# Treating within a resistance raising system



## mike bispham

It seems to me that while treating as a systematic method of mite management can only result in perpetual treatment dependence, there is no good reason why treatments cannot be used carefully within a proper resistance-raising breeding program.

In established treatment-dependent apiaries this might be part of a 'soft bond' approach. But there are dangers. Here in the UK current official advice is to 'treat only those that need it'. All else being equal that will simply have the result of perpetuating treatment-dependence, as without culling the weak genes will re-enter the breeding pool.

Things are different in dedicated resistance raising apiaries, where a good proportion of stocks are already resistant to a good degree. As long a treating doesn't interfere with evaluation of resistance, there is no reason why less resistant stocks shouldn't be de-queened, the hives 'cleaned' of mites to raise vigour and avoid damaging the new queen/s, and requeened and/or used to make new colonies.

As far as I can see the only objection to this is that it might be useful to have more varroa about to make clearer the varying levels of resistance. But there are problems with this. The mites will tend to enter other hives unevenly, and this might load evaluations in several ways - both good and bad. For example, those with strong doorkeeping will tend not to suffer - and strong doorkeeping is surely a good thing. (Those nearby might be expected to suffer more badly - but then we might attribute a failure to that when it was actually something else)

In all I think this sort of thing introduces complexities that will tend to obscure what it is we want clear. And for that reason there isn't a good argument for maintaining high varroa levels. Hives failing due to lack of resistance to varroa should be 'cleaned' and used to aid more throws of the (loaded) dice.

What do others think?

Mike (UK)


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## snl

Mike,
Do you get ABJ? Randy Oliver in the March 2014 issue addressed this ....


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## Oldtimer

If this is in "dedicated resistance raising apiaries, where a good proportion of stocks are already resistant to a good degree", personally I don't see the need for treatment as most of the hives will survive anyway.

However it is a good approach if few bees have much resistance, so that major or total losses can be avoided, but only the best are bred from.


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## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> If this is in "dedicated resistance raising apiaries, where a good proportion of stocks are already resistant to a good degree", personally I don't see the need for treatment as most of the hives will survive anyway.


You don't know in th early stages how many will survive, and how many will thrive. So its good to try to maximise increase quickly to build on what you have, to guard against losses, and create a block against treatment-dependent drones downgrading your next generation. 

So, given that you are unsure at that stage about either the degree of resistance or the qualities of local drones, moving fast to head off any trouble is a good plan.

In any case, why waste bees? What would you do in this situation - pour petrol on them? 



Oldtimer said:


> However it is a good approach if few bees have much resistance, so that major or total losses can be avoided, but only the best are bred from.


As longs as you can still identify them successfully. (Many argue that mites counts are ineffective and other assay methods too narrow and/or difficult)

The *great *thing about not treating or manipulating is that you expose the very thing you need to know most - which have best resistance and general vigour. Getting to a position where you can do that is the best possible opening strategy.

Whatever you do you still need to attend to the drone side.

BTW I'm not letting you off that 3 week ban. It applies (I've decided) to that thread only. But you can earn another one here just as easily.


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## mike bispham

snl said:


> Mike,
> Do you get ABJ? Randy Oliver in the March 2014 issue addressed this ....


Seen Part One on why most tf attempts fail ('domesticated' bees - excellent distinction). I haven't laid hold of a copy of Part Two about small scale queen raising. Any chance of a summary?

Mike (UK)


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## snl

mike bispham said:


> I haven't laid hold of a copy of Part Two about small scale queen raising. Any chance of a summary? Mike (UK)


It's just simplified grafting....


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## mike bispham

snl said:


> It's just simplified grafting....


Does he talk about where to get the bees to populate mating hives and nucs?

Mike (UK)


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## snl

mike bispham said:


> Does he talk about where to get the bees to populate mating hives and nucs? Mike (UK)


He shows a method of using your own population to produce Q cells (just 10 or so in a single box), again very simplified.


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## mike bispham

(From another thread http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...-Readings-of-Resistance&p=1078481#post1078481)



Rader Sidetrack said:


> "If I'd said _anything_ of that sort do you think Rader wouldn't have dredged it up by now?"


Glad to see you're on the case now Graham! 

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...-Readings-of-Resistance&p=1079193#post1079193


Rader Sidetrack said:


> It isn't difficult to understand your _past _comments on treatments. For instance, post #163 of this thread:
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...ekeeping&p=503072&highlight=oxalic#post503072
> 
> I invite everyone to read the entire post, but here is one of your paragraphs from that post ...
> 
> You said, "_*Treatments is *__*always the core of the problem.*_" And now you are advocating treating, and yet you claim that is not a change of your position!


And on...

The keyterms 'treatment' and 'treating' are used in two distinct ways, and we have to use context to read them properly.

'Treating' (T1) in the usual sense used here means more or less systematic use of substances in a manner aiming to do nothing more than reduce mite levels, so that bees can carry on. Modern orthodox beekeeping. 

That's the context of the TF forum. We're trying here to raise bees that can cope on their own - without 'treating' where 'treating' means no less than: 'systematic use of treatments to control mites'.

T1 is in effect shorthand for: 'treating-and-raising-more-treatment-dependent-bees'.

Again, from the bottom of the post of mine you cite, and every other one I've ever made here:

"Anti-husbandry: Medication + Reproduction = Continuing Sickness"

Now... of course the terms 'treatments' and 'treating' also refer to the substances used, *and to individual one-off uses* within a resistance raising program. (T2)

So: when we're using the terms we have to be aware of the context - that provides information as to what is intended by the term. 

Failure to do that leads to mistakes of the sort we have here. As soon as I say 'treat' you jump to the conclusion that I mean treat everything, systematically. 

Every time I've spoken about 'treating' and 'treatments' in the past, I've been speaking in the context of systematic use of the sort that cripples the bee's ability to raise resistance. (T1) Take a look at the thesis at the link provided at the bottom of my post and you'll see that I speak about 'Denial of Natural Selection' being the root cause of our problems. That is what systematic treatments achieve. That's why people refer to the practice of systematic treating as 'addictive'. The more you treat (systematically) the more you have to treat.

All this is true only in the context where treatments (systematic or otherwise) *are not followed* by requeening from (hopefully) better stock. Again, what's at the bottom of all my posts?

That context is perfectly clear in each of the quotes you have provided.

In that context that 'systematically' very quickly becomes unneccessary and is dropped. 'Treating' becomes shorthand for 'keeping bees in a modern orthodox manner as far as varroa is concerned'

Now: *it isn't systematic, addictive, resistance-sapping treatment+reproduction that I'm talking about here* (T1). 

*Its one-off treatments* aiming to clear bees of mites so that they can be re-used with a new (and hopefully better) queen without risk of her being damaged by them. (T2)

If you're still confused, read that again.

Its one-off bee-cleaning treatment within a systematic selective propagation operation, the main of aim which is to raise bees that don't need treating.

Get it? Systematic, addictive apiary-wide treatments (T1) OR one-off bee-cleaning treatments (T2).

These are entirely different things. Their effect ongoing is utterly different.

Since you ask; my own bees... are doing just fine, thanks for asking. They're all building, some faster than others. But then they went into winter in different states so that doesn't tell me anything. I'm anticipating some being better than others, and I'll probably be considering requeening the weaker. If they are failing because they have heavy mite populations, I'll consider my options. If I have plenty of bees and am on target for this year's increase goals, I won't need to think about re-using them - though I will think about whether I want them sitting there dying - and I may decide that it will be in the overall interests of my project to have exactly that. But if there are lots of such colonies, I'll want to re-use them. And then I'll consider cleaning them. 

Mike (UK)


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## Rader Sidetrack

> Get it? 

I sure do!

When faced with awkward [conflicting] past quotes, just _redefine the terms_ .... 







:lpf:









:ws:


Was it T1 or T2 that was going to be used in your new forum? :scratch:
When were you planning on explaining these subtleties to _Barry_? :s


:gh:


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## mike bispham

Ah well. You can't say I didn't try. You can lead a horse to water, as they say, but sometimes you know from the start it'll only use the water to hose you down.


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## Fusion_power

If you want to discuss soft bond, simply state from the beginning that you are talking soft bond. It will avoid misunderstandings.

It is my opinion that requeening with mite tolerant queens is the only treatment needed in most circumstances.

When the level of mite tolerance in a bee population is vanishingly small, you will have to "vanish" a lot of colonies to whittle down to that 1 in 1000 that has a small level of resistance. You need a dozen or so of these resistant colonies to set up a breeding population. Then you can raise a few hundred queens to requeen colonies that are susceptible. Of course, by then, most of your susceptible colonies will have been killed by varroa so you can just make splits from the resistant colonies to rebuild the population. This entire paradigm is why it is so easy to talk about using a soft bond approach to beekeeping.

Keep thinking about what might work, but settle down on something that is more or less certain to work. Live and let die works.

I'm surprised you have not tried to obtain some mite tolerant queens. There are at least a few places in the EU that sell them. John Kefuss is expensive, but if you really want mite tolerance, he has it. So just for grins, where have you looked to find mite tolerant queens?


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## mike bispham

Fusion_power said:


> If you want to discuss soft bond, simply state from the beginning that you are talking soft bond. It will avoid misunderstandings.


I don't especially want to talk soft bond. What I do isn't soft bond. Soft bond is systematically treating lightly to expose resistance, culling the less resistant and requeening with the stronger.

I make no treatments, other than (and this is a plan only thus far) to CLEAN BEES FOR RE-USE.

Come on, this isn't hard. 



Fusion_power said:


> It is my opinion that requeening with mite tolerant queens is the only treatment needed in most circumstances.


That's what I've planned to do. However I think its possible young queens will be weakened by mites and thus be susceptable to supercedure and/or weak performance. And that will cloud the evaluation. I think cleaning the bees makes sense. Good evaluation make a lot of difference.



Fusion_power said:


> When the level of mite tolerance in a bee population is vanishingly small, you will have to "vanish" a lot of colonies to whittle down to that 1 in 1000 that has a small level of resistance.


When I achieve a reasonable level of resistance I'll be more than happy. I'm not looking to achieve anything else. In an open mated scenario what you describe is impossible anyway - unless you have an island.

I'm pretty sure I already have a reasonable level of resistance. I'll find out more this summer.



Fusion_power said:


> You need a dozen or so of these resistant colonies to set up a breeding population. Then you can raise a few hundred queens to requeen colonies that are susceptible.


