# poor management practices: personal convictions of the beekeeper?



## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Eduardo, thanks for the post and the link.
I just so happen to be keeping bees in the midst of hobbyists who regularly argue all of the very same points highlighted in the article .
Most eventually give up bees before altering their practices and beliefs.

Thanks again.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

I will start my comment with telling that Dr. Lang and I are at the beginning of writing articles about that topic.

We, as a group, are observing wild living escaped swarms from commercial hives, not isolated, near their original mother colonies to find out what makes them survive, as they are surviving.

This blog websites, in my eyes, are very dangerous propaganda, same as the mentioned websites are which promote to go hard bond under circumstances which will not allow this proceeding or will create anger between beekeepers who treat and those who want to try a new way.
Just look at the professional history of the author from this blog and you will see it´s rather not neutral.

IMHO there are experienced beekeepers who treat and who still are not in harmony with their bees, knowing nothing about natural bee behaviors.
There are non treating relative new beekeepers who are and care much about survivability.
IMHO there are beekeepers who treat who do this because it still works for them and against the mites and they believe it will stay this way.
There are tf beekeepers who are fanatics and don´t see that after so many years of breeding the bees are livestock and have to be regressed with the beekeepers help if they should survive without treatments.
IMHO there are beekeepers who treat and who care not about setting free bad genetics, being only interested in profits.
There are tf beekeepers whose aim is just keeping bees without chemicals, selecting for mite resistance and even working more on that than every conventional beekeeper.

Blogs and websites like that, just as blogs and websites mentioned in the text, are not helping in the least to reconcile the two strategies and, in the end, do divide all beekeepers and make beekeeping a war arena between different opinions excluding serious research and experiences and discriminating new ideas.

What´s a healthy honeybee anyway? A bee kept alive by chemical treatment?
My bee inspector told me the opposite, commercial experienced beekeepers apiaries and outyards abandoned, not monitored, left to die.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Eduardo
I guess I fall on the other side of the coin. I did not think the artical was more then someone saying his way was the only way and any one who did not believe it was living in the dark ages. It seemed to be a big whine fest where a person could try and blame others for thier problims. Where this does not ring through is where he says that what the professionals are doing is working good for the professionals. If what they are doing is working really well for them then why would they have any care of what others do?

What he can not say by his position of what the professionals are doing being so good is that they are making the bees stronger. He ask for studies but yet in all his research leaves out the studies that the way the professionals keep bees has reduced the gene pool of the bees. He leaves out the studies that have shown that presure is what has caused bees to develop resistance in just the same way it has for wild goats to resist thier stomach parisites.

But the biggest reason his artical will never really have any bearing is because the way people keep bees will always be versitile and uncontrolled. Apparrently the comercial guys that are good at managing thier bees reconize this and are handling it well to be doing so well as his artical seems to imply. Heck the package makers might actually enjoy the versatility as they make lots of packages to fill the void.

He leaves out the fact that their are wild collonys that will never fit his treatment profile cause they are unmanaged and they have been studied and some are surviving ten years after mites just as long as they did pre mite.

I think if someone wanted to manage bees like this guy implys, they will probly have some success. Some out there that did not and did not have success may have more following this guys ideals on managing bees.

However, others may have enough success for themselves taking a differrent route. This guy might be right for him but that does not make others wrong and there is sience to back differrent management styles and non can say they are just so right that it can not be thought about furthure. 
I read this quite some time ago and thought it to be flawed as an across the board answer. I don't say it will work flawed if this is the path the guy doing the work and spending the money decide it is the management style he wants to take.

Most people feel the way they are doing it is the right way. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a dummy.
Cheers
gww
Ps SiW.. you type faster then me and even with more words got done before me. Are you sure english is not your first language, ha, ha.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

I support what Randy Oliver is doing in trying to breed for a mite resistant stock. I read Michael Bush's stuff almost religiously and I follow posters here like squarepeg and others who seem to have success without treatments all in hopes of their continued success.

But can't a pretty good argument be made that your average beekeeper with <10 hives is not going to breed, or even give value to the adapatation or evolution of, a hygenic community of honey bees? That seems to be who the author targets. The hobby beekeeper who will never have more than 4 hives in his backyard that wants to go treatment-free from day one. If this guy doesn't buy a mite-resistant queen (assuming one exists) then why is he going to go treatment-free and be encouraged to go treatment-free?

Is any value being created in encouraging the hobby beekeeper to withhold treatments and watch their hives die? I am not talking about experienced beekeepers who are either having success, breeding seriously for success or otherwise experimenting with various methods that ultimately fall under the umbrella of "treatment free."


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Psm
I saw four keepers that posted just this year that they just started as treatment free and it has worked so far for a couple of years. Michael bush has said why start treating if you want to be treatment free. He also treated till 2002 and then just quit. Square peg has 24 hives, not much differrent then most small hobbiest and also the numbers mentioned in the artical.

The new guys buying packages whether they treat or not, are having big death rates like at 80 percent or so. If they don't treat they blame that and if they do they blame package bees.

I do believe there may be areas that make it harder to not treat and you have to change something if you have a hundred percent loss. 

I would compleetly go the opposite from you and say that the majority that are having success treatment free are small guys that just start that way and it worked. They started that way cause they didn't know any better and it worked or they got lucky or whatever but thier bees are not dead. At least the last few post I have seen of live bees and treatment free that were posted on this site said that the way I read them.

Since even this guys artical said that 60 percent of the beekeepers don't treat and most of the big ones do, it makes sense that these are also the bee keepers having success at it. They are the ones doing it. Yes, some don't have success no matter how they keep bees. It could be as simple as some one told me. He said in a really good forage area, that even a bad beekeeper could do good and a real good beekeeper would still have a hard time in a bad forage area.

This guy says it won't work if they don't keep bees like they big guys. That is only a partially true statement that is right some of the time and is wrong also and guys like squarepeg prove it. 

In the end, you won't know till you try and you will have to make some type of adjustment if your bees are dieing. It could be treating or finding a better queen or some other thing.

I don't know why some bees keep living in places that are surounded by treated hives but they are and on the few places where they are doing really well, it seems to be something other then just hygenic behavior causing it. Hygenic by its self may be a help but does not seem to be the whole picture.

I do wonder from some reports on packages if that may be a big part of treatment free and treatment failure for new guys that better bee keeper have a little better luck at countering.

I still say it is not the guys with a thousand hives that are coming up with an answer cause they don't take the finacial risk. It seems to be the small bee keepers that are getting by just fine with out treating. Maby because it is a hobby more then a livilyhood.

There are plenty of small guys keeping bees with out treating. From the artical, up to 60 percent of bee keepers.
Cheers
gww


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

One other thing about bee keeping and what people want out of it. They talk of hive loss and use numbers to make a case. Take a guy like mel diesilkoen (spelled wrong). Now he says when making his splits religiously and following the plan that you can expect up to 75 percent of the splits to die for some reason. Yet even with those numbers you have the chance to end up with more hive starts that do live then most would be able to get.

So when they start throwing around numbers like 20 percent of treated hives lost and 34 percent of untreated hive loss, those numbers need to be put into perspective by the person doing it and he is the one to decide if the numbers are working out compared to the alturnative. Mel can take up to 75 percent loss and still come out ahead and when the losses go down a bit he comes out even futher ahead from already being ahead.

It is hard to keep a perspective on what is good bee keeping when there are so many differrent things that differrent people want out of thier bee keeping.

It might as well be reconized that all the ways of keeping bees is going to be out of your hands and so finding what will work for you is about all that can be done.

I can't wait till spring to see what adjustments I may have to make to get better. I kinda figure every spring is going to be the same for many many years to come.

I would say all the honey producers and almound polinators that sell off thier bees each year don't mind the demand for packages from all those who need them for what ever reason. 
Cheers
gww
One other thing that michael bush said, when people treat and thier hive still dies, they blame it on a mite bomb from a neibor. I guess it is not impossible but I wonder how many times that is just an easy way out also. It would not even matter if it is true, cause it will never go away and so might as well do what it takes to keep your bees alive and if you try it and they live with out treatment, they probly withstand that better also. I am not saying it will work for every one just that you can't control everyone else and so have to figure it out for yourself.


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

We had our monthly bee association meeting last night and one of the topics discussed was the first year package bee percent losses. 50% the first year and 75% by year two. Number one reason was mites. Nuc numbers were a little lower but still high. Assumption is that packages are typically poor quality bees that have little to no resistance to mites. New beeks should not try to be TF until they have identified a hive that seems more resistant to mites. That said, there are hives that are thriving that havent seen treatments in years. You are just not going to find those genetics in a commercial package. A friend has one such hive. This year I plan to get several splits off it as I would like to be nearly TF. Until then, Apivar and OAV are my go to.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Jw
I had heard of very high package loss even with those that are treating. One of the big things seems to be queen loss or superceedure that does not work out or happens too late. Add new beekeepers like myself that can start robbing, starve them and probly several more things and you end up with perfect storms.
Cheers
gww


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

Number two reason was poorly mated queens. Now I understand why conventional wisdom says pinch the package queen after she has layed up a frame or two and either intro a new queen or let them make their own. I hope to never have to buy bees again, but if I do, I will follow this advice.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Back to the study, which was done in europe.

