# High rates of colony survival; Good luck or good management.



## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I have been thinking about what all factors might be enabling some beekeepers to have good colony survival with very minimal treatments even be treatment free. I Have been thinking that beekeepers have varying levels of skill, and are more or less dedicated to getting the highest basic survival, aside from mite control. Some people seem to have been able to record 10% or less winter losses and others coast along at 25 or 30% losses and call it good. Your local situation controls what is practical survival targets for YOU. I am suggesting that this variance in operating methods could very well make the difference of which operator might be able to survive treatment free or not. If you are leaving a lot of money on the table in other areas you sure can also be losing a lot to mites!

Certainly we could make a list of things which favor the success of a treatment free proposition. Isolation (from transported bees) which would more easily allow local conditions adaptation, excellent foraging with wide variety etc. Feel free to add your thoughts as to what things constitute the local condition enablers.

Similarly with beekeeper habits that might contribute collectively to that extra 15% survivability that could make the difference whether treatment free would fly or not.
I am thinking of things like ensuring that colonies were not commonly allowed to go into winter with aged queens with statistically higher mortality rates. Maybe a few points improvement. Not taking scarily high percentage of bees stores rather late in the season and feeding last minute etc. Going the extra mile for winterizing even though it could have costs in labor and material. Maybe a few points could be added here and there. Suggestions?

Maybe it is something besides pure luck or misrepresentation that enables some operators to pull it off. I am not suggesting that everyone would even want to do the extra detail that might be necessary. I dont think I would, although I may have some enabling conditions. I am not having a difficult time controlling mites so it is less trouble for me than perhaps jumping through the hoops that might enable treatment free. I am highly suspicious about someone who claims to be both a treatment free and a lazy beekeeper! I dont think it happens by luck or just having the right mantra!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Here is an older guy in Siberia someplace (hope still there, but the video dated 2013).
He started his apiary from a single bee tree with some wild bees - he brought the tree down and made his first 5 hives out if it (now runs about 100).
He stays deep in the forest and keep his bees in shoddy POS hives.
He does not know what the "treatments" are.
His bees are pretty darn hot, but he does not care.
So here you go:


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Hopefully, in 2-3 short months I will still have 100% survival.
This will mean I am actually a pretty good keeper (outside of doing some crazy and highly bee-lethal experiments).
But the 2-3 short months will tell - maybe I am just full of it. 
If the bees die anyway, I will write a beekeeping book. LOL


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

crofter said:


> I am highly suspicious about someone who claims to be both a treatment free and a lazy beekeeper!


Great post, Frank. I'm not sure I have the intellectual energy to pontificate much on the discussion, but one thing I do know: Beekeeping (like any other animal husbandry effort) is hard work. So much so, that I am not sure there is such thing as a lazy beekeeper. There might however be a few lazy BEEHAVERS (all CAPS in homage to George Imirie).

I am reminded of Walt Wright's frequent mentioning of the _'5 percenters'_- things that are fairly inconsequential in-and-of-themselves, but cobbled together might account for above average performance relative to not employing that particular (and fortuitous) combination in a specific management setting. He is obviously talking in the context of honey production, but it seems reasonable this idea could be applied to other aspects of our management as well.

One such quotation: _'To recap the classification of five percenters, several worker jobs can be considered as occupying hive populations in activities that do not directly support honey production. The effects of a large portion of hive population engaged in non-production activities is difficult to measure, and is definitely not obvious to observation. But it should be easy to understand that bees engaged in work not related to your goal of honey production would make some dent in that production. Since the diversion of that portion of the work force is not readily measurable, we just arbitrarily assign that consideration to the 5 % classification. Some will be more or less of that much impact, but the combination of all of them could be worth the effort to minimize the effects.'_

Interesting questions- I will look forward to reading the feedback and maybe jumping back in if I feel I have anything worthwhile to contribute.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Litsinger said:


> There might however be a few lazy BEEHAVERS (all CAPS in homage to George Imirie).


6 years ago I would have been offended by this term. Now I'm angry when someone is a beehaver. Maybe angry is too strong of a word. Frustrated is more like it. 
I've always said that managing bees is so easy when you compare it to managing beekeepers. 

To answer Frank's inquiry, I can mostly get away with with TF beekeeping, but not management free beekeeping. Past 4 years winter losses have been around 23%. This year I'll be happy with 40%, but expecting 50%. Somewhat bad fall, but mostly my mistakes. Simple as that.
Successfull beekeeping is all about experience in my opinion. The more experience you get the better you develop the skills to manage bees. Failure is part of success. Consistent failure is maybe a sign to take on some other hobby.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Marcin said:


> I can mostly get away with with TF beekeeping, but not management free beekeeping. Past 4 years winter losses have been around 23%.


So, hold on Marcin.
You've be lurking about in the Chicago-land, mostly getting away with the TF and *STILL *getting only 23% loss?
*I am all ears.*

PS: what is "mostly"?
where in the Chicago-land?
... though I think the "mostly TF" part is the most interesting... spill the beans since now you said it!

PPS:
.......The more experience you get the better you develop the skills to manage bees.........








Rusty Berlew, April 2021, The...


I will be the 1st to say my curve looks more like this I am not sure if I am in a peak or a valley right now ;-)




www.beesource.com


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

0% winter survival rate. We shake them all out.
Let me start by saying I'm not a beekeeper, I'm a honey producer. 
NO CHEMICAL TREATMENTS. 
My 7 year avg. is 157 lb. APH. Still looking to improve my APH.
27 years on running bees my way. 
Second generation honey producer. 
Beekeepers are my best customers.
Yes I do love my job, look forward to it each day.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

The Honey Householder said:


> 0% winter survival rate. We shake them all out.
> ........


 for not shying away..


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

23% has been over the past 4 winters. Before that it was 40%-80%. I think bees have a lot to do with it -I mostly use NWC and have added Russians past 2 years. And brood breaks twice a year. Either by splitting, making up nucs, or taking out frames of capped brood. In spring I mostly will take out frames of capped brood from overwintered colonies and make up new colonies with those. It helps with swarm control too. And after the main flow - which for me is mid July regardless if there's still a flow on or not - I split everything again. Queens and open brood stay and capped brood goes into splits. Then either queens cells or virgins are inserted. Like I said it mostly works. Last year I saw about 3% of the colonies with pms. Those got treated and requeened when possible. My colonies rarely reach 45-50K bees in them so I don't have high honey yields like others around me might. It's a trade off. 
And I'm not opposed to treating. It's an option that I don't have to utilize often, but it's always available. 6+ years ago I was against treatments. Experiences change management.
I have multiple yards in NW Illinois, right up to the Wisconsin border.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

The Honey Householder said:


> 0% winter survival rate. We shake them all out.
> Let me start by saying I'm not a beekeeper, I'm a honey producer.
> NO CHEMICAL TREATMENTS.
> My 7 year avg. is 157 lb. APH. Still looking to improve my APH.
> ...


Ron makes some good honey. His wildflower honey is something that I can't produce in my area. It makes good mead. And he's nice to talk "shop" with.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Marcin said:


> I think bees have a lot to do with it -I mostly use NWC and have added Russians past 2 years.
> And brood breaks twice a year.
> I have multiple yards in NW Illinois, right up to the Wisconsin border.


OK, the bees + two brood breaks per a year + *the location(*!?)
This is NOT really the Chicago-land, as it turns out.


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## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Not now. But I did the same thing with 4-5 hives in my backyard in Chicago. And we do the same thing at my workplace in Chicago. Went from 80% loss in 2015 to having an average of 75% survival rate since winter of 2017-2018, including a year where all of the colonies survived the winter.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Marcin said:


> Not now. But I did the same thing with 4-5 hives in my backyard in Chicago. And we do the same thing at my workplace in Chicago. Went from 80% loss in 2015 to having an average of 75% survival rate since winter of 2017-2018, including a year where all of the colonies survived the winter.


Well, good for you.
Not working me the same up here though.


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## HarryVanderpool (Apr 11, 2005)

"
*Good luck or good management. (?)*
Well, I don't believe in luck so that narrows things down......


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

GregB said:


> Hopefully, in 2-3 short months I will still have 100% survival.
> This will mean I am actually a pretty good keeper (outside of doing some crazy and highly bee-lethal experiments).
> But the 2-3 short months will tell - maybe I am just full of it.
> If the bees die anyway, I will write a beekeeping book. LOL


If they die, you can write about consistent performance from your bees.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

I returned and saw under the sun that—

The race _is_ not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all.
_Ecclesiastes 9:11_

That seems to be written especially for beekeepers.

To which I add, the race is not to the swift, but that is where the smart money is.

My guess is it is a lot of unrelated factors which combine in unpredictable ways to produce inexplicable results.

By the way, if someone wants to test this, it would be an easy experiment. If success is due to a large number of independent factors, then the percent survival should follow a normal distribution. If it doesn't, then there is some factor which is dominant. Just need data from about 100 beekeepers or so, it is easy to do. Make a good masters thesis.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

If your garage falls down on your hives that is bad luck but if they starve, die from mites, water dripping on them, etc., it is not bad luck. People who have 15% or fewer losses for a number of years are not just lucky. If your management is not top notch I dont think many will get lucky being treatment free but quite a few inexperienced bet on it. It does not seem to happen unless the whole deck of cards is being well played. If your particular situation is lacking some of the most important enabling features, the most skilled person may not be able to pull off good survival TF.


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

@ A Novice; what do you think will be some of the most common traits to show up along with high survival history.


"_My guess is it is a lot of unrelated factors which combine in unpredictable ways to produce inexplicable results." _ Now that sounds like an all encompassing disclaimer.

_I returned and saw under the sun that—
The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all. _


Does a modern condensation of this become Shoot Happens?  But maybe I misinterpret it. @HarryVanderpool says he doesnt bellieve in luck!


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Well Frank I'll offer some of what I have experienced and am currently working on. in no particular order, brain dump.

Insulation ,, to use less stores and have less poop and less chalk brood in spring, and less temp swings for brood chill
My own queens to a point ,, I still bring in genitics then use them to raise more. cannot do 100% puppy mill queens
Balance of AG and Natural habitat ,, so bees have more options for blooms and Propolis IMO Apiary site is a big rock. 8% er rather than 5%
Feedable winter config ,, rather not tear into a hive in winter, not against emergency feed if needed. want to check
Genetics ,, enough said there and on this site.
narrower hive foot prints ,, taller comb, better heat profile, upright foot ball shaped cluster , rather a wide pancake.
culling bad queens the second you know you do not want them ,, deploy assets in a more optimal fashion
Having a good supply of good comb ,, allows faster supering, trapping, Splits, Lots of good comb gives you options.
Multiple sites ,, you learn faster as each is different, not all eggs in one basket (bears , floods, mites, theft)
Get or make 10 5 Frame NUCs (20% of your hive count) ,, fun and is one of the 5% ers for sustainability, Learn to winter them , they are great comb builders. have queens if/when you need them, replacement colony's on Hand. IMO no good reason no to give NUCs a go. I have 10 over wintering this winter. in 5 side by side setups.
Be open to new ideas ,, also do read the old keepers from 1800's and early1900's IMO not much has changed, except mites and non wood hive products.
Look at what works for others,, must be something there, if you do not see it , means you may be close minded. I do not know any one who "knows it all" many ways to skin the cat

GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Sounds like "Get the major things right and pick up as many of the 2 and 5 % plusses you can".  Probably necessary to have these ticked off by anyone who is managing or attempting to be treatment free. The difficulties added by TF dont allow much slack in other areas. You gotta be good to be consistently "lucky"


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## LAlldredge (Aug 16, 2018)

I have a high success rate only because I do a few things right. Mites, nutrition (including water) and winter config. After that I really don't over think it. The basics help me stay in the game. Everything else is a nice to have. 

TF people are usually highly skilled if they over winter successfully. It is not a beginner level unless you really are in the middle of nowhere.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

I would agree "need to get the basics Right"
Get bees to consistently over winter, then do the TF plays.

Maybe think of TF as extra credit, still need the main course work. 
the only luck some get IMO is genetic (have a great DCA and/or swarm catch area) AND Apiary site.
which BTW were 2 of my list....

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> ... no particular order, brain dump.


So GG's post inspired me to take a minute to think through the five-percenters somewhat systematically.

Specifically, what are the factors that might confer 'better than average' results regardless of context, but particularly in a TF approach. This is just a first-pass- I invite all comers to challenge, add on or take away from this outline. I have attempted to assign an order of priority, acknowledging that this non-scientific and somewhat subjective.

1. Genetics- Having a genetic base that more closely responds to the inherent opportunities and challenges of the local environment is maybe the single most important factor.

2. Forage- Having access to clean and abundant inputs may be just as important as the genetic base- our bees are what they eat.

