# Very wide spacing of hives (100m) reduces mite build up



## lharder

What would be interesting is a longer term study looking at spatial arrangements. In year 2 would mites once established, devastate the colonies anyway?


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## Himmel-Hund

There is definately some BIAS within this work!

Basically it is stating that somehow mites are disappearing into the landscape when hives spaced further apart whereas they are magically stepping directly into the neighbor-hive when placed within close distance.

Anybody believing this?


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## Bkwoodsbees

Says the mite counts were always lower in the hives spaced 100 m apart. How much lower? Only conclusion I came up.with is this. If you are going to place a couple hives with low mite counts in a new yard , and you are going to put 300 mites in one of the hives, then place them 100 m apart.


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## BernhardHeuvel

Prof. Tom Seeley found the same in his experiments. 





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVj4A6F1D_s


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## 1102009

For many many years the beekeepers in europe prevented drifting by marking the entrances with colors or pictures.

They considered the food supply and kept only low numbers of hives in one location. Food supply was much better then, since today only agriculture provides much food supply.
Old bee homes have 5 -10 entrances. There was no migrating.

Multiplying was done by swarming, no brood combs were shifted. There was no comb hygiene, honey was taken out of brood combs too. Not much pesticides no miticides.
Honey harvest was one third of today. Propolis was accepted.

Magazine beekeeping and agricultural managements changed all that. 
Who knows the impact varroa would have had if those methods never changed? 

There are may paths now to go back to a more natural beekeeping.
But as long as those bees are treated, nobody knows how tolerant they really are. Even in most scientific tf breeding programs the bees are still treated.








This bee home was built 1933, because it´s not possible to treat the keeper uses the boxes in background.








This I saw in switzerland, it´s used for swarms by a swarm catcher. The boxes inside are "Hinterbehandlungsbeuten". Natural comb.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinterbehandlungsbeute

He shifts the colonies to his tf production bee yard if they survive one winter.
The swarms he catches are escaped domesticated treated bees, sometimes with marked queen.


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## Hunajavelho

SiWolKe said:


> Even in most scientific tf breeding programs the bees are still treated.


Because, if you don't treat at all you will end up beeless. That we can see from all TF-keepers. All of the ones promoting TF beekeeping for the last decade has more or less losed all of their hives and yet have not find any stability. Varroa is even a bigger problem now than ten years ago. Even minimal Varroa population can be deadly nowadays, because of the virus infections are more serious it looks...


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## Hunajavelho

Erik Österlund has some interesting thoughts...
http://elgon.es/resistancebreeding.html


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## 1102009

Hunajavelho said:


> Because, if you don't treat at all you will end up beeless. That we can see from all TF-keepers. All of the ones promoting TF beekeeping for the last decade has more or less losed all of their hives and yet have not find any stability. Varroa is even a bigger problem now than ten years ago. Even minimal Varroa population can be deadly nowadays, because of the virus infections are more serious it looks...


Seems to me you do not know many tf beekeepers.
There are high losses but there are some, even in europe, who do it for years now and still have survivors, but they do not post in forums.

And what about Juhani Lunden or some? They have setbacks, like everyone, but still breed better bees and go on with the survivors.

I´m in contact with Erik. He uses thymol as treatment for the not susceptible hives. He does not breed queens from those.
But he realized that he has not enough progress doing this so now he has a bee yard to do the hard bond.

Erik:


> Your strategy
> Now what should YOU do?
> I say like John Kefuss on the conference in Sweden some years ago. Even if you don't know what to do, *do anyway at least something you think is in the direction of becoming a treatment free beekeeper.* There are enough of us around giving you ideas. And your are not without brain!


Maybe you are right to say we will end up bee less, maybe the world will end up beeless.
So what?
Is that a reason not to try?


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## Hunajavelho

Juhani is probably is one of the few we can actually trust telling the truth - he down to 12hives last spring, lets hope for a better report next year!

As for others...., I don't know but losses are huge for M. Bush and S. Parker. 
Hobby beekeepers mostly tell the good stories and disappear when things go down.