Most beekeepers named "hobbyists" are sideliners, having an income from their bees and treating in a prophylactic way.
So they are interested in avoiding losses.
The bond hobbyists are low numbers with not many hives, so I don´t believe they have an impact.



> Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation.


This statement is absolutely invented if you inform yourself via bee club members or magazines. 
Every spring there are losses from chalk brood and nosema in commercial beekeepers hives. Some loose all production hives and only the nucs survive.
Problems with varroa disease are the same and if you follow the threads on BS you realize that beekeepers who treat are not without problems.
By the way, most AFB outbreaks in germany are because of commercial beekeeping managements.

This link is showing a map of losses in europe. Do you really believe this is influenced by small tf beekeepers which are so rare in europe?
Bottom line is what now is a topic of research. This concerns all beekeepers, tf or not.

http://tvl-avsa.ch/_downloads/Neumann.pdf

Current knowledge
1. The mite Varroa destructor and viruses major threat to honey bees in Europe
2. Land use massive factor for all bees (diet, habitat destruction, pesticides)
3. Interaction between factors seems to play a key role

Current research University of Bern
European colonies can survive for more than 5 years without treatment
Beekeepers do not treat V. destructor (> 2 years), but colonies survive anyway
Tolerance evolves by natural selection in different genetically distinct A. mellifera populations


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

SiWolKe said:


> This statement is absolutely invented if you inform yourself via bee club members or magazines.


The author did not invent this data. It is a citation from the summary of the referenced study.

In this study (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0172591) on the "discussion" paragraph we can read: 

"Our results demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease *during the visits*, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had often symptoms of bacterial infection and/or heavy Varroa infestation observed *during the visits*."

This data was collected during the visits.

Sibylle I did not read this article as you read it. It is an article with a point of view, which seems to me very well sustained. This point of view clarifies that what can be considered a bad management, which results in high mortality of bee colonies (above 10% I say) is not only caused by errors and ignorance but also convictions.

It is not an article that opens a battlefield, just an article with a well-grounded point of view.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

The protocol of visits is described briefly below: 

"Surveillance was implemented during two consecutive years, between autumn 2012 and summer 2014. Three visits were set up in each Member State: before winter (autumn visit: V1), after winter (spring visit: V2) and during the beekeeping season (summer visit: V3). At each visit, beekeeping practices and clinical signs of the main honey bee diseases were recorded during field inspections using a standardised questionnaire. If colonies exhibited clinical signs of a disease, samples were collected for subsequent laboratory analyses. The main honey bee diseases clinically investigated were those listed for notification for intra-EU trade and import rules or for national eradication programmes at the European level [23, 24]: the fungal disease Nosemosis; the parasitic disease varroosis; the two main bacterial diseases affecting honey bee brood; the American foulbrood (AFB) and the European foulbrood (EFB); and a viral disease caused by the chronic bee paralysis virus (CBPV). An apiary was considered to be suffering from a disease after its diagnosis in one or more colonies. All case definitions were agreed between the EURL and the Member States (20)."

We can find a more detailed description here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-016-0440-z

I would also like to mention that I admire the work that some TFs beeks have done and that are abundantly described in this forum. I think it is a proof that this is an open forum that allows a civil coexistence between beekeepers with more or less different experiences, points of view and convictions.


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## wildbranch2007 (Dec 3, 2008)

:scratch:


> At each visit, beekeeping practices and clinical signs of the main honey bee diseases were recorded during field inspections using a standardised questionnaire.


 so they asked the bee keeper, and if he said he had diseases, then they inspected?? or they inspected all of them anyway??


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

wildbranch2007 said:


> :scratch: so they asked the bee keeper, and if he said he had diseases, then they inspected?? or they inspected all of them anyway??


"Each selected colony [for the study] was visited and fully examined by experts for clinical signs of the main honeybee diseases.

If a colony exhibited clinical signs for one of the diseases investigated within the framework of this project at any visit, affected brood and/or adult bees were sampled for subsequent laboratory confirmation." source: https://link.springer.com/article/10...592-016-0440-z


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## Vectorjet (Feb 20, 2015)

Look into research done by Dr. Declan Schroeder. His studies indicate that it might be the mite itself that has more to do with bees survival than the bees adapting to the mite. This could explain why TF is hard to replicate from area to area. Its not the bees, its the mite. With treatments we are killing the mites that do little harm to the bees and leaving the mites that are harmful.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Vectorjet said:


> With treatments we are killing the mites that do little harm to the bees and leaving the mites that are harmful.


An extraordinary statement. Do you have any evidence that gives you some support?

From this study of Dr. Declan Schroeder I highlight:
"Therefore, when Varroa mite infestation exceeds 2,000–3,000 during the autumn period, sufficient over-wintering bees become infected with DWV causing the colony to collapse during the long winter period."source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545936/


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> I would also like to mention that I admire the work that some TFs beeks have done and that are abundantly described in this forum. I think it is a proof that this is an open forum that allows a civil coexistence between beekeepers with more or less different experiences, points of view and convictions.


good thread eduardo, thanks for starting it.

my take on thoughtcapism's blog is that he/she paints with too broad a brush in terms of the characterization of treatment free beekeeping. as we have seen here on the forum there is a lot of diversity among beekeepers on both sides of the approach and there is no one size fits all methodology.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Here is something interesting but to me shows there is no real answers but just a continual flow of cause and effect. It is not about bees but could be.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?artic...in-Virulence-as-Hosts-Become-More-Resistant-/
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Scientists and professors have a job, they have to deliver.
You can find enough confirmation of your own thesis for each topic.

Please refer:
Studies if coffee is healthy
Studies on cholesterol
Studies on iron-containing vegetables

Every few years, the results change.

Eduardo, I respect you greatly.
But to call a mortality rate of over 10% as questionable is completely unrealistic here, even with treatments.
The average death rate is 15-40% per year among the production colonies of the treating beekeepers.
Even if they themselves do not admit this in the club I have my sources ( veterinary) who gives me such information without calling names.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

SiW
Throw in the fact that there are many reports of some hives sending out two or three swarms a year or more. If that many bees lived, there would be nothing in the world but bees. Some kind of death has to keep nature in ballance. 

Managing bees is about money and so less loss is better. Randy oliver mentions the populations variations year to year in the grey squirel population. We would not accept those fluctuations if we were raising grey squirels for money. Our goal is to beat nature.

Natures goal is to kill down to some kind of equilibrium. It is no wonder that things get tougher the better we get at beating the odds.

From what I can tell, even before mites, things would come along and cause bigger die offs and then would fade back into the back ground as time adjusted things. 

However, since people are inherently selfish, myself included, we look to things that give us the most in our 50 or so productive years and really look to what works now more then how long will it work. Since I am the same, I can hardly call others to task. I do not think it is so plain that one way is the answer more then that way may hurt the big picture. The last artical that I posted plainly seems to say that treating or breeding for resitance causes the virus to adjust to becoming more viral. So in the end it comes down to about how life comes down. Every thing is great for a bit but then you will run over a nail and when going to get the phone to call for help, you will notice your sewer has backed up. Then you will fix those and things might go good for awhile again.

Bees are the same and you have to adjust as things happen. Something out there is going to always be trying to kill some bees and will always have some kind of success.

Poeple are always going to handle those killing things in a multiple way due to What thier knowlages is and what they want to accomplish. Most will not know if what they are doing is the very best that could be done for the big picture but are more going to look at how it is working in the 50 productive years that they have.

Even the guys spending all thier time on the sience are not going to know for sure because it takes a long time to prove stuff out and something is always not thought of. 

I could have my mind made up that something was best if everyone would just do it but every one is not going to just do it and so I fall back on the fact that if I can look over here and see that this guy is keeping bees and they are living good enough for him and he is not treating and this guy over here is treating and having success that pleases him, It becomes up to me to decide how to do it for myself and do what it take to get what I need. I know the possibilities for them but not for me.

I did not find the artical that that started this thread to be wrong for the guy to believe that was how he felt the best success could be had, just wrong in that he felt the need to put others down that might be giving differrent advice. Who is he to say that others that are having success and telling poeple about it and are living by thier words, that they are wrong.

Sience give clues of cause and effect and none can use it as pure proof that their way is right but even then people will do what is best for them. They do not keep bees for the bees sake but so they can get something from them even if that something is sience and learning or money.

What he says is this is what works and this is what I base it on. He leaves out that on most things there is more then one way to skin a cat and infact he puts those down that are putting their money where thier mouth is and have good things to base that on.

The real truth is that most things have a risk assotiated with them and have some good parts and some bad parts.