3. Management- This is a big bucket and is maybe the one we as the beekeeper have the most ability to control. Hard to sort first to last and the priorities no doubt differ depending upon management priorities and climate:

A. Proactive Mite Population Control- Making timely and appropriate interventions based on the mite population dynamics (obvious I know)- but has to remain our focus.

B. Stores- Just an educated guess, but I wonder if allowing colonies plenty of time to establish their overwintering configuration (both carbohydrates and protein) is vitally important and possibly overlooked, particularly when we are managing colonies for production and working under the assumption of providing supplemental late season feed.

C. Moisture- Much has been said on this topic of late, but providing a configuration that allows the cluster to remain dry and have access to in-hive moisture during early brood rearing seems important.

D. Set-up- Employing the tools we can that afford some benefit to the colony, though hard to quantify: screened bottom boards, slatted racks, upper entrances, top insulation, etc.

E. Wild cards- Things that are not-yet well understood and possibly counterintuitive or seemingly counterproductive. Many things could be offered on this score but a few that immediately come to mind: allowing colonies to rear their fill of drones, avoiding the use of supplemental feed to bend the population and seasonal dynamic, and possibly our approach to rearing queens (i.e. grafting versus cells).

This is the best I can come up with- you all feel welcome to fire away!

Russ


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

crofter said:


> @ A Novice; what do you think will be some of the most common traits to show up along with high survival history.
> 
> 
> "_My guess is it is a lot of unrelated factors which combine in unpredictable ways to produce inexplicable results." _ Now that sounds like an all encompassing disclaimer.
> ...


Agreed. It was as all - encompassing as I could make it.

You should probably ask someone else, because I don't know. However, as usual, I have opinions, which I will share. Pretty much it is just basic beekeeping. There is no magic bee, or magic hive, or magic supplement or treatment.

The race is not to the swift. However, it is to those who are on the track, aren't wearing boots, start with the starting gun, run the right direction, stay in their lane, etc.

I think there is a lot you can do to improve your chances for winter survival, but it is all armchair science. What I think is:

1. Take care of the mite problem - however you choose to do that. It is a real problem, and if you don't take care of it in some way it will take care of your bees.
2. Make sure your bees have plenty of food in the hive. There is a reason they put up more than they need.
3. Have bees that do well in areas like yours, managed the way you manage them - whatever that means. I know that is circular, but I suspect the particular flavor of bees makes a difference.
4. Have good sized colonies going into winter.
5. If you feed, feed sugar. At least in places where it is cold for a long while, bees winter better on sugar than on honey. HFCS may work as well. I don't know. If you couldn't poop for 5 months, you'd want a very low fiber diet too. If your fall honey is dark and has a lot of indigestible matter, you may want to replace it with sugar if your winters are long. If you are wintering bees 80 miles inland in Alaska, you probably need to do that. If you are wintering them in Alabama, not so much.
6. Have young, vigorous queens in your hives. (I like to get them to live as long as possible, but that probably isn't helping winter survival.)
7. Try and find out what other beeks in your area are doing, and if it works, consider doing it.
8. Especially if you are in a very cold or dry or wet area, figure out what sort of insulation and ventilation works for you, and do it. A sheltered location for your hives may be helpful.
9. Location, location, location. It looks like that makes a big difference. Not sure what makes some locations better than others, but there are lots of potential reasons.
10. At this time of year (for most of us in the colder parts of North America) don't worry about your bees. Nothing you can do anyway.


If you do all that, (armchair science again - this time with numbers!) you should get to somewhere between 20% winter survival and 100% winter survival. The rest is due to other stuff.

Summer losses are another topic.

Take my advice at your peril.

Jon


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

LAlldredge said:


> TF people are usually highly skilled if they over winter successfully. It is not a beginner level unless you really are in the middle of nowhere.


It depends; it depends a lot.

In a "(near) perfect TF setup" - you just go about your business.
Such places exist - beyond doubt.

The idea of skilled vs. non-skilled pretty much irrelevant to the TF - it has everything to do with getting your bee production results (honey, bees, queens, etc) and keeping the stock alive to continue.

Look at "Tim Ives" (currently banned and mb for the better)..
Is he NOT skilled?
I argue just the opposite - he is a skilled beekeeper (regardless if you like him or despise him).

Is he "skilled at TF"?
Heck - no.
He needs to do nothing about all this "TF minutia".
He just goes about his honey production and that is that.

Basically, this "skilled at TF" thing is not much about you.
It is about the hand of cards given to you.

The skill is about keeping your bees alive and productive (in your line of business) - with the cards given to you.
The skill is also about recognizing the cards given to you - and making the best out of them (e.g. recognizing if you can get away with TF or not; is the TF worth it you; is the TF aligns with your priorities or not).


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Litsinger said:


> 1. Genetics- Having a genetic base that more closely responds to the inherent opportunities and challenges of the local environment is maybe the single most important factor.


And that at a robust population level.
Whatever is at the population level - will overrun most any "white crows".

The rest of the factors may still move a needle, but only complementing the #1.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregB said:


> The skill is about keeping your bees alive and productive - with the cards given to you.
> The skill is also about recognizing the cards given to you - and making the best out of them (e.g. recognizing if you can get away with TF or not).


Greg:

I think I understand and appreciate where you are coming from and agree with you. I would only add two thoughts:

1. The skills necessary to be successful at TF largely mirror those necessary to be successful in any management context, and this involves the immutable aspects of bee biology, but also the management approaches necessary to be successful in the unique setting one finds themself in. To borrow your Tim Ives analogy, I contend he has a good handle on the mite dynamics in his context, and based on recent posts he has made on the Michigan TF Beekeeper's group, he has thought deeply about most of these things, and determined what they mean in his operation. 

2. There may be some who find themselves in a charmed environment that no-doubt makes TF easier than in other environments, and thus affords them the opportunity to be more 'ignorant' of the rather skilled and nuanced measures many have to employ to move toward TF. Regardless, they have to become aware of mite population dynamics and their resultant impact on colonies or apiaries, or they won't be in beekeeping long.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Litsinger said:


> To borrow your Tim Ives analogy, *I contend he has a good handle on the mite dynamics in his context, *and based on recent posts he has made on the Michigan TF Beekeeper's group, he has thought deeply about most of these things, and determined what they mean in his operation.


OK I was not aware.
So maybe he is even more skilled than I assumed.
But also he has been dealt a very strong hand it would appear - that much needs to be appreciated and accounted for.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

I wonder about all the TF stuff and the "management" seems bees have had neither for 10 million years.

Now if a crop and or pollination, selling bees by the pound Etc. has a play then , Management would come back in to the profitability column. So managing cash flow, either way, is a more inline with my thinking process.

the bees do not "need" management to be on the planet. We need management to reduce loss to a point then increase profit.

GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The bees were doing well for millions of years till we came along and moved a parasite from a different continent on a different breed of bee, into its new playpen on this continent. We really need not worry about "saving the Bee". If we left the scene (which could well happen) some kind of a tolerable (to the bee) relationship would likely develop. Might take thousands of years but there is no shortage of them. It is only you and I that are running out of years!


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

TF management doesn't work for me, and I'm not even trying to move in that direction.
When the queen breeders (not the queen producers) figure out a genetic solution, I'll use it IF it's cheaper than treating, BUT those bees have to produce enough to pay for themselves, and me.
I suppose good management means different things to different people and operations, but for me good management means doing whatever it takes to keep my bees healthy. Healthy bees are productive bees (usually).
Good Management for me means managing to:

get treatments on, on time (with guidance from Randy O's mite model),
make sure colonies have the food they need for winter (honey, syrup, whatever)
monitor queen performance to make sure productivity stays high (young queens)
maintain a great relationship with the landowners (chat with them and give them honey)


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Glad to see we are getting to a consensus.

The most important thing in science is not to fool yourself. Because you are the easiest person to fool.
After that, all you need is basic honesty to not fool anyone else. Richard Feynmann


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

A. Novice wrote: 
By the way, if someone wants to test this, it would be an easy experiment. If success is due to a large number of independent factors, then the percent survival should follow a normal distribution. 

Me: a normal distribution, like a bell curve? You need to come to Menomonee Falls for coffee, and I will show you some wonky data, and how it started in the 60's.

The most important factor in overwintering? The age and/or contamination levels in your comb. Resulots of an experiment should be in the end of March.

Crazy Roland


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Roland said:


> A. Novice wrote:
> By the way, if someone wants to test this, it would be an easy experiment. If success is due to a large number of independent factors, then the percent survival should follow a normal distribution.
> 
> Me: a normal distribution, like a bell curve? You need to come to Menomonee Falls for coffee, and I will show you some wonky data, and how it started in the 60's.
> ...


It will be interesting to see the data.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> A. Novice wrote:
> By the way, if someone wants to test this, it would be an easy experiment. If success is due to a large number of independent factors, then the percent survival should follow a normal distribution.
> 
> Me: a normal distribution, like a bell curve? You need to come to Menomonee Falls for coffee, and I will show you some wonky data, and how it started in the 60's.
> ...


hopefully the data you glean will be interesting to the seeker of knowledge.
GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

A _cost to benefit _analysis of colony survival could have considerably different numbers for different people. Far different values can be placed on the cost of labor for a sideliner or commercial operator compared to someone who has a few hives for entertainment. Bragging rights on survival numbers could be important for some but definitely not for others. How easily and cheaply you can produce queen replacements can be a big factor. That could range from next to nothing all the way up to a hundred dollars. 
If a person is trying to get maximum honey dollars they are unlikely to leave much honey on hives for winter and wont be doing any amount of excess feeding just for insurance.

At one point in time my son was running approx 40 colonies in SE Ontario; I had 8. With full time work and commuting, time was his scarcest resource. He pulled honey later, open fed, lost some to robbing, did not do elaborate winterizing etc., and usually had at least 25% deadouts and occasionally more with anything unusual like a false spring. He grafted on the seat of his four wheeler and made up 3 frame splits in rather crudely divided deep boxes; replacement was cheap and easy. He did not spend a lot of time on swarm prevention.

In contrast at that time I had had zero winter losses but with unlimited time to spend and the main focus on showing that I could indeed keep the bees alive, engaged in a lot of fussing around. Not right or wrong.

What is bad though is when a person has losses continually and does not know why. I dont think we can ever be sure of avoiding the black swan events that we cant see coming.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

crofter said:


> A _cost to benefit _analysis of colony survival could have considerably different numbers for different people.


Good point, Frank. It reminds me of the thought that Dr. Sharashkin often espouses of looking at productivity as the amount of profit produced per labor hour expended. I could see how this thought could be applied to survival as well- the ubiquitous 80/20 rule of expending inordinate time/effort to squeeze a bit more blood out of the proverbial turnip.

Or as the esteemed Roger Patterson would deadpan, "_Don't be mollycoddling 'em."_

For reference, here is the approach Dr. Leo is suggesting, quoted from his SARE grant:

_'Using this approach we were able to produce a honey crop of avg. 20 lb / hive. While this would be considered a very modest honey output, it should be considered that a) we did not move the hives around, so there was no expense of hauling the hives; the produced honey is specific to the place and has distinct flavor; b) this honey was produced completely chemical-free (no treatments), sugar-free (no sugar-feeding) and with minimal expenditures of labor, and c) because of these properties, we’re successfully marketing this honey at $20/lb (2015 crop sold out in a matter of two months), 2016 crop ½ sold out as of Jan. 1, 2017) and are therefore able to make robust profit-per-hive comparable with more-intensive beekeeping operations.'_


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## little_john (Aug 4, 2014)

I get the impression that this thread has become confused ...
There are two completely separate issues here: one is Colony Survival, period. The other is Colony Survival in the context of Treatment or None-Treatment. I'm not sure how anyone can make a valid comment regarding the second of these, unless they have (or have had) a foot in both camps.

Re: Colony Survival generally speaking, I'd say beekeeper management plays a pivotal role: young queens, ensuring adequate feed for Winter, reducing cavity size, and so on - the usual stuff.

Re: Colony Survival in the context of treatment, I hold the view that pre-emptive Oxalic Acid strikes against Varroa both in early Autumn (Fall) and in mid-Winter are essential in order to keep this pest under control. I can't comment regarding Treatment-Free methods or outcomes.

Does Luck ever play a part ? Certainly. Britain is a country with highly unpredictable weather right throughout the year, but weather during the Winter period is of paramount concern. A cold Winter followed by a warm Spring is ideal for the beekeeper, but a warm Winter followed by a cold Spring - even a relatively short cold snap - can prove catastrophic. Seasoned beekeepers can usually cope with this scenario ok, it's invariably beginners who get caught out and lose their colonies from starvation. And, as we humans have zero control over the weather, such vagaries can reasonably be considered as being either lucky, or unlucky events - imo, of course. 
LJ


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Dont we all have an interest in treatments or alternatives. I dont think there should be as much adversarial rhetoric. . Examine what tools we all have available to us to keep bees alive and evaluate the limitations if we choose to shun some of them. I thought it a good exercise in discussion while leaving the ideological "camp" identification behind.