Erik's approach has been different. His Elgon bees are doing well in Varroa-counts in treated hives around Europe, probably due to Monticola.

I have myself done TF-tests, but I do not see any hope in the tunnel... VSH is good, but just another aid, I do think we need to treat in all future with somekind. I myself treat only once a year with oxalic acid or thymol.


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## Michael Bush

>Because, if you don't treat at all you will end up beeless. That we can see from all TF-keepers. All of the ones promoting TF beekeeping for the last decade has more or less losed all of their hives and yet have not find any stability

I'm not beeless. Last time I was beeless was 2001.


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## Duncan151

Doesn't this contradict the, My Treatment Free Neighbor Mite Bomb, theory?


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## 1102009

Hunajavelho said:


> Juhani is probably is one of the few we can actually trust telling the truth - he down to 12hives last spring, lets hope for a better report next year!
> 
> As for others...., I don't know but losses are huge for M. Bush and S. Parker.
> Hobby beekeepers mostly tell the good stories and disappear when things go down.
> 
> Erik's approach has been different. His Elgon bees are doing well in Varroa-counts in treated hives around Europe, probably due to Monticola.
> 
> I have myself done TF-tests, but I do not see any hope in the tunnel... VSH is good, but just another aid, I do think we need to treat in all future with somekind. I myself treat only once a year with oxalic acid or thymol.


You can trust me about telling the truth!  I do not fear setbacks and what you say only makes me more stubborn.

Erik. oh god, treated hives! I pity him. All this work in vain! If I were him I would give those people the queens I took out of selection.
To me his queens are golden nuggets.

We, my co- workers and me have Elgon genetics in our yards and we do not treat. So far Eriks queens show very good performance.

Treating once in the season is treating always. I have no problem with people who treat. I have problems with people who say they want to reduce treatments because they will blame me if their hives die.
I, who do not treat, know it´s difficult for the bees, so I´m blaming no one except me for losses.

In three years I have not seen anyone to have tf bees after doing the soft bond. But I know of some going blended or hard bond and still having bees.


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## Himmel-Hund

@ Bernhard
Since he is a human too even Tom Seeley may be in error - at least from time to time.


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## jim lyon

To me it makes perfect sense that the higher the population density the easier it would be to spread diseases and parasites. Not just in bees but in any organism. I've always assumed that horizontal transmission is one of the great obstacles that commercial operations face when trying to keep their hives healthy.


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## BadBeeKeeper

jim lyon said:


> To me it makes perfect sense that the higher the population density the easier it would be to spread diseases and parasites. Not just in bees but in any organism. I've always assumed that horizontal transmission is one of the great obstacles that commercial operations face when trying to keep their hives healthy.


Makes sense to me. Even a cursory study of epidemiology shows that to be the case. Isolated individuals don't get sick as often, while disease is easily spread in clusters of population.


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## WesternWilson

Living in a semi urban area surrounded by blueberry fields, and which also hosts regular come-and-go treatment free survivor yards and the odd "neighbours, what neighbours??" research project....our local beekeepers have debated the wisdom of just running all colonies with robber screens on to eliminate drift. Seeley is advocating spacing to do the same. 

For most of us, spacing is impractical. 

I am pleased to see that Varroa research is gaining momentum, and increasingly the gene editing technologies now coming into wide use are pointing to a solution via tinkering with the Varroa genome. This offers not only a robust control tool, but the very real possibility of eradicating Varroa from our honey bee populations.


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## Delta Bay

Varroa mites – bees’ archenemies – have genetic holes in their armor

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/varroa-mites-bees-archenemies-have-genetic-holes-in-their-armor/


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## WesternWilson

Delta Bay said:


> Varroa mites – bees’ archenemies – have genetic holes in their armor
> 
> http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/varroa-mites-bees-archenemies-have-genetic-holes-in-their-armor/


Indeed, and given this technique is already used in controlling cattle ticks, offers huge promise, a welcome alternative to twisting the bee genome into a (meaningfully) Varroa resistant shape.