I mostly don't spray my garden but if the bad bugs get the advantage, I am not above spraying it and I know when I do that I am going to kill some good bugs that have been helping me with the bad bugs. Not much there that tells you this is exactly the right thing to do every time.

One might say that if I was just patiant and let it go that next year or the year after, the good bugs might have caught up with the bad bugs and make my probim go away. Or I could have ordered a bunch of preying mantis and lady bugs and spred them around my garden. Let me look of the sience and see which option is best cause I am sure one of them has been proven to give the most. Yea right. If it was only that easy every one would do it.
Cheers
gww


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

Thanks sp.
Does the author's characterization of TF beeks include a minority or a majority of beekeepers in this trend? It is a good question that you are in a better position to answer than I am.

Sibbylle I greatly appreciate your interventions and your work for the balance and openness of spirit it reveals. The 10% is a rate that the inquiries reveal as the rate below which a large number of beekeepers find their winter breaks comfortable. But as I only know first hand the mortality in my hives I can say that in the last two winters it was below 5%. This fall I have 0% mortality from varroa to date. As you see for me this 10% rate is very realistic. In the articles I have read about winter mortality I see it more described as an objective and not so much as a reality.

gww
You seem to be a super-friendly person. Sometimes I find it difficult to follow your reasoning because English is not my native language. My fault! But if I understood the lady who wrote the article, I do not think she wants to give anyone instructions on how to do beekeeping. I do not think she's even a beekeeper. I think she has a point of view and that held that point of view very well. That's why I take my hat off (chapeau).


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

gww, well stated.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Eduardo Gomes said:


> Does the author's characterization of TF beeks include a minority or a majority of beekeepers in this trend?


i am not able to answer that with accuracy eduardo. i am personally acquainted with only a handful of tf beekeepers and would say that the author's characterization does not accurately represent any of them.

other than those few i know there are the folks that you and i read here on the forum. of those i would say there may be some that are conviction bent on tf to the exclusion of practical considerations. 

so my sample size is too small to guess on minority/majority.

in my opinion the author is guilty of hyperbole and spin with statements like this:

"It turns out that for thousands of beekeepers, ‘management’ is a dirty word."

thousands? really?

and:

"I had to follow up to see if this ‘treatment-free’ philosophy really was a thing. True enough, there is at least a Facebook page called Treatment-free beekeeping, and it has more than 16,000 members..."

as if all of the 16,000 signed up for that page are of one philosophy, (sol's philosophy that is).


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Eduardo, thank you for your understanding.

It's just that I try to make the amateur beekeepers, who really think it's just a matter of getting stopped by treatments overnight, to think it over. It is so difficult to convey that you can not just leave the bees to themselves if they are not resistant.

We have a law that we have to treat the bees. We do not want this compulsion, but we first have to get into the matter and learn how to help the bees. In this way, prejudices are a setback.
I fight with these prejudices every day. It's so easy to treat and believe you've done something good.

I am constantly attacked I would spread diseases. But my bees, though they may die of Varroa, have no other diseases. They have no nosema and no chalkbrood, they have no EFB and no AFB.

Those who attack me have all these problems, but they may not have a varroa problem because they treat against varroa.

Is the Varroa the only topic for maintaining health?

Today I had contact with my current mentor, we want to make a list of the costs of treatment, as an argument how expensive that can be and because many new beekeepers give up on beekeeping because of this.

He asked me if I wanted to list the legal treatments or the illegal ones.
The illegals?
He surprised me.
I do not know about this but maybe it works illegally with insecticides?

Everyone can sell their honey here without a certificate. Does that mean little loss but contaminated honey?
Questions.

Incidentally, hives to be combined is a loss of one hive to me.

Just as I see annual introduction of a new queen as a loss of an established colony, when it happens after the beekeeper culls queen cells.

For your situation, I congratulate you! I would definitely learn a lot from you.

Sols philosophy ( and maybe MBs and others, my old forum membership ) don´t work for me, mostly because of the lack of ferals. Still they are what I see as an example to have no varroa problem in short time ( if all beekeepers would combine their efforts and select for natural achieved resistance).


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> in my opinion the author is guilty of hyperbole and spin with statements like this:
> 
> "It turns out that for thousands of beekeepers, ‘management’ is a dirty word."
> 
> thousands? really?


I have no data. I do not think anyone has them. In Europe it is estimated that there are 620 000 beekeepers. If 10% of these follow the TF philosophy we have 62 000 beekeepers only in Europe. It seems plausible to me the author's statement.




> "I had to follow up to see if this ‘treatment-free’ philosophy really was a thing. True enough, there is at least a Facebook page called Treatment-free beekeeping, and it has more than 16,000 members..."
> 
> as if all of the 16,000 signed up for that page are of one philosophy, (sol's philosophy that is).


I'm not on facebook. I do not know if being a member of a facebook page/group implies a great communion with the mentor's guidelines. It seems to me that it is plausible that this is the main reason. If there is no such communion of philosophy why be in this virtual group?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> With treatments we are killing the mites that do little harm to the bees and leaving the mites that are harmful.


Sounds like TF fantinictisim that people spew in defiance of the facts... 
The premice that resorting to treating a hive to keep it from colasping will some how set your TF efforts back is a hall mark of many



> His studies indicate that it might be the mite itself that has more to do with bees survival than the bees adapting to the mite


more and more we are seeing were you keep bees matters more then what bees you keep, When plased in the same conditions commercial stock show the same resistance as Seeley's Ferals. We are seeing that genetics may be a just a small peice of the puzzle, nest size, swarming/splits, mite type and virus type all seem to matter "_Genetics alone is not going to solve the problem completely"_ Tom Seeley ABJ July 2017



> But to call a mortality rate of over 10% as questionable is completely unrealistic here, even with treatments The average death rate is 15-40% per year among the production colonies of the treating beekeepers


 As it here in the US..



> One other thing that michael bush said, when people treat and thier hive still dies, they blame it on a mite bomb from a neibor


and often rightly so, sure its their fault for not taking late season/post treatment mite counts, but I can tell you basied on my monthly mite counts that if I didn't have a bunch of hives of package bee stock rolling 50+ per 300 and colasping next to me, I wouldn't have had to treat my feral stock this fall. You don't go from rolling 2,6,2 to 32 with out the mites coming form some were. 
Then of corce its always the "treaters" fault for bad genetics causing TF to fail, when in most likly hood its the hobiest 60% who are TF mite bombing each other.
this


> any conclusion that has a "if only all beekeepers would do..." caveat is pie in the sky wishful


 rings very true

My view is yes, many TF "ways" are miss guided poor management practices, in many places, regardless of the stock, and regardless of the ferals, it may be inpossabul to keep bees TF with the pressures of being "managed" by humans... ie large volume hives kept in high dentistry(not just big AG, even 2 hives per a few blocks in urban areas adds up fast) with swarm prevention and expaction of a harvest, these are all thing we do not ask of ferals. 


> Managing bees is about money and so less loss is better. Randy oliver mentions the populations variations year to year in the grey squirel population. We would not accept those fluctuations if we were raising grey squirels for money. Our goal is to beat nature.
> 
> Natures goal is to kill down to some kind of equilibrium. It is no wonder that things get tougher the better we get at beating the odds.
> 
> From what I can tell, even before mites, things would come along and cause bigger die offs and then would fade back into the back ground as time adjusted things


BINGO what works for ferals is often incapability with management for human wants 

in outher places the stock, mite type, virus type, summer dearth and other things line up to alow fairly easy TF 
To be a beekeeper in the modern world takes work, we need to permote mite counts (and not allowing colony to colaspic )in TF till the stock and local conditions are proven. to 90% of the beekeeper 
run the numbers, we know from BIP 60% of hobiests are TF


> There are about 212,000 beekeepers in the United States, all of whom are eligible to participate in the program.(4) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) describes 200,000 of them as hobbyists, and another 10,000 as "sideliners," or part-time beekeepers


we know from BIP 60% of hobb are TF...thats 120,000 TF beekeepers... let the vastness of that number sink in.........
and yet the currant TF approach continues to fail out side of said pockets (were faburibul things line up). The 2017 BIP numbers say TF hobbyists lost 52.2% of their hives. this is not sustainable, palatable, or advancing TF in any way. 

Its time to drop the anti science snake oil and get real about mite resistance.


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## Eduardo Gomes (Nov 10, 2014)

SiWolKe said:


> Is the Varroa the only topic for maintaining health?


Sibbylle is certainly not the only one, but it is the most important.



> He asked me if I wanted to list the legal treatments or the illegal ones.
> The illegals?
> He surprised me.
> I do not know about this but maybe it works illegally with insecticides?


I do not know what it's like in Germany. In Portugal for example if I want to deal with formic acid legally I can only deal with MAQS. All other carriers of formic acid are illegal. The same for example for amitraz. If I deal with taktic it's illegal, if I deal with Apivar it's ok. Some beekeepers treat with the same active principles but outlaws because they use vehicles and quantities not approved by the authorities.