I think that "beekeeper management plays a pivotal role" was pretty well agreed on, in fact that it was essential. Being treatment free adds a degree of difficulty to the management.

The vagueries of weather is a given but as individuals we can be more or less cautious about building a cushion against many of them. This fits into the economic weighing of whether or not we choose a belt and suspenders approach to many facets of beekeeping.

Beekeeping will never be an exact science. Best we can hope for is to make more educated guesses.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Litsinger said:


> Genetics- Having a genetic base that more closely responds to the inherent opportunities and challenges of the local environment is maybe the single most important factor.



In their aponida presentations bolth comfort and webster put location above genetics

we see this in the The COLOSS Genotype-Environment Interactions Experiment... the unselected commercial bees placed at Avignon survived and advage 711 days untreated. Avignon is of course the location of the famous TF bees that had a max of 16% losses over 7 years of study (Le Conte et al., 2007) ) when they moved those TF bees to other locations there survival was on the low side compared to the unselect commercial stocks.



GregB said:


> The idea of skilled vs. non-skilled pretty much irrelevant to the TF


I completely disagree, beekeeping is a skill, an art, a science..
We often hear "all beekeeping is local" and that is kinda true.. but most often it means subtle and often unperceived management.

those who are successful often feel its there management, those who are not blame the environment and genetics

going back to the general question at hand
from the GEI


> Here, we established a standardised active monitoring network for 5 798 apiaries over two consecutive years to quantify honey bee colony mortality across 17 European countries. Our data demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had symptoms of bacterial infection and heavy Varroa infestation. Our data highlight beekeeper background and apicultural practices as major drivers of honey bee colony losses.





> Our results show that the main factors protecting honey bee colonies are beekeeper background and practices. More efforts are needed in beekeeper training to promote good beekeeping practices and achieve early identification of clinical signs of disease.











A pan-European epidemiological study reveals honey bee colony survival depends on beekeeper education and disease control


Reports of honey bee population decline has spurred many national efforts to understand the extent of the problem and to identify causative or associated factors. However, our collective understanding of the factors has been hampered by a lack of joined up trans-national effort. Moreover, the...




journals.plos.org


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

> > GregB said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I subscribe to what @little_john says.
Pretty much letting LJ to speak:



> I get the impression that this thread has become confused ...
> There are two completely separate issues here: one is Colony Survival, period. The other is Colony Survival in the context of Treatment or None-Treatment...........


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

crofter said:


> A _cost to benefit _analysis of colony survival could have considerably different numbers for different people. Far different values can be placed on the cost of labor for a sideliner or commercial operator compared to someone who has a few hives for entertainment. Bragging rights on survival numbers could be important for some but definitely not for others. How easily and cheaply you can produce queen replacements can be a big factor. That could range from next to nothing all the way up to a hundred dollars.
> If a person is trying to get maximum honey dollars they are unlikely to leave much honey on hives for winter and wont be doing any amount of excess feeding just for insurance.
> 
> At one point in time my son was running approx 40 colonies in SE Ontario; I had 8. With full time work and commuting, time was his scarcest resource. He pulled honey later, open fed, lost some to robbing, did not do elaborate winterizing etc., and usually had at least 25% deadouts and occasionally more with anything unusual like a false spring. He grafted on the seat of his four wheeler and made up 3 frame splits in rather crudely divided deep boxes; replacement was cheap and easy. He did not spend a lot of time on swarm prevention.
> ...


Agreed.

It is the whole cost-benefit tradeoff.

A long-time beekeeper, who runs about 20 hives now as he is retired, commented to me that the hives he started on packages built up better and produced more than the hives he overwintered. He is a bit frustrated because he can see that shaking out the bees in the fall makes more financial sense than all the work involved in overwintering them. Plus, he could save most of the time spent on swarm control, and mite management would be much easier with package bees and a new queen, and no plans to overwinter them.

On the other hand, he doesn't really want to keep bees that way, even though it would probably work better financially.

Everyone's situation is different.

I have to admit, when The Honey Householder said he shook out all of his bees in the fall, I thought to myself - I could volunteer to shake out a few of his hives. Shake them into a bin, throw them on some drawn comb, feed them up, and they'd probably make it through the winter just fine. Would the time and effort be more than the cost of buying a package in the spring? Probably.

Maybe a better way to word the question would be:

Are beekeepers whose wintering losses are lower than they need to be successful doing something or are they just luckier than beekeepers whose winter losses are too high for them to be successful?
Successful being defined differently depending on what they want to accomplish.

My own situation is somewhat ambivalent. I have 5 colonies in 3 hives. I would like to get to 4 colonies in two hives, so ideally, it would be helpful to me if I lost one or two this winter. For reasons which are complicated and unusual, I would like to have most or all of my colonies be trapped swarms. Only two of my colonies currently are trapped swarms.

So, on the one hand, it would be convenient for me to lose a colony, or two, or three.

On the other hand, I take some satisfaction in being able to get my bees through the winter successfully. So I did most everything I know to do to improve their chances. Most of it makes very little sense from a financial perspective.

Enjoy your bees!

Jon


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

GregB said:


> The idea of skilled vs. non-skilled pretty much irrelevant to the TF - it has everything to do with getting your bee production results (honey, bees, queens, etc) and keeping the stock alive to continue.


So, there are certain parameters with appropriate value ranges - within which we all operate:

winter temperatures - cold to warm
summer temperatures - cool to hot
mite pressure - non-existent - very high
surrounding bee density - non-existent - very high
foraging base - non-existent - very good
<keep plugging here the parameters> - from X to Y

With these parameters we operate.
For any specific setting - people's approaches are different.
People choose to insulate from 0% to 100%; people choose different approaches to insulate too.
In the mite-related context - some people choose to treat with X/others choose to treat with Y/others choose to NOT treat

All in all, we should be talking of the existing mite pressure as an example of the external parameters. 
So now we can see how skilled OR non-skilled a person is under the existing mite pressure handling.

Not TF vs. non-TF (as in skilled vs. non-skilled). Eh? What?...
The entire setup is commingled and confused.
Thus - "idea of skilled vs. non-skilled pretty much irrelevant to the TF context" (added the word "context" for clarification).


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

msl said:


> In their aponida presentations bolth comfort and webster put location above genetics
> 
> we see this in the The COLOSS Genotype-Environment Interactions Experiment... the unselected commercial bees placed at Avignon survived and advage 711 days untreated. Avignon is of course the location of the famous TF bees that had a max of 16% losses over 7 years of study (Le Conte et al., 2007) ) when they moved those TF bees to other locations there survival was on the low side compared to the unselect commercial stocks.
> 
> ...


couple comments
the End of the paper has :
Our results demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with Our results demonstrate that overwinter losses ranged between 2% and 32%, and that high summer losses were likely to follow high winter losses. Multivariate Poisson regression models revealed that hobbyist beekeepers with small apiaries and little experience in beekeeping had double the winter mortality rate when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease during the visits, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had often symptoms of bacterial infection and/or heavy _Varroa_ infestation observed during the visits. Our results show that the main factors protecting honey bee colonies are beekeeper background and practices. More efforts are needed in beekeeper training to promote good beekeeping practices and achieve early identification of clinical signs of disease and *little experience* in beekeeping *had double the winter mortality rate *when compared to professional beekeepers. Furthermore, honey bees kept by professional beekeepers never showed signs of disease during the visits, unlike apiaries from hobbyist beekeepers that had often symptoms of bacterial infection and/or heavy _Varroa_ infestation observed during the visits.* Our results show that the main factors protecting honey bee colonies are beekeeper background and practices. *

So there you have it.

Whole thread here.........

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Second post for same study

*comments and opinions*

Study population studied and retained variables
To calculate the colony mortality rates, only the apiaries with three consecutive visits and consistent data (*so throw out inconsistent data, And if it is a really bad data point don't go back for the 3rd visit. *)needed for mortality calculation were included. Data consistency was tested through several checks applied to the dataset including some editing (* we will just fill in these few balnks...*) to retain as much data as possible for analysis [25]. The consistency between various variables was checked; for exemple, the number of colonies randomly selected at the first visit and information reported at the second visit; the number of colonies randomly selected at the first visit and the size of the apiary; or the number of colonies owned by the beekeeper and the size of the apiary. After quality checking, 2 332 apiaries (out of 3 053) (*ok 2332 out of 3053, who thru out the 23% of the Apairies and why*) were retained for the analysis in the first year and 2 426 apiaries (out of 2 745) for the second year. Apiary was designated as the epidemiological unit.

Among the available *138 variables* in 12 tables, 36 were selected for the statistical analysis after a Delphi-like selection. In summary, these 36 retained variables were related to the beekeeper (age, activity and experience in beekeeping), the operation type (type of production i.e. honey, pollen, queens), the operation scale (the number of colonies owned by the beekeeper, the number of colonies in the visited apiary), the husbandry (honey bee subspecies [26], swarms and queens produced or bought), the disease state, whether depopulation had been observed in the apiary (clinical signs and mortality of colonies or honey bees observed before and during site visits) and the landscape surrounding the apiary. They were used as explanatory variables with the seasonal and the winter mortalities as response variables. With the seasonal mortality as response variable, the previous winter mortality was included as a supplementary explanatory variable.

*Seems room a plenty here for scope creep or Bias, Sure these are somewhat standard test practices.
Hence my in general, tend to not take as gospel studies. Some of the people some of the time, in some scenario Absolutely do the following....

GG *


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Looking back at the thread opener I see that I wrote can where I intended cannot. _If you are leaving a lot of money on the table in other areas you sure *can* also be losing a lot to mites! _ Should have read " *If you are leaving a lot of money on the table in other areas you sure cannot also be losing a lot to mites! *

Various posts brought out the essentials of successful management critical to any method of beekeeping. To do so while also being treatment free adds enormously to the degree of difficulty. I dont think many would disagree with that. I would be more for discouraging that for anyone embarking on beekeeping. That needs high quality management of all the basics in addition to a lot of fortuitous circumstances of location. Quite a bit of attention was drawn to that. 

Thought provoking or simply provoking?

Lots of meat in in GG last two posts, while I was typing this.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

msl said:


> In their aponida presentations bolth comfort and webster put location above genetics


Good post as usual, MSL. Hard to argue your logic.

Your reference to the GEI reminded me of this aspect of the research:

The influence of genetic origin and its interaction with environmental effects on the survival of Apis mellifera L. colonies in Europe

As you point out, _'The survival duration was strongly affected by environmental factors (apiary effects) and, to a lesser degree, by the genotypes and origin of queens. 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.'_

What I am left to wonder (and they touch on briefly in the research), is what are the specific mechanism(s) at work that comport higher survivorship at specific locations regardless of genetic origin- I wonder if these locations have the happy circumstance of affording a situation that allows for relatively few 'fatal' alleles- i.e. an environment where bees with relatively disparate traits can do well enough despite their genetic proclivities?

As they point out in the study, I expect most areas fall into this latter category:

_ Ecological studies have shown that genotype × environment interaction is an indicator for local adaptation and fitness. The most important form of this interaction is antagonistic pleiotropy, whereby different alleles have opposite effects on fitness in different habitats. This implies that no single genotype is superior in all environments, leading to a trade-off in adaptation to different habitats (Fry, 1993). _


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> What I am left to wonder (and they touch on briefly in the research), is what are the specific mechanism(s) at work that comport higher survivorship at specific locations regardless of genetic origin- I wonder if these locations have the happy circumstance of affording a situation that allows for relatively few 'fatal' alleles- i.e. an environment where bees with relatively disparate traits can do well enough despite their genetic proclivities?


An opinion, based on 12 or so Apiary sites over 40 years.
Clean water VRS runoff from fields being sprayed, bees drink urin so IMO they do not have a clean meter in the mandible,
Clean soils to push out clean Nectar, VRS say a junkyard where lots of stuff is in the dirt. or sprayed places like orchards
Clean soils also push cleaner Propolis , and pollen
Clean relates back to clean combs. IMO some places need comb, rotation, When? What if you do not?
While talking propolis, many "envelope" discussion, the meat is in the diversity and non polluted. not so much in the roughing the interior. example I have 50 Tree species they collect from and you have 7 who has the "better" propolis.
Varity of bloom, Several studies on each single pollen having a profile with a few good components, with Many pollens there is a high likely hood of a completely balanced profile. Same thing Math helps, with woods near you have Poplar Maple, Basswood, Apple, Chery, Locus, Sumac and a bunch of other blooms, Then in the fields , Dandelion, thistle , goldenrod etc. Heavy AG can have some species either sprayed dead , or living and blooming in well sprayed soils. So you want a bloom profile that has 3-5 things blooming at all times.
Wind, Air ,draft some places are cooler or more windy these have an effect even if slight. then add Smog, exhaust, etc. to the air and the site matters.
Local DCAs,,,, many hives supersede or swarm or have a queen pinched during inspection, bottom line you are at times mating a queen, weather you are aware or not, if your DCA is crap, in time this has a drag on your Apiary.

think community, some places we people live nice lives, now think ghettos, maybe not so nice lives. Bees have good habitat and poor habitat as well. A less good immune system can mean a lot to a hive. Best immune system for people is clean living,, good diet, Not a stretch to find this matters to bees as well.