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## Boxelder

It makes perfect sense that frequent influx of new genetic material from other hives could result in a more aggressive mite/virus disease complex. As has already been pointed out, bees do not normally locate their hives right next to each other, so no doubt their is very little evolutionary resistance to diseases that thrive with a lot of hives in close proximity. And aren't we presuming that the natural altruistic response of a sick worker (whether from mites or viruses) will be to abandon the hive - and quite possibly wander into another hive?

At what point should uniquely painted hives and robber screens become standard equipment for hives?


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## odfrank

How many of us can put these findings into use? I for one will start spacing all my hives 100 meters apart tomorrow.


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## 1102009

I spaced my hives 3-5 m apart and used robber screens the whole year long and I claim this reduced drifting + - 40%, as I saw because I have grey and yellow bees at my bee yard.
A big difference to last year. Let´s see if this means a change in tf survivability.

And I have placed a single, not resistant colony in my garden, surrounded by neighbor treated hives, 300m away. Robber screen on. I´m curious if these will survive winter. Normally they would be dead now without treatment, but I hear them.

To move brood or honey combs to sustain weak colonies will wreck this space management though.


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## Michael Bush

I actually have enough room that I could spread my hives apart a lot, but then I would spend all my energy walking from hive to hive especially when stealing resources from one hive or mulltiple hives for things like swarm boxes etc. I wouldn't have the energy.


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## Riskybizz

"I'm not beeless. Last time I was beeless was 2001. "..

Mike just wondering how your bee yards are doing these days. Do you mind sharing your current untreated colony numbers and overwintering rates the last couple of seasons. Are you still buying lots of package bees to replace dead outs each spring? I really have no idea how treatment free beekeepers are keeping numbers up these days. Thanks


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## FlowerPlanter

The charts in the study above are all over the place, and flip back a forth, almost doubling the mite count in two weeks for some groups. At any give time during the study there is either a 0M or 10M with similar or better results than the 100M group. I did not see a trend that's going to "Save the Bees". *But instead it depends on which week of the year I am going to keep bees at 0M, 10M or 100M apart*. That's going to be a lot of moving hives every other week to maximized the best possibly mite loss to the landscape.

And in the end all mites levels dropped in Nov. To survivable limits? That's the question. Was the difference in each group enough to show a difference rate in survivability? And to what degree. Are we to move our hives 100M apart for 2% increase in survival?


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## Cloverdale

Siwolke said:”Multiplying was done by swarming, no brood combs were shifted. There was no comb hygiene, honey was taken out of brood combs too. ” Do you mean removing old black comb from hives? Deb


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## 1102009

Cloverdale said:


> Siwolke said:”Multiplying was done by swarming, no brood combs were shifted. There was no comb hygiene, honey was taken out of brood combs too. ” Do you mean removing old black comb from hives? Deb


It was the skep beekeeping time.

https://av.tib.eu/media/14378

You can´t shift frames with a skep. Some hives were emptied of bees, making packages, combining weak colonies...the brood left behind was killed and all combs harvested, honey and brood combs. The wax was melted and cleaned.
It was all natural comb and the colonies built new.
There was no chemicals used inside the hives.

In europe comb hygiene was started when beekeepers began to use chemicals against mites. Before, even with magazine beekeeping, honey out of brood combs was harvested.


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## Charlie B

Riskybizz said:


> "I'm not beeless. Last time I was beeless was 2001. "..
> 
> Mike just wondering how your bee yards are doing these days. Do you mind sharing your current untreated colony numbers and overwintering rates the last couple of seasons. Are you still buying lots of package bees to replace dead outs each spring? I really have no idea how treatment free beekeepers are keeping numbers up these days. Thanks


That would be interesting to know about your losses Mike. I stopped treating 3 years ago, not that I’m anti-treatment but I just don’t have the time nor the energy. My losses are a little higher, but not as bad as I thought. Capturing swarms is the way I replace dead outs. I usually lure 2 or 3 swarms from Tankbees every year but his bees are dwindling fast! I get several packages a year but they never seem to do as well as swarms.