No you don't. I'll be quite happy when a good proportion of new colonies - maybe 95% - don't suffer mite blooms, and maybe only 10% suffer significantly from medium level infections. That's a perfectly good level of performance to be getting on with. 

I'm trying to do population husbandry, not aiming to breed to fix traits in a population. I don't think you can do that with varroa management traits - too many resistant patrilines are undesirable.



Fusion_power said:


> This entire paradigm is why it is so easy to talk about using a soft bond approach to beekeeping.


Am I misunderstanding 'soft bond'? To me it means carrying on treating a treatment-dependent population though lightly enough to expose the differences in resistance. Then requeening - best to worst. 

That's nothing like what I'm doing. 



Fusion_power said:


> Keep thinking about what might work, but settle down on something that is more or less certain to work. Live and let die works.


That's what I do. Not treating is the best way to discover the resistant bees. The rest die - but of course we only need to have the queen die. The workers can be used to make new nucs.



Fusion_power said:


> I'm surprised you have not tried to obtain some mite tolerant queens. There are at least a few places in the EU that sell them. John Kefuss is expensive, but if you really want mite tolerance, he has it. So just for grins, where have you looked to find mite tolerant queens?


In my feral population. That's all. So far very good. If I find I'm struggling I'll look further. 

Mike (UK)


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## beekuk

Fusion_power said:


> If you want to discuss soft bond, simply state from the beginning that you are talking soft bond. It will avoid misunderstandings.





mike bispham said:


> I don't especially want to talk soft bond. What I do isn't soft bond. Soft bond is systematically treating lightly to expose resistance, culling the less resistant and requeening with the stronger.
> 
> 
> Am I misunderstanding 'soft bond'? To me it means carrying on treating a treatment-dependent population though lightly enough to expose the differences in resistance. Then requeening - best to worst.
> 
> 
> That's what I do. Not treating is the best way to discover the resistant bees. The rest die -* but of course we only need to have the queen die.* The workers can be used to make new nucs.


If you don't intend to let the failing colonies just die, but treat to save the bees, then sounds as near to soft Bond method as you can get, treating and making up nucs with (hopefully) more resistant queens or treating and just introducing more resistant queens...always culling the worst queens, but saving the bees....and so on


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## Oldtimer

Mike I think you are defining soft bond too exactly. What you will be doing is soft bond.

It's pretty simple, hard bond is no treatment, if they die let them. Soft bond is using treatment if need be, but not necessarily on all colonies, why treat colonies if they don't need it? I never thought treating all colonies "lightly" would be soft bond although guess it could be. But treating every colony "lightly", in my view would probably kill more mites in some colonies than others and make it harder to identify the more resistant ones.

In fact what I've found, working with a population of very non mite resistant bees, is that there can be many reasons why one hive has more or less mites than another, it can be as simple as the position of the hive in the apiary. However, as I don't do proper VSH testing and doubt you will either, going by which hives have the least mites is rather simplistic, but will probably move things in the right direction.

As an aside, and in response to Fusion Power, I did not know that Brits were allowed to import resistant queens from other countries? Probably a gap in my knowledge. If this is the case, why do not more of them do it? Any Brits care to comment?


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## mike bispham

beekuk said:


> If you don't intend to let the failing colonies just die, but treat to save the bees...


Save the bees - not the queens. In soft bond some of those queens that needed treatment are used as breeders - on the basis that were better than others. #

Soft bond is called 'soft' specifially because it isn't 'live and let die' - it preserves treatment-dependent queens and uses them as breeders. What is seeks to do is raise resitance incrementally.

In my system no queens needing treatment are used as breeders. They thrive or perish - by my hand or Nature's hand.



beekuk said:


> then sounds as near to soft Bond method as you can get, treating and making up nucs with (hopefully) more resistant queens or treating and just introducing more resistant queens...always culling the worst queens, but saving the bees....and so on


Its not all that different I agree. But there is one crucial difference. I'm not preserving, for a moment, any bees that can't make it on their own. I'm not keeping treatment-dependent bees alive, where they can send drones communicating their inadequate genes into the future. Nothing, in breeding terms gets a moment's grace. They make it alone or they die.

That's not soft bond - soft bond is systematically treating lightly, to preserve all colonies while trying to discover which are more resistant.

My way is pretty much hard bond. The only real difference is that because I'm not starting with utterly treatment-dependent apiary bees I'm not getting the heavy casualties they would get, and which characterises 'hard' bond.

If and where the queen is to perish it is daft to waste the working colony. So you requeen. Yes that part is part of soft bond. Is it not also part of hard bond? It if you want it to be certainly. There's no drawback, no slowing of the breeding process.

Mike (UK)


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## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> That's not soft bond - soft bond is systematically treating lightly, to preserve all colonies while trying to discover which are more resistant.
> 
> Its pretty much hard bond. Mike (UK)


Incorrect. Hard bond is not treating. Full stop. If they die let them. Ask Mike Bush, Solomon Parker, etc...

In the past, I have raised the idea on the Treatment Free forum, of breeding from survivors but treating other bees just to preserve them with a view to requeening, and had the idea roundly rejected by hard bond proponents.

Solomon Parker lost a lot more hives than he wanted to this season, but I did not see any mention of him attempting to save them by treating. He accepts his losses as part of being a hard bond beekeeper.

Treating within the population is soft bond. The method you propose is viable, and in fact makes sense, long as you are not using treatments that permanently damage the hive in some way. But it is not hard bond.

As previously stated, if genuinely resistant bees are identified, why continue treating them just to be "soft bond"? Who would do such a thing?

Also, if a claimed 95% of bees are resistant, why treat at all? If I had 95% resistant bees I would certainly not be treating and would happily take the 5% loss.


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## Fusion_power

99.99 percent were susceptible in the early years. It is only in the last 15 years that some resistance has shown up. A lot of that can be traced to imports of the Primorski bees.

I'd be interested in a response from Beekuk about importing resistant queens to the UK. Can it be done?


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## WBVC

I new to this...take what I say with a grain of salt.

Can't you varroa test your hives...by free fall, alcohol washes and brood checks and breed from the Queens of hives that have least build up?

Those that treat get varroa back in their hives...it isn't like you treat and they are gone. It is like grass...during the growing season you cut it and grows back up to be cut again.

So whether you treat or not you should be able to determine which hives are your most varroa resistant, or better natural varroa managers, by recording which hives have the slowest recurrence of detectable varroa mites.

Thus is it not so much a matter of whether one treats or not but whether one monitors or not.


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## Oldtimer

Agree WBVC. There has to be more than one method to work towards more resistant bees.

The discussion over the last few posts has simply been about the names put on those methods.


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## RiodeLobo

WBVC said:


> Can't you varroa test your hives...by free fall, alcohol washes and brood checks and breed from the Queens of hives that have least build up?.


Yes you can



WBVC said:


> Those that treat get varroa back in their hives...it isn't like you treat and they are gone. It is like grass...during the growing season you cut it and grows back up to be cut again..


True, but basially all colonies have mites, resistant or not.



WBVC said:


> So whether you treat or not you should be able to determine which hives are your most varroa resistant, or better natural varroa managers, by recording which hives have the slowest recurrence of detectable varroa mites..


Not exactly. Mite levels is only one factor. How the bees deal with the mite load is another (or the viruses that the carry). My understanding is that some colonies will do well with a higher mite load than others will with a lower one. So selecting only on the mite level is to narrow of a selective quality.



WBVC said:


> Thus is it not so much a matter of whether one treats or not but whether one monitors or not.


Monitoring is good data to have, but not the whole picture. Resistance is more complex than a single factor.


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## rhaldridge

WBVC said:


> I new to this...take what I say with a grain of salt.
> 
> Can't you varroa test your hives...by free fall, alcohol washes and brood checks and breed from the Queens of hives that have least build up?


Well, you can, but then I wonder if that's the correct metric. Maybe what you really want is a colony that can remain vigorous despite a high mite load.

I have to admit that this is the idea that led me to start testing for mites, even though I don't plan to treat. If I have a hive with a high mite load that survives and is productive, I don't want to lose those genetics.


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## Fusion_power

If you want to do the job right, colonies have to be set up specifically to test for mite resistance. The best way to do this is to combine a boat load of queenless highly susceptible bees that are loaded with mites into one large container, then weigh out equal amounts of bees and set them up as a colony with a new putatively mite tolerant queen. Any colonies that reduce or keep stable the mite count are considered tolerant. Any that increase mite count are susceptible. Call this what you want, it is the ultimate test of mite tolerance. You know how many bees the colony started with. You know how many mites the colony started with. You know the queen the colony started with. If they control mites, they are resistant.

Ray, if you have a high mite load in a colony, it will eventually die unless something intervenes to artificially lower the load. There is no such thing as a mite tolerant colony that has a high mite load.


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## RiodeLobo

Fusion_power said:


> Ray, if you have a high mite load in a colony, it will eventually die unless something intervenes to artificially lower the load. There is no such thing as a mite tolerant colony that has a high mite load.


At what level is a mite load terminal?


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## WBVC

rhaldridge said:


> Well, you can, but then I wonder if that's the correct metric. Maybe what you really want is a colony that can remain vigorous despite a high mite load.
> 
> I have to admit that this is the idea that led me to start testing for mites, even though I don't plan to treat. If I have a hive with a high mite load that survives and is productive, I don't want to lose those genetics.


So we are looking for two factors:

Resistance to maintaining mites within the colony 

and

Ability to thrive in the presence of mites and viruses passed on by mites

The best would be to have both


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## Oldtimer

RiodeLobo said:


> At what level is a mite load terminal?


That is an interesting question. In my country when varroa first arrived, guidelines were published as to what level of mites would mean the hive should be treated. This has been revised downwards over time, as mite vectored viruses have become more endemic, and worsened. IE, at first, bees could tolerate more mites because there were less viruses.

For me, I don't count mites, my evaluation is based purely on the performance of the hive, the state of the brood and any virus symptoms in adults. That is the important measure.


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## WBVC

Fusion_power said:


> If you want to do the job right, colonies have to be set up specifically to test for mite resistance. The best way to do this is to combine a boat load of queenless highly susceptible bees that are loaded with mites into one large container, then weigh out equal amounts of bees and set them up as a colony with a new putatively mite tolerant queen. Any colonies that reduce or keep stable the mite count are considered tolerant. Any that increase mite count are susceptible. Call this what you want, it is the ultimate test of mite tolerance. You know how many bees the colony started with. You know how many mites the colony started with. You know the queen the colony started with. If they control mites, they are resistant.
> 
> Ray, if you have a high mite load in a colony, it will eventually die unless something intervenes to artificially lower the load. There is no such thing as a mite tolerant colony that has a high mite load.