IMO Apiary site a big rock A 5%er.

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

> msl said:





> In their aponida presentations bolth comfort and webster put location above genetics


Which is closely and directly related to the local population genetics.

Some locations support a stable population with certain features (once established).
Other locations - not so much.
You can spend a lot of time and effort and money in trying to establish a population in a crappy location - it will be time wasted.

The location by itself means nothing - it is just a spot on a map.
In the beekeeping context, location means presence of a sustainable population which is able to exist at this particular location for some reason (known or unknown).

Good location ~ ability to sustain a population with certain desirable features (in the beekeeping context!!). That is what the location means.

So, still must have the bees first.
No bees - nothing to talk about.
Once having the bees - ok, now we can try to find a good spot for them.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Relevant to this talk...

According to @mike bispham *,* this says it all:


> two key things were in my favour:* feral bees and relative isolation*. I have zero varroa problems now.











Treatment Free: It's a path, not a solution


Is there any information, studies if you will, on how far drones travel to breed? Treated drones, I am sure you are aware, could hamper your TF work.




www.beesource.com


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregB said:


> So, still must have the bees first.
> No bees - nothing to talk about.
> Once having the bees - ok, now we can try to find a good spot for them.


IF the SPOT is good/great , it will have bees. 
in the last 200 years here in the US, there have been bees in every county, many swarmed. Pockets exist where the location is great for bees.

what came first the Spot or the bees.

So I'll take the bet on the Spot.. If you build it they will come.

GG


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Litsinger said:


> What I am left to wonder (and they touch on briefly in the research), is what are the specific mechanism(s) at work that comport higher survivorship at specific locations regardless of genetic origin


The Landes ecotype comes to mind (more or less the poster child for local adapted bees)



> Louveaux et al. (1966) described behavioral differences in several A. mellifera populations in France, designated as ecotypes of the subspecies A. m. mellifera. One of the ecotypes, in the Landes of southwest France, inhabited a coastal plain stretching from Bordeaux south and east from the Atlantic to the city of Mont de Marsan. The regional flora was dominated by two major nectar producing plants, alder buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula L.) in late May through early June and common heather (Calluna vulgaris L.) in September. By measuring the area of brood (developing larval and pupal bees) monthly throughout the season, Louveaux et al. (1966) were able to show that the colony produced more bees to coincide with these periods of high food availability. Specifically, they found that brood production increased slowly in the springtime, peaking immediately before the flowering of the black alder in May. After the black alder bloom, brood production decreased in late June and July, but increased again preceding the heather bloom in August. _Subsequently, Louveaux (1973) moved several colonies of the Landes ecotype several hundred kilometers north to Bures-sur-Yvette, France and observed the same annual colony cycle, independent of location and to the detriment of the colony. While a late season colony population increase was beneficial in the presence of the heavily producing heather plant, it was maladaptive without a late season food source and Louveaux had difficulty keeping this ecotype alive in Bures-sur-Yvette_





https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1051/apido:2007012.pdf


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> what came first the Spot or the bees.


Any "spot" in America was there *for millions of years.*
Bees - 300 years? Maybe?
Of course the Spot. 

But truly - for anything in beekeeping - the bees come first.
Else - there is nothing to talk about.
Like, absolutely nothing.
Bees always first, no "buts" or "ifs".
It is the bees, man.

No bees - time to look for another hobby (spot or no spot).
No more beekeeping.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

msl said:


> The Landes ecotype comes to mind (more or less the poster child for local adapted bees)
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Interesting
the moved bees had the similar seasonal brooding patterns of the old location.
Where would that memory be? in the Queen, the rest of the bees have died by the next year.
in the layers of bees bread? Try to wrap my mind around, moving the hive and them doing poorly have brood patterns of where they came from. Brail dots on the inside of the comb? Passed information from nurse bee to Larvae.
This is odd data to be sure. there has to be communication of some sort we do not even have a clue about.

be interesting to move just the Queen add to local bees.
Move queen less bees, re queen with local.
Move comb only , put in local bees.
Hmm where is the data base of local flowers??
My Bet is the comb, cell has 6 sides, so 6 bit hex coding, in the cell bases of a certain area of the brood nest.
programed with the Amino acids of the pollen for each time period (moon).....

Makes me think AG area is poorer as it is not the same each year, beans, then corn , then Alfalfa. unless it is always the same, like in Manitoba with Canola each and every year.

Now I'll not get any sleep tonight,,,, how do last years bees tell this years bees when to brood up.
That is a future SARE grant.
just when you think you have a clue Bam

GG

Any one wants to do this test, I'll hire on, I'm more than intrigued.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Gray Goose said:


> This is odd data to be sure.


no, just a genetic trait... move genetical aggressive bees to a new site and they are still aggressive, move bees that start brooding up in late winter and they still do that (for the most part)... I think of Ian Steplar's bees siting in a dark climate controlled shed, yet they start brood rearing suggesting there is some non weather/light cycle timer the bees can use to trigger behavior 



Gray Goose said:


> Where would that memory be?


not memory, genetic traits


> Colonies from the Landes could be differentiated from non-local French A. m. mellifera populations using morphometric analysis, and from non-native and reference populations using mtDNA and microsatellites. Seven morphological characters were identified by discriminant analysis as informative for delineating the Landes ecotype from other A. m. mellifera populations. Mitochondrial haplotypes for the population were characterized and five microsatellite loci were found to be informative in characterizing the Landes population. Asymmetric gene flow detected with microsatellite alleles was observed to be 5.5–5.9% from imported to native stocks of honey bees while introgression of native microsatellite alleles into imported colonies was 21.6%.







__





Morphological and molecular characterization of the Landes honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) ecotype for genetic conservation - PubAg







pubag.nal.usda.gov




the most interring thing is they are still there after 60 or so years of people moving bees around, but if you breeding form the ones that make a fall bumper crop (do to brooding up when outher lines shut down) I can see it sticking


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

MSL

_Subsequently, Louveaux (1973) moved several colonies of the Landes ecotype several hundred kilometers north to Bures-sur-Yvette, France and *observed the same annual colony cycle, independent of location and** to the detriment of the colony. While a late season colony population increase was beneficial in the presence of the heavily producing heather plant, it was maladaptive without a late season food source and Louveaux had difficulty keeping this ecotype alive* in Bures-sur-Yvette

I read this they moved bees doing good on 2 local blooms to a "new " place
the bees had the same cycle in the new place they had in the old, expecting the bloom
even to their detriment.

not genetic, location independent memory.

how would response to black alder and heather be genetic??
we hear many times , bees doing great, I want some , move them , they do poor. "the local bees" thing
if this was true we by now would have "genetic response to Almonds" would we not

I do not see the bees genes shifting to a brood up cycle for a specific bloom, these Cues are learned somehow IMO._
also interesting is workers take 21 days to hatch, 6-10 more to be a field bee minimum. so the bees/queen know a month in advance of a "coming local" bloom. not genetic,, of course this is My Opinion, as neither of us have the decoder ring.

IF this was genetic, Ian's bees would be "gened up " for canola,, In time he should roll his own queens and not have any luck with "bought" queens. And the "Buckfast" is a mix of many bees, what blooms are in their DNA, brother Adam brought in bees from far flung places, the blooms at the Abby were very different, He would have had some inkling of this.

GG

I

my mind does not go to Genetic, sorry. does not compute.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

The "Bull of the Woods" would claim that a queen in it's second season was better than the first because she knew the routine of the seasons.

Crazy Roland


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## Beejiujitsu (Oct 1, 2021)

HarryVanderpool said:


> "
> *Good luck or good management. (?)*
> Well, I don't believe in luck so that narrows things down......


Right, luck isn't consistently reproducible.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Beejiujitsu said:


> Right, luck isn't consistently reproducible.


Unless the "luck"* is* that surrounding environment which allows the management (or the lack thereof) to succeed.
Looks like in some case the "luck" is very much reproducible.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Gray Goose said:


> not genetic, location independent memory.


rather then type a lengthy response, I am going to ask you to present scientific support for your position.


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## 30WCF (Dec 9, 2021)

I treat, so I can’t speak for that, but I do keep bees. I haven’t been keeping percentages, but I have grown steadily.
You mentioned misrepresentation. If I see a hive is failing, but otherwise not a health concern, I combine it. How everyone perceives that may vary. I’m not keeping tally, but haven’t felt like it was a lost hive, even though, if not combined, it was a dead hive. Maybe they just didn’t have enough stores, or were shrinking due to a late mated queen or something, but that hive was doomed. If someone puts that hive in the “not a dead hive, pile of dead bees” column it doesn’t look so bad. If someone puts that in a “lost hive” column it’s a lost hive.

Part 2 is just having a knack for something. It’s not about effort or knowledge. I could regurgitate out all the bee knowledge in the world, try as hard as I “mite”, and just fall on my face. I could be a boob who is just good at getting things done and has good instinct and be a success. 
I don’t see the tangible world and see things I can’t fix. If something breaks I fix it with style. Things I have never seen before I can fix or build, be it concrete and rebar or resistors and relays. I’m not tooting my horn, and I am young in the beekeeping world. I’m in NC. This isn’t where you go move to to make honey. This is my second winter. I know, this is when people get full of themselves, but I can’t give the bees or the honey away fast enough. I started with two nucs. The end of that first summer I had 2 hives and 2 nucs. They wintered over wonderfully. By summer I had (8) 10 frame hives. I gave a couple double 10s away, did some splits and late season combines and I am going into winter now with 4 hives and 2 nucs. I expect to lose 2 of them, but I’m playing a game and learning. The first year I took one frame of honey for a taste. This year I bottled twice and have been making random gifts of it and took 24lbs to the company Christmas party and gave it all to the co-workers. I still have a couple cases on the shelf. It’s not a bottom line for me. It’s a hobby that is in the end, inconsequential. So, I can, and absolutely have taken advise, and things I’ve read and tossed it right out the window, to do what makes sense to me.
I’m not saying you’re not handy, she’s not handy or that guy over there isn’t handy, but handy has a lot to do with it. Maybe handy is a better word than lucky. 
I’ll probably loose them all this year now.


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## tbishop (Feb 28, 2012)

After 58 years of keeping bees, my philosophy of beekeeping is simply do right  by the bees. Dead bees are worthless. In 2015 I changed from going for the maximum honey crop to bees
first. The following rules are what I followed:
#1- keep the stress off of the bees.
Good boxes
Honey and pollen available, all of the time
#2- good queens
#3- stock that can survive my locale
#4- stock that can replace queen and rebuild themselves.
#5- surprising, stock that can swarm. 
#6-KEEP THE MITES OFF OF THE BEES. My locale is prone to
mite bombs in the fall. I utilize Apivar starting in mid August, with a OA treatment(at least 1)
in October.
#7- All hives are weighed digitally before November 10th. Light hives supplemented utilizing
mountain camp method.
#8- All hives wrapped using synthetic roof underlayment.
#9- Piece of styrafoam between outer and inner cover.
I have followed these rules for the last 6 years. My losses have steadily dropped. At the beginning I was experiencing 50% loss. Last year my loss had decreased to 22%. I also 
include hives lost starting July 1st till April 1st of the following year. Most of my losses are 
with my young hives. Queen problems are the leading problems with wintering in my locale.
Prior to mites, my winter losses were less than 5%. So we are slowly edging our way to that
prior loss level.. Interesting enough, my honey crop has increased substantially due hive numbers and increased hive yields


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## 30WCF (Dec 9, 2021)

Don’t take this the wrong way, cause I’m pointing it at me. But you said queen problems are the leading problems in the winter. This comes back to how folks report things.
I’m a bit of a gambler. If I go into winter with a weak queen, can I / should I call that a lost hive if my dumb butt went into winter with a hive I knew wasn’t 90% or whatever % chance of survival. At some point it’s an unintentional experiment and not a factor in real hive loss.
Again, that’s not an insult, it’s a gamble, but people may report it as a loss, when maybe it wasn’t probable to begin with.


