# I want in



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

welcome aboard soapy!

you mentioned being involved with your local beekeeping organization and doing some mentoring. having some hive years under your belt and being able to recognize what is happening with your colonies is a big plus.

are you aware of anyone else in your area who is currently having success managing bees off treatments?

thanks for starting the thread. we're looking forward to hearing about your progress.


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## Jovian (May 31, 2016)

Definitely interested in hearing about your experiences and perceptions on entering this area. looking forward to your updates


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

rmdial said:


> Per SquarePeg suggestion I am starting this thread to open a conversation about getting started in the TF world.
> History: I am a 10+ year beek living in No. Idaho. I am using conventional American methods. Buy packages/nucs, feed syrup and pollen patties, treat as required, hope for the best. I read and follow many sources of advice and theory. Trying my best to be kind to the bees and reap a good harvest.
> As of three years ago I had 35+ hives, harvesting plenty of honey but experiencing losses at or above average numbers. Always seemed like I was not able to keep a good percentage of my bees healthy.
> I began experiencing heavier losses with signs of AFB. My wife then went into heart failure so I had to abandon bees for the most part. Wife ok now and I want to get back into my bees with the same dedication as before. I now have 3 hives coming out of winter with good population and brood build up.
> ...


Its not a transition. You either decide to go treatment free or not. I don't know of any treatment beeks that say they want to transition to TF that ever get there until the just decide that is what they are going to do.

My advice. Trap swarms. Follow any of the split programs (Mel Disselkoen) and others. Bring in queens from known treatment free breeders like Frost in Arkansas.


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## enjambres (Jun 30, 2013)

Your wrote: .."experiencing heavier losses with signs of AFB."

Was it confirmed to be AFB, or not? And are you using the same equipment, or entirely new stuff?

I know of no successful (not wishful voo-doo) TF management tool for AFB that doesn't involve a deep hole and a match.

Trying to go TF for mites is one thing. Treatment free in the face of confirmed AFB would be a hard case to make because AFB is highly contagious and forms very long-lasting vegetative spores that will remain infective on equipment for _decades_. And it may be illegal in your state to not report it to your state bee inspection system.

As far as I know the only safe way to salvage AFB-contaminated woodenware and combs is irradiation at 10 KGys.

Other than that, I think if you mean to try TF, you need to get some TF-level queens in the hives as soon as possible. Trying to go TF with ordinary commercial queens won't get you where you want to go.

I wish you good luck and I am very glad to know your wife is better, now. Heart failure is a difficult thing to face, and manage.

Nancy


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Buzz-kill said:


> Its not a transition. You either decide to go treatment free or not. I don't know of any treatment beeks that say they want to transition to TF that ever get there until the just decide that is what they are going to do.


the problem is that we've heard from numerous folks here on the forum who 'decided' to go treatment free and found out that simply deciding wasn't quite enough to get them 'there'.

rmdial is playing it smart by seeking out assistance and advice from those with experience here. gleaning information from those willing to share their successes and failures puts him a step or two ahead of those who simply 'decide'.



Buzz-kill said:


> My advice. Trap swarms. Follow any of the split programs (Mel Disselkoen) and others. Bring in queens from known treatment free breeders like Frost in Arkansas.


good advice on the swarm traps, especially if there is any hope of catching swarms from feral colonies or those already being managed off treatments. also good advice to acquire 'proven' genetics if possible, but that's easier said than done and no guarantees.

aggressive splitting to stay ahead of mites might allow one to sustain an apiary and perhaps sell off some nucs, but it won't do much for those interested in honey production or making any progress in moving the ball forward with respect to selecting for more resistant bees.

(buzz-kill, i just took a moment to browse through the 168 posts you've made since joining beesource last august. what i couldn't find was any mention of your own personal beekeeping experiences.

i encouraged rmdial to start this thread so that all of us could benefit from the exchanges as his story plays out. 

it would be great if you would likewise start a thread and share your experiences, i.e. how many hives and for how many years have you been managing off treatments, what are your management strategies, how are you doing in the survival and production departments, ect.)


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The question is how do I start this transition? What are the steps in doing this? How do I determine sources and methods? What losses can be expected?


1# that depends if you take a cold turkey bond or an IPM path
2# breed from the top 5% or less of your queens, requeen at least the bottom 60% (ish numbers) Sam Comfort started with 5 chosen from over a thousand, Bweaver bonded a thousand to find 5 (then bonded a thousand more), Kefuss some times chose only a single breeder and re-queened heavy. Surviving a winter is not enuff, it needs to be the best and you need to requeen the advrage.. A split program like OTS can prop up the stock, but it breeds form the advrage. Fine for getting your numbers up, but very poor for selecting traits and shifting them in your stock and leads not only to a lot ho-hum queens, but pisspoor drones as well 
3# unknown TF is highly locally and beekeeper dependent.. 
4# High if you go bond, for at least for the first few years if you have a large enuf stock size, If you don't, and end up having to bring in replacements you can get stuck on a tread mill making no progress. 
Here is a guy speaking at the organically manged conference this year who lives about 200 miles from you, has lost a few hundred hives over the past few years, constantly bringing in replacements from his dads stock and is down to 7 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPn-uUmbZwY. 

Being able to mass propagate seems to be key for many if you find a queen worth breeding from you need to be able to exploate it or other wise breed from the best.. If you take hard losses you need to be able to bounce back, Sam Comfort got ahead by grafting, he turned those 5 hives in to 160 3 frame nucs in 2 months and then grew them out to full size. 

isolation from other stocks also seems to have a large impact, not just there genetics, but there mites as well.

Having good records and metrics so you can make sold data based management choices seems to be a winner as well.

a sold local TF stock or Ferals is also a good start..
for some people it just seems to all work out (likely location related) others not so much. There are fokes who succeed with package bees and OTS. If it works, it works let your bees tell you what works and dosent, and if they are telling youit isn't working it time to change things up


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

I'm convinced your neighbors will have a stronger effect on you than probably anything you personally do, and probably stronger than your genetics. 

If you are bordered by responsible beekeepers who either treat minimally or not at all but maintain healthy hives, along with a diverse feral population, I think you can make a go of it and stand a good chance of being successful. Even a treating neighbor is ok if they follow label and are responsible and attentive. Nutrition is vital, and diverse forage is a must.

What will doom your program is: irresponsible (often TF) beekeepers who let their unhealthy bees get overrun, die out, and then get robbed out by your bees; commercial guys who come back from California with every disease known to man or bee and don't really care if 15% of their hives die in the fall; or a habitat dominated by monocultures and commercial farmers. Those 3 things will kill your bees (obviously within about a 5 mile flying radius), no matter how wonderful their DNA and your management are.

I read often on this forum about some folks who seem to have a fairly easy go of it, and other (equally bright and motivated folks) who struggle and fail and don't know why. I'm convinced it is likely stuff happening outside their beeyards which is hurting them. If you pour clean water into a bucket of muddy water, you end up with muddy water. Your clean water is gone; the muddy bucket is barely changed. This is what pouring fine TF bees into a bad neighborhood is like; they don't stand a chance.

I don't want to gloom you out. I'm beginning to think I might be lucky and might be in a good neighborhood. It happens. 

Enough soapbox. Practically addressing other things in the thread: AFB is nothing to fool around with and you should burn any equipment involved in that. There may be someone close by who can test for you if you are unsure. And SP's advice about attending a local meeting (or three) and finding out who your neighbors are is a great one. Do that. 

Best of luck!

Mike


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## rmdial (Jun 30, 2009)

Another question:

Does anyone use foundation-less frames? If, how do you support the wax and how do you get the girls to build comb the way you want it? Doesn't sound like I have been keeping bees very long does it? I do know bees will do as they please but I also know there are tricks. I have always put a drawn frame next to an un-drawn one but now with all new frames that is impossible. Should I use bland foundation next to foundation-less frame?


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## AvatarDad (Mar 31, 2016)

I've had good success checkerboarding with foundation frames between foundationless frames. Just A B A B A B across the box

If your bees draw the foundation, then cool. You have a frame. If they shun your foundation and draw one of the foundationless ones, also cool. You have a frame, and hopefully the foundation on either side of it makes it straight.