It would seem one should be looking at mite tolerance and mite resistance (or the ability to get rid of them).


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## D Semple

Fusion_power said:


> There is no such thing as a mite tolerant colony that has a high mite load.


Sounds funny but I wonder about that. Dee says that some times bees don't tackle a problem till it reaches a critical mass and they are motivated to take care of it. 

I've found several years running now that I have hives that test in the 5 - 8% range in early July, but I seldom find any hives that test with over 3 % infestation in September. May be a local condition. 

Appreciate your input Darrell


Don


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## beekuk

Fusion_power said:


> I'd be interested in a response from Beekuk about importing resistant queens to the UK. Can it be done?


Yes it can be done, it is done, from any country in the EU, and some countries outside the EU as well.


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## Oldtimer

Yes but can you get resistant ones?


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## beekuk

Yes, there is even a member on here that sells them, Juhani Lunden.


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## Oldtimer

Hmm.. Would be nice if I could just order up a few.


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## Juhani Lunden

D Semple said:


> Sounds funny but I wonder about that. Dee says that some times bees don't tackle a problem till it reaches a critical mass and they are motivated to take care of it.
> 
> I've found several years running now that I have hives that test in the 5 - 8% range in early July, but I seldom find any hives that test with over 3 % infestation in September. May be a local condition.
> 
> Appreciate your input Darrell
> 
> 
> Don


Very interesting Don, I have measured similar incidences. I count mites with the powder sugar method in mid May (because I have to decide, which 2 or 3 year old queens to use in queen rearing) and then again in August. Often there are less mites in autumn than in spring. Sometimes the infestation is the same, but very often in the breeder hives it is down to half or more. And I have taken account possible nucs made in summer.

To Mikes original question, whether we can or cannot treat, while having a breeding program for resistance, I would say yes we can, but it has at least two downsides. First is that the so called efective size of the population gets smaller: The group of hives, which is treated, forms a group of their own after that. This group cannot be evaluated with the rest of the hives. If we do it again the next summer, we treat one fraction of hives in both these new groups (treated and not treated) we get four groups. So the size of the populatio, which can be evaluated together, gets smaller.

The other down side is that if we think of the situation after we have finished this breeding effors. We have Varroa resistant bees in our hands. How can we distripute them in the surrounding world, if they cannot withstand reasonably big mite loads? We cannot.

The possible third down side is that the factors behind resistance might be epigenetic. This is: there is some factor from the environment that makes the genes "turn on". This factor might be the mite load. As Don pointed out, something happens in these resistant colonies, which causes them to be able to get rid of mites.


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## mike bispham

Fusion_power said:


> 99.99 percent were susceptible in the early years. It is only in the last 15 years that some resistance has shown up. A lot of that can be traced to imports of the Primorski bees.


Where does that 99.99 figure come from? Did you just make it up? What does 'susceptible' mean? It will affect them to a degree? It will kill them?

Is there any evidence - with proper figures - about the extent of influence of Primorski bees? 

I think resistance began to rise from the start in the 'survivor' feral populations. Its what happens in naturally selected populations. Dr Debora Delany sees it as an entirely natural phenomena as far as I know. Joe Waggle called it right - I don't know when that was. 

Mike (UK)


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## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> Incorrect. Hard bond is not treating. Full stop. If they die let them.


I agree with 'Hard Bond' let them die. *The queens (and drones)* - *the only components that matter in population husbandry*. Better still, kill them.



Oldtimer said:


> In the past, I have raised the idea on the Treatment Free forum, of breeding from survivors but treating other bees just to preserve them with a view to requeening, and had the idea roundly rejected by hard bond proponents.
> 
> Ask Mike Bush, Solomon Parker, etc...


Maybe you were unfairly treated. 

The only reason I can think of for allowing the colony (as opposed to the queen) to actually perish is to create an environment in which a lot of bees carrying varroa are entering adjacent hives, thus sorting the men from the boys there. The notion has merit - its halfway to 'accelerated bond'. 

Its tempting to me. But its a decision I'll make as I go along. I'm not going to be dragooned by others notions of what should and shouldn't be done. I going to do population husbandry as I see fit. It will be similar to 'hard bond'. It won't be like 'soft bond'.



Oldtimer said:


> Solomon Parker lost a lot more hives than he wanted to this season, but I did not see any mention of him attempting to save them by treating. He accepts his losses as part of being a hard bond beekeeper.


I wouldn't 'save them by treating' either. I might requeen them. That is, save the worker bees. I wouldn't try to save the queen unless - like you - I had no other choice. I do have other choices.



Oldtimer said:


> Treating within the population is soft bond.


If you regard the breeding population (which is all that matters) as the queens and drones alone (as you must) it matters not at all what happens to the rest. Unless, as above, you want lots of varroa loaded bees flying about. 

Treating within the BREEDING POPULATION is, yes soft bond. But that isn't what I'm considering. I'm onsidering treating queenless bee to clean them of varroa prior to introducing a new queen. 

How many time do I have to say that? Can you truly not undertand the difference? 

Are you deliberately misunderstanding to try to create confusion? Why would you want to do that? 

Soft bond is a method useful to beekeepers like yourself, who would lose most of your bees if you just stopped helping them cope with mite.

I don't help my population cope with mites. Period.

If you truly cannot appreciate the difference, work at it. Your apparent failure to appreciate this indicates a glaring hole in your understanding of population husbandry. Understanding it will supply you with an insight that could make a whole lot of difference to your own project.



Oldtimer said:


> The method you propose is viable, and in fact makes sense, long as you are not using treatments that permanently damage the hive in some way. But it is not hard bond.


I never said it was. Its mike bispham doing traditional husbandry as he sees fit. That's all its ever been. 



Oldtimer said:


> As previously stated, if genuinely resistant bees are identified, why continue treating them just to be "soft bond"? Who would do such a thing?
> 
> 
> 
> Who is proposing to do that? Again, are you deliberately pretending to misunderstanding me to cause confusion, or just really not understanding?
> 
> Try to get away from ideas like 'genuinely resistant.' Resistance isn't (for us) a binary option: 'On or Off'. We all have a degree of resistance, and we're working at raising it.
> 
> What we try to identify are the best - as we see fit as husbandrymen. That for me is a combination of resistance and productivity, with a nod toward good handling qualities.
> 
> 
> 
> Oldtimer said:
> 
> 
> 
> Also, if a claimed 95% of bees are resistant, why treat at all? If I had 95% resistant bees I would certainly not be treating and would happily take the 5% loss.
> 
> 
> 
> Again, are you deliberately misunderstanding to try to create confusion?
> 
> There is treating in the normal sense - like you do - and there is cleaning bees for re-use, which is what I'm considering. Did you miss the post where I explained that carefully? Here it is:
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...sistance-raising-system&p=1079364#post1079364
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## mike bispham

WBVC said:


> Can't you varroa test your hives...by free fall, alcohol washes and brood checks and breed from the Queens of hives that have least build up?


I've been breeding from the best for 3 years now. I've haven't made any attempt to learn what it is that makes them better. I think that's a sound policy. But I might change my mind. 

.. whether you treat or not you should be able to determine which hives are your most varroa resistant, or better natural varroa managers, by recording which hives have the slowest recurrence of detectable varroa mites....

It they are thriving and productive they are managing varroa. That's all I need to know.



Oldtimer said:


> Thus is it not so much a matter of whether one treats or not but whether one monitors or not.


If you treat you are keeping alive colonies that will spread their (inadequate) genes into the next generation. You are perpetuating the problem. Its best avoided. In my apiary its avoided entirely. I don't treat at all. What I do is work in way designed to show me clearly which are the better mite-managers - and from those I'll make the next generations. It takes a bit of patience and careful thinking through of what might have an effect that will supply false readings.

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

Juhani Lunden said:


> To Mikes original question, whether we can or cannot treat, while having a breeding program for resistance, I would say...


Juhani, respectfully: do you not read my posts?

I've carefully laid our how I'm considering *CLEANING* queenless colonies of mites (having killed the queen) prior to requeening. 

http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...sistance-raising-system&p=1079364#post1079364

*THAT IS ALL*.

None of your commentary applies to that proposal.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Juhani Lunden

mike bispham said:


> Juhani, respectfully: do you not read my posts?
> None of your commentary applies to that proposal.
> 
> 
> Mike (UK)


With all respect, i don´t have time.

And yes my comment applies very much to your proposal. You are making your effective population size smaller, my first point. It is a very serious drawback because breeding is a numbers game.


----------



## squarepeg

squarepeg said:


> i have not had to deal with collapse from varroasis. if it shows up, i would consider removing such a hive to a safe location, busting it down to a single box, reducing the entrance, installing a robber screen, killing the queen, using a soft treatment to rid of the mites, requeen from resistant stock, and try again.


since making this post i have had a few colonies 'crash' or more accurately not overwinter successfully and i suspect varroa was a part of the reason.

this is one of those times when 'practical reality trumps philosophy' because the collapsing occurs during the time of year when requeening is perhaps possible but not practical.

if your goal is preserving the unfit stock to use with new queens you will need a better metric than collapse.

i have considered monitoring mite counts and trying to come up with a threshold, but my current thinking is that resistance has as much to do with natural immunity to viruses as anything. this is why i believe an all natural diet (avoiding syrup) is a common denominator among most successful tf operations. not disturbing the microflora in the hive also makes sense for this reason (promoting natural immunity).

starting with feral survivors or as in my case bees that are derived from feral survivors and locating apiaries in areas where feral survivors are present is another one of those common denominators.

fusion power has presented some of the better metrics one can use if breeding for bees that maintain low mite counts is the goal.

my current approach is pretty much choosing queen mothers from my most long-lived and productive colonies while splitting up the dinks for use as mating nucs. last year was my first to graft queens and those daughter colonies are not disappointing me in the least.


----------



## JWChesnut

A post may take 15 minutes to compose. More if a series of references is included.

To read them takes a not inconsequential period of time, and much more if included references are downloaded and reviewed.

I post while waiting for the coffee to cool in the morning. After that I am engaged in the real world of work (much of which is much more enjoyable than the cramped world of electronic pixels). 