> Everyone can sell their honey here without a certificate. Does that mean little loss but contaminated honey?


If I intend to export my honey to your country, it is very likely that the buyer will require me to certify that the honey is in compliance with antibiotic and other residues.



> For your situation, I congratulate you! I would definitely learn a lot from you.


Thank you. What I have achieved makes me proud, without false modesty. You will not learn from me what I think you most want: how to have healthy bees untreated. I can not risk as much as you do. As long as you and others get to the right end, and your results are repeatable, I hope to be attentive to learn from you.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

like you say eduardo there really is no way to know for sure how representative that mindset is, neither for us nor for the author, which is why i have a problem with the broad generalizations made.

it seems less than plausible to me that there are that many practicing tf beekeepers let alone that many who are driven solely by conviction and ignoring management considerations.

we have had recent threads discussing where to buy tf bees and tf queens and for the most part people are having a difficult time finding someone who practices treatment free in their area. 

it seems more likely to me that the type of approach characterized by the author is going to be espoused by someone who is just starting out and is relying more on what they have read on the internet vs. getting training and advice from experienced beekeepers in their locality.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> I'm not on facebook. I do not know if being a member of a facebook page/group implies a great communion with the mentor's guidelines. It seems to me that it is plausible that this is the main reason. If there is no such communion of philosophy why be in this virtual group?


Because of the importance they feel. The elite feeling.

My experience is that many of the followers do treat but hold this in secret. I´m not on Facebook but I did join some forums which I later left because there was no serious work done.
Besides I don´t like autocratic persons forcing a strategy on me and banning me or attacking me when I´m sceptic. All beekeeping is local as msl said.

Even in my very small forum group where we tolerate beekeepers who treat it´s the same. 
Those who are the most tf fanatics but do not post their own experience are secretly treating.
They post about putting nettles in their hives and if you visit them they tell you they treated with thymol. The treatments are ok to me but not the lying.

Because of that I publish my diary where I tell the truth about my struggles. SP is an example to me concerning this. I know, if he will ever have a setback he will say so we can learn from this.
You may read a 100% loss anytime in my thread but none can take away the learning and I will go on being tf without chemicals no matter what, changing my managements.

So be at ease, there are not so many tf beekeepers having no conscience and jeopardizing your hives.


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## psm1212 (Feb 9, 2016)

GWW"

It always works for "a couple of years." I usually say 18 months. That is my experience anyway. Between 18 to 24 months in, I get the call to come tell them what happened to their bees. SHB and wax moths have taken over the hive by then, so they do not accept any responsibility when I tell them that this is what happens 18 months after you start a package and do not treat. Instead, it was the SHB that got them or the wax moths. Or the farmer's pesticides.

Yes, Michael Bush does say to start off TF if you want to be TF. That is what Bush says. That is not what Bush did. Bush had more knowledge of bees and beekeeping prior to the emergence of varroa in this country than I will have in my entire life. I think it takes that kind of beek to succeed as a TF keeper. Yes, others can and have, and I applaud them for accomplishing something that I could not.

I see absolutely no evidence of beekeepers ordering packages from Georgia, putting them in a box, consciously choosing not to treat them, and actually having those same line of bees 5 years later. I personally have not seen it happen. While I am sure it has, somewhere, my experience is -- without fail to date -- it doesn't work for them. I am not talking about experienced keepers that consciously take that step. I am talking about the hobbyist with < 10 hives that has no idea how to do a mite wash, nor has any interest in knowing what their mite levels are.

A local beekeeper near me (fortunately not in flight distance) does not treat and maintains about a dozen hives every year. Every year he splits in the fall, catches swarms all year long (mainly his own), and every year he comes out of winter with about a dozen hives. He doesn't treat and he deems this successful beekeeping. Maybe it is. But his hives are not surviving. They are being replaced.

People are free to do as they please. My personal opinion is that new keepers are often being led down a trail that they do not understand and cannot appreciate. They are being told by their "mentors" that they lost their hives to SHB, or wax moths, or they starved (in Alabama!), or these **** pesticides got them. Everything but what is actually happening to their hives. 

Again, I am not painting with a broad brush, but a very narrow one. I would not advise a new beekeeper to go TF unless they were obtaining a very special stock of bees that I thought had a fighting chance at survival.


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## Adam Foster Collins (Nov 4, 2009)

squarepeg said:


> ...he/she paints with too broad a brush...


She.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

thanks adam. it appears she has a science background but no beekeeping experience and that her view has been shaped by reviewing what information she has been able to glean off of the internet. it's not hard to see how she arrived at her position given the sources she cites but as you know there is more to the story.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Earlier in this thread I read

'we have had recent threads discussing where to buy tf bees and tf queens and for the most part people are having a difficult time finding someone who practices treatment free in their area'. 

What I see is many who 'practice' or say they 'practice' treatment free but none ever have them to sell. So it's not a matter of finding someone who 'practices' treatment free, that's easy enough, it's a matter of finding someone who can actually sell any of them.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

true clyde, and that tends to support my belief that there are not very many bona fide treatment free operations, let alone operations big enough to be in the business of selling bees.

i'm guessing most tf 'practitioners' are small operation and/or entry level without many hive years. we have few members here who report having running modest sized tf operations for numbers of years, but i've not seen mention of them making bees available for sale.

up there in the northeast aren't sam comfort and kirk webster selling treatment free bees?


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

Bona fide TF operations? what's that?
One doesn't need a big operation or be a 'queen breeder' to sell off some TF queens.

I have my guesses as well but I've come to conclude that most of it is all talk. Few are willing to walk the walk though.

Last I knew they were.
I like my queens better.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

clyderoad said:


> Bona fide TF operations? what's that?


bona fide would be the opposite of chimera. 



clyderoad said:


> Last I knew they were.
> I like my queens better.


have you run comparisons?


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Sam was only selling queens this year, I don't think Kirk was selling anything.



> Every year he splits in the fall, catches swarms all year long (mainly his own), and every year he comes out of winter with about a dozen hives. He doesn't treat and he deems this successful beekeeping. Maybe it is. But his hives are not surviving. They are being replaced.


 150 or so years ago that was the deffention of successful beekeeping (in skepts), the idea of a hive being a milk cow vs a steer for slaughter is new, and old.
The Egyptians and the Greeks practiced non destructive harvest, so why the middle age shift to harvesting the hive as a whole? Maby there is a bee plague missing in our history, sure it wasn't mites(or was it, lol), but the same management pattern would seem to work good against mites! kill off the mite bombs and take there honey... 
lol just saying. My thought is the change was the value of wax vs sugar in the oil age that changed bee keeping
edit bugger when you take time to compose a post LOL


> Bona fide TF operations? what's that?
> One doesn't need a big operation or be a 'queen breeder' to sell off some TF queens


the issue I see is a TF queen is expected to head a colony threw miss management, noob keepers, and mite bombs. The TF rhetoric says if you fail, it's the genetics, not the beekeepers fault, not a mite bomb, blame the stock, worse yet it was the boggy man,not the mites, not the beekeeper, bees just up and die you know.
coming back around yes, there are a lot of talking heads , but very few make queens or even the easy to produce cells available to there neighbors or others.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Ok, I had to do some work and got a bit of company (grandkids) and am pretty far behind. I have read all the reponces. 

Eduardo 

You think it is hard following my logic, you should see me tying to type it. If I even get close to what I am trying to say you may even think me further out there but I doubt it will be because of you language not being english but more my comunication skills.

Msl
Even if it is a location that a guy just got lucky on and it is working, it might still be the thing you have to try at some point in time to find out if it works. And if it does work it might be a good ideal to keep it going cause there is some sience that says presure from parasite can make the host stronger. I don't doubt that it is harder in some places then others but also know that things can cycle and even that can change for better or worse. You indicate that the TF bees can't be moved to other places and work there but there is also places where they have moved treated bees to where bees are surviving off treatment and those treated bees even being in a good area still die.

The answer is that it is not quite known why either happens. Just like it is not known why some people have southern bees that they can't keep alive in northern climates while others seem to have no problim.

It is also miss leading to quote a 52 percent death rate which is pretty high compared to most years that I have seen the breakdown on. For one, if we broke it down to new bee keeper losses rather then treatment or treatment free that could be the ratio also. Numbers are a hard thing to put into perspective with out knowing what is behind the numbers to go with the one deciding factor that is being counted. I could break this down a little furture but don't have the energy right now.

Clyde and psm
I don't know if I could find it but the three or four brand new threads on this site that said they had bees and had not treated were on an average between having bees for 3 to 7 years. They were hobiest though. Finding poeple that don't treat and buying bees from them? The only bees I bought came from someone who did not treat and he was the only one that had bees for sale really close to me that I could find. Oldtime told me that if I kept bees like he did I should have at least the success that he has. Therefore the question will end up being am I happy with that level of success. He has kept bees for 20 plus years and I think he told me the most he has ever had is ten hives. I can't pretend to know what his ups and downs have been cause I don't talk to him that much but do know that he has not quit and had bees to sale to me. I am one of them new guys that fitt that 18 months you talk about and I do not sit here and tell you how successful I will end up being cause I don't know myself. I just look around at what is out there and make my decision and will take my lumps if they come.