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## Charlie B

duplicate, sorry


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## odfrank

> Capturing swarms is the way I replace dead outs. I usually lure 2 or 3 swarms from Tankbees every year but his bees are dwindling fast! 
Charlie! All of us here on Beesource would love to learn your secret on how you know exactly whose swarms you are catching. A few years ago you "knew" that you had caught the first swarm of the year and that it had come from my hives. Now you "know" you are catching Tanks' swarm. Please tell us how to have the same brilliant insight that you do.


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## Charlie B

odfrank said:


> > Capturing swarms is the way I replace dead outs. I usually lure 2 or 3 swarms from Tankbees every year but his bees are dwindling fast!
> Charlie! All of us here on Beesource would love to learn your secret on how you know exactly whose swarms you are catching. A few years ago you "knew" that you had caught the first swarm of the year and that it had come from my hives. Now you "know" you are catching Tanks' swarm. Please tell us how to have the same brilliant insight that you do.


I’ll thank you to remember that I’m the Bay Area 2016 bait hive champion capturing one of YOUR swarms. I base it on circumstantial evidence. All the bits and pieces of information carefully assembled to lead a reasonable (or unreasonable) beekeeper to believe that more likely than not, that’s an Oliver Frank swarm!!!









Now, as for Tanksbees, his bee yard is several blocks from mine in Hillsdale. Case closed!









This is the coveted tree I place my bait hives to catch Tankbees bees every year.


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## Michael Bush

>Mike just wondering how your bee yards are doing these days. Do you mind sharing your current untreated colony numbers and overwintering rates the last couple of seasons. Are you still buying lots of package bees to replace dead outs each spring? I really have no idea how treatment free beekeepers are keeping numbers up these days. 

I suspect that you have no idea how treatment free beekeepers keep their numbers up because you have preconceived notions about treatment free beekeeping. You assume more losses than when you treat. I have not found that to be true. My biggest issues have nothing to do with not treating, they have to do with time to keep up with beekeeping and enough bees early enough to start queen rearing early. I kept up better this year than I have in some time. My current counts: 14 full size colonies (four 8 frame medium boxes), 11 small colonies (three 8 frame medium boxes), 19 nucs (two eight frame medium boxes or less). At the peak of queen rearing I had over 100 two frame mating nucs which have since been combined with other colonies for winter.

>That would be interesting to know about your losses Mike. I stopped treating 3 years ago, not that I’m anti-treatment but I just don’t have the time nor the energy. My losses are a little higher, but not as bad as I thought. Capturing swarms is the way I replace dead outs. I usually lure 2 or 3 swarms from Tankbees every year but his bees are dwindling fast! I get several packages a year but they never seem to do as well as swarms.

I much prefer swarms as well and I catch some. I do have to buy a few packages early in the spring to populate early mating nucs, so I can start queen rearing early enough to do it at my bee camp. Otherwise I would have to wait another two weeks to have enough bees for queen rearing. Losses vary from winter to winter. Typically my losses are the same or less than the rest of Nebraska for a given winter. Looks like they are listing 72.1% losses in Nebraska last winter on BIP. I had more like 35% last winter which is about half the average losses. I had thought it was a mild winter so losses would be low, but it seems like there were a lot of warm flying days and nothing blooming so losses were high.


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## Riskybizz

>"Otherwise I would have to wait another two weeks to have enough bees for queen rearing..." 

So you are willing to purchase package bees in the spring and introduce them into your apiary in order to save two weeks in order to expedite queen rearing? Wouldn't it be more advisable to just wait the two weeks until your bees are built up accordingly instead of bringing in bulk bees (and more mites). If your bees aren't sufficiently populated I would think that you wouldn't want to raise queens at that time anyways, and better off to wait for strong colony populations with mature drones with viable sperm. Just a thought.


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## gww

riskybizz


> If your bees aren't sufficiently populated I would think that you wouldn't want to raise queens at that time anyways, and better off to wait for strong colony populations with mature drones with viable sperm. Just a thought.


Just looking at what was writen, I think you might be missing the point. Bee progress is probly Climate regulated but bee camp is proby people related. So if you have a bee camp that fits before the real work of beekeeping begins, the priority may be to have the tools nessasary to teach before the beekeeping gets in the way. It probly works better for the campers and the teachers. It would make perfect sense to me that it would be handled just like mikes answer says he does it.

