funny experience a couple of years ago when I observed a local over there beating his longan tree (fruit related to lychee) with a bamboo pole. The air was heavy with the pollen. But there were no bees! And he was doing the pollination. So..........I don't know what to say about cerana other than that I seldom have seen them in places where they are supposed to live.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Gino45...I trust that you knew I was kidding about importing cerana. The only thing that redeems them is their ability to survive (I didn't say thrive) having coevolved with varroa. Otherwise they are practically useless.

I hold Oldtimer in high regard. He doesn't have his head in the sand. He may not test for varroa but he knows that they are a serious problem.....an essential requirement for HITS is denial of the problems caused by mites.

ps I visited Kauai a couple of years ago. Went kayaking up a river and the trees lining the river were covered with honeybees. Because of the massive numbers, I assumed most were feral. Have mites gotten there yet?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

there's good mites and bad mites

with ceranae the good mites became less virulent so as to not deplete their host and source of survival equilibrium was reached.

the varroa mite and the western honeybee are having a difficult time getting there, mostly because of an abundance of honey bee colonies that are kept in near proximity.

our methods should consider selecting for less virulent mites as well as more tolerant bees.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

I see that there is a Treatment Free forum, why is there no Treatment forum? Would seem of high priority since mite treatment is the single most important action a keeper must do. Would seem logical to have a place where all the information is collected and presented. Diseases And Pests doesn't seem specific enough, at least to me. In fact Mite Treatment Forum would be better. :scratch:


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## Mr. C (Oct 27, 2011)

julysun said:


> I see that there is a Treatment Free forum, why is there no Treatment forum? Would seem of high priority since mite treatment is the single most important action a keeper must do. Would seem logical to have a place where all the information is collected and presented. Diseases And Pests doesn't seem specific enough, at least to me. In fact Mite Treatment Forum would be better. :scratch:


I think that is because treatment is talked about in every other forum... and there is more to it than just varroa. It's kind of like asking why you don't have European history month in America...it's because that's what's taught most of the time. My guess is you'll find what you need in diseases and pests if that's the road you take.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

as i was thinking more about selecting for less virulent mites, (and deselecting for more virulent ones),

i realized that i had missed an opportunity with the dwindled hive i discussed in the thread i linked to in the above post.

when i found that colony collapsed down to a handful of bees, with more mites than bees, i should have closed it up and put it in the freezer instead of shaking the bees out.

that way i would have destroyed that population of colony collapsing mites and would not have given them a chance to enter any of my other hives.

live and let learn.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

beemandan said:


> I visited Kauai a couple of years ago. Went kayaking up a river and the trees lining the river were covered with honeybees. Because of the massive numbers, I assumed most were feral. Have mites gotten there yet?



The latest I heard is that Kauai doesn't have mites; however, they do have the hive beetle. So it would be interesting to know how much trouble the beetles cause without the mites to set them up. Over here the beetles are quick to finish the job once the mites wear the hive down.

FWIW, I understand there are quite a few hobby beekeepers there as well. Hopefully some day I will visit there again.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> as i was thinking more about selecting for less virulent mites, (and deselecting for more virulent ones),


I understand that Seeley's work has suggested the possibility of a less virulent mite but I don't think there are any completed studies to support it.....but I'm certain that there are a number of such studies underway.
It would add some interesting possibilities.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Spark said:


> What I'm saying is that no one has proven without a doubt that it is just mites that have killed a hive or any other factor. .


I believe that any reasonable person who understands the lifecycle and parasitic impact of varroa on a bee colony will acknowledge that they are an extremely destructive pest. Those same reasonable people will also accept that the heavier the mite load, the more damage they do.
Is it my mission to *prove* that mites were the sole reason a colony of bees collapsed? Nope.
Do I hope to get the attention of some reasonable people who have somehow gotten the misguided impression that mites aren’t a big deal? Yep.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Gino45 said:


> Hopefully some day I will visit there again.


Me too.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

beemandan said:


> I understand that Seeley's work has suggested the possibility of a less virulent mite but I don't think there are any completed studies to support it.....but I'm certain that there are a number of such studies underway.
> It would add some interesting possibilities.


thanks dan, i wasn't aware of seeley's work.

by less virulent or good mites, what i mean are mites that keep their population low enough and achieve equilibrium with the host colony without collapsing it.

i assume that is what is happening in the established tf operations, alongside with the bees developing better resistance.

i suggest that the beekeeper can help this process along by preventing spread via robbing, and euthanizing the colonies (mites and all) that get to the point of no return.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

squarepeg said:


> thanks dan, i wasn't aware of seeley's work.
> 
> by less virulent or good mites, what i mean are mites that keep their population low enough and achieve equilibrium with the host colony without collapsing it.
> 
> ...