In contrast, Mike is posting long screeds with highlighted fonts and underlines obsessively -- *where does he find time for his soapbox contributions* -- how can he treat his bee fairly when his time is taken up with fulminating against his perceived inferiors? How does he hold his other jobs and interests together?


----------



## mike bispham

Juhani Lunden said:


> With all respect, i don´t have time.
> 
> And yes my comment applies very much to your proposal.


Juhani,

If you don't read my posts, not only do you not have any grounds for making that (and your following remarks), I think its rather irresponsible to remark on them. It just makes life harder for those of us trying clarify the best ways of getting reliably and properly treatment free. 

And you are absolutely wrong. On both scores.

My method is strongly geared to making rapid increase (your numbers game) while minimising any clouding of the evaluation of resistance qualities.



Juhani Lunden said:


> You are making your effective population size smaller, my first point. It is a very serious drawback because breeding is a numbers game.


How on earth do you get to that from anything I've said? On another thread I've just been exploring the best ways to make increase rapidly, laying out why that is desirable, and looking at some of the pitfalls.

Please, if you can't make the time to read my posts, don't comment on my procedures. It just adds to the confusion that others love to generate.

I'd much rather you did find time, and engaged properly. I'd suggest you start with the first post of the thread: http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...sistance-raising-system&p=1079005#post1079005

Then maybe look at at least a sprinkling of my subsequent posts. 

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

squarepeg said:


> ... the collapsing occurs during the time of year when requeening is perhaps possible but not practical.


Not much you can do about that other than have arranged plenty of spare the previous summer.



squarepeg said:


> if your goal is preserving the unfit stock to use with new queens you will need a better metric than collapse.


I've never suffered 'collapse'. Out of 27 I have one that didn't build well last year (and is still faltering), and one that isn't building well this year. If they stay that way for another few months I'll look into the reasons why, and think about what I might do. If they worsen I might do something sooner.

I'm reluctant to do anything else as one of my best producers last year - dvw, slow to get started - turned out to be a plodder but a really good getter. 

This year I'll be putting my energies into preparing to make strong increase from those I think most promising, and building up drone numbers from the same. Most of the invesment will be in making hives, nucs and special gear. 



squarepeg said:


> i have considered monitoring mite counts and trying to come up with a threshold, but my current thinking is that resistance has as much to do with natural immunity to viruses as anything.


I agree. My main criteria is sustained production given zero help. If they're doing as well as any others in the same circustances they're candidates. The longer they do it the more weight I give them. 



squarepeg said:


> starting with feral survivors or as in my case bees that are derived from feral survivors and locating apiaries in areas where feral survivors are present is another one of those common denominators.


I agree. For mating as well as for swarms.



squarepeg said:


> fusion power has presented some of the better metrics one can use if breeding for bees that maintain low mite counts is the goal.


Yes, I like that idea of identical testing in a mite heavy environment. 



squarepeg said:


> my current approach is pretty much choosing queen mothers from my most long-lived and productive colonies while splitting up the dinks for use as mating nucs.


Yes, that'll do it. I want to get organised however with dedicated stock-raising colonies, that will contribute bees, brood, comb and strong drone numbers. Same with queen raising.



squarepeg said:


> last year was my first to graft queens and those daughter colonies are not disappointing me in the least.


Same here.

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

JWChesnut said:


> I post while waiting for the coffee to cool in the morning. After that I am engaged in the real world of work


Clearly you're not being paid enough for damping down expectations of success in treatment free beekeeping. Performance related?


----------



## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> OT: I won't be opening your posts for 3 weeks. I make that 17th April.





Oldtimer said:


> I've heard that before LOL.


17th April must have come round pretty quick LOL 




mike bispham said:


> are you deliberately pretending to misunderstanding me to cause confusion, or just really not understanding?
> 
> Try to get away from ideas like 'genuinely resistant.' Resistance isn't (for us) a binary option: 'On or Off'. We all have a degree of resistance, and we're working at raising it.
> 
> What we try to identify are the best - as we see fit as husbandrymen. That for me is a combination of resistance and productivity, with a nod toward good handling qualities.


Mike I don't misunderstand you at all. In fact I note that as you are gaining experience, you are moving away from armchair theory and more towards my own views, and I approve. Although you still have a way to go. And always replying to everybody even your supporters in an attacking type manner does not really help get your message out.

Re your definition of soft bond though, I suspect you have it badly wrong. Treating as you claim "all hives lightly", to reduce mites but not kill them all, not only will not separate the good from the bad for evaluation purposes, it is also a dangerous practise as it is likely to kill off the susceptible mites but allow the hardier to survive.

And before you get reactionary and accuse me of deliberately misunderstanding or whatever, I realise you are not planning to do this yourself. But putting the suggestion out there and maybe influencing others to do it is not the greatest idea Mike.

What you will be doing as I understand, is treating hives to save bees as needed, hopefully with a view to requeening them, but not necessarily treating all hives. Which is the normal interpretation of soft bond.


----------



## Fusion_power

Mike, I would be very happy to see you succeed. Just to know that you were able to develop mite tolerant bees and successfully keep them would be an extremely happy occasion.

With that said, what Juhani has done is 3 or 4 steps ahead of where you are. You could benefit from his hard work by getting 2 or 3 queens from him and seeing how they perform under your conditions. I would not under any conditions recommend supplanting your working stock, there are too many important genes in your bees. But if you can tilt the table in your direction just a bit, it will go a long way to increasing your likelihood of success.



> Where does that 99.99 figure come from? Did you just make it up? What does 'susceptible' mean? It will affect them to a degree? It will kill them?


 That figure comes from a time in the early 1990's when we were first dealing with varroa mites here in the U.S. and a report was made from Florida of finding exactly 1 survivor colony out of 10,000 in a large beekeeping operation. It was a Carniolan queen if that helps. Susceptible to me means dead bees. I have never seen a colony live for very long at the tipping point. Either they control the varroa or the varroa decimate the colony.

To address your posit of cleaning bees of varroa and then giving them a new queen. In my opinion, Juhani is correct. You are tilting the balance away from finding mite tolerant bees and reducing the number of colonies that are actually being tested the hard way for mites. This is why I made the statement earlier about requeening being the only thing I would do if a colony were collapsing from mites. Unfortunately, as Squarepeg pointed out, this is likely to occur very late in the fall or very early in the spring when requeening is difficult or impossible given that you have to rear new queens. My experience is that it is best to let the susceptible colonies die and split the survivors.

Here is what I know works. Find some tolerance. Set up an isolated population and breed from the tolerant queens. If you do the hard work of checking mite loads in colonies and identifying the colonies that are least affected, and raise queens from those least affected colonies, in time you will produce mite tolerant bees. It will not be fast. You won't succeed in 5 years. You might succeed in 10 years. Meantime, consider bringing in some known tolerant genetics. They are available and would jump start your program.

We saw the first varroa in 1990. By 1993, they had spread U.S. wide. I lost all but one colony in the winter of 1993/1994, i.e. about 25 Buckfast colonies died. The lone survivor was a feral swarm I had caught the previous year that showed very high levels of Apis Mellifera Mellifera traits. They had no real mite tolerance, but survived probably because of the brood break from swarming. I split that colony into 3 in late March and managed to make a small crop of honey. Those bees were treated for mites in the fall and I treated every fall until 2004. There were NO feral bees to be found from 1994 to 2000. I checked diligently for feral colonies and did not find any anywhere. By 2003, I was seeing a few feral swarms. I caught a few in 2004, one of which turned out to show distinctive mite tolerance along with a host of unwelcome traits such as excessive stinging. I inspected all of my colonies thoroughly in the fall and found that colony had almost no varroa in the drone brood. This translates to a small bounce back by feral bees after 10 years of exposure to devastating levels of varroa.

I tilted the balance in my favor by purchasing 10 queens from Dann Purvis. While I am confident I could have gone forward with the limited stock I had, there would have been problems with inbreeding. By using the Purvis queens as a drone source and the mite tolerant swarm queen as a source of eggs, I was able to raise queens that were highly mite tolerant and had very little inbreeding. There is no rocket science in this. I simply stopped treating. From the winter of 2004/2005, I have not in any way treated my bees. They either live or they die. I split the survivors. For the last 3 years, I made up losses by catching swarms, many from my own bees, others from feral colonies derived from my bees. My average winter losses have been about 2 or 3 colonies per year out of 10 to 20 colonies. This is in the range of losses pre-varroa.


----------



## mike bispham

Fusion_power said:


> what Juhani has done is 3 or 4 steps ahead of where you are. You could benefit from his hard work by getting 2 or 3 queens from him and seeing how they perform under your conditions. I would not under any conditions recommend supplanting your working stock, there are too many important genes in your bees. But if you can tilt the table in your direction just a bit, it will go a long way to increasing your likelihood of success.


Without wishing to put Juhani down in the least, at present I'd want to know a lot more about his methods before I did that. I think I may have a good set of mothers, and they're all local (within a roughly 15 mile radius) All my second generation hives come from what I thought were my best, and they're not disappointing me yet. When I've seen through this summer I'll know more about whether to bring in more.

[I wrote of Juhani's figures:]
"Where does that 99.99 figure come from? Did you just make it up? What does 'susceptible' mean? It will affect them to a degree? It will kill them?"



Fusion_power said:


> That figure comes from a time in the early 1990's when we were first dealing with varroa mites here in the U.S. and a report was made from Florida of finding exactly 1 survivor colony out of 10,000 in a large beekeeping operation.


That sounds very like a lot of dying hives pulling down those around them in a cascade. Its also - massively - the most extreme figure I've ever come across. Its scaremongering.



Fusion_power said:


> Susceptible to me means dead bees. I have never seen a colony live for very long at the tipping point. Either they control the varroa or the varroa decimate the colony.


I've yet to see it. I've yet to see a colony die from an out of control varroa infection. 



Fusion_power said:


> To address your posit of cleaning bees of varroa and then giving them a new queen. In my opinion, Juhani is correct. You are tilting the balance away from finding mite tolerant bees and reducing the number of colonies that are actually being tested the hard way for mites.


You haven't got it either.

I'm:

A) treating nothing

B) manipulating nothing

C) organising rapid expansion, taking care that doesn't give mother/doner hives an advantage over mites

ALL colonies are being tested 'the hard way for resistance - and its lack.

I'm considering:

D) if any show clear signs of failing, requeening rather than letting them splutter on.

At that stage - cleaning the bess.