Remember: foundationless hives must be dead level.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

what little experience i have using foundationless frames involved inserting them in between already drawn frames so someone else will have to chime in about starting with all foundationless. using foundation in first frame have foundation sounds like it might work.

with my first foundationless frames i glued wooden tongue depressors into the slot on the underside of the top bar as a starter strip and that worked well. i've since been buying the 'f' style frames from kelly supply that come with a bevel on the underside of the top bar and they work well too.

the main thing with foundationless is to perfectly level the hive left to right so that the comb is drawn straight to the middle of the bottom bar.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

If you are going foundationless and have a good guide on your frames, a package should be like a swarm. When I get a swarm, I put it in a box full of foundationless frames and the bees know what to do. I do usually drop two drops of lemon grass oil in the bottom of the hive body.

This is how I did all of my swarms and trapped bees and on the splits, I have given the bees maybe one or two frames and the rest empty frames.

I do move stuff around if they start getting off in some way or draw fat or start curving near the end of the frames cause it will get worse with each frame. I do pull frames up to get the next box started and will put empties in between brood comb. That is where they draw the best comb.

I do mostly level my hives side to side but do lean my hives forward so that water runs out the bottom board instead of in. I am not perfect at the side to side but do use a 2 foot level to get it pretty close.

I am only starting my third year but have always been foundationless and have eight hives. Take it for what it is worth.
Cheers
gww

This is my comb guide.


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## rmdial (Jun 30, 2009)

Thanks for replies on foundationless. Have never heard of leveling and it's importance. Always learning.

I am in an isolated locations. In the back of a valley with a small lake in the middle of it. Two watersheds on each side of me and no knowledge of bees in close proximity. Don't know of feral bees in the area although there is lots of forest land around me. Public and private. 

Since I have not had bees here due to my wife falling ill soon after we moved, I still do not know what the forage situation is. I will soon find out.

I am familiar with IPM methods but have a question on one aspect. I have heard of interrupting brood cycles as a method of mite control. I understand why it works but am confused how it is done in a practical way. Is it during increase like splits?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Welcome, Soapy! 


> " Refrain from treating colonies for Varroa. WARNING: This last suggestion should only be adopted if you can do so carefully, *as part of a program of extremely diligent beekeeping.* If you pursue treatment-free beekeeping without close attention to your colonies, then you will create a situation in your apiary in which natural selection is favoring virulent Varroa mites, not Varroa-resistant bees. To help natural selection favor Varroa-resistant bees, you will* need to monitor* closely the mite levels in all your colonies and kill those whose mite populations are skyrocketing long before these colonies can collapse. By preemptively killing your Varroa-susceptible colonies, you will accomplish two important things: 1) you will eliminate your colonies that lack Varroa resistance and 2) you will prevent the "mite bomb" phenomenon of mites spreading en masse to your other colonies. If you don't perform these preemptive killings, then even your most resistant colonies could become overrun with mites and die, which means that there will be no natural selection for mite resistance in your apiary. Failure to perform preemptive killings can also spread virulent mites to your neighbors' colonies and even to the wild colonies in your area that are slowly evolving resistance on their own. If you are not willing to kill your mite-susceptible colonies, then you will need to *treat them and requeen them with a queen of mite-resistant stock.*" (Thomas D. Seeley - darwinian beekeeping)


It´s the way to go.

I´m with gww in respect to foundation less frames. I put in some empty frames and one drawn brood frame empty of bees when my hive throwed a swarm. 
They started on the empty frames building comb. Later, when the frames were filled with brood and honey they used the drawn older comb.
A nicely build comb will start nicely build new comb at the sides.
Because of the narrowness of space between frames the natural comb is very straight built.

AFB is a problem in my area. Last outbreak was 5km distance. Spores are everywhere. 
Because we are not allowed to use antibiotics the bees are developing resistance and nowadays the bees are saved, the boxes burned.

Brood disease often comes with weakening a hive. Weather, starvation,mite disease, managements like too small a split or the opposite, giving too much space, and migrating weakens a hive.


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## rmdial (Jun 30, 2009)

What is "bond"?


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

rmdial said:


> What is "bond"?


http://scientificbeekeeping.com/the-varroa-problem-part-6a/

Scroll down


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

squarepeg said:


> the problem is that we've heard from numerous folks here on the forum who 'decided' to go treatment free and found out that simply deciding wasn't quite enough to get them 'there'.
> 
> rmdial is playing it smart by seeking out assistance and advice from those with experience here. gleaning information from those willing to share their successes and failures puts him a step or two ahead of those who simply 'decide'.
> 
> ...


Aggressive splitting can also be managed for honey production. They are not mutually exclusive. Likewise you can also move the ball forward on mite resistance if that is your aim. For example Mel and some of his followers replace overwintered queens but you can leave them and see how they do a second year. If they survive you can select from those lines. It depends on your goals. Many back yard keeps just are looking for a way to get their bees to survive and make some honey. Others may be trying to move the ball forward.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

I dunno, transitioning should be the way everyone does it if you can't find bees that hold up at first. It's tough to breed from dead bees but over time you should be able to somewhat adapt the bees or at least bring in the genetics that may hold up or hold up once you start cycling generations and pick up some local adaptability if it exists.


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## Buzz-kill (Aug 23, 2017)

JRG13 said:


> . It's tough to breed from dead bees but over time you should be able to somewhat adapt the bees or at least bring in the genetics that may hold up or hold up once you start cycling generations and pick up some local adaptability if it exists.


Also difficult to breed from treated bees.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

This is one of the best discussions going. Thanks to the OP and all the excellent comments.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Ultimate success probably depends on the beekeeping environment. Lots of industrialized migratory operations around? The chance of success is low. The ability for bees to adapt depends on a system stable enough to adapt to. The constant bringing of bees together from around the continent, along with their hitchhikers makes for a chaotic adaptive environment. TF or traditional approaches don't have a chance to make headway. 

But you don't know until you try. Getting local bees from folks that make their own queens is a good start. From the stories I'm hearing around here, we have some resistance lurking with the local keepers, even though they are unaware of it. We also have some known feral bee hives that have been in existence for a few years. I think these two factors have allowed me to get to where I am in my operation. I also brought in queens from the best source (Saskatraz) I could find. The combination seems to be working. I have queen lines that originate from local stock and some from the Saskatraz stock. I have better 2 year survival this year so I can diversify my queen rearing efforts. I have made and lost lots of nucs. Partly out of my own ignorance as a newer beekeeper. But it allowed me to find the bees that survive. 

The next step is dominating the local bee space wherever you are. This means having as many bees as you can handle. This year I will have sites for the first time within flying distance of each other. This I hope will result in more of my queens and drones interacting with each other, and increased stability. But even so, this years bees without this benefit seem to be stronger than ever.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> The ability for bees to adapt depends on a system stable enough to adapt to. The constant bringing of bees together from around the continent, along with their hitchhikers makes for a chaotic adaptive environment. TF or traditional approaches don't have a chance to make headway.


Thats an argument against "natural selection" management I have made several times. but how much weight on the scales does "beekeeper section" place

looking at those who have done it, it seems to be heavy

When Sam comfort took his 5 hives, broke them up for resorces, started grafting, and turned them in to 160 3 frame nucs, he certainly wasn't contributing much to the DCAs, much less dominating them

John Keffus ran small production yards (20-25 hives), with =to or larger then commercial yards in close contact, some 1 km away, and open mated at his production yards just fine, no iso or decacated mating yard. 
He then took treated bees and placed them 25 miles away and re queened with his virgins to open mate with what ever random drones were there, and got TF stock.




> Also difficult to breed from treated bees.