That's just an assumption, though. It could be many are just aggressively splitting and using the brood break to stay ahead of varroa. For hives surviving long term it could be an equilibrium has been found with some combination of shorter brooding seasons, lower populations, higher Hygenic behavior or maybe even cell size. To those afflicted with "HITS" syndrome its not really important. Their perspective is we don't care to find out because it really dosent change anything. Either they survive or they don't, what difference does it make why they die.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> i wasn't aware of seeley's work..


Tom Seeley is quite brilliant…in my opinion.
In one piece of research he was looking at feral bee colonies in a remote location….many miles from any managed hives. He had done similar studies in the late 60s and wanted to see how the feral populations compared today.
He found a number of them…and upon testing discovered that they often had huge miteloads (Seeley is not a HITS guy). After some follow up examination he decided that lower mite virulence might explain how the colonies survived.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

In the event that anyone is still following this….let me paint a picture for you.
We tend to think of varroa mites as bee blood sucking, disease vectoring parasites….and they are. But this is only one piece of their destructive power.
I’ve heard it estimated that 60+% of the mites in a bee colony are in their reproductive stage within the brood cells at any given time.
As the season winds down, your bees slow down their brood production…at the same time the mite population is at its peak. Less developing brood to infest….more mites. The mites/brood number skyrockets. As a result a substantially higher percentage of developing brood is parasitized… many ending up with multiple foundress mites reproducing on an individual developing bee. …..at a time when it is especially important for your bee colony to produce its most durable bees….those that must endure the winter.

And then so many wonder in the spring why last year's boomers are gone.

Ok...I've restrung and refueled the weedeater...now I must load the truck. I've got bees to check and yards to clean up.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

jim lyon said:


> It could be many are just aggressively splitting and using the brood break to stay ahead of varroa.


Which is one reason that many knowledgeable entomologists believe that AHB survive varroa.
They tend to swarm themselves into oblivion and abscond at the drop of a hat. Brood breaks are common for them. We shouldn’t be surprised. As tropically evolved bees, their ancestors didn’t really need to worry about overwinter stores. In their native range something is in bloom year round….which is also part of the reason they don’t do well in northern climates.

Now I'm outta here for real.


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## karu (Mar 1, 2008)

Aerindel said:


> When the pro treatment guys stop having 30%+ losses I'll start treating.


As far as for myself - I'll consider changing my ways only if they do consistently better with treatments and I do consistently worse without.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

karu said:


> As far as for myself - I'll consider changing my ways only if they do consistently better with treatments and I do consistently worse without.


Yeah...my thinking exactly. If I ever consistently do as poorly as they do....I'll quit treating.....oh wait....that's what you said....right?
Ah well...I guess those tf/treatment arguing folks just can't survive without expressing their opinions....and haven't figured out where to do so. 
Maybe I need to start a new thread for them...........
Does anyone think that they'll leave this one alone if I do?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

same 'ol stalemate.

the common ground whether treatments or not is the need for overcoming losses with a viable method of making increase, (thanks mike palmer), 

and in the process helping the genetics along by careful selection (and deselection).

there's nothing natural about keeping bees in a box, locating colonies in close proximity to each other, disturbing them on a regular basis, and taking resources from them.

i see risks and benefits from both approaches.

but to the op and hits, it seems to me that varroa is out there doing its thing whether one chooses to pay attention to it or not.

i say to each his/her own, your choices determine your outcomes good and bad.

it is challenging for the beginner though, as there is so much to take in anyway. 

for me, exploring the unkown with trial and error experimentation is what makes this so addicting.

i really don't see why anyone has to be in this camp or that, i sure don't fit into either.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> i really don't see why anyone has to be in this camp or that, i sure don't fit into either.


Angry debates and diatribes that never sway anyone's opinion. Egos firmly attached to those opinions. You'd think they were arguing politics or religion....and getting the same results as those debates.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

"Angry debates and diatribes that never sway anyone's opinion. Egos firmly attached to those opinions. You'd think they were arguing politics or religion....and getting the same results as those debates." Beemandan.