The part about people being led down a path that they are not prepared for is the same path that anyone who even gets bees is being led down. That person has two choices. He can get a mentor who makes all the decisions for him till it works and never change or he can learn the options and take his risk that way. In the end, if he has never done it there will be a learning curve and he will either learn or quit or let some one else really be the one keeping his bees and him just being a grunt. 

You only know what you know when you have never did something before.

Since there is advice out there to handle things many ways from many people, if you are the new guy, you either have to pick one to listen to or look at it all and make up you own mind on how to proceed and then watch what happens and make whatever adjustments have to be made while doing it.

I saw exactly the opposite at the last bee club meeting I attended on bees dieing. I don't attend but maby three times a year. The guys that lost thier bees and were getting together for packages in spring were not the guy I bought my bees from.

Now I do not claim to be a good beekeeper yet but do have lots of time to study bees and look at every studie on both sides of the parasite/host/evolution question. I don't pretend to be able to read half of them and get out everything they are saying as they speak many times over my head. I do glean enough from those studies to know that there is a case to be made that bees are living with out treatment and that when the mites showed up for the first time that they weren't for awhile. Something happened. I also have read that people that treated do more treating now and that the threshold for treating has went down for where it was and that hives that used to have a threshold of 10 percent to be considered dead now might be dead at 3 percent. 

I know that a new bee keeper won't know if he does not try it and that for some that do try it, the pain may be too much to make it worth it. I sure don't blame them for doing what they can live with cause that is what I am going to do.

There is one study over a couple of years where they did take commecial hives and set them off to the side and open bred thier queens with the commecial bees and after a first year pretty big die off things with the set aside hives leveled out and just kept going.

I don't know what can be repeated over and over but do believe these things show possibilities. 

Psm, I don't blame you if you decide that it is not worth it to you. That might be me in soon. Only time will tell. I don't mind taking the risk cause I don't have to use bee income to put shoes on anyones feet. My pride does make me want to make bee keeping pay for itself but I am not in a big hurry to get there. I hope to learn. Even if for me, I have to take a differrent route then I am taking now, I still see that it can work and it will just be me that doesn't want to become that good of a beekeeper. Till then I will test and see what kind of a bee keeper I end up being. The studies show it could go either way.

jw
Thank you

Blanket statement.
I still say the artical that started this thread was down on anyone who might have some validity to what they were doing if it did not agree with her conclusions. And it was saying sience was on its side while leaving out other sience. And I say one other thing. Psm and msl and square and clyde and SiW and jw and Eduardo. I would give more merit to you guys experiances that you have actually seen with your own eyes and even though I might go my own path and find out for myself, I believe what you say has merrit and because I believe it, it is added to my ever expanding knowlage base to use in my decissions as I persue this craft. 
Cheers
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> You indicate that the TF bees can't be moved to other places and work there but there is also places where they have moved treated bees to where bees are surviving off treatment and those treated bees even being in a good area still die.


point was treated commercial stock did as well as feral stock when moved in to some areas( ithaica NY) 
If moving TF stock to a new area was highly successful we would not need/want treated bees.. Solomon Parker's experience is a great 1st hand acout of what happens


> It is also miss leading to quote a 52 percent death rate which is pretty high compared to most years


The 5 year advrage is 48.2% losses and the 10 year would be 43.2%...
So no, not pretty high compared to most years as you suggest


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

> have you run comparisons?


yes.
compare and evaluate every queen I bring in.
evaluate them for the 'traits' they are advertised to carry. compare them to my bees.

as far as being TF, none have lived up to their billing. some are better with mites than others but
I already have bees like that.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

clyderoad said:


> yes.


that's interesting clyde, thanks for the reply.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

msl


> point was treated commercial stock did as well as feral stock when moved in to some areas( ithaica NY)


And my point was that there are comercial hives sitting right by untreated hives and if they also are left untreated, they die even though in the same place.

It just shows that there are some differrances and also that everything happens and it has not quite been figured out the whys.

Cheers
gww


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Ah the search for the resistant honey bee continues, surely not mite resistant but virus resistant as a mite has never killed a mature honey bee. The other thing that might help is my search for roundup ready clover which might help with the shortage of forage around here.
Johno


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Johno
I planted cover 20 years ago and it lasted exactly one year, now the red that is not supposed to work well for bees comes back year after year after year.

It cost almost $400 twenty years ago. I would be scared to think what it might cost now.

Back then I did it for the deer. It would probly help more with the bees. 
Cheers
gww


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

Gww I have about 4 acres of crimson clover and ladino clover mixed, the crimson clover is now coming through the grass and will be 18" high in the spring when it comes into flower. this is the wrong thread for this though. Now if it was roundup ready I could broadcast it in the corn fields at night LOL.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> The TF rhetoric says if you fail, it's the genetics, not the beekeepers fault, not a mite bomb, blame the stock, worse yet it was the boggy man,not the mites, not the beekeeper, bees just up and die you know.


msl,
you forgot the big cells! Never use big cells!


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## JWPalmer (May 1, 2017)

johno said:


> Ah the search for the resistant honey bee continues, surely not mite resistant but virus resistant as a mite has never killed a mature honey bee. The other thing that might help is my search for roundup ready clover which might help with the shortage of forage around here.
> Johno


Just plant 100 acres and then spray it with Roundup. Save the seeds of any that survive. Maybe they are resistant, or maybe you just missed them and all was for naught. Seems there are about 60,000 people that believe this will actually work.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Dr. Lang just informed me about losses of treated hives:

Although forced treatment and treatment with Varroa have existed for decades, the results are sobering at the level of colony losses. Thus, the 2nd Interim Report of 26.2.2016 of the Future Bee - Basic Research Project for the Promotion of Bee Conservation and Bee Health from Austria in the winter of 2014/15 has the highest average nationwide loss rate of 28.4% (Vienna even 52.6 %, Burgenland 40%). From the USA, loss rates of about 30% are well known for several years in a row. A recent online survey in Germany showed a nationwide mortality rate of about 20% for the winter of 2016/17, again with the highest figures for the city states of Berlin (31%) and Hamburg (30%). A winter mortality of around 50% in Switzerland shocked not only the Swiss some years ago. Nevertheless, there is no sign of a majority rethink, especially there is the beekeeping press more than ever in the hand of treatment beekeepers.
Since one wonders, shaking his head, what else has to happen to at least allow alternative options for thinking and acting? "


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## johno (Dec 4, 2011)

SiWolke, your last post has me wondering what point you are trying to make. As some of Europe's countries have mandatory treatment policies and still have major losses do you suggest that if these countries had mandatory non treatment policies that their losses would be less. Do you believe because the government mandates that you do something that all the citizens will just go ahead and do what they mandate, I personally doubt that and if asked I would say sure I did what I was told so there must be something else wrong. So I think all these surveys about bees and losses all over the world are not worth the paper they are written on.
Johno


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

SiWolke: Maybe you could ask the good Dr. for a reaction to the ideas put forth in the essay being discussed and linked to in the first post by Eduardo.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The law of treating is respected here, even though the managements may not be carried out properly and are not actually checked.
In order to improve the situation of the losses and to promote the resistance to the mite, it would be better, every beekeeper would be obliged to keep a journal instead of having a law on paper that means nothing and is not executed.
In the case of proof of a journal, there should be an exception for treatment-free beekeeping, e.g. upon a presentation of a selection done.

It´s already possible to apply to such an exception if beekeepers take part with research programs. But we want to have this possibility for all beekeepers, including those who have no time to do professional research because they work in jobs and keep bees as hobby sideliners and because we believe that to adopt beekeeping methods and research methods is not the right path since it is not taking care of all the variables of beekeeping.

It is planned by state to make a beekeeper license obligatory, that is, every beekeeper must have an education.
Since the losses also occur in animal husbandry by trained professional beekeepers, this is just money-making for us but does not help with promoting any resistance to the mite.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

clyderoad said:


> SiWolke: Maybe you could ask the good Dr. for a reaction to the ideas put forth in the essay being discussed and linked to in the first post by Eduardo.


Out of an article Dr. Lang published you see what he aims for:

Desire and objectives of the author with regard to the issues raised would be the perception, research and protection of wild honeybee colonies as far as possible transnational in Europe (Example: Scottish study on survival at 47 locations of wild bee colonies, dbj 6/2013, p.5), stabilization of a each locally well adapted wild honeybee population (not necessarily derived only from the dark bee), better understanding of the connections between genetics, diseases and management conditions of the honeybee in general and development of as near-natural and cooperating with the wild honeybee and wild bee population beekeeping methods (see eg Basic breeding of the Union of basic breeders). In order to prevent misunderstandings, it should be pointed out explicitly that the author is not an opponent of today's methods of treatment, optimization and breeding in beekeeping, but only advocates the promotion and research of wild honeybees, which results could be a progress also for the beekeeping medium - and could bring great benefits in the long run.
(google translated, I hope I got it right).