None of this has ANY EFFECT AT ALL on the numbers under test

None of this REDUCES AT ALL the severity of the test which ALL colonies are continuously under.



Fusion_power said:


> This is why I made the statement earlier about requeening being the only thing I would do if a colony were collapsing from mites.


Which is (excuse the shouting, but I'm getting fed up with repeating myself) EXACTLY WHAT I'M PROPOSING



Fusion_power said:


> Unfortunately, as Squarepeg pointed out, this is likely to occur very late in the fall or very early in the spring when requeening is difficult or impossible given that you have to rear new queens. My experience is that it is best to let the susceptible colonies die and split the survivors.


The trouble with that plan is that splitting, it is understood (and I'm planning to look closely at this here soon) tends to supply an artificial aid. YOU DON'T WANT TO BE SUPPLYING ARTIFICIAL AIDS. That (to use your words) REDUCES THE NUMBER OF COLONIES THAT ARE ACTUALLY BEING TESTED THE HARD WAY FOR MITES!



Fusion_power said:


> Here is what I know works. Find some tolerance. Set up an isolated population and breed from the tolerant queens.


Done it, doing it.



Fusion_power said:


> If you do the hard work of checking mite loads in colonies and identifying the colonies that are least affected...
> 
> My metric is overall productivity.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...and raise queens from those least affected colonies, in time you will produce mite tolerant bees.
> 
> 
> 
> Yep.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> It will not be fast. You won't succeed in 5 years. You might succeed in 10 years.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> You can't put a figure on like that. For this reason: you don't know my starting point. If I'm right then I'm working with feral bees that have had 20 years to locate a relationship with mites. You didn't stop treating till 2004 - my bees are 10 years ahead of yours! (Perhaps - the point I'm making is: neither you or I know how resistant my bees are.)
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> Meantime, consider bringing in some known tolerant genetics. They are available and would jump start your program.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> My suspician is that my bees are as tolerant as Juhani's, perhaps more so, and better suited to my locality.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> [...] This translates to a small bounce back by feral bees after 10 years of exposure to devastating levels of varroa.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> ... among beekeepers systematically treating...?
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> I tilted the balance in my favor by purchasing 10 queens from Dann Purvis. While I am confident I could have gone forward with the limited stock I had, there would have been problems with inbreeding.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> I have no such problems. I'm picking up feral colonies from a 15 mile radius in a setting that has had bees imported from all over the place for 500 years.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> [...]There is no rocket science in this. I simply stopped treating.
> 
> Yes. And in 4 years I've never treated. I've made new colonies from my best. This year I'll beef up my chosen drone colonies - and let all good 'uns have unlimited brood space on starter strips. They can raise as many drones as they're capable of.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> They either live or they die.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> ... that includes requeening...
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> I split the survivors.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Watch it. Its my fear that you can split poor bees till kingdom come and be under the impression that you have resistant bees.
> 
> 
> 
> Fusion_power said:
> 
> 
> 
> For the last 3 years, I made up losses by catching swarms, many from my own bees, others from feral colonies derived from my bees. My average winter losses have been about 2 or 3 colonies per year out of 10 to 20 colonies. This is in the range of losses pre-varroa.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> My losses last winter were effectively zero once I'd taken out my own errors and experiments gone wrong. Out of 33 going in I have 27 now. All but 4 are showing promise. Those 4 are still with us and building - and I've had slow builders that have turned out well before. I've seen only a fraction of the DWV I've had in previous years so far.
> 
> This summer I'll find out a lot more about my genetics. And build, from the known completely-treatment-free-honey-making-thrivers toward 100 colonies.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> 17th April must have come round pretty quick


That was on another thread as I've already explained to you. You're 1 step away from the same here.



Oldtimer said:


> Mike I don't misunderstand you at all.


You can say that again. 

OR

Alternative account: 'Mike I'm deliberately pretending I can't understand you' (with the implication 'you're not making sense)



Oldtimer said:


> In fact I note that as you are gaining experience, you are moving away from armchair theory and more towards my own views


I haven't changed a single iota. Go to my website (link below) and read what I wrote 5 years ago. (I know _you're_ not going to do that - its an invitation to anyone here being suckered into thinking I have changed my views - please do check yourself before taking that as read)



Oldtimer said:


> And always replying to everybody even your supporters in an attacking type manner does not really help get your message out.


Anyne who remarks on my views in a way that ignores what it is I've just carefully said deserves to be put right sharpish. Fair thinking people understand that. In fact fair minded people are grateful for it.



Oldtimer said:


> Re your definition of soft bond though, I suspect you have it badly wrong. Treating as you claim "all hives lightly", to reduce mites but not kill them all, not only will not separate the good from the bad for evaluation purposes, it is also a dangerous practise as it is likely to kill off the susceptible mites but allow the hardier to survive.


I'm not defending it. I don't do it, and I haven't 'defined it'. I described it as I understood it. 



Oldtimer said:


> And before you get reactionary and accuse me of deliberately misunderstanding or whatever, I realise you are not planning to do this yourself. But putting the suggestion out there and maybe influencing others to do it is not the greatest idea Mike.


Why don't you start a thread 'soft bond' and we'll take it apart? (Like that's going to happen - OT do something constructive tpward resistance raising!!!)

Maybe I'll do it. Thanks for the suggestion.



Oldtimer said:


> What you will be doing as I understand, is treating hives to save bees as needed, hopefully with a view to requeening them, but not necessarily treating all hives.


Which just goes to show you are utterly impermeable to even the most careful explanation. Repeated several times.

I wish I could put that down to stupidity. Unfortunately you also show yourself at times to be capable of good understanding and powers of reasoning.

So the question: 'why is OT being so dumb?' cannot be resolved by the explanation: 'he is dumb'

That's why I persistantly put forward the alternative hypothesis: 'he's being dumb deliberately to try to sow confusion.'

That leads to the question: why would he want to do that? That I can't answer. So I'm left with: 'all I know is he's deliberately sowing confusion.'

And then there's the third hypothesis: OT isn't a 'someone' at all. He's a compound, several different people all working together toward the same end - to undermine discussion of resistance raising. That has the further benefit of supplying an explanation for the strange switches we see between posts - from smooth, rational, clever to the reactionary, 'I'm just an 'ol guy bin raisin' bees 50 years' personality. 

It also fits with the odd reluctance to discuss any feature of your own beekeeping. There is no 'you'.

I'm staying with that one for now. You're an enigma OT. A highly predictable enigma, but an enigma nonetheless.


----------



## Oldtimer

Thanks for the analysis Mike.

Smooth, rational, clever, - Blush, you are too kind!


----------



## mike bispham

Oldtimer said:


> Thanks for the analysis Mike.
> 
> Smooth, rational, clever, - Blush, you are too kind!


You're that alright.

Also, deceitful, dishonest, with malignant motives... don't forget that stuff too.


----------



## sqkcrk

Would you two please get a room already?


----------



## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> You're 1 step away from the same here.


Oh dear, no, no. Please - . Not that!!


----------



## squarepeg

sqkcrk said:


> Would you two please get a room already?


:lpf:


----------



## Oldtimer

The idea is not workable. What would I do if I dropped the soap?


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

mike bispham said:


> I'm considering:
> D) if any show clear signs of failing, requeening rather than letting them splutter on.
> At that stage - cleaning the bess.
> [HIGHLIGHT]None of this has ANY EFFECT AT ALL [/HIGHLIGHT] on the numbers under test
> None of this REDUCES AT ALL the severity of the test which ALL colonies are continuously under.




How can you be _sure _that there is no impact? :scratch:

While you are planning to requeen after treating, your new [untreated] queen will be fed royal jelly produced by *treated *nurse bees! 

How can you say that royal jelly produced by _treated _nurse bees has *no *impact on your new queen? :s


:gh:


----------



## mike bispham

Oldtimer is now on the naughty step here too. I won't be opening his posts on this thread till 17th April.


----------



## mike bispham

Rader Sidetrack said:


> How can you be _sure _that there is no impact?
> 
> While you are planning to requeen after treating, your new [untreated] queen will be fed royal jelly produced by *treated *nurse bees!
> 
> How can you say that royal jelly produced by _treated _nurse bees has *no *impact on your new queen?


Graham, you made a constructive criticism without being insulting (emoticons aside)! Well done!

But, are mature queens still fed royal jelly? 

Even if not, would residues of treatments threaten the queens health by other means? 

More than the risk of viruses and weakness due to mites?

All good questions, and on topic to boot!


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

mike bispham said:


> But, are mature queens still fed royal jelly?


Queens are exclusively fed royal jelly _all _their lives, AFAIK. :lookout:


See Randy Oliver's comments on royal jelly on this page:
http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fat-bees-part-1/




:gh:


----------



## Barry

sqkcrk said:


> Would you two please get a room already?


I guess they need their own emoticon!


----------



## mike bispham

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Queens are exclusively fed royal jelly _all _their lives, AFAIK:
> 
> See Randy Oliver's comments on royal jelly on this page:
> http://scientificbeekeeping.com/fat-bees-part-1/


That's what he says. 

Is being fed royal jelly by (possibly tainted) nurse bees a real issue?

Personally I'm finding this hard to quantify, and my gut feeling is that any such damage would be rather marginal. And likely less than damage from high mite levels. 

So, thus far I think that if you decide to re-use mite-failing colonies to make nucs, or just re-queen them, a dose of something to kill adult mites, and maybe removal of drone brood might be a good plan. (The latter would be a definite good thing anyway)

Or a treatment might be of marginal benefit. And, as someone said, its a good way to get an early reading on the new queen's resistance capabilities. Straight into the fire. At risk of messing her up a bit before she's got even got started.

Either way it won't adversely affect the breeding program, because the one important thing - termination of the failing bloodline - is happening. 

It might be worth considering leaving the hive to fail on its own to supply a dose of varroa to nearby hives, to help sort the men from the boys, as it were, but if you're thinking about that it makes more sense to distribute the varroa fairly/according to population. Then you probably need to find a way to stop them fighting and making uneven results.

You might want to use the infected brood to test a set of colonies.

Otherwise; kill the queen, kill the mites, start off a few nice fresh nucs. 

That's what I think so far.


----------



## rhaldridge

Rader Sidetrack said:


> How can you be _sure _that there is no impact?




I think it's obvious that there would be an impact. If you treat and then requeen a colony, how can you fairly evaluate the performance of that colony? That colony is starting from a basis of fewer mites than the untreated colonies in your yard. Furthermore, how can you be sure you are not assessing the resistance of that queen to miticides rather than to mites? After all, treatment leaves residues in the wax. Treatment affects the internal flora of bees and hive; your treated colony with a new queen may have deficits that are not apparent. 