No worse then then serial split stock you talk about in the qoate below 
A brood break and 3 way split knocks the mites back 80% or so... a brood on OAV knocks them back 15% or so... Witch one is propping up weak genetics? 
Pot calling the kettle black when it comes to selection and breeding...
and yes you can, like all things with trait section the hives have to be manged equally.. You can give them all a spring Tx and then Tx(or split, brood break, etc) them as they hit threshold, last one to threshold is the winner, propagate it. Indeed there are places were this may be necessary to make any movement toward resistance 


> Aggressive splitting can also be managed for honey production. They are not mutually exclusive. Likewise you can also move the ball forward on mite resistance if that is your aim


I disagree with moveing the ball forward on resistance , you have all the problems of propping up weak stock that will colaspace when you remove "management"... call it what it is non cem treatment...
and then you have the real downfall, mass propagation of poor stock. To shift the performance of your line(s) you need to propagate the best, re-queen the rest. 

Spitball genetics here 
Say you breed race horses. Do you provide stud service from every male that has ever run a race, every male that has ever won a race, or the male that has won the most races?
That's easy you breed form the best and don't bother with the rest 

If you want to shift your stock, you breed form your best, the 60-80+% of the bottom end of the hives are nothing more then a spot to place a cell form the best. 

And thats key here. It dosen't matter what they are, They are nothing but surrogates you implant a cell , be they Bonded, IPMed, full on treated, commercial nuc, etc...You will be ending their genetic line and there poor drones so there history is irrelevant 

look at a bell curve 80% of the stock is average or below.







So lets say you are getting 50% losses and running 100 hives
Come spring you have lost 50 hives and need to get your numbers up. 34 of those that are left are average , if you split them you are propagating the average and you will keep getting your average, 50% losses. Ie the stock lives 18 months as is common in TF, its just enuff to overwinter, get split in the spring and die in 2nd winter, you get no were splitting it and get on a tread mill going no were.. mean while those poor drones can be draging down your good stock 

if you requeen those 34 from the top 2-3 that had low mite counts and were booming come spring you shift the performance of your stock, and more then that your putting out better drones from those hives 

In short TF survivor stock is not euff to make it breeding stock, it has to be TF thriving stock, or as close to that as you have.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl
I hear it is hard on bees to move them. I hear northern bees winter better then northern bees (I also hear some have no problim with this). I have heard that bees moved out of thier envoroment will become properous in a new enviroment in about 3 generations. Perhaps I am just picking the one thing out of everything I have read to the contrary because it is what I want to believe (though I do think there are other cases). I keep remembering the one 20 hives of comercial bees that was set aside and a bunch of them lived even though the breeding pool was mixed with the comercial bees. I read another interesting thing today that mentioned that most of the genetic studies were kind of flawed because there were a lot of genetic alies that were not strong enought to be measured in the way most studies are conducted. 

The same thing I read today was basically saying that bees breeding to average is why the bee still has more genetic matirial to work with (not like a horse) even though bee breeders were trying to chanel them to fewer traits. This can be presented as a weakness or a strenght. I see you (and not just you) almost always present it as a weakness to explain why wider genetics make it hard. I can see this if this is the only thing that gives a bee a chance to fight mites and you leave out learning. I just keep thinking that the evidence does not make that position gold and that there are examples out there that say more then genetics is going on. If more then genetics is going on then it almost seems to me the more genetic variance even if some comes from weaker stock still gives the bees a chance to adjust using those genetics based on need. Not treating provides the need and the genetics provide the tools along with enviroment and learning.

I noticed another bee keeper joined beescource that has not used chemical treatments for five years and still has live bees. 

About this you have to keep doing the managements or you will lose the bees thing. I think is is a bit easier and not harder to have bees kept in managed hive compared to places like seeleys forrest. People that manage bees try and judge the stores and make adjustment as needed to keep bees from starving and things like that reduce stresses that might be felt. In a round about way, stuff like that takes one stressor away allowing bees strength to fight all their other problims. 

I know some people with a thousand hives make the arguement that that is what it takes but antidotal evidence is showing that smaller guys that are not in the position to control the envoroment are having some success. Some are not but some guys with big hive numbers are having things come through thier apary and killing big numbers to even when treating. Plus the way they manage thier aparies, they have bigger losses all year but count differrent that a guy with 20 hives does. If a guy sends 500 hives to almunds and loses 200 but as soon as almonds are over builds the numbers back up so he can send them to apples, he is not counting like a back yard guy and still has 500 hives when all is said and done.

Those guys when something out of the ordinary happens send samples to bee labs and investigate. Lots are willing to blame mite bombs. There is something going on and no doubt that mites kill bees but I am reading everything and am not sure that small numbers at many places have the ability to make it even surrounded a bit by bad stuff. It just depends on what you call moving the needle.

If no hives are living, then you will not move the needle, but if some are surviving, then they are surviving and keeping them treatment free may keep them at least where they are but may make it better. But I do agree that having a whole bunch alive will help more then not till something bad comes through which happens to most treatment or not, at least in a lot of areas, every so often.
Cheers
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> This can be presented as a weakness or a strenght. I see you (and not just you) almost always present it as a weakness to explain why wider genetics make it hard


No I am talking about the reality of what you need to do to shift away from average, should one chose, as that's an endless subject on "what you need to do to be TF" 
Its a strength in terms of wild survival of the species and works well in terms of a colonys per square mile on a land scape scale it alows for fast adaption. Nature does this by casting a wide net of deveristy and ruthless culling back to what works 
Nature dosen't care if the bees live in your box or the tree a mile away, just that the natural balance of hives per km2 is maintained
Thousands of years ago it was discovered that what works for wild bees doesn't work for the needs/wants of humans, the beekeeper was born, the beekeeper cares that the bees are in his boxes, and keeping bee living in there boxes is the 1st task, fail at that and your not a beekeeper 

That natural culling takes a toll... a 1/2 to 2/3s per year toll.. that' s steep... but as a beekeeper culling doesn't mean the loss of a hive, just the queen, IF you as the bee keep are proactive...
Its not rocket science.. 

You have a mean hive what do you do? Do put it to the side and wait/hope for it to die? No you save it, re queen it from a genital one! 
You have a hive that doesn't make crap for honey what do you do?. Do put it to the side and wait/hope for it to die? No you save it, re queen it from that makes honey! 
You have a hive with chalk brood what do you do?. Do put it to the side and wait/hope for it to die? No you save it re queen it from a hive you have never seen chalk in !
You have a hive with mites :ws: OMG let it die. Whisky Tango Fox Trot! Time to grow up traits are traits... 

The Gurus/ TF Taliban can say what they want, how we select and propagate stock doesn't change just when mites are involved, the basics are the basics dogma doesn't change facts or 3k years of bee breeding



> I have heard that bees moved out of thier envoroment will become properous in a new enviroment in about 3 generations


At F3 your in the high 90s with what your crossing with , great if your a believer that the drone stock will help you, not so good if you thing its hurting you...Either way it's right to the point of my argument


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

I have a new acquaintance to whom I spoke yesterday on the phone.
He is a seasoned beekeeper who treated for years but some time ago started tf beekeeping by artificial inseminating his best survivor queens daughters from his best survivor hives drones.
Now he already sees inbreeding results. He wants to meet me to find a strategy for IPM and bond like I will do and to exchange genetics.
He wants virgin survivor queens from my group to artificial inseminate them with his best tf hive`s drones to have more diversity. He uses local mutt stock.
I find his situation very interesting because it supports gww points.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

msl


> Thousands of years ago it was discovered that what works for wild bees doesn't work for the needs/wants of humans, the beekeeper was born, the beekeeper cares that the bees are in his boxes, and keeping bee living in there boxes is the 1st task, fail at that and your not a beekeeper


Actually most bee keepers keep bees for what they can get out of the bee. The reason it makes sense for most to keep their bees alive is cause they think they can make more then if they don't. You still hear the comments from really good bee keepers that say they don't spend time proping up dinks or they don't have sickness because they cull the bad hives. They don't worry about moving comb around hurting thier hives cause they don't want weak bees that can't handle it.

So in the end on when we let bees die or live, it does many time come down to what the cost is to keep them alive compared to letting them go. Many don't think it is worth the time and resources to mess with laying workers and they just shake them out. I understand what you are saying and the avenues you mention to fix things that go wrong but also know in real life what real people that have to do the work do many times.