Just what I seem to get from his answer and maby not what he was meaning.

So I guess it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
Cheers
gww


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## jim lyon

Kudos to Mr. Bush for being upfront about his numbers and reasons for bringing in (I presume) treated package bees.


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## Cloverdale

Randy Oliver has published an updated version on his website called Getting Serious About Breeding and this is quoted” I recently published the article “Bee Breeding for Dummies” [2], and have now posted a pictorial version to my website [3], hoping to encourage our queen producers to shift the genetics of our bees towards mite resistance. I’m not a proponent of the “Bond Method”–which involves unnecessarily allowing colonies to die–but rather of a “smarter” process based simply upon repeatedly selecting those colonies with the lowest rates of mite buildup [4].

The question, of course, is how realistic would it be for a queen producer to actually engage in such a breeding program? To answer that question, we should look at four factors that determine whether a program has a chance of being successful at breeding for a certain trait (in this case, varroa resistance) over a reasonable amount of time:
1: There must exist a goodly degree of variability in the desired trait in the breeding population (i.e., a wide hive-to-hive variability in the rates of mite buildup),
2: That the desired trait is heritable (that mite resistance be passed to the next generation),
3: That the breeder can identify individuals exhibiting that trait (what this article is about), and
4: That the breeder can apply a strong amount of selective pressure to the breeding population (how strongly you can shift the genetics of your breeding population by eliminating susceptible bees and promoting resistant lines). 
He discusses these points and I highly recommend reading this.


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## Riskybizz

"Just looking at what was writen, I think you might be missing the point"..

No I don't think I'm missing the point. What was said was "I do have to buy a few packages early in the spring to populate early mating nucs, so I can start queen rearing early enough to do it at my bee camp". Maybe your the one not understanding..?


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## gww

Riskybizz
And then you ask wouldn't it be better to wait. It wouldn't be better to wait if you wanted to have bee classes before that time. Maby you understood perfectly but would just run your classes later if you were having a bee camp of your own. I could see every one that went to be camp wanting to go back to thier own bees in time to impliment what they had learned during prime time but it doesn't hurt if you would run your camp differrent if people still came. You probly weren't missing the point of what I thought (again not speaking for michael but just reading what he wrote) he ment but think he should wait.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009

jim lyon said:


> Kudos to Mr. Bush for being upfront about his numbers and reasons for bringing in (I presume) treated package bees.


Did he ever said he used treated bees? There are a number of tf bee packages available in the US.
And if he does, why not? 
Maybe it makes his bee stock even more resistant. Kefuss imports mites too to trigger the stock to more defense.
As I see it he only has problems with overwintering when it´s getting too warm, probably they use too much stores. No problem with mites.


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## jim lyon

SiWolKe said:


> Did he ever said he used treated bees?


He didn't specifically in this case but he has in the past saying that he hasn't been able to find the tf suppliers he needed.

.


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## Michael Bush

>So you are willing to purchase package bees in the spring and introduce them into your apiary in order to save two weeks in order to expedite queen rearing? 

I'd be willing to wait, but I want to do some queen rearing at camp. I used to do the camp later so I wouldn't need to have the bees, but then one year everything ran early and they all swarmed before camp. I can't do much queen rearing with a bunch of hives with virgin queens and no brood or eggs. I need a sure thing in order to cover queen rearing at bee camp. Also, it's nice to cover installing some packages so they can see that done.

>Wouldn't it be more advisable to just wait the two weeks until your bees are built up accordingly instead of bringing in bulk bees (and more mites).

You think mites are a problem. I don't find them to be a problem.

> If your bees aren't sufficiently populated I would think that you wouldn't want to raise queens at that time anyways, and better off to wait for strong colony populations with mature drones with viable sperm. Just a thought.

I have really two issues, but the big one is camp. The other one is that no one wants to buy queens in August, they want to buy them in April. April, of course, won't happen, but I try to at least have some by the end of June.

