# Setting up a "seeding" hive?



## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Just an idea.... Looking forward to reading your opinions.

For those of us who have lines of bees that have apparent survivor traits, would there be a benefit of dedicating a hive to being completely intervention free? I'm talking about once the hive is installed, never opening the lid again. No feeding, no honey robbing, no swarm control, no mite counts, no splits, no nothing. Maybe just observing the hive from the outside to make sure it contains bees and not doing anything to the bees, or the hive, unless or until it experiences a dead out. 

It would be interesting, to me at least, to see how long a hive could survive without any fumbling around by the beekeeper. 

The bees that I keep come from stock that has been treatment free for 18 years, but they have been manipulated by the beekeepers who have kept them. 

I may be wrong but I think that a hive like this would be a great learning tool and it would also likely be good for drone production.

I'm game to set up a hive like this, but I would enjoy an ongoing dialog with others who are trying the same thing. 

If anyone else is willing to give this a try let me know and lets discuss what setup or hive configuration would be best to use. I'm thinking 4 deep boxes would be a good setup.

The only purpose this hive would serve, other than testing survivor traits, would be to seed the area with swarms and drones. I understand that many of you live in urban areas where allowing swarms to be cast is not a great idea....


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## stan.vick (Dec 19, 2010)

I have a few TBH in a large swampy area that I do that with, except that I do one split off them just before they cast their spring swarms, don't feed, don't treat. Other than losing some to vandals a couple of years ago they do fine. I have a couple of Langs that I don't treat, but they are close enough to get sugar-water from my community feeder, they also do well and have never been treated since I trapped them six years ago. I am in an area that is almost void of other beekeepers. A lot depends on what kind of bees you have.


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## bigtex (Nov 17, 2014)

I catch a few swarms in the River bottom each year. I set them up in 3 deep lang hives and just let them do there thing.the oldest hive is 3 yr's old & swarms at least once each year.i never take honey or treat them in any way. I do however look in them once each year after the spring flow is over.They seem to pack the frames every year.They survive just fine even during the past 2 years of drought.Maybe better than my hives that keep & manage somewhat.I do not & never have treated any of my hives. I did loose 2 hives this spring from too much water running under them for so long.My bees are mutts & some are hotter than others but not enough to worry about.I get all of the honey that I want& that is all I am after. They are fun to watch& I have never had any issues with them mowing , tilling ,etc..They set 50 ft. from my garden & 100 yds from my house. Oh they are all on screened bottom boards with upper & lower entrances.


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## stan.vick (Dec 19, 2010)

Sounds good bigtex, like you, I've found that plenty of ventilation and enough room along with some survivor mutts makes for a productive colony, and some good genetics to boost your managed bees.


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## AR Beekeeper (Sep 25, 2008)

My Bond Yard was in 2 deeps and 2 medium supers. The average surplus honey gathered in this area is 60 pounds so you would need to adjust yours storage to your averages.

My yard was started in 2006 with 12 colonies and there are 2 left alive. They swarmed, and some were caught and put in the yard, so that there was a high of 20 colonies in the yard at one time. The average length of life for a colony in a French study was 7 or 8 years with no management, so most of mine were average. They are away from other bees because they are on some private property that is inside a national forest.

You probably will see that the primary cause of colonies dying is a failure to requeen themselves after swarming or a failed supersedure. This is probably caused because of the heavy virus load the colonies will have. The colonies will appear prosperous for the first 2 or 3 years and then their populations will become smaller and they dwindle away. I noticed this because they stopped bearding during the hot part of spring and summer. Hefting the boxes gave the impression they were not gathering as much honey as they did their first few years.

Last year I harvested 4 queens and made them my queen mothers for my home yard. Their colonies have heavy mite loads, but few crawling bees. Some of their daughters head colonies that are prosperous, but other daughter colonies have a problem requeening themselves. This is the worst year I have ever had keeping queens in my home yard. It may be something other than the queen lines, such as weather or birds, but I am seeing very poor feeding of queen cells also.

Have fun, just remember that if you have successful survivor colonies it is because of good drones as well as your survivor queens. Next year you may not have as good a combination and losses will mount.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

I have an experimental treatment-free yard. I established it in the hope that I could identify "survivor" genes. It is stocked with swarm captures and splits of those swarms from remote and promising sources. I maintain 10-12 hives in this yard.