The only rational conclusion is that treatment makes it much more difficult to evaluate the effects of genetics on colony survival, because treatment greatly complicates the analysis of your results.


----------



## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> So, thus far I think that if you decide to re-use mite-failing colonies to make nucs, or just re-queen them, a dose of something to kill adult mites, and maybe removal of drone brood might be a good plan. (The latter would be a definite good thing anyway).





mike bispham said:


> You haven't got it either.
> 
> I'm:
> 
> A) treating nothing
> 
> B) manipulating nothing.


So. A dose of something plus manipulating drone brood, or treating nothing manipulating nothing. Which?

I think the influence of treating goes well beyond the royal jelly that is fed to the queen. In my opinion the thing that would most seriously disrupt a true analysis of the hives ability to resist mites would be the effect of residual chemicals in the wax and cocoon material of a brood comb, on the developing larvae.


----------



## jonathan

mike bispham said:


> And then there's the third hypothesis: OT isn't a 'someone' at all. He's a compound, several different people all working together toward the same end - to undermine discussion of resistance raising. That has the further benefit of supplying an explanation for the strange switches we see between posts - from smooth, rational, clever to the reactionary, 'I'm just an 'ol guy bin raisin' bees 50 years' personality.
> 
> It also fits with the odd reluctance to discuss any feature of your own beekeeping. There is no 'you'.


That's what I call a conspiracy theory! We are now entering the twilight zone.


----------



## Oldtimer

Yes I'm a compound LOL. But hey, a smooth rational and clever one. 

There is no me? Haven't quite figured that part out yet.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Oldtimer said:


> Hmm.. Would be nice if I could just order up a few.


It would, but according to Murphys law our mutual friend, who is coming for a visit in July, is working for MAF...


----------



## julysun

"Oldtimer is now on the naughty step here too. I won't be opening his posts on this thread till 17th April."

We are talking serious penalties here! Naughty Step, is that similar to short plank?


----------



## mike bispham

rhaldridge said:


> I think it's obvious that there would be an impact.


Sure there's an impact Ray. The question as I see it is do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages?



rhaldridge said:


> If you treat and then requeen a colony, how can you fairly evaluate the performance of that colony? That colony is starting from a basis of fewer mites than the untreated colonies in your yard.


I'm pretty much resigned to evaluating my colonies with... patience. I want them on stands, left alone for 2-3 years before I consider using them for grafting.

That's plenty of time for them to acquire and enter into a relationship with mites. And for them to show their qualities against their peers. 

Most of my nuc will be started with low levels of mites. Should I really subject others to high levels just because they are there? 

In any case (depending of time of year) there'll be mites hatching from existing brood in the nucs. So they will be under test conditions from the start. They just won't be unfairly loaded - they won't be subjected to what is in effect an accelerated bond test before she's even got started.



rhaldridge said:


> Furthermore, how can you be sure you are not assessing the resistance of that queen to miticides rather than to mites? After all, treatment leaves residues in the wax.


Again the patience angle. I wouldn't think a single careful treatment is going to have that much effect down the road. I could be wrong. Perhaps a thorough sugar dusting would be better. Does it actually work? 



rhaldridge said:


> Treatment affects the internal flora of bees and hive; your treated colony with a new queen may have deficits that are not apparent.


Its probably fair to assume some treatments more than others. I can't think I'd ever put antibiotics or fungicides in a hive. But do miticides really have a huge impact on microflora? All miticides?



rhaldridge said:


> The only rational conclusion is that treatment makes it much more difficult to evaluate the effects of genetics on colony survival, because treatment greatly complicates the analysis of your results.


Again, I think the patience angle smooths a lot of that away. I don't think the impact needs to be as great as you estimate, and I think what impact there is will recede to zero over a year or two. If a hive is thriving and productive, alone, after three years, it'd be high on my score regardless of its beginnings.

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

julysun said:


> "Oldtimer is now on the naughty step here too. I won't be opening his posts on this thread till 17th April."
> 
> We are talking serious penalties here! Naughty Step, is that similar to short plank?


You've never met Jo Frost, Supernanny? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DONNgEBAlSE


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> That's what I call a conspiracy theory! We are now entering the twilight zone.


Its a very modest conspiracy theory. Not up to twilight zone standards at all.

Interesting though, that you regularly try to pin 'conspiracy theorist' on me. Do you all get allocated strategies? Wouldn't it be more convincing to rotate them? 

I can feel a new thread coming on...

Mike (UK)

PS I have to share: what a pleasure it is not to be opening any of oldtimers crazy posts this morning! I'm going to have to do this more often.


----------



## Oldtimer

Having heard all this before I know you would have had a look Mike 

As to conspiracy theories, now you think Jonathan is part of a plot & gets allocated strategies? Who by? Sounds like a conspiracy theory to me. 

As to the patience thing, if your plan is to wait 3 years before evaluating them I'm pretty sure that you can go ahead & split any way you want without regard to keeping mite numbers balanced. Three years in the future it's not going to matter much anyhow. Of course, 3 years in the future they will probably have different queens. Depending on how much swarming etc the queens could be separated by several generations from the original.



mike bispham said:


> 29 rudely healthy hives without any treatments or manipulations ever
> 
> Mike (UK)


If this was your claim only 2 weeks ago, seriously, I don't know why you are even considering treating. If all my hives were as healthy as you claim yours are, treating them would not even be crossing my mind..


----------



## RiodeLobo

mike bispham said:


> PS I have to share: what a pleasure it is not to be opening any of oldtimers crazy posts this morning! I'm going to have to do this more often.


I, for one, am going to follow your example (slightly modified), it will be nice to skip those long winded rants . Good Day.


----------



## jonathan

mike bispham said:


> Interesting though, that you regularly try to pin 'conspiracy theorist' on me. Do you all get allocated strategies? Wouldn't it be more convincing to rotate them?


If you don't want me to comment on your conspiracy theories, simplest thing would be to avoid posting them. I only point this out as you frequently claim to be a believer in science and evidence based reasoning but your mindset is anything but.


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> If you don't want me to comment on your conspiracy theories, simplest thing would be to avoid posting them. I only point this out as you frequently claim to be a believer in science and evidence based reasoning but your mindset is anything but.


You don't know much about science Jonathon do you? Forming theries to explain phenomena is the starting point. There's no reason at all why that can't include conspiracy theories. Forming testable hyptheses and designing experiments to test them the second bit. That's a bit harder in this case, but I'm working on it!

A sense of humour would help too! Constructive contributions to the thread topic... well we live in hope.

How are your untreated bees getting on? Oops, you don't have any do you! 

Seriously now, is the Irish Amm breeding program making any progress toward raising resistance? 

Mike (UK)


----------



## Oldtimer

Mike let me help you out some, the conspiracy theory is fiction.

The truth is actually simple, there are people with different opinions to yourself. Unfathomable as that may seem to you.

So that resolved, as you say, back to topic.

Which has recently moved from banning discussion of treatment and manipulations, to now discussing, encouraging, and doing them. Which in itself answers your conspiracy theory, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction.


----------



## jonathan

mike bispham said:


> Seriously now, is the Irish Amm breeding program making any progress toward raising resistance?
> Mike (UK)


One step forward two steps back.

We had a meeting on Sunday in Port Laois where a modified proposal was discussed. The funding for the major project I wrote about in the Bee World article unfortunately fell through in December so there is a reduced proposal under discussion. This still involves survey work including DNA sampling and involves two Universities - in Galway and Limerick.
There are samples of 100 bees being collected from all over Ireland, along with colony mite level records, and these are being stored at NUIG for later DNA work when funds are available and a PHD student can be funded to do part of the work.

This is the contact in NUIG organising the samples and the DNA work.

You may be intererested to hear that I left one apiary of 10 colonies untreated in the autumn after careful mite sampling which showed a very low level of infestation. I would normally use a thymol treatment between August and September. I used an Oxalic acid trickle in December when colonies were broodless. All are thriving apart from one which had a drone laying queen which I combined with the colony beside it a couple of weeks ago.

I know the Galtee bee breeding project also left some apiaries untreated after finding low mite levels as well.
Careful monitoring and treatment when necessary is the route I am going down.

I wish you luck, but the chances are you will have heavy losses within 12 months as there is unlikely to be anything special about the swarms and ferals you have collected. The vast majority of uk 'feral' colonies are recent swarms so could well be nothing more than escaped Carnica or Buckfast colonies as those are the most common types kept in GB.


----------



## Oldtimer

jonathan said:


> the chances are you will have heavy losses within 12 months as there is unlikely to be anything special about the swarms and ferals you have collected.


The big losses would only be if he kept his operation treatment free. The decision to treat must have stemmed from that realisation.


----------



## jonathan

Oldtimer said:


> The big losses would only be if he kept his operation treatment free. The decision to treat must have stemmed from that realisation.


I could not possibly comment Agent X Oldtimer.
Either way, letting colonies die when they could be saved makes no sense.
Just need to requeen poor performers with daughter queens from the better performers.

Mike, how do you intend to propagate queens?
Have you ever grafted?
Grafting, or Cupkit if you are unfamiliar with grafting, is the way to go.


----------



## beekuk

Oldtimer said:


> Mike let me help you out some, the conspiracy theory is fiction.
> 
> The truth is actually simple, there are people with different opinions to yourself. Unfathomable as that may seem to you.
> 
> So that resolved, as you say, back to topic.
> 
> Which has recently moved from banning discussion of treatment and manipulations, to now discussing, encouraging, and doing them. Which in itself answers your conspiracy theory, fact is sometimes stranger than fiction.


Perhaps we are all in the twilight zone.


----------



## RiodeLobo

Oldtimer,
What treatment would you recommend in a soft bond approach. My thinking is ideally it would be effective and leave little or no residue in the wax.


----------



## Oldtimer

OK well there's a number of options but for various reasons I don't use them all, and ALL treatments have some downside. For example the manipulation of drone brood removal did work for me for a time but has now become impractical. Plus for that is no chemical contaminants, minus and what killed it for me is the strict timetable that has to be followed plus the removal of drones that I actually need to be available for mating.