>He didn't specifically in this case but he has in the past saying that he hasn't been able to find the tf suppliers he needed.

These were treatment free bees. Unfortunately not northern bees as they wouldn't be far enough along that early.


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## FlowerPlanter

Himmel-Hund said:


> Since he is a human too even Tom Seeley may be in error - at least from time to time.


+1

T Seeley took treated bees and stopped treating; in the end they all died. He prevented swarms in the "LH" group by removing queen cells when they went queenless he blamed mites. When a few of "SH" group died the first winter he promptly replace them and did no count as a loss. Look at his notes attached to his study. And this is the same study all the new studies are citing his work. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4788434/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4788434/table/pone.0150362.t001/

These experiments have been going on since day one when mites were introduced. Ever time a novice beekeeper does not treat they loses their only hive, it's mites and it happen every time. How are the results different when a university does the same thing? All of a sudden spacing hives 10m - 100m works?

It also does not coincide with T Seeley's genetic bottle neck theory, how can we have a genetic bottle neck with the Arnot Forest bees, if spacing prevent mites. He has stated many times hives are spaced the same before mites as they are now, a few per square mile. That's a lot more than 100m.

It's not the spacing it's the bees!!!


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## Riskybizz

MB : "You think mites are a problem. I don't find them to be a problem"

Its always interesting to get feedback from different beekeepers about how they manage their apiaries. Personally I do find mites to be a problem; and if my average colony losses were 35% each year I would find it to be a much bigger problem. That's part of the reason I initially asked about your colony numbers and overwintering success. I know plenty of TF beekeepers (especially in my area) and its again always interesting to hear them talk about their TF success. Les Crowder kept bees here for a long time and I remember being at a meeting at my house one evening where he said he lost almost all his hives that winter; around 200 TB hives. 

Kefus spoke here a couple of years ago and apparently he has managed to breed in genetics allowing him to maintain his colony numbers (and not treat) because he now sees no mites in his bees. I suspect that Mike Bush doesn't share that same success because his genetic line is not as capable dealing with mites. I don't think that Kefus loses 35% of his colonies does he Wolfe?


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## msl

you have to look at it as a whole...
france's losses are like 9.63% 
In the last 9 years the advrage loss for treating keepers in the US has been 33.7%, same time frame the NE advrage for a treating keeper is 45.4, last year it was 58.3%
Michael Bush is doing very well 
as for TF in your area in NM last 9 years treatrers lost an avargre of 37.3% and the TF keepers lost 32.9%.... It would seem TF is quite successful in NM


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## 1102009

Riskybizz said:


> Personally I do find mites to be a problem; and if my average colony losses were 35% each year I would find it to be a much bigger problem. That's part of the reason I initially asked about your colony numbers and overwintering success.


Mites are a big problem here because there is no feral survivor stock around and the bees are weak from treating for many years. No selections done.

So treated beekeepers average losses are 15-60%, depending on the climate and if treatments work.

I would be very happy if my losses tf would be on a 30-35% level some time in future. In a natural setting insects often have very high losses this changes from year to year.


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## Michael Bush

>and if my average colony losses were 35% each year

My average colony losses are NOT 35% each year. They were last winter. According to BIP the average losses last year for Nebraska were 56.72%. It was a strange and apparently hard winter for the bees.


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## Riskybizz

MSL > "as for TF in your area in NM last 9 years treatrers lost an avargre of 37.3% and the TF keepers lost 32.9%.... It would seem TF is quite successful in NM"

would you mind sharing with me your source for statistical data as I would be interested in reviewing that.


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## msl

The US numbers come from here
https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey/

the french number was off.. I flipped the seasonal loss with the winter loss number by mistake 
https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/live_animals/bees/study_on_mortality_en 









as you can see the state of losses is very different else were then it is in the US


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## gmcharlie

A couple of thoughts, First We actually know for a fact, than mites reproduce better when infected with DWV so for that reason alone they could be worse in close proximity. 
We also know that closer hives would tend to get robbed out more with Dying hives having better luck at transferring mites at closer ranges.