The hives dwindle and die, beginning in year two, or I remove them to treat and attempt to salvage their value. I see no (as in zero) evidence of "survivor" resistance.

A major syndrome is failed supersedure. These colonies just plain run of "steam".


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

I think I'm going to go ahead an dedicate one of my best hives to be set up as I described above. They may fail from supersedure failure at some point in the future or may fail for any number of reasons, but IMO, in order to test the actual mite tolerance or resistance of the bees, the factor of the beekeeper has to be taken out of the equation. I'm going to have to put it somewhere that I won't be tempted to check it.


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

Brad Bee said:


> I think I'm going to go ahead an dedicate one of my best hives to be set up as I described above.


If you are a treating beekeeper, don´t put your best hive. They are likely to have unsuitable genes. They are with a big brood area ( to produce a big honey crop).

Instead put a hive which has a small brood area which they take care very well. This hive is likely to have no more than average honey crop. If you find holes in the cells or brood partly eaten, the better.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Seems like if you don't open it, the learning possibilities are necessarily limited.


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## rwurster (Oct 30, 2010)

These seeding hives are already out there, in trees, in the walls of houses... Why neglect a "good hive" when nature is already doing what you're proposing?


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## Juhani Lunden (Oct 3, 2013)

rwurster said:


> Why neglect a "good hive" when nature is already doing what you're proposing?





Brad Bee said:


> For those of us who have lines of bees that have apparent survivor traits...The bees that I keep come from stock that has been treatment free for 18 years, but they have been manipulated by the beekeepers who have kept them.


OP does not say if Brad Bee has TF bees or not.

Brad Bees idea is good. I´m creating the first treatment free zone in Finland and wrote in the beekeeping magazine (Mehiläinen 6/2014) about it. I have already got e-mails asking where are your bees, "where can I put my hives so that I won´t interfere with your project". The idea is to get this TF zone growing, little by little in circles. There might be other beekeepers starting similar circles. These circles might emerge in the future.
If there were other TF beekeepers ( in Finland), I would love them bringing seeding hives near my yards.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Solomon Parker said:


> Seems like if you don't open it, the learning possibilities are necessarily limited.


Yet Solomon militantly opposes monitoring for mites, which as a "learning possibility" for the causes of decline, seems a paramount data point.

Solomon reports elsewhere that he is down to 3 "good" colonies and 5 struggling, marginal ones. That of 12 nucs attempted, he only had one "take". Seems to me that an inventory of mite loads would shed some light on the causes of this decline and failure to thrive.

Solomon hypothesizes that his decline is due to lack of "acclimatization" of his bees. Yet this supposition runs counter to the thousands of contradictory successes by Colorado beekeepers hiving packages from many origins.

It is possible that Solomon's few remaining bees have mites well in hand, and their failure is due to poor forage on the high plains. There is too little information to know, and certainly too little information to posit anti-acclimatization as the causal link.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

The bees that I have, came from survival stock trapped or cut out of a tree in 1997. They have never been treated for anything. I got started 3 springs ago with them. 

Solomon, why do you suspect the learning possibilities will be limited if I don't open the hive? Wouldn't the truest test of treatment free bees be a completely non invasive, hands off approach? 

Regarding having hives in trees and such, I couldn't tell you when the last time I saw a beehive in a tree was, but it was a long time ago. It would also be much easier to keep track of whether a hive is occupied continuously if I have them in a box rather than trying to find a tree with bees. 

If nothing more, this would be an endurance test for the bees. I know "my" bees can survive without treatment, but I don't know how much effect that even non-intentional manipulations have on the hives.


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## Stlnifr (Sep 12, 2010)

I have a Top Bar Hive with a swarm of bees in it that came from a bee tree. I do not bother them other than sit on a bench and observe them. When I first put them in it I opened it up to see the progress, haven't been in it since. It is this years swarm "2015" so this is its first year of let alone bee keeping. My idea was to let it swarm each year and hopefully they will occupy some trees on my property. They are gentle bees only been stung once from them, I was to close in my observation like right in their face.


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