So what I'm using now is formic acid, administered as a 24 hour flash treatment via a fumeboard. Just done a good % of my hives with it over the last month with excellent results. Plus for that method is no chemical contaminants left in the hive, which is important in my opinion. Second method is oxalic vaporisation, quite a few issues around this so still in the experimental phase however I have just purchased a bulk vaporiser which carries enough OA to do around 25 hives in one shot. And the only other treatment I am currently using is Apivar strips. Reason for this is it is foolproof, ie, a no skills required treatment, and can be used for special cases where other methods for some reason are not appropriate. It can be used in any hive, any season, any weather. Downside, it is a synthetic. However it is non residual, ie, once the active ingredients are out of the strip they have a 1/2 life in the hive of only a few days before breaking down to pretty much harmless metabolites.

A comment on something else you said, at this time, I do not fit the genuine description of a true soft bond beekeeper (as I understand it), that is because I will treat any hive that needs it. My method at this point is dictated by necessity, a few years ago bees where a hobby but now one way or another bee related income is pretty important to me so I don't allow hives to die any hive will be treated if needed. With only a bit over 100 production hives to choose from I cannot select breeders based on too many critierion, but they are selected on temperament, production, and mite resistance. Because all hives are harvested constantly for both bees, comb, and honey, finding out which hives best meet these criterion is rather subjective, something of a judgement call. However I can say for certain, that the bees this season have shown way less or no mite damage compared to previous seasons and this trend has been going a while, I am sure things are moving the right direction. But having said that, I don't think I have any bees that would survive indefinitely without some form of treatment.

Hope that was not too long of a rant for you LOL.


----------



## RiodeLobo

Thank you, I appreciate the information. 

FYI informative is not a rant


----------



## Juhani Lunden

jonathan said:


> Either way, letting colonies die when they could be saved makes no sense.
> Just need to requeen poor performers with daughter queens from the better performers.


This is the tricky part. In practise there is, for a commercial beekeeper who has to earn money (that is: do other work), no time to check the mite levels so frequently, that the colonies could be saved. Mites move from hive to hive and collapses occur in just a few weeks. Super strong colonies just drop in two three weeks. 

What would be the threshold? 3%, 5% , 8%, 10% infestation or more? I could not tell other than sometimes they live all right with 8%. Sometimes they cannot cope 5%.

Sometimes colonies lower their infestation by themselves( don´t ask how) and this is really important, maybe the most valuable characteristic, which the breeder will never wiittness with soft bond methods.


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> I wish you luck, but the chances are you will have heavy losses within 12 months as there is unlikely to be anything special about the swarms and ferals you have collected. The vast majority of uk 'feral' colonies are recent swarms so could well be nothing more than escaped Carnica or Buckfast colonies as those are the most common types kept in GB.


If I had a penny for every time I've been told that! What evidence base are you using to underpin this opinion?

Seriously. What is your data source?

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> Mike, how do you intend to propagate queens?
> Have you ever grafted? Grafting, or Cupkit if you are unfamiliar with grafting, is the way to go.


Yes, I did my first grafting last year. I'm taking things up a stage this year - not so much to concentrate genes, but to get better control of the process and develop labour efficient working methods. 

My position is that it really is the selection that matters - identifying those with what it takes. Everything in my operation is geared to that end without compromise. That means I have to pay attention not just to getting queens, but to getting bees and brood to make up nucs without disturbing the selection process. 

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> One step forward two steps back.


Not so much then.... maybe time to try a different tack?


----------



## jonathan

mike bispham said:


> If I had a penny for every time I've been told that! What evidence base are you using to underpin this opinion?
> 
> Seriously. What is your data source?
> 
> Mike (UK)


Estimating the Density of Honeybee Colonies across Their Natural Range to Fill the Gap in Pollinator Decline Censuses
RODOLFO JAFFE et al. 2010



> In Europe honeybees sampled in nature reserves had genetic diversity and colony densities similar to those sampled in agricultural landscapes, which suggests that the former are not wild but may have come from managed hives.


May be different in Kent of course but SE England has a large number of imports coming in every year so I would doubt that.
There are parts of Scotland which are still varroa free where you will find ferals like in the good old days.

Kate Thompson at Leeds University surveyed ferals and managed colonies in the UK with a view to determining if there were any native bee populations (Amm) left in the UK. I sent her samples from my apiary in 2010. From correspondence with her I know she had difficulty finding many long term feral colonies. As far as I know her work has not been published yet but there were a series of papers planned.



> Not so much then.... maybe time to try a different tack?


My main interest in in conserving what is left of the native bee population in the UK and Ireland.
Selecting for traits which help deal with varroa seems like a logical step to take at the same time.
If the native Amm population gets hybridised it will be lost for ever as you cannot unmix the genetics.
In this sense we have different agendas.


----------



## D Semple

Oldtimer said:


> So what I'm using now is formic acid, administered as a 24 hour flash treatment via a fumeboard. Just done a good % of my hives with it over the last month with excellent results. Plus for that method is no chemical contaminants left in the hive, which is important in my opinion. Second method is oxalic vaporisation, quite a few issues around this so still in the experimental phase however I have just purchased a bulk vaporiser which carries enough OA to do around 25 hives in one shot. And the only other treatment I am currently using is Apivar strips. Reason for this is it is foolproof, ie, a no skills required treatment, and can be used for special cases where other methods for some reason are not appropriate. It can be used in any hive, any season, any weather. Downside, it is a synthetic. However it is non residual, ie, once the active ingredients are out of the strip they have a 1/2 life in the hive of only a few days before breaking down to pretty much harmless metabolites.


This whole thread should probably never been started in the treatment free forum, but this post obviously doesn't belong.


Don


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> "In Europe honeybees sampled in nature reserves had genetic diversity and colony densities similar to those sampled in agricultural landscapes, which suggests that the former are not wild but may have come from managed hives."


There is nothing in that statement pertaining to the length of time within which such bees have been feral, nor anything about the degree of resistance which they might have attained. 

While their genetic origins are not in dispute, you made a clear implication: because they stem from Buckfast and Carnicas they will be treatment dependent. Your reference does not back this up.

Lets return to your statement:



jonathan said:


> "...the chances are you will have heavy losses within 12 months as there is unlikely to be anything special about the swarms and ferals you have collected. The vast majority of uk 'feral' colonies are recent swarms so could well be nothing more than escaped Carnica or Buckfast colonies as those are the most common types kept in GB."


Your 'chances are' and 'likely' are nothing more than opinion. They have no basis in empirical evidence (at least, not yet).

You're 'could well be' is similarly a statement of opinion.

For a number of my swarms and cutouts I have good evidence that they are from well established colonies. And I know of a numbers of others (that I don't have in my possession) that are similarly long-lasting ferals. 

And some of these - swarms and cutouts - have thrived with me for 3 years now.

Perhaps the important thing to understand and work with is: while there are many unknowns, ferals can represent a genuine opportunity to get bees with *a great deal more resistance* than 'domesticated' bees. That is highly desirable - it gives you an excellent starting point.



jonathan said:


> May be different in Kent of course but SE England has a large number of imports coming in every year so I would doubt that.


It has moderate numbers of managed bees, and a lot of migration work. And a lot of rough space where there are few managed bees but sufficient forage for ferals to live while natural selection works its magic. That might well turn out to be a very useful combination. 



jonathan said:


> There are parts of Scotland which are still varroa free where you will find ferals like in the good old days.


So some ferals (despite being of foreign origin) can be resistant? Or do you think varroa hasn't reached them?



jonathan said:


> Kate Thompson at Leeds University surveyed ferals and managed colonies in the UK with a view to determining if there were any native bee populations (Amm) left in the UK. [...] From correspondence with her I know she had difficulty finding many long term feral colonies.


I don't find that particularly surprising. She probably talked to plenty of beekeepers who told her there were none! She might get better at it as time goes by. It sounds to me like she isn't actually looking for that feature anyway. She should talk with Deborah Delaney.

Mike (UK)


----------



## RiodeLobo

D Semple said:


> This whole thread should probably never been started in the treatment free forum, but this post obviously doesn't belong.
> 
> 
> Don


Respectfully you are incorrect. 

"Any post advocating the use of treatments, according to the forum definition of treatment will be considered off topic and shall be moved to another forum or deleted by a moderator, unless it is employed as part of a plan in becoming treatment free."
http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?253066-Unique-Forum-Rules


----------



## jwcarlson

mike bispham said:


> Which is (excuse the shouting, but I'm getting fed up with repeating myself) EXACTLY WHAT I'M PROPOSING


But it isn't EXACTLY what you are proposing. You're proposing treating the hive to be requeened first, then requeening. Which is certainly not "exactly"...


----------



## Oldtimer

Thank you Riodelobo. When I wrote that I was slightly uncomfortable & aware of D Semples point and that these things were pushing at the boundaries for this forum. However what I wrote was an honest answer to a valid question, and the whole thing was in context of the thread. I would not have wrote it otherwise, and suspect that is why it was not moderated nor the thread moved. It is in the context of MB's latest idea of using treatment as part of a program to move away from treatment.


----------



## jonathan

mike bispham said:


> There is nothing in that statement pertaining to the length of time within which such bees have been feral, nor anything about the degree of resistance which they might have attained.


There was no difference genetically between the managed colonies and the ferals sampled from the nature reserves. Draw your own conclusions if you like but if the genetics is the same there is likely no adaptation in terms of varroa tolerance.



> So some ferals (despite being of foreign origin) can be resistant? Or do you think varroa hasn't reached them?


There are parts of Scotland which have never seen a mite, parts of the mainland and some of the islands such as Colonsay and Orkney.



> I don't find that particularly surprising. She probably talked to plenty of beekeepers who told her there were none!


She was actively hunting for ferals all over the UK. It was a central part of her work.

How many of your colonies are from cutouts and how many are swarms from long term feral colonies?
I am not sure how you would know about longevity, other than people telling you there have been bees in such and such a place for ages.
Once a cavity has old comb in it it becomes a magnet for scout bees and will be reoccupied very quickly.
If you have been monitoring certain feral colonies long term yourself, fair enough, but I would take a lot of the tales of continuous occupation with a pinch of salt.
I have several colonies descended from a queen in a swarm which emerged from a colony behind the fascia board of a friend's house. That was in June 2009 and the original colony died out the following winter and was reoccupied again the following summer. I told the guy to block up the access as he did not want bees in his roof but he didn't bother.


----------



## RiodeLobo

Your welcome, I am currently taking the Hard Bond approach, however I am only willing to take one more crash before I change approaches. If this is to happen, than I will be switching to soft bond. So in planning for the worst and hoping for the best your input is valuable to me.