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## Scottsbee (Jan 11, 2017)

Those that advocate for TF, do you check for mites at all? 
Do you really just wait for the bees to die and say, well guess they didn't have the right stuff!

Every beekeeper kit should come with a sugar shake kit.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

SiWolKe said:


> The law of treating is respected here, even though the managements may not be carried out properly and are not actually checked.
> In order to improve the situation of the losses and to promote the resistance to the mite, it would be better, every beekeeper would be obliged to keep a journal instead of having a law on paper that means nothing and is not executed.
> In the case of proof of a journal, there should be an exception for treatment-free beekeeping, e.g. upon a presentation of a selection done.
> 
> ...


Nothing is only black or white. Or all or none.
How does one know what others are doing in their back yards with their bees? especially when there is little or no enforcement?

If the backyarders have no time to research the direction they are undertaking with their bees, and have little or no backround with bees to methodically 'move forward' maybe they shouldn't attempt such a complicated endeavor? to dismiss established methods in favor of willy nilly ones that inexperienced and time limited hobbyists make up as they go along is going to achieve what goal?
Germans should dismiss professional management suggestions because they don't solve all of the issues affecting bees? How do laymen know what is affecting bees in the first place?

I always thought the more learned one was the more capable they were to evaluate situations, be that learning from experience or through formal classwork. I guess that's not the case as you want to dismiss both experienced professional beekeepers as well professional research.

I don't understand any of what you are doing and see that personal convictions may have become barrier to growth. 
Not to sound harsh but little of it makes any rational sense to me.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

clyde


> Nothing is only black or white. Or all or none.


Then why do your posts are supporting black and white?

Most new hobbyists here got an education being bee club members or they are sharing a project like mellifera.ev, having mentors.
I myself started beekeeping after visiting a bee class one year.
Most *do not* just order packages because they watch u-tube and then get angry if they must monitor or have no harvest or have dying hives.

My belief is that beekeeping methods have to change, become more natural. This we want to mediate to those who are interesting, working together to find a strategy.

I´m convinced there will be some interest. We already have Forum members in Viva who are commercials. They mentor us in beekeeping methods, we mentor them in new ideas.
Black and white? You know that´s not me if you read my posts. 
I have my opinions like everyone else.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Scottsbee said:


> Those that advocate for TF, do you check for mites at all?
> Do you really just wait for the bees to die and say, well guess they didn't have the right stuff!
> 
> Every beekeeper kit should come with a sugar shake kit.





> Do you really just wait for the bees to die and say, well guess they didn't have the right stuff!


Not those I know or most of them don´t.

They monitor more than any commercials.
There maybe some who belief the bees do not need help but they learn very quickly that this is still an illusion. 
One season and homework is done. 
( this not meaning they treat but start to monitor or do some IPM or start to select or buy better queens)

Yeah sugar shake kit, very good!


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Scottsbees


> Those that advocate for TF, do you check for mites at all?
> Do you really just wait for the bees to die and say, well guess they didn't have the right stuff!
> [/QUOTE
> 
> ...


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## Scottsbee (Jan 11, 2017)

Gww
To test or not is completely up to you, just like treating. My thought is why not? Even if you are not planning on doing anything, if they die you will have an idea of why they died. 

Don't know what my threshold is either. Started doing the sugar roll this year just out of curiosity mostly and not wanting to treat just because. One hive had 9 mites in 1/2 cup, some say that's a death sentence. 

If you're lucky enough to have great bees in a good area, I'm happy for you!! 

I started to treat after seeing DWV and crawlers last year, bees made it through winter. Same thing this year. 

My plan going forward is to keep growing my numbers and bring in better queens. Guess I kinda fall in the with the IPM management. To much of a softy to let the bees die. 

Scott


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## trishbookworm (Jun 25, 2016)

Couple of thoughts to toss in:

The Facebook group (I stopped using it pretty quickly, seeing mainly posts like "where do I get tf bees"?" and other very basic questions with little thought behind them) was started by Sol Parker. He has a treatment free beekeepers podcast. It's a poster child for the approach to treatment free where it is all or nothing - if you use drone removal, or sugar dusting, it is too much manipulation for what Sol Parker wants in his bees. He has been selecting the best queens and propagating them, so he is walking the walk. So if you judge TF beekeeping by what you see on the internet, you'll have your prejudices confirmed. 

What struck me about the TF beekeeping podcast was the complete lack of discussion about what damage Varroa does to a hive. No mention of what a hive that died from Varroa looks like, vs dying from something else. Nothing about mite levels, or what levels were acceptable. The only metric was survival, and no efforts were put into finding something you can measure/test in summer or fall to predict which would survive. Such as mite counts. 

There is careful documentation of bees surviving with varroa: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-015-0412-8 for an overview. And there are reports here, of Squarepeg's and Sybille's experiences and Beepro and quite a few others. 

But simply claiming "If they die, they die. Bad genes." is not learning from the bees about how they live and thrive. It's imposing our own ideals. I think that's what we all pick up on at some point when defending or discussing the TF approach to beekeeping. Hey, new swarms have an 80% die off rate. The ABJ article from Seeley in Nov has a great write up of small unmanaged hive survival, vs feral bee survival. It's only $20 for digital access to ABJ, and worth it for his work alone. If someone is truly committed to breeding bees from survivors of Varroa, they should know how it works for feral bees. It's small hives, swarmy, and enough time to accumulate stores for WINTER only.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> "where do I get tf bees"?


You can get bees which are more tolerant but you don´t know if they are tolerant at your location.
In my old forum bee colonies were handled like golden nuggets, like they would be resistant. But they are not, they are not resistant just because of small cells, for example.
Small cells and isolation, maybe.

You have to make them resistant, using the knowledge of years and never give up on it.



> if you use drone removal, or sugar dusting, it is too much manipulation for what Sol Parker wants in his bees.


I want it too in my bees but there is a path which leads to this. He starts at the end of the path. I will ask him when I meet him at Vienna what he would do in an environment without feral swarms.



> No mention of what a hive that died from Varroa looks like, vs dying from something else.


If the goal is reached you may loose the interest and don´t care about that anymore, why should you?

But it´s terrible if such ignorance is promoted for newbies.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Trish.........


> But simply claiming "If they die, they die. Bad genes." is not learning from the bees about how they live and thrive


Maby it is not learning from them or maby it is. The link you posted of all those locations with living populations got those living populations in exactly that way. The wild population rebound after the late 80s got thier resitance in that way. The one studie where they seperated some comercial hives but kept then close to each other and did hard bond on showed thier resistance by the ones that lived and kept living.

You can point out and seeley can point out that coloneys are spaced out and in small hives and such and I have no doubt that that is the envoroment that they live in and adapted in and built thier resistance in. What that leaves out though is that almost all of the wilds were wiped out at first appearance of the mite invasion and have built back up in just such a hard bond fassion. The only differrance in the end on letting coloney die or live based on resistance from managed and wild coloneys is on managed ones, you can change the queen rather then let all the bees die.

I understand the enviroment of wild hives maby helping them in thier building of resistance but it is also the same envoroment that they lived in before becoming resistant. And that enviroment did not save the nonresistant ones.

So in two things the above matters. One, some have shown resistance (even if harder for the bees) in managed hives and that resistance was gained from having mite pressure on those hives in the envoroment they were living in even if it was differrent then the envoroment that the wild hives were in. So facts; 1. The wild hives were not resistant when mites first come. 2. They built resistance after the mite showed up. 3. They did it hard bond method cause there was no bee keeper to give them a new queen.

The small spaced out hives might have helped and thier resistance might not be strong enough in managed hives but the resistance was hard bond built.

Now saying all of that, I don't want to save the world bad enough to pay the price it might take to get managed hives resistant by hard bond methods but I do have no doubt that the wild hives got there by this method.


> It's imposing our own ideals.


 It would be imposing our own ideals to think differrent.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

gww,
we are not in the wild ( you are maybe ), so this setting will not work in reality.
Beekeeping is an industry not a environmental project.