Much of it caused by your first post using a put down acronym. IMH (haughty)O. :lookout:

I did order Hopgard *TODAY*! What did you *DO* in response to or caused by this discussion, fist fight, wrestling match?

Now that I have ordered the gun I *will do* a mite check on the targets.

Now tell me the BEST TIME to apply it. Also...do I apply it to honey supers or just brood containing boxes?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

julysun said:


> I did order Hopgard *TODAY*!


Did you really? 
Please remember.....this thread was not intended to convert tf folks to the dark side. I might add that I've tried hopguard and am less than impressed. It is not as benign as the manufacturer says....at least in my experience. 



julysun said:


> What did you *DO* in response to or caused by this discussion, fist fight, wrestling match?


I was itching for a good brawl but found no takers. So...I kicked the dog, pulled the cat's tail then went out and annoyed a boatload of bees.


julysun said:


> Now that I have ordered the gun I *will do* a mite check on the targets.


I still am not sure if you are serious.



julysun said:


> Now tell me the BEST TIME to apply it. Also...do I apply it to honey supers or just brood containing boxes?


Brood box only. 2 strips per ten frames. Wait a week...then do it again, then one more week and one last time (3 applications). They say it can be applied with honey supers on but if it is honey I plan to extract, I wait until those supers have been removed. It might not hurt to have them on but I'm afraid that it would impact the taste.

So, really....you're just pulling my leg....right?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

dan, do all of your colonies get treated or just the ones that exceed a threshold infestation rate?


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

English Language and Usage...To "pull one's leg", as a saying, does seem to have the etymology you describe; every source I can find states that it dates back to the mid-1800s in England, and refers to physically tripping up another person, which puts him off balance, possibly makes him collide with others in awkward ways, and generally makes him look foolish. It quickly evolved to mean achieving that result - making a person look foolish - regardless of the specific means used. The most popular means to do so is to tell a deliberate plausible non-truth which, if believed, would lead the person react foolishly.

Now would I do that?

I ordered thirty bucks worth plus about fourteen for shipping from Mann Lake. Should cover my four hives brood boxes. Also am investigating buying the PIKE from the local brewing products store. Want me to send you a pint?.

Hope this is not like the bug blasters I installed two weeks ago in a box where I can see SHB. Caught nary a one to date.

I am not TF. To much like a religion for me. Been a Beek for 13 months and am still learning the ropes.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

js, i am also using the disposable beetle traps from mann lake and have had success with catching beetles in them.

for bait i use the juice from rotten banana and an equal amount of apple cider vinegar, and mix it with about 16 oz. of vegetable oil in a used dishwater detergent bottle.

the bait won't mix with the oil, so you have to shake the bottle good before putting some in the trap.

sorry dan, off topic again.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> dan, do all of your colonies get treated or just the ones that exceed a threshold infestation rate?


Not every hive gets treated but almost all do. If I had to guess, I'd say that over a two year cycle all get a mite check. Post treatment I do spot checks to determine efficacy.
Those that don't get treated usually have had some sort of overt disturbance during the season...multiple swarms, extended queenless/broodless period or those that are in serious decline and I believe that the treatment will do more harm than good. 
I don't recall ever seeing a vigorous hive test in August/September that didn't exceed my treating thresholds.....and I've had Russian hybrids, Purvis, claimed survivors, ferals, etc,....... oh yeah also small cell, and foundationless.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> jsorry dan, off topic again.


I don't mind off topic posts as long as they don't totally redirect the entire thread. 
As in any normal dialog....peripheral questions arise and appropriate answers add to the entire discussion.
Discussion....not argument.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Let me paint another picture.
It’s September…mites at their peak and brood rearing slowed dramatically to make a population of bees to overwinter.
You test and determine that your miteload is 20%. But wait a minute…that is 20% of the adult population of…say 30,000 bees or 6,000 mites. If…60% of the mites are actually in brood cells….that means as many as 8,000 mites are parasitizing your much smaller population of developing winter bees. And if they are only producing 15000 bees to overwinter….that means as much as 60% will enter the winter seriously weakened.

Ok….much to do….got to go. Those jars of honey won’t label themselves, that bottling tank won't refill itself and those beeyards need cleaning up before I start pulling some supers in a couple of weeks.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

PS julysun
In a different lifetime I did a bit of work in Baytown. In the midst of the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s I drove past the Shell Oil refinery in Baytown. With a huge tank farm in the background, the Shell gas station at the entrance had a sign in front saying ‘Out of Gas’. 
If I'd only had a camera.....