----------



## mike bispham

jwcarlson said:


> But it isn't EXACTLY what you are proposing. You're proposing treating the hive to be requeened first, then requeening. Which is certainly not "exactly"...


That's nit picking! 

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> There was no difference genetically between the managed colonies and the ferals sampled from the nature reserves. Draw your own conclusions if you like but if the genetics is the same...


Gosh Jonathan. That's rather revealing of a chasm in your understanding. I'm not sure where to begin. Especially as I'm no expert. As I understand it things go roughly like this.

In all sexually reproductive species every individual is a unique combination of genes. (The exception is a particular sort of identical twin - where both twins grow from the same fertilized egg).

Further many features of the organism are controlled by alternative gene-sets (alleles). So within humans you can have blue-eye genes, brown-eye genes, green eye genes - according to the allele you inherit.

Each individial is made up ('coded' if you like) from a 'blueprint' - the gene-set that is his (or her) unique combination of genes inherited from the parents. As well as that set he carries a second set which, well he simply carries. The first set are called the 'expressed' genes, the second the 'unexpressed' genes.

When they mate each parent passes on new unique combinations of these two sets of genes.

So each new individual is made up from a unique combination of four full gene sets. Some of their own genes will have been also used by the 'doner'. So you might have your father's blue eye allele. But you might not - and you might not have your mother's allelle either. You might instead have an eye colour allele that was carried by one of your parents, but not expressed by them. You might inherit an eye colour allele that hasn't been expressed for several generations - a 'throwback'.

The possibility for variation within just one family is, you can see, huge. And this is just one family! Imagine the variation in a town, where for years immigrants have influenced the gene pool!

But... all this variation is present in...the same species! 

As you can see the logical step you have made above is wildly misconceived. 

Within each population there is a diversity of genetic combinations, and of alleles. Every single individual is unique. Some are stronger, cleverer, have better eyesight than others, simply because they happened to get lucky with their parents and the genetic recombination process. (A large proportion of fertilized eggs never come to fruition - they simply weren't viable recombinations - the individuals we see alive have already passed a severe test of viability)

Some allelles supply advantages over others at different times. So, for example, if you are a honey bee, when a new (or long lost) mite turns up, it is advantageous to have, expressed, that allelle which codes for a particular hygienic behaviour. And in fact there are several useful mite-management behaviours, and its useful to have a good few of them in your hive.

So what happens in a natural population is that those individuals that don't have (and express) such behaviour suffer ill health. Some die, some don't make viable swarms. Those colonies on the other hand with a lovely combination of mite management behaviours do really well. They thrive and make lots of drones, and throw of lots of healthy swarms.

And so the next generation inherits those genes, those allelles, that code for mite management behaviours *in greater number* that it inherits those alleles that don't.

And this process is repeated in the next reproductive cycle, and the next, and the next..... always.

Natural selection thus works with the genetic diversity present within a single species - or sub species, or local population. And in many cases with a single family. Think rabbits. 

All the bee races in country have the alleles needed to make them good mite managers. Its just that those alleles are at very low levels in the population, because they haven't been needed. Nature, in feral bees has been busily selecting, and that's how feral populations have developed resistance. Meanwhile humans have been busily preserving all the alleles that code for non-mite situations.

While the details change a little from species to species, this is the trick of genetic recombination supplied by sexual reproduction. It works much, much better in many different ways than simply dividing (like bacteria). And that why it exists. Sexual recombination supplies massive diversity, upon which natural selection goes to work.

This might sem like too much information, but... these are the basic mechanisms of life. A husbandryman - especially a putative breeder - should be familar if not with them, then a least with the cause-effect relation between selective parentage and health in offspring. Basic traditional husbandry in other words. 



jonathan said:


> there is likely no adaptation in terms of varroa tolerance.


Sorry Jonathan, but you are not equipped either with an understanding of the mechanisms or reference to a data source. Furthermore it flies in the face of a multitude of reports - often expert - that speak of rising feral resisitance, success in breeding toward resistance, and the most basic tenets of evolutionary biology and traditional husbandry. All of them. 



jonathan said:


> How many of your colonies are from cutouts and how many are swarms from long term feral colonies?
> I am not sure how you would know about longevity, other than people telling you there have been bees in such and such a place for ages.


I'm not an idiot Jonathan. Nor am I dishonest with myself. I know the difference between gold and dross, and interrogate carefully to distinguish them.

Mike (UK)


----------



## jonathan

So how many of your colonies are from Cut outs, how many are captured swarms from long term ferals, how many are captured swarms or splits from your own colonies and how many are captured swarms of unknown origin?

You really ought to go and read the relevant parts of that paper.

Conservation Biology Volume 24, No. 2, 2010
Estimating the Density of Honeybee Colonies across Their Natural Range to Fill the Gap in Pollinator Decline Censuses
RODOLFO JAFFE et al.
Discussion, P590


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## Oldtimer

Mike I have also been following this and what you say in general terms is more or less correct. However Jonathan was speaking about a specific example and reported correctly. Nothing you said showed him wrong and I'm rather surprised at your indignant tone not to mention put downs such as referring to the "chasm" in his understanding, when there was none.

Where you are confused is the difference between your rather wordy generalities, and the specifics Jonathan referred to.


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## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> So how many of your colonies are from Cut outs, how many are captured swarms from long term ferals, how many are captured swarms or splits from your own colonies and how many are captured swarms of unknown origin?


Without looking at my records...

Roughly, and from memory: about 4 or 5 of my current colonies are from swarms or cutouts that were either quite well or very well attested as long living. That usually seems to mean they were in smallish cavities and were remembered as having swarmed once or twice every year. In some case people have watched them more closely, and attested continuous occupation (though with swarming). Two (I think) are now in their 3rd year. 

I've had colonies like that which haven't survived.

They might have superceded - I don't watch them that closely. * I don't think many of my hives have swarmed, but could easily be wrong about that too.

About 15 are 1 or 2 year olds made up from splits or grafts from those (well attested) queens. (I've felt strongly enough about their origins and performance to choose them as breeders)

The rest are odd swarms and cut-outs that have lasted without treatment, most now 2 year olds (I didn't get many swarms or cutouts last year.) 

One is distinctly small and black - for what that's worth.



jonathan said:


> You really ought to go and read the relevant parts of that paper.


Why? What will it tell me that is relevant (taking into account what I've just explained to you)?

Mike (UK)


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## jonathan

You haven't actually explained anything Mike.
You posted some beginner level stuff about mendelian genetics, random assortment and inheritance.
The point that paper is making, if you would care to read it, is that in Europe there is no measurable difference between the genetics of the ferals in various nature reserves and the genetics of the general managed bee population in these areas.
None of your comment about random assortment of genetic material is even relevant. The comparison is between the two populations.
I think even non scientists understand about variation as most of us have noticed that not all humans look the same.


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## mike bispham

jonathan said:


> You haven't actually explained anything Mike.
> You posted some beginner level stuff about mendelian genetics, random assortment and inheritance.
> The point that paper is making, if you would care to read it, is that in Europe there is no measurable difference between the genetics of the ferals in various nature reserves and the genetics of the general managed bee population in these areas.


My point - which perhaps I didn't make explicit - is that when you say 'genetics' you might be making a statement of a very general and broad nature ('same sub-species') or a very tight nature ('individual') or anything in between.

And: you cannot apply statements made at one level to every other! That is (a minor kind of) category error.

Just because two individuals belong to the same subspecies (and therefore 'genetically identical' *in that clumsy sense*), doesn't mean they are actually genetically identical! Far, far from it! They are unique, 1-off, never seen before/never seen again individuals! They are all different, *and all have different qualities*. 

Again: only identical twins are *actually* genetically identical!

Therefore: your statement:

"There was no difference genetically between the managed colonies and the ferals sampled from the nature reserves. Draw your own conclusions if you like but if the genetics is the same there is likely no adaptation in terms of varroa tolerance."

Is nonsense! You are equating species type/sub-type with resistance qualities at the level of the individual. There is no such relation!

Your further statement: 

"in Europe there is no measurable difference between the genetics of the ferals in various nature reserves and the genetics of the general managed bee population in these areas."

...makes the same, deep and fundamental error. 

You are equating sub-species with genetically derived traits at the individual level.

Think about it Jonathan, and read my previous post again.



jonathan said:


> I think even non scientists understand about variation as most of us have noticed that not all humans look the same.


That's right! Its the same with bees! Some, within the same sub-type - within the same location, are more mite equipped that others, utterly independently of any racial consideration. They are so equipped because the local population has been conditioned by natural selection.

Saying that that ferals are the same racial type as domesticted bees, and are therefore no better at mite management is therefore a nonsense!

Its like saying all caucasians can run equally fast!

Go back to the start Jonathan. Forget the notion that some bees are better at mite management on the grounds of race. All bee races have the same mite management alleles. In different proportions.

When they are not needed they are lowered in populations (because they reduce competitiveness - they are energy wasting) By natural selection.

When they are needed they are raised in populations. By natural selection.

Russian bees are currently better mite managers than most... because... they've been recently exposed to the mite. The mite-managing alleles have been raised in Russian bees. By natural selection.

Period.

Bees are like sheep are like people are like lamas. They have a diversity of genes (and alleles) within every population, and those alleles that supply qualities best suited to the present environment are reproduced most often. That, processed at each reproductive cycle, confers optimum health on the population - it is at root a health-seeking mechanism.


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## Juhani Lunden

jonathan said:


> You haven't actually explained anything Mike.
> You posted some beginner level stuff about mendelian genetics, random assortment and inheritance.
> The point that paper is making, if you would care to read it, is that in Europe there is no measurable difference between the genetics of the ferals in various nature reserves and the genetics of the general managed bee population in these areas.
> None of your comment about random assortment of genetic material is even relevant. The comparison is between the two populations.
> I think even non scientists understand about variation as most of us have noticed that not all humans look the same.


How did this paper measure difference in genome? 

It might be, that all bees have the genes what are needed for varroa resistance. These genes just need to be turned on (epigenetic factors). The fact that resitance has occured in so many places and diffrent beeraces, at least in some degree, points to this direction. In Gotland experiment Ingemar Fries even insisted that there should be a mixture of ordinary bees which are most commonly kept in Sweden. And resistance come out after some years. Resistance genes were turned on after some years. And this resistance in Gotland experiment bees has been scientificly prooved to be true.


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