And even Sol will rob honey, sell nucs and breed queens. In a project like some do it in Poland or Rumania the bees are kept like wild honeybees. Without profit except to keep the survivor genes.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Siw
You are missing the point. It doesn't matter if we are in the wild or not. The point was that wild bees live differrent and that is why they were resistant. The truth is that no matter where they lived, they were not resistant and they got resistant by hard bond. I was answering the parts that I highlighted as quotes. I pointed out in an industery that queens could be changed but resistance itsself takes pressure to be resistant to. That doesn't matter if you are in an industery or in the wild. If resistance is the goal. Like I said, I don't want to single handedly try and save the world and so I don't say resistance is my goal. I would take advantage of resistance if I can find it but I guess my goal would be industery over resistance, apparrently like your goal is from your last post to me.
Cheers
gww
Ps Making queens, robbing honey and selling nucs has nothing to do with resistance. People look at resistant bees that that doesn't happen to and equate it to them but those bees were also not resistant till hard bond.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Scottsbee said:


> Those that advocate for TF, do you check for mites at all?
> Do you really just wait for the bees to die and say, well guess they didn't have the right stuff!
> Every beekeeper kit should come with a sugar shake kit.


I do, a lot of TF types don't
yes a lot of people do let them die
yes, and a robbing screen for fall and drone comb to stop the flow of gentinicts till the hive proves out as TF stock



> My belief is that beekeeping methods have to change, become more natural


I would argue that the "natural" ways, as marketed by endless internet gurus, payed speakers, and book writers have failed repeatably do to selling a dream/ telling people what they want to here.... We all know the guy... Has a pod cast, gets payed to speak on "Expansion Model Beekeeping", striving to be a full time beekeeper but only has 14 hives..... :shhhh:
A popular message, no matter how well delivered does not make it correct.

To me a hive being a "survivor" and "looking good" is not far enuff, especially if we are collaboration with others, we need to beable to aply stronger selective pressure to advance the stock

when we look at what http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00218839.2016.1160709 did in creating TF comreical stock we see very strong selective pressure, on the order of 0.33% some years (one out of 300 hives became breeder stock)

Randy spells out the "how" very well http://scientificbeekeeping.com/scibeeimages/2017-KISS-Breeding.pdf

I think in many cases most of the TF keepers are spinning their wheels and on a bee replacement tread mill and giveing the movement a black eye. 
We have been mucking with bees genetics for 3500+ years, time to get serious about selecting for mite resistance and not expect "Nature" to do it for us, especially if we only have a few hives. 

Yes you hurd me, we can't expect nature to do it for us! As an example lets look at Seeley's Famous Arnot Forest Ferals
Genetic testing puts it at a breeding population of 1,000 colonys. 
With small hives and after swarms/casts figger 3 swarms per year
typical swarm survival past year 1 is 16%
Seeley puts conly longetive at 6(ish years) 
So thats 1000 established hives ( advrage gentinicks) losing 160 a year
and 2520 swarms dieing a year
to put that kind of selective pressure the context of home yard with 10 hives overwintering a year...
That's making 30 nucs/splits a year just to keep stable at a average of 10!! Yep 75% losses, yearly! Just to keep up the selective pressure and maintain the standard, not even to improve it And with splitting your overwintered hives 4 ways every spring are you goint to see much honey? nope just enuff to get the hives threw winter
Works GREAT in nature, not so "good" for beekeepers. But you can see why Skepts were used for so long... kept some of the selective pressure up. Bees that will survive thier 1st winter, swarm come spring, and build up to be harvested in the fall as a unit 

breeding from the top 3%,1% or 0.33% puts you well a head of the the feral 25% example
why?
ok if you run the 25% example
36.56% of those your breeding from are merely average and 45.64% are above average...... We don't want theses bees, if we want to increase a trait average has NO place in a breeding program 

at 3% selection pressure 24.33 are above average and 75.66 are significantly above average or better! 



trishbookworm said:


> they should know how it works for feral bees. It's small hives, swarmy, and enough time to accumulate stores for WINTER only.


Ding Ding Ding you beat me to it, I have been typing for a bit on and off for a few hours LOL

Its time to change the message, we need to select what we want out of the bees, the easy and most efficient method is mite counts, and it lets groups work together with a objective metric. 
Say you have 3 hives this fall you are thinking about breeding from... 
They look good! One advradges 2 mites, one 6 and one 15... but if you don't test you won't know.. and you loses the golden goose. 
The hive with 2 is showing 300% more mite restance then the one rolling 6, and 750% more then the one rolling 15.. 
so and raize queens form them all in summer 2018 and waist a bunch or resocers on sub par stock choices,, and fall 2019 you evaluate them and find a bunch are much poorer then few good ones b....2 years, as a small time keeper you can waist 2 years on a bad choice. 

For us to advance TF genetics I feel we need provide higher selective pressure then nature, and we need to keep pressure on, we need to propagate from our best or the best in a group, using a common and easy to use objective metric.
The biger the sample size the better, so we should regional together, and share our best with those around us, QCs are cheap and easy.
Your not going to want to breed from 97% or more of your stock,. Put in drone comb and cull regularly to castrate hives that aren't breeders, treat as needed so you can requeen with the 3% stock or break it up for resources to raze queens... and if your small, there is nothing wrong with keeping it castrated and treated if needed so you can get a bit of honey while your working on improving the resistance of your stock.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl
Good post with good resources. The only thing I can say about it is that if your goal was to create a super bee, it is probly a good way to start. 

If however you live in a place like squarepeg and the guy I bought my bees from and you got 20 hives and you just roll with it and they just keep living. You are probly not setting any work backwards as long as you don't treat and as long as your bees keep living. So wether you got lucky or are surrounded by lots of ferals or have good forage or whatever, if it is working then there is no work to do but just keep breeding from your best That do the things you want the hive to do.

So I agree that if you are starting at the bottom, you have to have a way to proceed.

Not every ones goal is to create a super bee. Some just want to find that bee and use its merits and keep bees for what they can get out of them. If I bred a bunch of bees that were better then everyone elses it would help no one except the few times I might cull down my numbers to not have too many hives. I want good bees like everyone but don't want to be the provider to everyone and the things that come along with being that provider. 

I do not dissagree with anything you have writen but more just point out that it is not bad beekeeping if you have to keep bees like the origional artical that started this thread or if you go the other way even so far as to want to make a super bee. That was why I did not like the origional artical cause it seemed to be saying there was no other way that was right. You just showed another way that has good merit and study behind it.

I do say one thing that is always brought up and that has to do with all the numbers that are posted like a thousand hives in the arnet forrest being how big the pool for change is. If the number of 60% of bee keepers don't treat and then add the ferals that are around, those numbers may not really be that impressive in the forest. Every one says that a guy with 4 hives in his back yard won't make a differance but change that to 60% of the beekeepers around and maby those numbers for the four hive guy starts to add up. Some might add up in some places due to local attitudes more then other places.

I am figureing that I will take the lazy way and see if I am not starting at zero and that the work may have already been done for me. I may find that it has not and then have to work a little harder but I have not found that out yet. I saw everyone putting pressure on squarepeg and fussion and others telling them that if thier bees are so good than why are they not producing queens and spreading them around. The answer has to be that they don't feel like it. It take more work and takes away from what is more important to them.

Them feeling that way does not make it not true what they are doing and wether they are being successful. It does not make them bad bee keepers cause they keep bees differrent then the origional artical.

I also believe hard bond if any live would work with numbers like you mention in the forest being possible in some places even for the guy with four hives. It can be said that he is stupid for losing any hive that he does not have to but he may add it up differrent if it is not too many hives just like others add up the compermises they have to have to keep bees to accomplish all the things they want like polination or packages or honey production. Just like the chart in you link on breeding for traits shows. Everything you do is some kind of compermise. I sure am happy to know about all the things like is in the links you post cause some day my ambitions may change.
Cheers
gww
Ps I would also say that the 75% loss mentioned in seeleys forest is probly not very dependent on mite loss. Swarms by thier very nature probly had those very same losses before there ever was a mite and the hives are living just as long after the mite. They did die pretty bad when the mite showed up but now those metrics are all adding up the same as before the mite.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> if it is working then there is no work to do


Correct! if you keep doing the same you keep getting the same and its a dubble edge sword



> It does not make them bad bee keepers cause they keep bees differrent then the origional artical.


I whole heartily disagree, letting your bees die is bad beekeeping. 
I am going to loose nus this winter cause I was pulling 60-80 hours a week mid Aug-early nov and didn't get the feed on them and am playing catch up between snow storms. I can hide behind "natural" beekeeping and say I was section for bees that can fend for them selfs without feed, or I can face the fact I failed them as a beekeeper.



> Every one says that a guy with 4 hives in his back yard won't make a differance but change that to 60% of the beekeepers around and maby those numbers for the four hive guy starts to add up


Yes, but "studys" show 95% of beekeepers would like to argue on line then work together:lookout: 
By the same study that gives us the 60% on average TF guy with 4 hives will lose 2. (Sure it may be 1,1,4 or what ever) 
At best they breed from there top 25% (one hive) at worst 50% when they split their 2 remaining hives to make 4. That's just not enough selective pressure unless they work together and find the 3%, or even 10% in there colective stock and share cells 
This is a bit of an unperfict example, but it will do 
Say you get your bees from a sold TF source (as you have) and have a golden goose queen.. That means her bees have 1/2 goose in them, the hive swarmed its 1st year and raises a queen with 1/2 goose so her bees are 1/4 goose. Come spring You chose to propagate from them to make up for your losses.... the workers are now 1/8 goose, 14 months and you have 75% less goose then when you started. 