I see common's on TF success mentioned. IMO here is the real problem, the idea of success is completely different. Some of us Want to make a living, and 40/50% losses mean we cant quit the day job. (some have complained they dont have enough to sell queens time because of the job) Others just do not accept that.

Charles


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## gww

GM.....


> Some of us Want to make a living, and 40/50% losses mean we cant quit the day job.


But some treatment free do not lose 40/50% and some treaters do. I do agree that if a person lost 40/50% that it could be harder. A lot of poeple throw out things like this to make a point that this is what you get if you go a certain route but all it is is a statement when it could be a fact for one (treater or nontreater) but not another.
Cheers
gww


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## gmcharlie

point is simple, there are TF people who accept high losses, don't prevent swarming, and could care less about honey. The number of really TF pros is so tiny as to be non existent. My point was simple, you have to decide if those standards can fit your operation, nothing more. What you do with your hives is your business.


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## gww

GM....
I do agree with most of your last statement.
Cheers
gww


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## msl

> We actually know for a fact, than mites reproduce better when infected with DWV


I have never hurd this, do you have a link to a study?


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## jonsl

If you query this data you will see that treated bees generally have a higher survival rate. However, you need to take these statistics with a grain of salt since this is "self reported" data.


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## Kcnc1

I see it as a reasonable hypothesis to be studied. All creatures have a natural boundary in which they will travel effectively.


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## gmcharlie

The latest one I read is a German study, Danke comes to mind but not positive. the reproductive rate rises about 6% if i recall, as well as rising again when multiple fondress mites inhabit a cell.(up to 7 per cell) Google Scholar.... lots of research on this topic.


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## gww

Gm


> as well as rising again when multiple fondress mites inhabit a cell.(up to 7 per cell) Google Scholar.


I may not know what you mean.
This quote seems to say differrent then what you are indicating.


> When more than one mite invade a single brood cell, the per capita fecundity decreases, as the number of mother mites per cell increases. Mites invading brood cells in older combs also have fewer offspring. This led scientists to speculate that mites themselves might have a chemical to inhibit each other’s reproduction (a pheromone). A chemical, (Z)-8-heptadecene, was identified. In the laboratory, it caused a 30% reduction in mite fecundity. When tested in the colony, the average number of offspring was 3.48 in cells treated with (Z)-8-heptadecene, but 3.96 in control cells. This difference was small, but statistically, highly significant (P < 0.01). The effective fecundity (number of potentially mated daughters) was 0.94 in treated cells, and 1.31 in control cells; and this level of difference should have a rather large impact on population growth.


I got this quote from here.
http://articles.extension.org/pages/65450/varroa-mite-reproductive-biology

I did see that the mite can start up to 7 (baby mites) but that they are not viable because of the time of uncapping and so the real rate in worker brood is about 1.6 and in drone brood due to longer being capped it is like 2.4 or so that actually live.
Cheers
gww


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## Cloverdale

msl said:


> I have never hurd this, do you have a link to a study?


I believe it is in the Bee-l archives.


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## msl

found a study on it
http://www.pnas.org/content/113/12/3203


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## gww

Msl
Good find.
Cheers
gww


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## jwcarlson

What planting zone are you in in Nehawka, Michael?

I'm 5B/5A border here, similar colony count, and have no problem populating a cell builder, mating nucs, and getting queen rearing rolling grafting the Thursday nearest April 15th. 
When's bee camp? Early April? Maybe you're doing a lot more nucs than I am though. First round is usually 15ish nucs (2x deep frames each usually in 4-way boxes). Then it balloons up after that obviously.


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## Michael Bush

USDA says we are 5b. I think they are mistaken based on the bitter cold we usually get. I try to buy fruit trees that are zone 4 if I can. I settle for zone 5 if I can't. I might experiment with a few zone 6 ones now that some of the USDA maps say we are officially zone 6... but the one I just looked up still says 5b, or they changed it back due to this winter... I was feeling pretty pessimistic about the bees this year due to colder and longer than normal colder temperatures, but it was 65 F day before yesterday and there were bees everywhere. Some of the hives they are going in and out of are probably dead outs getting robbed out, but there were bees coming and going from all the boxes.