The decision can be the same on wether to polinate apples knowing what that does to your hives compared to the money that could be made with a hive that is not put through those stresses and still decide it is worth it.

So again it really comes down to the cost of the route taken and with the bee informed partnership numbers saying that there is really only about 8 percent differrance in loss rate for all states averaged over 5 years, then letting some bees die due to mites might be made with management techniques as well as with treating and may move the ball furthure in the right direction. Not counting the big guys, the number is about 50% of beekeepers who don't treat and so there may be a better breeding pool out there then can be seen.

Problims could be handled by requeening or by pinching queens and combineing and who is to say what culling means in day to day management. 

If a hive was mean enough, I might be a dry ice type of guy or I might be a break up the hive requeen type guy. Hopefully I don't have to find out very soon though. As far as the rest, I think most that are not tracking some kind of data, pick what looks like thier healthyest hive to propogate from when making more hives. The ones that do bad, they combine come fall. The hive assessment may be done more on a yard wide bases then evaluating each individual hive and so the best is always going to be the best and the problim child is going to be taken care of one way or another. To me if you let the bad one die or combine it in fall, the hive that would have lived with or with out the bees from the dink is going to reduce its size down to about the same as the rest of the hives that will make it through winter and so maby you are saving something and maybe you arn't.

In the end it comes down to can you grow your apary while not treating and still get the thing you are keeping bees to get. If you are and your hives live enough then you are probly helping the breeding pool and it may even get better.

I do agree there is a time to handle every situation that you mentioned in the way you mentioned but that sometimes it is also right to handle it other ways.

Also on the traits are traits. If traits are traits, then there would be no adjustment to presure. The traits would be traits if you treat or did not treat. Yet bees have come up with differrent way to fight mites in differrent places. Now this could be that the traits that were already there were the traits that moved around and come to the forefront or there could be more going on then the bees already had it and the presure only allowed those bees to live.

I don't know which it is for sure though I do wonder if actual change is taking place. I admit it could be like some drug that was made for one thing but found to work for another. But it might be something new. If the only bees that are alive have it, who they breed to has a chance to get it and so then the question becomes does average give enough alive at the end that it is worth it and if so then average may get better cause of the aliveness.

The question is, are small efforts still moving the ball forward.

SiW... 
I had read one other study where they had taken some already resistant bees and artificially inseminated then and had very sparotic success. I don't remember if it was an inbreeding thing or that it just did not take well. I could not even find the study cause I can't remember which population (gottland or seeley or) They used but read it not very long ago.
Cheers
gww
Ps It was only hundreds of years ago and not thousands that beekeeper did the nature thing and killed most of the hives they havested from. Then they refilled those hives with swarms from the ones they did not kill. Or at least that is what wikipidia says. I think what bee keepers found out thousands of years ago is that bees would go where you put them till you wanted to take thier stuff.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

There are so many things to consider.

In an expansion model there is no evaluation possible. The bee´s hives must be established "production" hives to see if they are resistant.

In Germany I don´t know if there is a beekeeper with established tf production hives. When I surf the websites it´s always a parallel strategy: most breed queens in a tf arrangement in small nucs but the moment these queens are used to produce honey with all the methods used to force this, they are not resistant anymore.

Dinks can be dinks because the queen is not prolific. It must not be mite or virus susceptibility it can be bad mating because of weather for example. This can be changed by the bees with supercedure. Why not let them?
After a supercedure the dinks might become strong hives.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

SiW,,


> After a supercedure the dinks might become strong hives.


I let my dink die on the off chance that it might make it and turn into a good hive but most beginning bee keeping courses and lots of professional bee keepers combine in the fall.
Big hive have lots of babies and so lots of chance to make mites. Still danial d had a hive make 200 lbs and we know what squarepeg gets. Add that all most all beekeeper had some hives die. Too many dieing is too hard and you got to do what you got to do but also don't know anything till you try and even all that is subject to change when dealing with live stuff. Some times a bad strain of stuff will cycle through in places. The good thing is that the real bad stuff is so bad that it dies also and the cycle ends. Or that is what it looks like for a few big guys that I read that had lost eighty percent but only one year.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

Well, I mean dinks in spring, if those are not thriving you can combine in fall with the better queen.

SP enterprise is exactly what I mean to show bees are resistant. He can use his tf bees like any treater does if he wants this. His losses are in a normal range with his production hives.
That must be the goal of every tf beekeeper. And that is why his journalling thread is so valuable. Nothing to hide.

This could happen to you and Daniel too, but to us not so lucky in our location we might change more resistant stock we selected to susceptible stock in no time if we use them for production.
But I need to meet more german tf beekeepers to get knowledge about this.

Those beekeepers I know always tell the same story: First year tf make a split --> zero loss in winter --> established production hive in summer--> deadout in next winter. No resistance.
( I´m proud I have two queens overwintered twice but they were splitted)


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

SiW.....


> Those beekeepers I know always tell the same story: First year tf make a split --> zero loss in winter --> established production hive in summer--> deadout in next winter. No resistance.


The same thing apparrently happens here. I have heard a bunch of reports of 1 to 3 to even 5 years of low loss and then bam, everything is lost. Even square peg has that trend to a lower degree in his hives where he had almost zero loss for two years and then 30 percent loss in his third year. Specialk got all the way to sixty hives and then lost all of them in one year. This is my third year and till it is over, who knows what is going to happen. Add that I change my tactics while keeping bees (mostly on getting stingy with feed) and it might even be hard to tell what killed my bees (if it happens) due to me adding varibles to the picture. If they die of course.
I say I am more testing out the possibilities then actually doing anything but so far so good.
I am looking at the other stuff I can find and thinking about it but then so are others and I come up with what I come up with and they can read the same stuff and maybe interpet it better and come up with a differrent view. Ones experiances along with reading, has large impact on how one reads stuff.
Cheers
gww


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

This is a post from randy oliver on a Bee L including the thing he was giving answer to in the top part.



> >
> > >Since honey bee arrived "recently" to USA from Europe, and it`s a non
> > native specie in the States (and other places around the world)...I wonder
> > if make sense talk about "locally adpated"
> ...


Does anyone find interest in this as far as the possibilities of breeding to average not being the whole story and maby need having something to do with what is retained by bees?
Cheers
gww


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## Bill Kennedy (Mar 25, 2018)

What is OTS?


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Bill
I am thinking that when OTS is used in this thread, it is referring to On The Spot Queen Rearing. 
http://www.mdasplitter.com/docs/NCarolina-2.pdf
Good luck
gww


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Buzz-kill said:


> Also difficult to breed from treated bees.


A stupid misconception. It's a process, you take what you have and by making daughters you can locally adapt them just as well as anything else in the area with proper selections. You can't tell me that TF stocks are any better than commercial stocks either, there is no evidence of this other than they tend to be more locally adapted it seems. I've tried a few different sources, none of them hold up to mites here in my area, so they haven't truly developed any resistance different from any other bees.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

gww said:


> This is a post from randy oliver on a Bee L including the thing he was giving answer to in the top part.
> 
> 
> Does anyone find interest in this as far as the possibilities of breeding to average not being the whole story and maby need having something to do with what is retained by bees?
> ...


The main issue is the bell curve isn't a good example for a population that's being selected against or for something. It's probably already been shifted to right in most stocks making it narrower and much more difficult to improve upon for a lot of traits. Personally, I don't see local adaptation helping with the underlying varroa issue much at all, and I don't consider any seemingly local adaptation to varroa as evolution either since it doesn't generally hold up well to the same pressure elsewhere.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

JRG


> The main issue is the bell curve isn't a good example for a population that's being selected against or for something. It's probably already been shifted to right in most stocks making it narrower and much more difficult to improve upon for a lot of traits. Personally, I don't see local adaptation helping with the underlying varroa issue much at all, and I don't consider any seemingly local adaptation to varroa as evolution either since it doesn't generally hold up well to the same pressure elsewhere.


I guess it is a bird in the hand rather then in the bush type of thing. If you don't want to take your bees any where else and it is working where you are then it is still working.