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## tbishop (Feb 28, 2012)

30WCF said:


> Don’t take this the wrong way, cause I’m pointing it at me. But you said queen problems are the leading problems in the winter. This comes back to how folks report things.
> I’m a bit of a gambler. If I go into winter with a weak queen, can I / should I call that a lost hive if my dumb butt went into winter with a hive I knew wasn’t 90% or whatever % chance of survival. At some point it’s an unintentional experiment and not a factor in real hive loss.
> Again, that’s not an insult, it’s a gamble, but people may report it as a loss, when maybe it wasn’t probable to begin with.


I agree with your thoughts. Once the summer solstice occurs, I have all of my hives setup for upcoming winter. I know that sounds dumb, but over the last 40 years my main flow seems to be come in July(same time as the soybeans bloom). I gear my beekeeping operation to have my nucs and production hives ready. As soon as August hits, honey off, mite IPM on going till
cold weather. Now my losses seem to concentrate on queens giving out in August/September.
That has been consistent over the last few years. When I make nucs, I make sure that the bees are given the best chance I can offer to be successful. However, the nucs queen gets going, excellent pattern, good growth, then downhill in late fall. I think the queens are not mating completely. We have some [email protected]#[email protected]# weather in the spring. Last year we 4 inches of snow late April with a freeze in May. I'm gathering data this year to get a clearer picture of what is happening.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> The "Bull of the Woods" would claim that a queen in it's second season was better than the first because she knew the routine of the seasons.
> 
> Crazy Roland


Actual experience, is a great lead.
I can see she would remember, however is she swarms out or is Newley emerged, then perhaps there is a lower back up laying rate.
I can see this as a way, to calibrate, laying, due to the fact in the old days queens lasted for 3-5 years and were considered normal, not freaks.

so if you requeen every year, this is out the window then .

you have had more queens than I do you see the second year queen better tailored to the local flows?

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

msl said:


> rather then type a lengthy response, I am going to ask you to present scientific support for your position.


we are breaking ground here.
ergo no support yet for a decade or so.
Some days I think of the past and look at "papers" .
Some days I look to the future , where they are yet to be written.

totally agree why has this work not been done? and papered?

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

tbishop said:


> After 58 years of keeping bees, my philosophy of beekeeping is simply do right by the bees. Dead bees are worthless. In 2015 I changed from going for the maximum honey crop to bees
> first. The following rules are what I followed:
> #1- keep the stress off of the bees.
> Good boxes
> ...


you mentioned "queen" and "stock" couple times, do you make yours or do walk aways or buy them?
just trying to flesh out your reply a bit.

GG


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Gray Goose said:


> MSL
> 
> _Subsequently, Louveaux (1973) moved several colonies of the Landes ecotype several hundred kilometers north to Bures-sur-Yvette, France and *observed the same annual colony cycle, independent of location and** to the detriment of the colony. While a late season colony population increase was beneficial in the presence of the heavily producing heather plant, it was maladaptive without a late season food source and Louveaux had difficulty keeping this ecotype alive* in Bures-sur-Yvette
> 
> ...


It could easily be genetic. The Landes type bee might have been adapting to that region for thousands of years. A few helpful mutations could easily have occurred. Since AMM is a native species in France, it has had time to adapt. Adaptation based on new genetic mutations can be extremely slow or nonexistent, as it is based on random processes which in most every case produce harmful variations.

In another few thousand years, Ian's bees may be "gened up" for canola. Or not. It takes a long time if it happens.

Some adaptation to local conditions can occur by selecting of individual traits already present in the population. Since those genes already exist, you are depending on a random process that involves successful (or at least not pathological) genetic variation, which already exists. This is what we hope to find when selecting bees for particular traits.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

30WCF said:


> Don’t take this the wrong way, cause I’m pointing it at me. But you said queen problems are the leading problems in the winter. This comes back to how folks report things.
> I’m a bit of a gambler. If I go into winter with a weak queen, can I / should I call that a lost hive if my dumb butt went into winter with a hive I knew wasn’t 90% or whatever % chance of survival. At some point it’s an unintentional experiment and not a factor in real hive loss.
> Again, that’s not an insult, it’s a gamble, but people may report it as a loss, when maybe it wasn’t probable to begin with.


This is the problem with gathering real world data.
It is messy. 
Comparing results between beekeepers who have different practices is complicated.
For example:
One beek I know if he has a weak hive in late fall, shakes the bees into soapy water and gives their stores to a strong colony.
His definition of weak is not enough stores in the brood nest, *not* population.
He has higher summer losses, but lower winter losses, than the guy who just lets the bees alone, 
Both of them have higher losses overall than the guy who feeds his colonies to a set weight.

Comparing their mite management strategies to see which works better is going to yield rather noisy data.

This is why I prefer armchair science. Real science is hard. It is especially hard when comparing outcomes and relying on statistics to find correlations.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

msl said:


> rather then type a lengthy response, I am going to ask you to present scientific support for your position.





Gray Goose said:


> ... totally agree why has this work not been done? and papered?


I am aware of one paper that explores this question specific to AM and the crux of this tread:

_Advances and perspectives in selecting resistance traits against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor in honey bees_

Regarding social learning and associated 'heritability' they write:

_'It is worth noting that heritability might be confounded by epigenetic processes. A genetically inherited trait is indistinguishable from a trait acquired via social learning, when workers have the ability to transmit acquired knowledge across generations: thus, behaviours may be expressed by related workers without a genetic causality. Social learning has been identified in other insects, such as fruit flies [160] and bumble bees [161,162,163], which adapt their behavior after observing conspecifics. It has rarely been investigated in honey bees, which is surprising given that they are a model organism to study learning and memory in insects [164]. One of the few studies on the topic ruled out the social transmission of hygienic behaviour towards dead brood [165], but learning may play a role in other resistance traits against V. destructor. For instance, grooming was performed more intensively by workers of naturally surviving A. m. intermissa colonies when they were in contact with older workers. Younger nurses could have learned the behaviour from their older nestmates [166]. Such a phenomenon could lead to the loss of resistance if queens from selected lines are introduced into foreign colonies.'_

I am also reminded of the amazing work that Dr. Lars Chittka has done in studying bumblebee social learning. If you haven't seen this video yet, I think it is well worth the investment- I'll caution that the music video at the end takes some of the polish off an otherwise engaging and interesting presentation:


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## tbishop (Feb 28, 2012)

I will try to add some more info. I operate bees in a secondary area for honey production. Not many commercial beekeepers nearby or operate in my area. However, many feral colonies abound. My main priority is to have "LIVE" colonies year round. I help them when they need it. I keep them as stress free as possible. I use 3 frame nucs to make increase in the spring. Nucs are moved to new locations(little drifting of bees). Success of nucs, over 95% produce viable queens. 2020 we got 100% with viable queens. 2018-19-20 we were able to overwinter 85% of nucs that produced queens. I don't make splits or new hives much past mid June. I have tried and for me, it hasn't been successful. I tried buying cells and introducing them. One yard I learned later was a haven for dragonfles. No nucs survived. I recombined into production hives. So what I'm seeing is the nucs produce a viable queen, good patterns, then late September into October, the nuc dwindles and snuffs out. I also see this with my production hives. At harvest time, huge populations and 6 wks later robbed out. It is like they lost their queen, tried to replace,and failed. My hive count is going up at a increasing rate, but I am losing hives to the failure of the queen for the most part. I'm getting prepped to go and check my yards in two weeks. I have a list of the light hives and they will be the target group for this visit. End of February we will visit all my hives to determine what the winter has done to us. Once I hit March, loss of hives drops to near zero for me.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> I am also reminded of the amazing work that Dr. Lars Chittka has done in studying bumblebee social learning.


And listening to this talk again, Dr. Chittka references work that Dr. Page did at Arizona State concerning relative learning performance between two distinct genotypes (i.e. their high pollen and high nectar lines), suggesting that speed and scope of social learning are heritable. The papers themselves are unfortunately locked-down, but we have snippets from both:

Responsiveness to sucrose affects tactile and olfactory learning in preforaging honey bees of two genetic strains

_'Genotype did not have a direct effect on acquisition. In high- and low-strain bees, individuals with high gustatory response scores learned better than bees with low gustatory scores. This is true both for tactile and olfactory learning. The correlation between responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition scores is not different between the strains. But genotype did affect sucrose perception and thus indirectly affected learning performance.'_

The Effects of Genotype, Foraging Role, and Sucrose Responsiveness on the Tactile Learning Performance of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera L.)

_'We analyzed sucrose responsiveness and associative tactile learning in two genetic strains of honey bees under laboratory conditions. These strains differ in their foraging behavior. Bees of the “high” strain preferentially collect pollen. “Low”-strain bees mainly forage for nectar. Responsiveness to different sucrose concentrations and tactile learning were examined using the proboscis extension reflex. Acquisition, extinction of conditioned responses, and responses to an alternative tactile stimulus were tested. High-strain bees are more responsive to sucrose than low-strain bees. Regardless of genotype, pollen foragers are more responsive to sucrose than nectar foragers. In bees of both strains we find the same relationship between responsiveness to sucrose and acquisition. Bees responding to low sucrose concentrations show more often the conditioned response during acquisition than those responding only to higher sucrose concentrations. Extinction of conditioned responses depends on the response probability during acquisition. Discrimination between the two tactile stimuli is affected by genotype but not by responsiveness to sucrose. High-strain bees discriminate better than low-strain bees. Our experiments thus establish links between division of labor, responsiveness to sucrose, and associative learning in honey bees.'_

P.S. It is a bit of a tangent, but it makes me wonder if Dr. Keffus is on to something by simultaneously selecting for low varroa growth and high pollen collection. Is it possible that the nexus of these two has something to do with social learning?


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## Outdoor N8 (Aug 7, 2015)

HarryVanderpool said:


> "
> *Good luck or good management. (?)*
> Well, I don't believe in luck so that narrows things down......


*"Improve the environment. Improve the environment--" *Steve Tabor, _Breeding Super Bees_.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

msl said:


> The Landes ecotype comes to mind (more or less the poster child for local adapted bees)...


To me the intriguing question is not why certain bees perform better in a specific geographic and habitat context, but why (as the COLOSS study presents above), some regions support higher survivorship than others irrespective of genetic background.

Beyond the obvious factors survivorship factors related to marginal areas due to climate and/or forage availability (i.e. Alaska or the Sahara), it does make one wonder- are some areas more 'forgiving' toward maladapted bees?

Does a place with relatively mild winters, relatively long forage windows and a preponderance of clean forage resources present any bee subtype or landrace better than average odds of survival regardless of their background? Seems reasonable to me that the answer is likely 'Yes'. 

Anecdotally, there are broad swaths of the continental US where both Italian and Carniolan-type bees are successfully kept despite the fact that strictly speaking these areas are not too similar climate-wise to the genetic origin of either of these subspecies.

My place is one such example. Yesterday the high was 54 degrees and the nighttime low was 15. We are patterned by high variability both in season and often in 24 hours. Last week's average temperature was 37 degrees F with an average spread high to low of 22 degrees F. This week's average temperature is predicted to be 29 degrees F with an average spread of 18 degrees F.

Does this type of weather pattern affect survivorship relative to other locales? I am sure it does, but may be more forgiving (in relative terms) than where you all in more northern climes.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

A Novice said:


> In another few thousand years,


well it dosen't take that long only a few generations if the pressure is high enough, 3-5 genurations



> By the fifth generation, tested in 1966, the "low" and "high" lines had reached extreme levels of alfalfa preference





https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1265&context=piru_pubs



we see this in nature, genetic prefaces for blooms


> Progeny from different honeybee queens that were reared in, and foraged from, the same colony sometimes differed in their floral preferences, confirming that these are to some extent innately determined.











Genetic determination of honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) foraging preferences


Progeny from different honeybee queens that were reared in, and foraged from, the same colony sometimes differed in their floral preferences, confirming that these are to some extent innately determi...




onlinelibrary.wiley.com





in Cale (1970) we see preferences to one bloom causing bees to miss the main flow, or as in the case of avocado's scip over the crop they are sposed to polonate, Selection and breeding of honey bees for higher or lower collection of avocado nectar - PubMed


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Grey Goose asked.. ..do you see the second year queen better tailored to the local flows? 

Me, ... Yes, that is what the "Bull of the Woods" was alluding to. She knew in the spring when th right time to "go go gadget" was so that the hive population peaked when the flow began., and when to cut back in fall, not too soon, not too late.

We still clip left/right by the even/odd years first thing in the spring . The l/r is noted on the back of the brood chamber, so you can tell if the queen is new, or how old she is. The Bull claimed that typicaly she would be replaced in her third year. We rarey see a queen today that makes the second year. 

The survivabilty of hives over winter since the 60's has closely followed the queen survival rate. , steadily down hill.