Speaking of off topic.......


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

Exxon oil in Baytown,...my how time flies! 
Ordered sticky paper today. Will do a mite check soon, may use the alcohol wash, will post results. :thumbsup:


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

Hey Square, it is all natural. Using some natural work produced penicillin from dirt fungi. Rocket juice is Hydrazine and Oxygen, all natural.Zink coated nails in your boxes are natural compounds. Hopguard and Formic acid are natural. Treatment Free is a natural method. So is nuke'em with atoms dispersed in some exotic named liquids. inch:


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## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

beemandan said:


> Here’s one analogy.
> I’m in an auto accident and hurt my arm. Friends tell me to get it x-rayed. Nope, says I…it ain’t broke….I’ve broken bones before, so I can tell. A couple of weeks later it is even more swollen and painful. Another week passes and I start running a fever. Must just be the flu….darn that arm is swollen and painful. Gangrene? No way….that arm ain’t broke. A week later I die in bed. They do an autopsy and discover fluid in my lungs. Cause of death….pneumonia.


Here's another analogy:
I'm in an auto accident and afterward there is a mark on my arm. A few voacl friends tell me to get it x-rayed. Nope, says I…it ain’t broke….I’ve broken bones before, so I can tell. A couple of weeks later the arm functions normally, and there is no pain.

"Get it x-rayed," they say, "or you'll get gangrene and die. The break is already there, and you can't tell without an x ray test."

It tell them it might be "broken" but it is functioning very well.

A year later, they are still warning me of the perils of gangrene, and the importance of x ray testing when the arm is stronger and more productive than it has ever been.
They're still telling me gangrene will kill me despite a fully functioning, healthy arm.

I suspect that no matter how many splits thrive, how many nucs nor how many pounds of honey produced, there will still be critics with their heads in the sand warning that if one doesn't put insecticide in his insect colony, they'll all die.

Some folks just refuse to acknowledge reality regardless of what others see, experience and tell.

The most an honest man can say is, "I haven't seen it".


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Beregondo said:


> I suspect that no matter how many splits thrive, how many nucs nor how many pounds of honey produced, there will still be critics with their heads in the sand warning that if one doesn't put insecticide in his insect colony, they'll all die.


First...I surely have never said anything even remotely similar to _ if one doesn't put insecticide in his insect colony, they'll all die._
Second…you seem to have missed the entire point of my analogy. There are beekeepers who insist that mites aren’t a problem. In reality…they are a serious problem for all of us. Some will have a bee colony collapse and insist that it wasn’t mite related because they didn’t see overt evidence. The reality, in my opinion, is that mites underlie most failures, conventional or tf, whether or not one finds a gazillion dead mites on the hive’s bottom. And that was the point of the analogy. With rare exceptions, regardless of the outward symptoms….mites are part of most failures.

By your analogy, you are suggesting that the impact of varroa mites in a tf bee colony are the equivalent to a small bruise? That after a few weeks the damage is all done and never to exert any pressure again? Is that your claim?


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## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

beemandan said:


> By your analogy, you are suggesting that the impact of varroa mites in a tf bee colony are the equivalent to a small bruise? That after a few weeks the damage is all done and never to exert any pressure again? Is that your claim?


No the mites are not the subject of my analogy.
The blindness of some who put their heads in the sand and insist that testing is needed, even if there is no indication of a mite problem... those who insist hat despite a long time passing with no symptoms, one must test for an illness (ie, a mite problem).



beemandan said:


> they are a serious problem for all of us


I think there is a big difference between a hazard to be respected and a problem.

When mites don't cause problems over a long period of time, they're not a problem.
Not all of us have a problem with mites.


To continue to deny that folks are successfully keeping bees without treatments in face of growing testimony to the contrary, and refusing to consider an alternative to spending money on pesticides to put in bee colonies is surely a shining example of...

Head In The Sand Mite Control


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Beregondo said:


> To continue to deny that folks are successfully keeping bees without treatments in face of growing testimony to the contrary, and refusing to consider an alternative to spending money on pesticides to put in bee colonies


WOW! Where has that happened?!


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## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

Maybe I misunderstood.