It does not matter where you are, if you have bees you have mites. If the bees are living with out treatments then they are living with out treatments. To me and your experiance of bees not living with out treatments, I relate that to the numbers by state that Bee informed publish that show some states have very high loss rate of bees even if they are treated compared to others that have low loss that are treated.

So even treated bees can not be moved to some areas and do as well as where they are. That does not change the low rate of loss that is happening where it is happening.

Some places may just be harder at times to raise bees then others are no matter how you treat your bees. What is an interesting number is the spred between the treated and not treated bees annual loss rate that average out less then ten percent spred even in those hard places. So every one is going to lose bees but ten percent added to 20 percent or 40 percent is still ten percent. 

Now why lose ten percent extra? Cause at least one state had the rate of treatment free being lower then the treated bees and so that is the hope factor that that ten percent might be managed down to a lower number over time.
Cheers
gww


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

It's not about treating vs not treating for me. It's the basic principle of saying evolution is at hand via natural selection, which I don't believe that's what we're seeing. Mite pressure is mite pressure where ever you are. In some areas it may be higher, but we're still talking about the same pest so if something was truly resistant, I think we'd see better results across the board. It takes me to a post Sol replied to on FB, where he pretty much discounts all the breeding programs and says TF breeds for 'survival' not mite resistance. So now I kind of get that concept, but at the same time you can't then say everyone should just stop treating, the bees will evolve, or have evolved, but yet performance of said evolution to mites doesn't hold up like it should if it was a true heritable evolved trait or combination of traits.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

JRG
I don't say everybody should not treat. I don't say that all problims will go away forever cause I don't think nature works that way. The human populations still get deadly and some not so deadly disieses. So it comes down to levels of disiese and playing with numbers. Some who play with those numbers say that bees that used to survive with 10 percent mite infestation are some now dieing with a 1 percent infestation on a more regular basis then they used to.

So it is not so much that bees are immune to mites but more can the bees be managed in a way that mites don't effect the out come worse then other ways of managing them. It doesn't mean that mites are good for bees just which way are they not as bad for bees. I think there is enough evidence that some are having outcomes that wether they treat or not, it is not changing the picture of mite issues enough one way or the other to be worth doing or the best thing to be doing.

It seems to be about levels more then immunity. There is enough proof that the levels can be adjusted by what ever the bees are using to come close to matching some treatment regiment. It seems those levels can be adjusted up by those working towards doing that.

I do not think the aruement can be made that all bees are as strong as the strongest bee is. I think all bees might be as weak as the weakest bee depending on what stress is going on at the time or what alighning of the stars caused the straw that broke that camels back. I might go out in the cold daily but only get a cold every so often.

I can not come to the conclution by reading everything out there that one way or the other is the wrong way and that is why this diccussion is still here. Cause and effect, short term and long term have not been proved out on any path but lots of proof of sorts shows options to pick and see if they may work.
Cheers
gww


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

> Those beekeepers I know always tell the same story: First year tf make a split --> zero loss in winter --> established production hive in summer--> deadout in next winter. No resistance.
> ( I´m proud I have two queens overwintered twice but they were splitted)


bingo the serial split pattern, stock alive just long enough to be split 
BUT you have the records to tell you about those 2 queens, they have shown you they are likely different, Maby this year you change it up what your trying 


> Dinks can be dinks because the queen is not prolific. It must not be mite or virus susceptibility it can be bad mating because of weather for example This can be changed by the bees with supercedure. Why not let them? After a supercedure the dinks might become strong hives.


Why waste your time? They might also sit there and do nothing 
Break them up for nucs as Michael palmer would do, or at least give them a queen from a known high performer. Don’t leave them sitting there on the off chance they might blossom, put the resources to work. 


> It was only hundreds of years ago and not thousands that beekeeper did the nature thing and killed most of the hives they havested from. Then they refilled those hives with swarms from the ones they did not kill


3500 or so years ago the Egyptians were practicing non destructive harvest, selective queen rearing, making splits, etc. Greek topbar hives with movable combs were 2k or so years back

Skep Beekeeping is seen in areas with a late fall flow were the 2nd swarms ( and often swarms form swarms) can make a crop, maybe not enough to over winter, but that doesn’t matter. Also you see it in areas were beeswax had high value, in medieval Europe church’s had to have beeswax candles, a skepist would make about as much off the wax as the honey. 

Skeps/gums and outher swarm type beekeeping are not a “nature” thing as you suggest, the human is culling ½-2/3s of the stock providing strong slective pressure above and beyond survival 
Got mean hives? Bet they get culled 1st, same with disease, dinks, and other negative traits… 
Net effect is the same as requeening ½-2/3s of your hives with your best stock. Strong selective pressure was used to maintain stock performance. 
It’s a mistake to look at skeps as backwards, they came in to prevalence as they were very well suited to local conditions and the beekeepers profit margin. Weak colonys were not babied in a attempt to get them to over winter, they were simply harvested, losses were taken in the fall so to speak. 



> I don't see local adaptation helping with the underlying varroa issue much at all


The work on the subject sjuests other wize 
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3896/IBRA.1.53.2.03?src=recsys
_On average, colonies with queens from local origin survived 83 days longer compared to non-local origins (p < 0.001). This result demonstrates strong genotype by environment interactions. Consequently, the conservation of bee diversity and the support of local breeding activities must be prioritised in order to prevent colony losses, to optimize a sustainable productivity and to enable a continuous adaptation to environmental changes._

Local stock tends to be better, the more locally adapted the less stress its under and the better it can resist other issues. Doesn’t help the migtory keeper much, but most here aren’t

edit a lot was posted while I was typeing


> So now I kind of get that concept, but at the same time you can't then say everyone should just stop treating, the bees will evolve, or have evolved,


you kinda can.... stop Txing and moving bees around an we would undoubtedly have pockets of TF stock in 5 years or less as that is what we have seen in the ferals, then like the AHB take over, we would see them spread at a rapid rate (rapid on an exclusionary scale) across the US in 50-100 years or so.. but they may not be good for human needs/wants 

Sol often uses a cheata and gazelle example as a insite to the balance of nature
But there is alos the dark flip side, human introduced rats and cats have caused the extinction of many native spices, balance is far from a guarantee

I get his point, survival is what matters, but if he was breeding for survival he would have some hives.... whats he down to now, 12? endless chases swarms, splits like mad claims 5-20% losses, claims to make his liveing selling bees but hasn't had any for sale sense he left AR. things don't add up 
My thought is he isn't breeding for anything and is barely selecting, caught in the serial split treadmill trap.. 

Swinging back around to section 
_Beekeepers have for a long time recognised these two behaviours, swarming and colony defence (Crane, 1990), and enacted breeding strategies to reduce their expression, in opposition to natural selection (Ruttner, 1972; Möbus, 1983; Villumstad, 1983; Poklukar, 1999; Moritz and Southwick, 1992). For example, the natural way for honey bee colonies to reproduce is to swarm, and this behaviour is thus intimately connected to fitness, but in contrast to this, beekeepers favour colonies that never swarm. Likewise, defensive behaviour is not favoured by beekeepers, but very docile honey bee colonies can easily fall prey to natural enemies, like wasps, birds or mammals. Hence, maintaining honey bees with optimal behaviour from a beekeeping point of view, at the same time maintains the demand for continuous artificial selection 
_
https://www.researchgate.net/public...t_genetic_origin_in_a_pan-European_experiment


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

> Break them up for nucs as Michael palmer would do, or at least give them a queen from a known high performer. Don’t leave them sitting there on the off chance they might blossom, put the resources to work.


In summer. I´m too curious now how they will do. But let´s discuss this in my thread not the OP`s.


> Local stock tends to be better, the more locally adapted the less stress its under and the better it can resist other issues. Doesn’t help the migtory keeper much, but most here aren’t


Some questions:
- how many generations do they need in the micro-evolution until there is some adaptation?
- the moment your stock is distributed among some locations isolated from one another but exposed to other genetics will the parts adapt differently?
- how much a part in adaptation is flow, chemicals of environment, wind, humidity, sun.....is an adaptation possible with all the yearly agricultural and climate changes?
- how much the management of beekeepers prevent adaptation if it´s not pure genetics working?