Crazy Roland


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

msl said:


> well it doesn't take that long only a few generations if the pressure is high enough, 3-5 generations
> 
> we see this in nature, genetic prefaces for blooms
> 
> in Cale (1970) we see preferences to one bloom causing bees to miss the main flow, or as in the case of avocado's skip over the crop they are supposed to pollinate,


I think you missed my point.
When a population has a large degree of variability, it is relatively easy to select within that range of variability for a desired trait.

If by "gened up" for canola you mean selected based on existing population traits (not new ones) then yes, in reasonably short order, bees which have those traits should tend to predominate in his system of raising bees. However, the degree of adaptation probably will be modest. I think generic Carniolans would do well in his operation, so it isn't clear what you would be looking for.

However, outside of that range of variability, it requires mutation and selection, not selection alone, in order to select for a desired trait.

Mutation is a slow process, which mostly produces variations which are harmful, and being random rarely produces any particular variation. It takes thousands of years.

It is unsurprising that bees have a variety of adaptations to patterns of forage, since individual populations developed in relative isolation over millennia, and to some extent adapted to their particular environment. Since our modern bees are a blend of many of those populations, they have latent in them some ability to adapt to patterns of forage.

It is a misunderstanding to suggest that increasing the selection pressure will speed up the process. Increasing the selection pressure will slow the process down.
The reason it slows the process down is it selects out a larger number from the population, which gives you fewer individuals to produce the desired mutations.

It is rather frustrating to be at the mercy of a blind random process that is painfully slow and uncertain in its outcome. That is not the way people want the world to work.

However, it is necessary to deal with reality as it is, not as we want it to be.

Returning to the topic of Varroa, it seems abundantly clear that first order adaptations (those involving a single trait) that are able to effectively counter varroa do not exist. 
Those would have been apparent rather quickly. They didn't show up.
Higher order adaptations are trickier - they require multiple traits to exhibit themselves in an individual colony simultaneously. 
Things need to line up. 
That takes time, and those adaptations take longer to predominate.
At a population level, that means we need to be patient, permit *modest* selection pressure, and slowly things will get better. Or not.
If the adaptations necessary for varroa do not exist in the population, then we need novel adaptations.
Novel adaptations - those that require new genetics - take longer. Probably thousands of years.

That is just the way it is.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> suggesting that speed and scope of social learning are heritable.


hmm a twist, speed of learning and scope of learning, is heritable.
so learning and genetic. somehow intertwined.

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> Grey Goose asked.. ..do you see the second year queen better tailored to the local flows?
> 
> Me, ... Yes, that is what the "Bull of the Woods" was alluding to. She knew in the spring when th right time to "go go gadget" was so that the hive population peaked when the flow began., and when to cut back in fall, not too soon, not too late.
> 
> ...


I was young and foolish then, but I recall the same , Queens lasted a lot longer. Wish I had kept notes 40 years ago.
so the "best" year would be the second of a 3 year queen, having the "experience" to mimic the local bloom.

Another negative creeping in, shorter lived queens. We loose the good from learning.
Roland do you recall if Bull of the woods grafted, did walk away splits, ordered queens?
Seems Queen quality, is again going to be a big rock. Is he still around?

GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

Are they shorter lived queens because of changed genetics or change in chemistry within hives? Alternately could it be something entirely with the workers that their perception of queen performance has changed, leading to early supercedure of what would otherwise be good queens? What has crept in on us?


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

crofter said:


> Are they shorter lived queens because of changed genetics or change in chemistry within hives? Alternately could it be something entirely with the workers that their perception of queen performance has changed, leading to early supercedure of what would otherwise be good queens? What has crept in on us?


good question Frank.
I am pondering the same, real queen failure, or perceived failure.
So few make the 3-4 year mark, I cannot believe the "perception" is thwarted every where. Some have bees in a fairly clean environment. Like your up in the bush, I have one yard in the woods, A mile from a road, fairly clean area.
Considering the bee is short lived 6 weeks in summer flow, the perception must be messing up fairly fast.

Would need to locate a place where queen lives a normal life then compare the environment.

GG


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## plantman (May 30, 2020)

I live in a (clean) environment per SE,and I can keep a queen around for a few (3) years sometimes..I'm a little too experimental..lol I'm trying to stay more focused...The closest beekeeper around my home yard here is 15 plus miles...One is a( commercial) has alot of hives Amish.A New Jersey keeper drops a hundred hives 20 miles away..The local farms are down to one dairy farm..He doesn't spray anything near my home..I lost alot of bees in the begining years by moving bees that were at my brother's place.Several keepers nearby and one that does the end of year( Dump).I had been transferring mites between the two yards.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

crofter said:


> Are they shorter lived queens because of changed genetics or change in chemistry within hives? Alternately could it be something entirely with the workers that their perception of queen performance has changed, leading to early supercedure of what would otherwise be good queens? What has crept in on us?


Yes, the thing I have noticed is queens rarely last two years.

MB claims a lot of his queens are two and three year queens, though I don't think he provided evidence to support that claim.

Not sure why queens only last a year or so. 

I remember reading queens could live 5 to 7 years. Not in my hives.

Have we selected for short lived queens unintentionally, or have changes in the environment caused this?

Did this trend begin before Varroa? If it coincides with Varroa, I say blame the mite. Just my bias.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

A Novice said:


> Yes, the thing I have noticed is queens rarely last two years.
> 
> MB claims a lot of his queens are two and three year queens, though I don't think he provided evidence to support that claim.
> 
> ...


as there are "several" virus vectored by the mite, it could be something vectored by mite Yet undiscovered.
Or not

GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

I have had a few into their third summer and be superceded but I would replace ones that did not do it on their own. If you can make your own queens at little cost I dont think it worth taking a chance on trying to look for longevity and risk losing a colony. That said, I am not trying to achieve any breeding breakthrough; if you were doing testing and selection program I can see the value of hanging onto a favorite. Right now every queen I have is going into her first winter. I have only had to cull a very few outright duds.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

A Novice said:


> Have we selected for short lived queens unintentionally,


Because it is preached to change over the queens *annually*.
Well, with this approach, you don't know anymore which of these queens (IF left to live on) would be long lived.

Let alone someone actually selects from the long-lived queens.
Is the selection from the longest living queens even exists (as a selection factor)?
Anyone?

The same effect as if we start zapping people at 60 years old flat - you've done your time logic, now drop off.
Pretty soon the long-living families will be lost and non-existent and hard to spot (to appear as if the genetics are not there).


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

Agreed GregB; Many of the adopted beekeeping methods used are essentially designed 'by and for' those seeking the most bang for their buck, those trying to make some kind of living with bees, most often by treating these wild creatures as livestock rather than recognizing and/or promoting their wildness. 

'Annual' queen purchases are a great source of income for queen producers. We've been told to 'replace' queens annually for a long time, and frankly I've never seen the logic, so I steadfastly remain part of the Resistance to replacing a good queen annually.....to this day... 

BEES, whether Packaged, Nuc's or Full Colonies used for pollination, is where the $ are in keeping bees these days. So it goes...

Much of what happens in this world is justified as long as it creates an income for someone. It's the way of the world we (and our bees) find ourselves, so must learn to live with. 

We either adapt or perish.


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

If a beekeeper treats for mites, the queen is affected by *all* those treatments. The worker bees, not so much since they only live 6 weeks.

I've almost never had a queen as productive in her 2nd year as she was in her first. The old literature says otherwise, but times have changed.


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

A Novice said:


> Yes, the thing I have noticed is queens rarely last two years.
> 
> MB claims a lot of his queens are two and three year queens, though I don't think he provided evidence to support that claim.
> 
> ...


Check out Roger Pattersons utube on queens…he has been saying for years there are changes in queen survivability/longevity etc.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Grey Goose wrote:
Roland do you recall if Bull of the woods grafted, did walk away splits, ordered queens?
Seems Queen quality, is again going to be a big rock. Is he still around? 

Me: No. The "Bull of the Woods" did not have the finesse to graft. He ran 1300 hives with two helpers, and would bring in the best half dozen queens every year to the "Home Yard". My father and I would do the grafting from those best hives every Saturday until the honey flow OK, I just made the cell bars up, was a little kid). Since we hang up brood, I would assume he started splits with a deep full of hatching bees and a cell. All done in the out yards. After two decades we had a bee that we believed was better than those commercially available. We also co-operated with the UW - Madison bee lab (Farrar + crew), and a queen breeder in Mississippi named Jensen. The best where shared.

Yes, to the best of my knowledge, the "Bull of the Woods" , is still alive, but not any less cranky.

GregB - about - years ago John and Sherri K would get frames of eggs and larvae from our five oldest queens, so yes it has been done.

Crazy Roland



.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

A Novice said:


> If by "gened up" for canola


I have never mentioned canola, I mentioned a beekeeper who shed winters bees, yet even in climate control they brood up.. alluding to a circadian clock or other unknow trigger... ie not weather, daylight cycle, or pollen flow... such a triger expanes the lands brood up in a different ecosystem..



A Novice said:


> Those would have been apparent rather quickly. They didn't show up.


look in to the morphometrical changes on MBB... shorter and serrated mandibles to better grab and crush mites,

I would argue the traits did show up...
they did in the arnot forest,
they did in Louisiana (and fast.. about 5 years bounce back) https://www.researchgate.net/public...estructor_Mesostigmata_Varroidae_in_Louisiana
they did in Gotland https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2006/05/m6039.pdf ( about 5 years),
they did in Avion,
they did in Primorsky
they did in Toulouse (again close to 5 years)
they did at baton rouge
the list goes on an on for decades

The issues is many of the restiance traites seem to be at odds with economic ones (big bee pop to pollinate and make honey )




crofter said:


> Alternately could it be something entirely with the workers that their perception of queen performance has changed


or it could be we have been selecting for higher brood production... Ie its not the years it the miles 



A Novice said:


> Yes, the thing I have noticed is queens rarely last two years.





GregB said:


> Because it is preached to change over the queens *annually*.


that is what nature (currently) selects for as well.. Seeley 2017.. 80% of the over wintered hives swam, 75% of those swarms die over winter, the 20% that don't swam die before spring.. so only 20% of overwintered queens see the next spring..


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

> GregB said:





> Because it is preached to change over the queens *annually*.





msl said:


> that is what nature (currently) selects for as well.. Seeley 2017.. 80% of the over wintered hives swam, 75% of those swarms die over winter, the 20% that don't swam die before spring.. *so only 20% of overwintered queens see the next spring..*


And then those overwintered OLD QUEENs the ones to swarm away again.
The successful queens to live to re-swarm again and again.
This is because the OLD queens are the ones to swarm away (until eventually superseded).

How exactly the "nature (currently) selects for as well" annual queen replacement? 
I don't think this is the case.
High feral colony failure <> annual queen replacement.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> Grey Goose wrote:
> Roland do you recall if Bull of the woods grafted, did walk away splits, ordered queens?
> Seems Queen quality, is again going to be a big rock. Is he still around?
> 
> ...


Thank you for taking the time to answer.
Very interesting.
I am always intrigued about the "older keepers", AS IMO they had some insight.

Side bet Bull Of the Woods did not use Utube to figure out what to do with bees. 


GG


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

The odds of any queen dieing over winter increase exponentially with each year, so replacement sooner rather than later would seem to be just playing the odds.

Now if it is proven that there is an increase of survivability amongst the daughters of aged queens then there would be advantage to teasing out the trend. Hmmm? Lots of room for ideology to influence your personal policy.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

msl said:


> that is what nature (currently) selects for as well.. Seeley 2017.. 80% of the over wintered hives swam, 75% of those swarms die over winter, the 20% that don't swam die before spring.. so only 20% of overwintered queens see the next spring..





GregB said:


> And then those overwintered OLD QUEENs the ones to swarm away again.
> The successful queens to live to re-swarm again and again.
> This is because the OLD queens are the ones to swarm away (until eventually superseded).


So the longevity HAS to be a selected trait. IMO
lets discuss the easy side first, A queen does not make the first winter. de selected. number of winters Zero
4 year old queen, swarms out every year, the old location is re queened, at times if there is enough bees, a secondary swarm issues, daughters up to 6-8, she passes at 5th winter, of these 2 only 1 had daughters.

so 80% of swarms die first year, they all could be the first year queens of poor stock. I have not seen studies of "the age of the perishing swarm queens" one could say the best of the best survive (20%) Was a time in the 1940-1960's if you caught a swarm and it made the winter you had some fairly good bees. Now they mostly are escaping, stock from "hands off keepers"

But one could easily see that the "never made a winter queens" would/should have less daughters.
Smear in the the 50+% of queens grafted and the results are altered a bit today.

GG


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## William Bagwell (Sep 4, 2019)

crofter said:


> Now if it is proven that there is an increase of survivability amongst the daughters of aged queens then there would be advantage to teasing out the trend. Hmmm? Lots of room for ideology to influence your personal policy.