Maybe when one speaks disparagingly of of folks who don't tend to have mite problems and therefore don't test as "sticking their heads in the sand" and makes statements about mites like "they are a serious problem for all of us" (despite the above mentioned fact that there are folks who speak freely of having none..over time, and not noobs talking about all 3 weeks they've had bees) you _*aren't*_ denying that TF folks don't have a mite problem that they aren't treating for.

Do you honestly not see how a reasonable person might see such a denial as I mentioned in those comments?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Let me be sure I understand what you are saying.

You are suggesting that somehow, even with high mite populations, treatment free bees are not affected by them? You believe that those hemolymph sucking, disease vectoring, brood parasitizing ticks somehow, mysteriously develop a synergistic relationship with bees…simply because one doesn’t treat?
Or are you claiming that your treatment free bees have no mites….in spite of the fact that you don’t test?
Or are you claiming that by testing one, somehow, disturbs the above mentioned synergistic relationship between the treatment free bees and mites?

I am not sure why this makes you so angry.
I’m not pushing treatments.
I am not against folks being treatment free.
I do believe that an objective look at mite levels will tell a beekeeper, treatment free or conventional, a lot.
And while I think every beekeeper ought to do some sort of count…I don’t care if experienced beekeepers choose not to….but I do worry about the total newbie who reads these things, has no idea what’s going on in his/her hive but figures if the oldtimers don’t test…why should they…..then want to know why their bees didn’t overwinter.


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## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

Dan, 
I'd like to point out that regardless of conversations you may have had in the past with other folks, I'm not them.

And I've no intention to responding to things I infer those others may have said to you, based on the presumptions of what you think I'm saying -- presumptions based on things I didn't say that aren't anywhere near meaning that the words I did say mean.

I'm saying that in a population with no history of having a particular health problem over a number of years, testing for that affliction is not necessary.

I'm also saying that when there is a growing body of testimony from folks who don't treat, haven't had mite problems and over a number of years continue to have healthy apiaries, for one to prefer denial of the fact that such folks don't need to test for a problem that they don't have is an excellent example of Head In The Sand Mite Control.

There's nothing wrong with testing.
Testing is good and serves a purpose where appropriate.

But years after the bee hive was "in an accident" if there are still no symptoms of a "broken arm" it's either time to acknowledge the "x ray" test need not be done, or acknowledge that one's head is firmly planted in the sand.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Beregondo said:


> presumptions based on things I didn't say that aren't anywhere near meaning that the words I did say mean.


Seems like there’s a good bit of that going around today.

Beregondo (is that really your name?),

I don’t doubt that your hives are pristine….the picture of health.

When someone publically makes the statement…. I don’t test and mites aren’t a problem…do you see where a newcomer, reading that statement, with less pristine hives, who might have a serious mite infestation could be lulled into presuming theirs needn’t be counted either?
As I said…I don’t care if you count ‘em. I am distressed by the number of beginners who wonder why their hives failed from what sounds like classic mite collapse….and who insist that it wasn’t mites and repeat the same stuff they read on the internet.
This is not uncommon.
I do not believe they are stupid. Naïve yes.


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## Beregondo (Jun 21, 2011)

Your original post to this thread didn't mention newcomers, did it?

It merely proposed a perjorative label for people who find it unnecessary to test for mites.

And on being presented facts concerning the foolishness of considering all who don't test for mites as being in denial, and an explanation of why one might find yourself more suited to that perjorative you immediately resort to red herring responses unrelated to what was said in the post you're responding to, and comments concerning hives you've never seen.

It's unfortunate that the only justification you now put forward for your rude perjorative is a claim of concern for newcomers.

Any newcomer not properly mentored whether in treatment free or treated beekeeping is stacking the deck against himself.
But to assert that newcomers are somehow unable to make judgements on whether or not to blindly follow the advice of people t they don't know, have never seen, and whose success or failure they have no way verifying is insulting to them at best.

No reasonable person would blindly follow the advice of such a person.

Despite the alleged concern you have for newcomers the name calling you resort to in threads such as this one and "21st Century Snake Oil" are generally indicators of weak support for one's assertions at best, and bad faith at worst.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Beregondo said:


> It merely proposed a perjorative label
> find yourself more suited to that perjorative
> your rude perjorative is a claim of concern for newcomers.


Other than your addiction to the word pejorative….that you managed to misspell all three times in the same post…..there isn’t anything worthy of comment.


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