It is common belief one should use queens from the north rather than from the south.
The amount of brood throughout the year and the amount of stores is one of the main dangers of not being adapted in my eyes, not the mite in itself which may find better survivability chances in this south adapted hives if such genetics are placed in the north where the brood cannot be renewed all the time. But then the mite is not the direct danger but the genetic adaptation to other location is and it is really the local stock that should be used.
But after what time is it local stock?


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

MSL,

I think you touched on it a little bit... most thinking revolves around the mite being static, but I believe they're changing as well. I believe there are pockets of success already, don't get me wrong, my issue is this, local adaptation may play a role, but varroa is varroa whether you're on the east coast or the west coast. Given forage abundance is about the same, I believe those 'genetics' that hold up in one area should hold up in others for the most part but it doesn't seem to be occurring all that much. To me, this is not success. Even if I'm able to attain being TF here, I would expect those bees to hold up just about anywhere else to varroa and anything different I wouldn't consider a complete success. 

I agree with your splitting treadmill comment as well. I don't consider that being a success, simply maintaining by removals, swarm collection, and splitting. Success with bees means multiplication (increase) of what survives and that it keeps on surviving, collecting other bees is just a bonus.

The link didn't work btw so I couldn't read the article. I'm also not talking about just surviving, I'm talking varroa tolerance/resistance.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

The link:


> Abstract
> Honey bee colonies exhibit a wide range of variation in their behaviour, depending on their genetic origin and environmental factors. The COLOSS Genotype-Environment Interactions Experiment gave us the opportunity to investigate the phenotypic expression of the swarming, defensive and hygienic behaviour of 16 genotypes from five different honey bee subspecies in various environmental conditions. In 2010 and 2011, a total of 621 colonies were monitored and tested according to a standard protocol for estimation of expression of these three behavioural traits. The factors: year, genotype, location, origin (local vs. non-local) and season (only for hygienic behaviour) were considered in statistical analyses to estimate their effect on expression of these behaviours. The general outcome of our study is that genotype and location have a significant effect on the analysed traits. For all characters, the variability among locations was higher than the variability among genotypes. We also detected significant variability between the genotypes from different subspecies, generally confirming their known characteristics, although great variability within subspecies was noticed. Defensive and swarming behaviour were each positively correlated across the two years, confirming genetic control of these characters. Defensive behaviour was lower in colonies of local origin, and was negatively correlated with hygienic behaviour. Hygienic behaviour was strongly influenced by the season in which the test was performed. The results from our study demonstrate that there is great behavioural variation among different subspecies and strains. Sustainable protection of local genotypes can be promoted by combining conservation efforts with selection and breeding to improve the appreciation by beekeepers of native stock.





> Defensive behavior was lower in colonies of local origin and was negatively correlated with hygienic behavior.





> Hygienic behavior was strongly influenced by the season in which the test was performed.


Interesting.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

If I interpreted it correctly, more defensive means more swarmy, and less hygienic. More hygienic means less defensive, which means less swarmy as well.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

JRG13 said:


> MSL,
> 
> I think you touched on it a little bit... most thinking revolves around the mite being static, but I believe they're changing as well. I believe there are pockets of success already, don't get me wrong, my issue is this, local adaptation may play a role, but varroa is varroa whether you're on the east coast or the west coast. Given forage abundance is about the same, I believe those 'genetics' that hold up in one area should hold up in others for the most part but it doesn't seem to be occurring all that much. To me, this is not success. Even if I'm able to attain being TF here, I would expect those bees to hold up just about anywhere else to varroa and anything different I wouldn't consider a complete success.
> 
> ...


I think the quest for a bullet proof bee is fool hardy. Pathogen environments are not likely to be the same region to region. So local adaptation may be possible, but to expect them the perform the same in another environment is not logical. My local sheep farmer doesn't expect new genetics in her setting to do well. They are fine where they came from and look great when they arrive. But they go down hill. Their daughters do fine. I think varroa puts an exclamation point on this basic principle. You might have been able to get away with this pre varroa, with little treatment but now these bees are tipped over the edge and can't make it put into new environments. We should remember that there were disease incidents pre varroa and everything wasn't rosy. If we look back I think a good chunk of these problems was associated with the movement of bees. 

So JRG, why can't you seem to get anything that holds up? I would look to the ecological context in which you are trying to do this. If you lack feral bees or places where they can thrive, then managed beekeeping is having an undue influence on local bee genetics and the pathogen environment. Adaptation is possible, the Arnot forest shows it is possible, but there is a limit to what the system can deal with. Ie. if it is overrun by removal of selection pressure generally, and the movement of bees and their pathogens.


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Yes, but when we're looking at varroa, what does local adaptation have to do with bees controlling mites? Different areas might have higher pressure, understandable, but the mechanics of varroa are the same coast to coast. Now, whether the bees do well being moved around, that's another issue.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Not quite
_"We estimated a significant negative correlation between the scores of defensive and hygienic behaviour in both test years, which may suggest that defensive bees are more hygienic. "_

now if you dig threw the notes
_"The lack of long-lasting intensive artificial selection in this somewhat neglected subspecies has probably contributed to retaining the natural expression of this trait "_

_"The lowest scores (corresponding to the highest expression of defensive behaviour) were found in MelP and MelF"_

_"A significantly higher expression of swarming tendency was detected in the colonies of the MelF genotype, originating from a population in France that was reported as “varroa surviving bees” _

and going back to the quote that started this, and my orgonial point 
_maintaining honey bees with optimal behavior from a beekeeping point of view, at the same time maintains the demand for continuous artificial selection, at least until fixation occurs, i.e. unfavorable trait are removed entirely from a population. Such fixation, however, has not been achieved, which is a strong argument for the idea that honey bees should not be considered as “domesticated” 
_

Without ongoing artificial selection by the beekeeper the stock will drift back to wild type. This happens when the only section pressure is survival, and its what we often see in bonded type stock and ferals. Small unproductive colonys that are swarmy and aggressive.
This is why the hand of the beekeeper is NEEDED , Kefuss makes a big point of this in his soft bond... to paraphrase- only look for resistance in your 20% best honey producers, resistance is useless if they aren't productive 

swinging back to TF stock 
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13592-015-0412-8 is a good read detaling the know populations and mentions the pan euro study
and the french stock 
_Today, the Avignon mite-resistant population is not isolated but has maintained mite-resistant characteristics. The colonies however can be aggressive and typically do not produce much honey. In a recent Europe-wide genotype-environment interaction, experiment descendant colonies from the Avignon mite-resistant population did not demonstrate better or worse survival in different environments compared to unselected local colonies_


After 20+ years of surviving TF and mostly unmanged, move the stock and it fails. Selecting for just survival and you can't slect for pressures and stress you don't have.

edit- people posting while I was typeing


> I think the quest for a bullet proof bee is fool hardy. Pathogen environments are not likely to be the same region to region. So local adaptation may be possible, but to expect them the perform the same in another environment is not logical.


I agree! 
Even apis cerana is far form bullet proof, especially if manged in a commercial setting, keepers often induce brood breaks and use soft Tx to maintain there hive counts


> , but when we're looking at varroa, what does local adaptation have to do with bees controlling mites?





> Now, whether the bees do well being moved around, that's another issue.


you answered your own question
best case for restiance is mites become a stress issue, much like EFB.... non adaped bees are under more stress
If you just select for survival, you only slect for bees that survive the local mite pressure... move to an area with a different one, or one with out summer brood break, or a winter one for that matter and they collapse under the larger mite loads


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

JRG


> Yes, but when we're looking at varroa, what does local adaptation have to do with bees controlling mites? Different areas might have higher pressure, understandable, but the mechanics of varroa are the same coast to coast. Now, whether the bees do well being moved around, that's another issue.


What you say on the face of it makes sence but there must be more going on. If you took a maple tree from florida that is the genetic mirror of one that is in Missouri but when planted in MO, it does not do the same. It uses the same sunshine and the same dirt and the same water. There are no extra maple parisites in MO that are not in Florida but yet the tree will not prosper. 