Reminds me Scottish highland cattle, decades ago when we fooled with them someone was running buy ads in the magazines. At least twenty years old with a calf at their side was the only criteria. Color, registration status, etc were no concern. Obviously trying to preserve one of traits highlands are known for.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

GG - Utube??? The "Bull of the Woods" did not even like indoor plumbing.

Just the queen dying over winter is hard to prove, but I have never seen any evidence to suggest it is an issue. In early to mid Summer, queens that stop laying, but are still alive, is a phenomena that is increasing. A "stuck Queen" will not be readily replaced, and sometimes the hive gets 3 rounds (14 days apart) of open brood added before they make a cell she does not destroy.

Crazy Roland


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

msl said:


> I have never mentioned canola, I mentioned a beekeeper who shed winters bees, yet even in climate control they brood up.. alluding to a circadian clock or other unknow trigger... ie not weather, daylight cycle, or pollen flow... such a triger expanes the lands brood up in a different ecosystem..


True. I was referencing a comment by GreyGoose (see below). Sorry if I created confusion.

However, if I remember correctly, Ian moves his bees out of storage as soon as it gets warm, because he can heat his shed, but he cannot cool it. As soon as it starts to get warm, the bees get broody, and he has to get them out and get feed buckets on them, because he winters with just enough stores to make it. each colony when dormant is about a 10W heater, which isn't much. However 1000 10 W heaters amounts to 10Kw. It could heat things up pretty quickly.



Gray Goose said:


> MSL
> 
> IF this was genetic, Ian's bees would be "gened up " for canola,, In time he should roll his own queens and not have any luck with "bought" queens. And the "Buckfast" is a mix of many bees, what blooms are in their DNA, brother Adam brought in bees from far flung places, the blooms at the Abby were very different, He would have had some inkling of this.
> 
> ...





msl said:


> look in to the morphometrical changes on MBB... shorter and serrated mandibles to better grab and crush mites,
> 
> I would argue the traits did show up...
> they did in the arnot forest, ....
> ...


It appears to me that you are actually making my points for me.

None of the adaptations which happened quickly have produced bees which survive in the manner of bees before Varroa. We agree. The first order adaptations available, while they may allow bees to survive under some circumstances, don't get us anywhere near that goal.

The careful selective breeding is looking for higher order adaptations. While they have had some success, none of them are anywhere they would need to be to be in order for mites to not really be a problem.

However, there is a problem with that sort of approach, because it relies on a lot of genetic things lining up.

I can best explain the problem by an example from human biology. 

I know of a large family that lived near me when I was a child. There were 8 children, all of whom were known to be very intelligent. One of them told me that his brothers and sister all had IQ's between 135 and 145. I find that believable, as it lines up with their reputation and accomplishments. As a point of reference, it would be about as unusual as 8 children in a family all being between 6' 4" and 6' 6" tall.
Human intelligence (to the extent it results from genetics) is the result of a large number of inherited characteristics. It is a higher-order adaptation.
That family had many children. Of the ones I know, only one had an IQ over 145. (based on his test scores, which he went on about). He had a brother with an IQ of roughly 80, (based on his being rejected by the US army for that reason). In summary, the many children of the 8 were on average (based on knowing and attending school with many of them) only slightly higher in IQ than average, if at all.

This is the problem with trying to select for traits which result from higher order adaptations. I think the technical term is filial regression.

Within a generation or two, the offspring of the remarkable individual you find by random chance or select for carefully are no different from the general population.

With bees the problem is worsened by their unusual mating and inheritance characteristics.

The only solution which will get us to the point where mites aren't really a problem is steady modest pressure on the population, so the desired traits become more prominent in the entire population without destroying the genetic diversity of the species. Basically, treat your bees and eventually you won't have to. It may take a long time.

Other efforts to hasten that day are delaying it.

At least that is how I see it.

Jon


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

A Novice said:


> None of the adaptations which happened quickly have produced bees which survive in the manner of bees before Varroa. We agree


I don't think we do agree 
Seeleys work suggests that they do survive as they did before.


> The two sets of findings are strikingly similar even though they were made ca. 20 years before and ca. 20 years after the arrival of _V_. _destructor_. Both sets of results show that most newly founded colonies and established colonies survive summers, but that only ca. 26% of founder colonies and ca. 82% of established colonies survive winters. Both sets of results also show that founder colonies rarely change queens/produce swarms, but that established colonies are likely to do so (_p_ = 0.96 for 1970s and _p_ = 0.87 for 2010s). Furthermore, the 1970s and 2010s results yield almost identical estimates of mean colony lifespan: 2.1 and 2.2 years for all colonies and 5.6 and 6.2 years for established colonies. Evidently, the wild colonies living near Ithaca have essentially the same suite of life-history traits in 2010s as in 1970s


 Life-history traits of wild honey bee colonies living in forests around Ithaca, NY, USA - Apidologie

As did the feral bounce back in the LA study I posted earlier 

what has changed is our ability to keep them in supper high denincinstys (more or less feed lots) in large colony population numbers caused by large amounts of un naturally high brood rearing. 



A Novice said:


> produced bees which survive in the manner of bees before Varroa.





A Novice said:


> they would need to be to be in order for mites to not really be a problem.


I don't expect we will ever go back to "the manner" of pre varroa, even apis ceranae's adaptations don't even get us there, and are often treated more often then talked about to improve the hives yield. This whole issue happed do to importing AM in to AC areas because the AC traits that allow it to live with Varroa cause it to make far less $$ per hive.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> GG - Utube??? The "Bull of the Woods" did not even like indoor plumbing.
> 
> Just the queen dying over winter is hard to prove, but I have never seen any evidence to suggest it is an issue. In early to mid Summer, queens that stop laying, but are still alive, is a phenomena that is increasing. A "stuck Queen" will not be readily replaced, and sometimes the hive gets 3 rounds (14 days apart) of open brood added before they make a cell she does not destroy.
> 
> Crazy Roland


I was being sarcastic on Utube. 
My grand dad one time had in a dinner prayer during the "first time" the family had an outdoor picnic. Just happened to be after getting indoor pluming. " lord help me to understand these new times where we eat outside and crap in the house." he had a dry sense of humor, often missed the pun unless you were listening careful.


I had a couple queens do that this year as well.
Its like they take a break then never start back up.
My hives have some mites hard not to.
if there is a "wing muscle" virus, wonder if there is one affecting the brain, or sensors.
its like a queen failure the bees totally missed.
Then there seems to be more than normal supersedes. Queen and pattern look fine.

YA the queen thing needs some studies.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

msl said:


> I don't think we do agree
> Seeleys work suggests that they do survive as they did before.
> Life-history traits of wild honey bee colonies living in forests around Ithaca, NY, USA - Apidologie
> 
> ...


It is nice that bees living in trees can survive just fine, like they did before, though that is somewhat arguable.

I have no doubt if I set ordinary bees (not special survivor stock) out in single 10 frame deeps, 10 of them side by side, and didn't do anything else, the bees in them would probably survive pretty well. That experiment was tried a few years ago. The bees survived.

However, that doesn't get us to a useful place for keeping bees without being bothered by varroa.

Apis Cerana is a smaller bee, that makes smaller combs. It isn't at all clear that the reasons it is smaller and makes smaller colonies on smaller combs has anything to do with Varroa. 

Apis Florea living in the same area is much smaller and has small colonies that produce very little honey. I don't believe it has a problem with varroa, so its small size is probably not a result of varroa.

Apis Dorsata, whose range overlaps Apis Cerana, is much larger, and has huge colonies that produce very large combs with multiple colonies living in the same tree. Whatever its adaptations to Varroa are, it appears to do just fine in large colonies close together. It is parasitized by a different Varroa species specialized to it.

The Varroa adaptations of A. Cerana I know about are that mites can only breed in drone cells and drones are produced sporadically.

A. Cerana's adaptations if they could be adopted by A. Mellifera would probably result in mites not being a problem. Mites would only be able to breed in drone cells, and drones would only be produced occasionally. That would probably do it. It is hard to say, but it is pointless. Such adaptations would take thousands of years or may never happen.

So that leaves us where we were.

Keep your bees alive, and things will get better eventually.

That is how I see it.

Jon


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## tbishop (Feb 28, 2012)

Gray Goose said:


> you mentioned "queen" and "stock" couple times, do you make yours or do walk aways or buy them?
> just trying to flesh out your reply a bit.
> 
> GG


Sorry for slow response. The last 3 years I have been relying on 3 fr walk away splits. I make sure the splits are moved to a new yard. I have been very surprised at my success. If I buy outside stock, I make sure it is local.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

tbishop said:


> Sorry for slow response. The last 3 years I have been relying on 3 fr walk away splits. I make sure the splits are moved to a new yard. I have been very surprised at my success. If I buy outside stock, I make sure it is local.


thank you for the reply.
I am in the process of evaluation of my "queen stuff" and looking at how others do this and their success.

GG


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## tbishop (Feb 28, 2012)

In my locale(southeastern Indiana) I'm blessed with a good spring buildup. I make sure to make the splits with the following. 1 frame of stores, 1frame emerging bees, 1 frame of open brood/eggs. The boxes are very tight with a close fitting telescoping cover. Entrance is a 7/8 inch hole with a circular entrance disc. The most important aspect is we move the nucs as soon as they are made to a new location. We make these splits around the 3rd week of April. We have mature flying drones by May 1st. My main thrust with my beekeeping is to have "LIVE" hives year round. I track the ages of my production hives and I am starting to have hives that have been in production now into their fifth year. Believe it or not, my honey production is steadily increasing, not to the standards of many commercial keepers, but enough to fill my needs and more. As a side note. As I have increased my hive numbers, my hives have become healthy enough to swarm. The last 3 years have been hectic to say the least. 20+ swarms each spring. I catch what I can and let the bees have at it. Result, solid healthy hives, good honey crops in July and we have good queens for winter. I don't know if my style of beekeeping would work for any one else, but it is working for me.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

tbishop said:


> In my locale(southeastern Indiana) I'm blessed with a good spring buildup. I make sure to make the splits with the following. 1 frame of stores, 1frame emerging bees, 1 frame of open brood/eggs. The boxes are very tight with a close fitting telescoping cover. Entrance is a 7/8 inch hole with a circular entrance disc. The most important aspect is we move the nucs as soon as they are made to a new location. We make these splits around the 3rd week of April. We have mature flying drones by May 1st. My main thrust with my beekeeping is to have "LIVE" hives year round. I track the ages of my production hives and I am starting to have hives that have been in production now into their fifth year. Believe it or not, my honey production is steadily increasing, not to the standards of many commercial keepers, but enough to fill my needs and more. As a side note. As I have increased my hive numbers, my hives have become healthy enough to swarm. The last 3 years have been hectic to say the least. 20+ swarms each spring. I catch what I can and let the bees have at it. Result, solid healthy hives, good honey crops in July and we have good queens for winter. I don't know if my style of beekeeping would work for any one else, but it is working for me.


so some swarm queens as well.

thanks

GG


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## Cloverdale (Mar 26, 2012)

Gray Goose said:


> so some swarm queens as well.
> 
> thanks
> 
> GG


GG, has any of the studies that might have been done on ”swarm queens” actually state that a queen made for a swarm situation in a hive has a higher percentage to swarm again? Deb


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Cloverdale said:


> GG, has any of the studies that might have been done on ”swarm queens” actually state that a queen made for a swarm situation in a hive has a higher percentage to swarm again? Deb


Hi Deb, 

not that I am aware of. there could be, I have not searched for them.
I have heard of "swarmy" bees so in that case the feature could be inherited.

What I am doing is forcing them to swarm which IMO is different, they neither gain or loose genetics by having the cavity stay small.

Forget to super your hives in the spring, and you will in time have swarms.  same deal but I pick the ones to forget to super.

So there are 2 or more kinds of "swarming" my discussions/activities would be labeled "mismanagement" by some.

most of the time, if I only need 3-5 queens, I have used this method to get it done. just need to watch it carefully, the old queen can leave any time after the QCs are capped, so really 6 day complete inspection cycle.
I have modified it to now just look at the bottom of the frames with a hive tilt. A) if they are going to swarm "some" will be visible. B) pulling frames, will generally mess up some of them, so I want to know where to start pulling frames.

GG


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

Gray Goose said:


> I was young and foolish then, but I recall the same , Queens lasted a lot longer. Wish I had kept notes 40 years ago.
> 
> I'll be old and foolish and suggest that the use of various treatments, whatever they may be, often has a negative effect on the life and/or viability of the queen that is present in the hive during those treatments.
> I have no solution; however, people saying that the queens they have now don't last as long as queens used to, might, IMO, consider the possibility that the treatments to which the queens are subjected negatively effect queen life span and fecundity. And then there are the viruses enabled by varroa: Do they impact queen health as well?
> ...