> Not every ones goal is to create a super bee


Its not about a superbee, its about distilling enuf goose in a line that it remains effective over more out crossing 



> I also believe hard bond if any live would work with numbers like you mention in the forest


Yes the forest is hard bond, dependent on a 75% loss rate to maintain the selective pressure and keep the stock at advarge performance. It works. 
Now what happens in the beeyard? You end up breeding from too much average/just above advrage stock and creating too many poor queens and you get the build and collapse cycles often talked about by "successful" bond permoters. This is the goose getting to thin and nature distilling it back out to start again. 

The big issue is bees sected that way on the whole will have less goose, and lose the traits faster. No pressure and the traits are gone, fast it would seem. 
Flip side is if you just prop them up with treatments, it removes the pressure and you have a bunch of susceptible stock very fast, this is the problem with blind treating unless the stock is castrated and not used/evaluated for breeding
Treatment free or Treating the path to resistance lies in using objective metrics to select from the very best you have acess to and then raise cells from it. Walk away splits and splits were the hives make there own queens should be avoided as a method of increase/replacement of loss, they are surviving TF, but they may not have enuf goose for the next gen to do so, only the top should be propagated from.



> They did die pretty bad when the mite showed up but now those metrics are all adding up the same as before the mite.


Correct, I don't feel the wild hives are dieing any more or less then before the mite, they are now at a stable point if not still expanding 
point is that's the selective pressure needed to maintain the survival traites and pump out advarage bees with a lot of a deveristy so they can bounce back from change.
So to improve a stock you must have a higher selective pressure then nature, and if you want said stock to maintain its traits past a outcross or few you need very high selective pressure. 
Now in an area were the average mite resistance is "good enuf" for hives to live and the local drones are supporting you, great. But I think I have given a plausibly answer as to what happens when the stock is moved, not enuf goose and the F-1s fail


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl
I do not dissagree on your cause and effect. I am just saying that being perfect where the bees are concerned is not why most people keep bees. They keep bees to get enough from the bees to make it worth it to keep bees. My whole point is that if randy and the other link you posted says that treating does make a weak breading pool but every one is willing to say it is a finacial nessesity, then it is like the kettle calling the pot black if they are mad at some one else who is happy with losing bees in a differrent fassion but they also are getting what they want. You made the same decision based on work being more important then the bees at that one moment. There would be no reason for beating yourself up over that and it would be not reason to not have bees and it may not happen that many times but did happen this time. Both the weakening of bees and the having to work are done for money at the expence of the bees just like keeping bees are for what can be had from them.

So if a guy is getting enough even knowing the boom bust cycle, it just seems hard when we live in a world of compermise that one can be so sure the other is bad. We are all bad at times if anybody wants to look close enough.

I totally dissagree that one route is adding up to more harm to the bees as a whole then the other route.

It is talked about the guy who catches swarms and just keeps replacing his hives with splits to get back up to tweleve hives is bad beekeeping. It is not bad for the guy that only wants what them twelve hives give him and figures he gets those twelve hives with out spending any money and he really doesn't want any more. If you want to break it down, this is exactly the reason michael palmer came up with his nuc system is because he was losing hundreds of hives in apple polination and having to buy packages every year to fulfill his apple contract. How come when he does it it is good bee keeping but when a guy on a small scale does it it is just a bee haver?

I do not dissagree that you are pointing out best practices and even that we should look up to those who practice best practices. I also say the practices get better the more you keep at it and some of that happens just by doing. Most people are not keeping bees for best practice. They are adding up compermises. I have people thinking I am an idiot cause my hives are heavy cause they are made out of oak. Or because I am using all mediums. I however know how I get my boards and compermising on wieght works for me.

I state again that if I had 4 hives die this year, I might think that is just fine because money wise I will still have almost doubled my hive count. It doesn't matter that I could have did better if I would have did a monthly mite count and bought insulation and more sugar water and some chemicals and some foundation. But I compermised and still doubled my hives. I might not be happy with that either and might decide something that adds more labor will help or I might decide it is easier to do all that before because it is easier then taking care of a dead out. I might dicide to get an apple contract and use that money to get more stuff.

I do believe that even if I handled it this way that if mite pressure is as good as the links you provide and if the weak are more likily to die first, I still would be no worse then handling it like a comercial would.

I might get more ambitious as my skill set grows to where things that are hard now become easy and give me more time to devote to being better. I bet when you retire and don't have those long hours, you will improve. Yours is a fine goal to work towards but it does not make anyone bad who keeps bees and does not live up to it if it is a certain amount of, for easy understanding, "profit" is being made with out best practices cause that is what is going on with almost all beekeeping in the niche that poeple fill when keeping bees.

It is still agraculture and just like the grain fattend beef for mass market or the grass fed for special markets, nobody is right, they are just good in thier niche.

If your priority is making the super bee more then industery this approch is wrong. If you are interested in industery and willing to do industery in a way that might also help keep a little resistance/tolerance building evolutionary pressure on the bees and the compermise that intails, it won't be making things in the big picture any worse then other practices you could do even if you don't make them much better.

Even then new things may develop and you might grow as they do to doing better. There is no sure easy answer but only avenues that poeple are persuing based on the best research at the time. I am a pessimist in most things but have this view that all those guys out there that just did it even when it wasn't supposed to work and then found out it did is why we have more not treating now and having success. Lots of things were invented when it was not what they were working on, accidents. I think half the poeple that are keeping bees with out treating and it is working did it because they didn't know any better and of course it didn't work at all for half of them but did for some showing possibility.

Please keep arguing with me cause I have got some real jems from some of the links you post and I do thurst for knowlage (which you provide well) so that when I do get fourced to make adjustments or just want to improve, I have some things in my brain to work with. I am a loner and that is why breeding parties and bee clubs and such are not going to help me even if it would work better. Hermits make things work at home even if collaberation would make it work better.

Cheers
gww


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

msl


> Say you get your bees from a sold TF source (as you have) and have a golden goose queen.. That means her bees have 1/2 goose in them, the hive swarmed its 1st year and raises a queen with 1/2 goose so her bees are 1/4 goose. Come spring You chose to propagate from them to make up for your losses.... the workers are now 1/8 goose, 14 months and you have 75% less goose then when you started.


The thing you are missing is the guy I got my bees from is small time and open breading and just doing it. So it is the open breeding that is the golden goose and not some queen raiser. People are importing packages in this area and in that open breeding pool.



> Correct! if you keep doing the same you keep getting the same and its a dubble edge sword


But, if getting the same is enough to be profitable then it is still enough and you only do more cause you want more or something changes and you don't keep getting what you get. If you are and it is good enough than it is good.
Cheers
gww

Ps I am not bragging about what I have done, my bees might all die. I am talking for others like the guy I bought my bees from being happy enough to still have bees for 20 years. I have nothing to brag about except one year of 100 percent live bees, I do not say year two will be the same, I say I don't feel bad trying it and seeing what happens.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The hard bond beekeepers' forums, podcasts and blogs, from those who are experienced and successful in treatment-free work, always have the disadvantage that this management is *mimicked* rather than* used*.

A beginner who is not isolated and thinks he can imitate the Arnot Forest is really naive.

Also you can not operate an expansion model, if you have no drawn comb. Also one must consider in an expansion model that one must feed. The bee colonies are much too weak if you do not. Yet many have practiced that. I have acquaintances who have made 20 colonies from 2 hives, later they all starved to death, because fanatics told them they should only feed honey and they had no honeycomb stored yet. So they thought the number of foragers and the flow would be enough.
I remember Dee Lusby advising to buy honey to feed. Ok, introduce AFB doing this.

But when they fail it´s always the mite which is blamed.

If the basic knowledge of beekeeping, and especially the dangers of tf beekeeping is not taught or is ignored by the professionals, there are always huge problems. That is the responsibility of the TF profs and not the responsibility of the beginner IMO.

To me, MB is an example of a good mentor. When I asked advise I always was indicated to the dangers of some managements. He says he feeds in an emergency and so on...
The asking is the responsibility of the ignorant.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

GREAT Thread!! Thanks to all contributors.


"One can never learn what one thinks they already know"

...because....

"Everyone knows, that's how it goes" (L.C.)



TF, All Mediums (wish we'd went with all shallows), Foundationless since 2007


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

drummerboy said:


> GREAT Thread!! Thanks to all contributors.
> 
> 
> "One can never learn what one thinks they already know"
> ...


Hey Drummer Boy, Yes a great thread. as it has been silent for some time, I have an ask for you. I am considering the all medium route but in the hives I have started it with I do not see as good of a brood pattern. Does this resolve itself over time?
next do you extract? if you extract from comb that had brood does it affect the honey flavor?

thanks
GG


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