The problim is that even studying, everything that is part of the cause and effect can not be seen. Mites are the same and bees are the same but how they do what they do is not the same and it is not known why. Seeley makes hypothosis of what he thinks is helping and the other places that see bees reducing the mite reprodution know that it is happening but admit they don't know the how of it. Even the mite that is the same as you say, may be reacting to the pressures put on it.

This is why the very high kill multicides are looked at as dangerous cause if you only leave the baddest of the 3 percent of mites that were in the hive then there is no compitition from less bad mites and so the product last even less long before all the mites left are resistant.

It is a war of nature and so breeding a weaker bee may have the effect of breeding a weaker mite and moving the bee to where that has not happened may not work well.

I read this ideal on a farm animal parisite study and not about bees but if nature holds true on action and reaction, then it makes sence to me. If nature is a constant arms race with both sides effecting each other, then moving to places that have differrent pressures would have differrent stresses.
Cheers
gww
ps MSL apparantly type faster then me as is shown with his even bigger post.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Msl


> This happens when the only section pressure is survival, and its what we often see in bonded type stock and ferals. Small unproductive colonys that are swarmy and aggressive.


This assumes that the only bees that will be alive to pick from have the traits you list when in real life, of the ones that survive, you still have the choice of picking the ones that did the best on other traits too. I understand the argument but not the fact that the argument claims.



> After 20+ years of surviving TF and mostly unmanged, move the stock and it fails. Selecting for just survival and you can't slect for pressures and stress you don't have.


This on the other hand, I agree with and is why all those out there wanting a magic pill garentee that if I move your queen here will you garrentee that I will never have a problim with mites is to high a standard being used to call all those who do have bees off treatments as being lyers. It is also why everyone who wants to keep treatment free bees should at least start that way and see how thier area is now so they can assess future possibilities and cost so thier decision from that point can be made with knowlage rather then two sides saying it is possible or it is not possible. Then if you lose all your hives, you can decide it is immpossible for now but if you lose 30 percent of your hives but you want to lose 10 percent, you have a chance of deciding how you might bring that 30 percent down.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

https://oberprima.com/biologie/gendrift/

>>Microevolution is an intraspecific evolution that takes a relatively short time and involves and causes a change in the gene pool. Macroevolution is the uninterrupted continuation of microevolution in systematic large groups. These large groups were created by many small evolution. This is called additive typogenesis.

Coincidence or necessity?

Mutation, gene drift and recombination happen by chance. That's really undisputed. However, the importance of these processes remains open in the synthetic theory of evolution and can not really be explained or explored so well. Many things actually happen by chance and are not predictable.

System theory or neutrality theory?

According to systems theory, two structures and functions of living things interact in such a way that selection forces act on living beings not only from the outside, but also from the inside. Gene mutations would therefore almost inevitably be selective. According to the theory of neutrality, on the other hand, molecular changes can accumulate independently of selection and are then subject to gene drift.

Example of the gene drift: the founder effect
If an individual is separated from his source population by drifting and can no longer return geographically or spatially, ie is isolated, he is the founder of a new population. The gene pool created by establishing a new population is initially random. It is a part of the large gene pool of the initial population. The allele frequency (or the gene pool, both terms mean the same) now differs between the two populations. There can be no gene flow through the isolation. As a result, the low variability of genes in the newly established population persists and the two gene pools each have completely different alleles and genes in the gene pool.

An event that kills many individuals or separates them from their population drastically reduces the existing gene pool and results in a genetic drift. The remaining population is now a founding population. The gene drift caused by the bottleneck effect for a variety of supply of genes and alleles and a limited allele frequency.<<

Microevolution queens being introduced and daughters bred into a microevolutioned different location. Needs some time until coexistence with mites is established again. Patience? We don´t have it.
Or use locals which are treated and so have to be regressed to a more tolerant state. Again this needs some time. 
Accept losses or do IPM and try to influence your area.
In the end losses will vary in the locations and if you want to be tf you have to consider this.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

JRG13 said:


> Yes, but when we're looking at varroa, what does local adaptation have to do with bees controlling mites? Different areas might have higher pressure, understandable, but the mechanics of varroa are the same coast to coast. Now, whether the bees do well being moved around, that's another issue.


No its not because a hive has finite resources to deal with all their problems. So if they are inefficient in other areas, they would have less resources to deal with varroa. For instance, my late nucs got hammered by robbing during an extreme dearth. They didn't have much energy for dealing with anything else but defending themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if varroa reared its head in these circumstances. So the external forces besides varroa affect varroa. Bees not only have to deal with varroa, but must give it the right allocation of resources in relation to everything else. It wouldn't be the same place to place.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

What happens or what comparisons/differences can we make with certainty to a colony w/ varroa mites over-wintered in the tropics as opposed to BC Canada, or northern Wisconsin? With our long winters (also a long break in brood rearing) can we Northerners 'generally' expect good outcomes with our survivors? It used to be that way, but no longer.


As the only known beekeeper in our immediate area (at least a five mile radius) for many, many years, we have slowly/increasingly been surrounded by a party attempting to keep upwards of 300 colonies, divided into yards of a dozen or so. They can be seen along out our county highway's and town roads but we've been told they're being placed all over the County, mostly farm land, vacant or used hay fields that they've been given permission to do so. 

As this commercial endeavor (began just 2 years ago) has grown, I believe our own TF bees have suffered the consequences of the the over saturation. The closest yard is a quarter mile from us, as the bees fly, but as already said, we are now surrounded by this persons bees, that are coming from who knows where. And we are literally starting from scratch (Local/regional bees rule!) this season after keeping our yard of TF bees alive for over a decade....purchasing local NUC's from a fellow TF advocate, but one that still treats when needed, but only then.

Could this experience indicate that we've been varroa bombed by this new influx of colonies? What can we do about it now...besides join the always treat movement?


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

Everyone in the discussion,

I see the main arguments are still 'other' stressors. But I'm kind of factoring those out... I'm talking, you get new stocks, feed and treat em for mites the first year, the following year they do fine but still end up miting out. No mite bombs, good forage, no robbing issues, put up good honey stores by end of summer. I see the main points of TF 'breeding', or lack there of as localized evolution, but yet, when you eliminate the stressors there still seems to be a huge lacking of anything that seems heritable, regarding mites specifically.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

JRG


> But I'm kind of factoring those out...


But in factoring them out, it means you know all of them to factor out. Every body else can only give educated guesses but admit that they don't know.

I was factoring out the same type of stuff with the maple tree but the maple tree still does not do as good from florida in missouri as the tree from missouri does. 

Perhaps there are things going on that we don't know the effect.

I know that I don't know, but what I do know is packages are bought in my bee club from the southern states and fed and treated and they still die here at a higher rate then the guys keeping mutts. Under what you say, that should not happen.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

no silver bullet


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## JRG13 (May 11, 2012)

gww said:


> JRG
> 
> 
> But in factoring them out, it means you know all of them to factor out. Every body else can only give educated guesses but admit that they don't know.
> ...


That's not what I'm saying....


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

JRG



> there still seems to be a huge lacking of anything that seems heritable, regarding mites specifically.


Ok
Look at it this way. Randy makes a list of all the things that bees might use to fight mites. The brood could commit harry carry, the bees could heat the brood nest one degree higher then the do now for a short period, the bees could make the smell change enough that they can reconize infected brood, they can bite the mite of do something to cause the mite to not be as fertle etc. All of these things could be just fringe actions but not killing actions based on how much time the bees have to spend on it. So they could work at such a low level that the ideal is not to kill off the mite but more to live with the mite. Living with the mite might be much less easy to run checks on then killing the mite and the ballance might be more easily tipped one way or the other. However, if the bees are living better, or worse then when the mite first arrived, the conclution has to be that there has been some change or rearanging of what was already there. Some proofs behind this are where they checked the dna of feral against managed bees and found a differrance or where they had bees on an island and its dna was not the same as off the island. 