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## gww

I am supposedly 5b and we have some pollen now. I could never tell what was activity and what was robbing. I know I can not see them going directly fly from one to the other. The activity peaks from each hive do not come at exactly at the same time of day. I only have eight hives and at least saw a bee at each hive bringing in pollen. That may not prove that the hive is not being robbed but was my best gauge of robbing but hoped it showed that some of the old hive is still alive inside.
Cheers
gww


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## gmcharlie

gww said:


> Gm
> 
> 
> 
> I got this quote from here.
> http://articles.extension.org/pages/65450/varroa-mite-reproductive-biology
> 
> I did see that the mite can start up to 7 (baby mites) but that they are not viable because of the time of uncapping and so the real rate in worker brood is about 1.6 and in drone brood due to longer being capped it is like 2.4 or so that actually live.
> Cheers
> gww


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2311.1996.tb00261.x/full


Seems there is a bit conflicting data (surprise surprise) but both papers agree the
number of FERTILE mites increases. the actual ratio of fertile mites in worker is closer to 1.1

Charles


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## little_john

msl said:


> The US numbers come from here
> https://bip2.beeinformed.org/survey/
> 
> the french number was off.. I flipped the seasonal loss with the winter loss number by mistake
> https://ec.europa.eu/food/animals/live_animals/bees/study_on_mortality_en
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> as you can see the state of losses is very different else were then it is in the US


Interesting map - losses fairly obviously related to geographical location - suggesting that temperature and/or starvation are responsible (rather than mites/TF etc). Use VOA, deal with temperature and feed, and winter losses drop dramatically. My losses have been zero for the last 6 or 7 years - although I may have lost one or two this winter, due to the 'weather bomb' we're just about to emerge from - will know in a day or two.
LJ


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## 1102009

I read in our bee magazine that losses were 30% in germany last winter. Treated hives.

The spring is getting more and more to be later in year which is very dangerous to the colonies in respect to starving or freezing if they are weakened by mites. A sign of climate change and a more virulent virus perhaps.

This leads to more importing of bee packages early in year and therefore to introduce more disease like the SHB which is not present for now.

It´s not a spacing of 100 m only which prevents mite infestation, it´s the preventing of drift via robber screens or other managements IMHO.


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## gww

Charles


> Seems there is a bit conflicting data (surprise surprise) but both papers agree the
> number of FERTILE mites increases. the actual ratio of fertile mites in worker is closer to 1.1


1.1 is better then 1.6.
Cheers
gww


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## Michael Bush

>I am supposedly 5b and we have some pollen now.

You are ahead of us. We have nothing yet.


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## little_john

SiWolKe said:


> It´s not a spacing of 100 m only which prevents mite infestation, it´s the preventing of drift via robber screens or other managements IMHO.


I'd agree with that. Right now 90% of my hives have anti-robbing screens - soon to be 100%, even the big ones.

FWIW - winter losses still at zero %, although I do have had one colony on 'life-support' (dummied-down, extra stores and temperature maintained at 20-25C) since January. Should be ok after I donate some capped brood ...
LJ


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## BadBeeKeeper

SiWolKe said:


> I read in our bee magazine that losses were 30% in germany last winter. Treated hives.
> 
> The spring is getting more and more to be later in year which is very dangerous to the colonies in respect to starving or freezing if they are weakened by mites. A sign of climate change...


So, you are saying that it is getting colder and Winters are getting longer?


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## Cloverdale

Well it is certainly getting colder and longer here.


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## 1102009

BadBeeKeeper said:


> So, you are saying that it is getting colder and Winters are getting longer?


No, warmer, which is even more dangerous. Burning stores, no brood brakes, wet hives....winter is in jan-feb, not around solstice anymore. And maybe longer, october to march. And more rain, less sunny days.
I believe this works against the bees instincts and they have to adapt.

Now suddenly it´s 18°C and "shock flow" this could mean it´s blooming much earlier and the flowers will freeze. Our last nightly frost is mid may often.


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