Change or just rearangement adds up to the same thing. So if the bees had a 90 percent die off when mites first arrived and now have a fifty percent die off and stable population, the leap has to be made that something was heritable and mite spicific. There is no other way it could be looked at.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

drummerboy said:


> Could this experience indicate that we've been varroa bombed by this new influx of colonies? What can we do about it now...besides join the always treat movement?


This is my starting situation with stock which is on it´s way to be more tolerant but still needs some time. I´m not starting chemical treatments with my more tolerant stock. I´m planning to propagate better genetics, do IPM like brood culling or brood brakes, queen shifting. Let the best queens hive throw the drones.

I will try to mate my queens at the most isolated location I have ( I have 4 now, one is isolated more than the others), or search for a better isolated mating place or ask my co-worker to inseminate them with his drones`semen. He will exchange material with me.
I will use robber screens throughout the year. 

If you need to have the income it´s harder. Every new input of mite virus will likely be a setback for some time, but maybe your stock can take it. Kefuss imports new mites into his beeyards to trigger resistance.
In 7-9 days I will be at the conference where Kefuss and others speak. In he evenings we wlii all meet at the bar and some discussions will go on.
I hope to get more ideas.
What I will not do is to go back to any treating treadmill like my neighbors do.


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## 1102009 (Jul 31, 2015)

https://wordpress.basiszuechter.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Literaturliste.pdf

https://basiszuechter.de/basiszucht/schriften-von-wolfgang-golz/

https://basiszuechter.de/basiszucht/durch-das-jahr-mit-wolfgang-golz/



> This is offset by the many years of experience of the breeders. Obviously, the authors of the "fairy tale" mentioned above have never attempted to read out a maternal lineage over several generations of open mating. Otherwise, they would know that the dreaded split-up of the F2 generation provides the basis for rigorous selection. If one evaluates the best colonies in this generation - which most closely corresponds to one's own ideas of breeding - for multiplication, while the others get their queens shifted and repeats this in each generation conscientiously, so you get within a few years a balanced, robust stock with good benefits.
> It should also be mentioned here again: The essence of the breed is the constant selection in each bee generation. This does not exempt controlled mating.





> When losses have to be compensated by purchase, care should be taken to procure stock only from areas with similar or harsher conditions than their own. Otherwise, the next losses are already expected.





> If one believes that wintering is ensured by combining hives, it will work well for a while, but such a bee will not inherit any winter resistance and will go down with less strength.





> There is much that can be argued for and against it, but it clearly emerges from all the comparisons: huge losses are only possible in the case of a genetic error situation, which was once caused by climatically unsuitable bee material and secondly by a lack of sharp selection.





> But let's go back to the cause of the great loss of colonies.
> Deep impact is the weather. This became very clear to us in the wet triangle between the Elbe and the Weser in 1984.
> The small climate of the stand and the state of the traditional flow were two other striking factors.
> The hives also played a role. So it has in the winter of 1984/85 in Upper Bavaria at the free-standing single-walled magazines
> given much higher losses compared to those living in a bee house in the apiary.





> The strain of a late flow, which the colonies used are often genetically unsuitable for their origins, can ruin entire apiaries.





> This was confirmed to me this year by a beekeeper who uses his own isolated mating place to mate his Buckfast queens when he says that buyers of his queens often complained that some of the queens they bought did not convince. The breeder says: "You can assume that one third is really good, one third is usable and one third is just bad. That's the way it is and no honest breeder will claim otherwise. "





> Explanations to 2: Basically we know very little about the diverse relationships of the bee colony to its environment. But what does his environment mean? How can one speak of local adaptation when migrating everywhere and achieving the higher harvests? Well, the migrating is usually just a break in the locality of the bee colony. In the crucial phase, namely hibernation and crossing into spring, our colonies are usually localized. The time of the migration falls into the warmer time of the year and does not make such a crucial demand on the bee colony regarding its residency. The situation is different with the flow combinations prescribed by beekeepers to the bee colony. Already here bees must be adapted , which many bee colonies are not able to. Also, the "digestion" of individual honeys is one of them. It is not uncommon for beekeepers to require their colonies to spend all their energy on early, summer, and late crops and also on late feeding, while bees are traditionally only prepared for one main crop habit (genetically). It is not surprising that the mere life thread of many bee colonies is torn by this alone.





> The incidents make it clear that the assessment of damage is more likely to be based on the stability or instability of the races than on the oft-cited ill-health of the racial mixture. With the new danger posed by the Varroa, these things will play an even bigger and clearer role, especially for biological control. One can only be glad that the high losses occurred before they could blame them all the Varroa.
> It will remain in my opinion:
> Most bee colonies die of lack of adaption.





> Explanations to 1 .: The experience shows that basically all problems in the beekeeping are solved by the selection. Through targeted and continued selection, it is possible to reach out to have highly-indigenous colonies who use the early flow without reinforcement. In addition, it has been proven that the wintered old bees enter most of the early spring flow. The logical conclusion forbids the (fundamental) consolidation of the colonies before the early harvest and the (unnecessary) stimulation of the brood business by the beekeeper.





> The next colonies ( he talks about a hive´s check) shows an almost opposite picture. At first glance, one might think that honeycomb construction is unoccupied. It is from the top of the frames due to the honeycomb no bee to see. But I know from the feeding ago a similar strong colony as the previously is sitting. It remains bombproof in the winter cluster. Even the mild weather of recent weeks could not tempt him to loosen his cluster. It´s inner clock is set for later awakening, when it`s breeding cycle will start again. These are the colonies I prefer. They have the most economical consumption of power and stores. Their honey domes from the previous year are still present on top of the early nest , so that the fresh honey flows fully into the new crop. His old bees forage most of the early spring honey, as they are still little worked out. It is a mistake to believe that only the early-starting colonies would produce much early-spring honey. In the latter, the long-lived winter bees are already used up before the early harvest, the winter stores completely consumed. A late winter brings such colonies in serious danger because they can no longer enforce force, pollen and stores. You have operated an unnecessary bee brood action for our northern region. Today is added that not only the Nosema but also the Varroa finds a favorable development field in them. The mites have a great developmental advantage, which allows them to grow early. This brings together several negative assumptions that favor the collapse of such colonies.
> Late breeders, on the other hand, force the Varroa to take a longer break and support the fight against the pest.





> I used to clear out weak or insignificant colonies, today I confidently leave nature to nature. These are in this case the strong neighbors. They clean the honeycombs and after that I only need to sort the honeycomb construction into old and still usable honeycombs. This is certainly no advice for big apiaries, where many colonies are housed together, but on my small outwards has never been a robbery among the stable colonies erupted. Here, the small number of 5-6 hives is an ideal solution, (* note) in which there are even no problems during the harvest. Before the colonies get really mobile, we are finished with the work.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

SiW...
Thanks for posting and taking the time to transulate some of it.
Cheers 
gww


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

southern Louisiana 
A case for local resistance?

https://www.researchgate.net/public...estructor_Mesostigmata_Varroidae_in_Louisiana

Cheers
gww


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

gww said:


> southern Louisiana
> A case for local resistance?
> 
> https://www.researchgate.net/public...estructor_Mesostigmata_Varroidae_in_Louisiana
> ...


I watch jpthebeeman on youtube every so often. His removals show a wide range of bee colonies, some that are large and have survived a few years without treatment. Its a counter argument for those who think tf bees must be small, swarmy and unproductive.


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

iharder
Yep, I have seen some too.
Cheers
gww


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

well soapy it looks like we got more than we bargained for when i suggested you start this thread. 

some of this discussion can easily continue in the other threads where the main topic is transitioning treated bees to tf. lets try to direct this thread back specifically to rmdial's progress.

are you still expecting your packages to arrive next weekend soapy? can you share which supplier those are coming from?


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## gww (Feb 14, 2015)

Square


> some of this discussion can easily continue in the other threads where the main topic is transitioning treated bees to tf. lets try to direct this thread back specifically to rmdial's progress.


I thought this was his origional question, however, I would love to hear about his progress and where he is getting his bees from and when and all things he shares about his about to happen experiance.
Cheers
gww


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

rmdail, so how is it going , what kind of year did you have?
GG


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