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## crofter (May 5, 2011)

At this point do we know what reduction in queen longevity there really is. I certainly am not denying that it is the case; just would like to see more definite data supporting the numbers. I would like to see if there are trends in certain areas that we might compare with other areas. It has been reported that varro is now vectoring a wider array of viruses than it did in the past; that could be a plausible reason for the reported general reduction in queens productive years.

Perhaps this information that I say, I would like to see, is already firmly validated.


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Frank, I thought about this thread today. I have a tiny colony in a poly nuc. The last few days the inner temperature variance was lower and lower. Early this morning it was 25F outside and less than 1 degree more at the sensor.

A few hours later, I opened the nuc where I had put some sugar recently. I could see though the frames all the way to the bottom. But when I moved the sugar there was still a respectable tiny colony under it, not particularly happy about getting opened up at 40F.

I closed them up and swapped their positions with a 6 over 6 medium-strength, established nuc (also poly). At mid-day today bees were flying and the resulting equalization of foragers into the little one raised the inner temp to almost 20 degrees higher than outside.

While this sets the big one back a bit, it is an option if you have late queens you’re basically banking on a frame or two. Can I say this colony would have perished if left this small through Feb? I’d say it would depend what kind of Feb we have. If it’s like Jan, I would not have bet on their survival, particularly since this inside to outside temp gradient has been falling.

I had 100% colony survival last year, but used this technique on 2 nucs in the same shape. So we learn to keep these boogers alive. Goes a long way toward thinking (and saying/believing) we have good bees. 🐝😃


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

Cloverdale said:


> has any of the studies that might have been done on ”swarm queens” actually state that a queen made for a swarm situation in a hive has a higher percentage to swarm again?





> With this model, heritability estimates were 0.26 for honey yield, 0.36 for defensive behavior, and 0.34 for swarming behavior











Modeling honey yield, defensive and swarming behaviors of Italian honey bees (Apis mellifera ligustica) using linear-threshold approaches - BMC Genomic Data


Background Genetic improvement of honey bees is more difficult compared to other livestock, due to the very different reproductive behavior. Estimation of breeding values requires specific adjustment and the use of sires in the pedigree is only possible when mating of queens and drones is...




bmcgenomdata.biomedcentral.com




seems as about as much as anything we select for

swarming is like teen pregnancy.. its going to happen
throw a bunce of unsupervised, un educated teens, add in privacy and a warm comfortable spot, and some substances and whats the result ? (dad of an 11 year old daughter shudders here )
some strait talk, over site, the pill, condoms, etc the metric changes (OR so i hope!!)
except for some...
I was my wife's 1st at 20.. a bit prude for sure...
she had a pare of twin HS friends who had 3 kids between them before getting out of HS.. I am now pushing almost 50 here and have seen those kids (and the ones that followed) repeat the pattern.

the point is its context leave them in a nuc or single and they swarm. thats not genetics, use the cells... swam 3 times in a 3 deep hive that they only are using 1/2 of... that's different story


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

msl said:


> the point is its context leave them in a nuc or single and they swarm. thats not genetics, use the cells... swam 3 times in a 3 deep hive that they only are using 1/2 of... that's different story


MSL
Agree, if the cavity is "too small" the swarming urge kicks in to put bees somewhere else , we can just leverage that need/impulse. Time of the year also matters, now a small hive is not going to be doing this but in May different story.

GG


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Gray Goose said:


> MSL
> Agree, if the cavity is "too small" the swarming urge kicks in to put bees somewhere else , we can just leverage that need/impulse. Time of the year also matters, now a small hive is not going to be doing this but in May different story.
> 
> GG


We do know that for example AM Scutellata (africanized bee) swarms up to 16 times per year under ideal conditions, compared to AM Ligustica which swarms maybe 5 or 6. So swarming behavior is hereditary to some extent.
The ability of AM S to completely displace AM L throughout much of its range in spite of human efforts does provide some insight into the prospects for AM S to somehow develop effective resistance to Varroa in the forseeable future.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

A Novice said:


> We do know that for example AM Scutellata (africanized bee) swarms up to 16 times per year under ideal conditions, compared to AM Ligustica which swarms maybe 5 or 6. So swarming behavior is hereditary to some extent.
> The ability of AM S to completely displace AM L throughout much of its range in spite of human efforts does provide some insight into the prospects for AM S to somehow develop effective resistance to Varroa in the forseeable future.


Right, BUT how many survive.
Seeley spoke of 70% swarms not making first winter.
Throwing more swarms may offset poorer winter survival for example.

So IMO a better judge of survival would be how many swarms are still Alive 2nd spring after 2 winters.

Just like some fish lay more eggs, but they do not over run the lake.. Cuz some baby fish are easier to catch for food.

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Lots of swarming talk...

Did anyone think why particular bee races have different swarming propensities?
Because they developed their local advantageous swarming propensity that was best for their *historic local conditions.*
Carnis are BIG swarmers
Gray C's are NO swarmers.
This is because it was the best way in each location and it was naturally selected for over the millennia.

North American mutt bees' swarming traits (colony by colony) are just out of place and out of time.
I would not look much into it - it is mostly random mess with no rhyme or reason.

Consider that most North American bee makeup looks like this - a random mutt out of place with unpredictable traits.
What conclusions are we trying to make?


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregB said:


> Because they developed their local advantageous swarming propensity that was best for their *historic local conditions.*


so then do you "presume" the bees in North America, are not developing local advantages? they just stopped?
Odd you are disagreeing with your self, I would agree with your first statement in the quote above, for bees in North America. And suggest over the several Ice ages bees mixed with each other, in the past, in Europe, and went thu this a few times.

And disagree with you disagreeing with your self here "it is mostly random mess with no rhyme or reason. "
the rhyme is seasonal, the reason is to try to reproduce in the new land of North America. In the early adaptation stages(first 500 years) the development may just be less noticeable, I would not presume it is not happening, the bees you refer to in Europe have had more time, so they have made more progress. give the North American bees a couple more centuries they will be farther along. 


GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> so then do you "presume" the bees in North America, are not developing local advantages? they just stopped?
> Odd you are disagreeing with your self, .......


I have been consistent all along - no disagreements with myself.

NOT much happened in 200 years in N. America but a non-ending and still ongoing melting pot .
And so no - no rhyme or reason in bees exploding at my place in March (with still snow on the ground) and swarming in April (with still freezing nights and no forage to speak of). And yet this happens right and left.
My first swarm in 2020 I indeed snatched in April - truly, that was about "saving the bees" (some idiot out-of-place bees for So. WI).

The North American bee history is a micro-second evolutionary speaking.
And this very micro-second is shaved down to a nano-second by non-stopping migratory practices of the US.
No significant stability afforded to speak of any kinda-sorta local bees.

I suggested earlier to look into maybe the "Appalachian bee".
What is it? Does it exist? What are its traits?
Well, the answer is we don't know and it is too early to separate out any distinct population with any distinct traits.

BTW, I don't have much interest in the wing morphometry measurements this winter - pretty much seen enough of those mutt bees and know it will be the same. It is back to the actual observed behavioral traits (does not matter what the wings say - all I see is just mutt bees).


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Just having a little fun here...



GregB said:


> What conclusions are we trying to make?


Why some areas/management practices seem to have better than average survival, particularly in a TF construct.


GregB said:


> I suggested earlier to look into maybe the "Appalachian bee".


I'd say judging on his descriptions @joebeewhisperer has some of these up there on the Cumberland Plateau- dark, smallish, heavy propolizers, modest surplus gathering, small winter clusters, efficient on stores and explosive Spring build-up. Seems to be the architype bee form that is trying to develop in the Ohio Valley.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

A Novice said:


> compared to AM Ligustica which swarms maybe 5 or 6. S


probably a bit less
















Swarming, afterswarming, and reproductive rate of unmanaged honeybee colonies (Apis mellifera) | Semantic Scholar


The reproductive rate of unmanaged European honeybee races was studied in Kansas, U.S.A. and the rate of afterswarming was influenced by at least two factors: the amount of sealed brood in the colony and the season when swarming occurred. SummaryThe reproductive rate of unmanaged European...




www.semanticscholar.org





this dovetails well in to the records of Owen Thomas, a skep beekeeper form the mid 1700s UK, all be it with likely a smaller volume then the single 10 F used in the above study



> 1757 : One old hive: the first swarm 7 June, the second swarm 20 June; swarm out of the first swarm 8 July, second swarm from the first 22 July.
> 
> 1758 : Two old hives: the first swarm was got into a hive 2 June, the first swarm from the other hive 6 June; second swarm out of the hive that swarmed on 6 June, 23 June. Swarm out of the first swarm 19 July. Shared between us and Robert Owen 28 August.
> 
> ...





https://www.evacranetrust.org/uploads/document/9cb7fced9e5db46beb810b8cc3f9f1797e2c5995.pdf



so much for the reputation of the British Black Bee for not swarming, lol


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Litsinger said:


> Just having a little fun here...
> 
> Why some areas/management practices seem to have better than average survival, particularly in a TF construct.
> 
> I'd say judging on his descriptions @joebeewhisperer has some of these up there on the Cumberland Plateau- dark, smallish, heavy propolizers, modest surplus gathering, small winter clusters, efficient on stores and explosive Spring build-up. *Seems to be the architype bee form that is trying to develop in the Ohio Valley.*


Right.
So the swarming traits pulled into this talk (or pretty much any traits) are highly variable in the US context - for us (the armchair scientists) to draw much of any useful conclusions.
Let alone much of any observations based on our 5-hive suburban backyard apiary are pretty much inconsequential and hardly transferable.

Now, the "Appalachian bee" subject is interesting to me and, IMO, a worthwhile subject - the particular region actually having some natural selection potential.
BUT - why no one yet of the actual scientific community coined the term yet?
I am not qualified to talk about it (being a backyard, Google-educated scientist that I am).
But why not look at the Russian Primorskij region use-case and learn from it and look at a very similar case developing as we speak for the Appalachia region?
A very much worthwhile subject me thinks.

While I am pessimistic about most any generic "little suburban backyard" setting, the Appalachia is different it feels from just listening to our, folks.
OK, I am unsure IF the South (AL, LA, etc) is to be included into the "Appalachia" phenomenon or needs to be distinguished as a separate region - not getting into that minutia. Pretty much a contiguous region anyway.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

msl said:


> so much for the reputation of the British Black Bee for not swarming, lol


Dunno about the British Black Bee..
The Russian Black Bee is very much prone to swarming - a documented fact.

Granted, the old documentation is hardly admissible here - talking of those tiny baskets and slightly larger log hives - most any bees will swarm like crazy in those conditions.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregB said:


> But why not look at the Russian Primorskij region use-case and learn from it and look at a very similar case developing as we speak for the Appalachia region?
> A very much worthwhile subject me thinks


While my opinion doesn't count for much I think you are on to something, Greg. It seems reasonable to assume that if we could slow the pace of genetic upheaval on a landscape scale, we might start to see local/regional variants develop which are the product of beneficial alleles showing up in greater frequency and deleterious alleles... well deleting themselves.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Gray Goose said:


> Right, BUT how many survive.
> Seeley spoke of 70% swarms not making first winter.
> Throwing more swarms may offset poorer winter survival for example.
> 
> ...


I think you missed my point. 
All I pointed out is that swarming tendency is heritable and variable. The example of Skutellata as compared to Lagustica show that isolated populations, separated for millennia will develop different swarming traits when those traits are beneficial in the local environment.

GregB is also correct, I think, in that AM subspecies, variants, and races in the US are very mixed at the moment. Changes in the environment may eliminate versions (such as AMM) which are unable to tolerate the changes.
Races of bees able to survive in the rapidly changing environment are all mixed together, largely due to human activity.
Significant differences between populations, like we see between AMM, AML and AMS will only show themselves if the populations are isolated and selection pressures are different between different populations. 
Even if those conditions are met, significant differences between populations will only become apparent on geologic time scales.
The only hope that we will see changes worth noting in our lifetimes is if the genetic variability within the current mix of mutts is sufficient, and no mutations are required.

The Africanized bees have been present in the US since the 80's, but they haven't managed to adapt so that they can survive where winters are harsh. If adaptation were quick and easy, they would be to Alaska by now. We know bees can adapt to the cold. Why haven't they? Because it would take a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Even interbreeding with other subspecies hasn't made any difference.

The most important thing in science is not to fool yourself. Because you are the easiest person to fool.
After that, all that is required is basic honesty to avoid fooling other people.
Richard Feynmann


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

A Novice said:


> If adaptation were quick and easy, they would be to Alaska by now.


Jon:

You make a good point and I agree with you on balance. I would only add the caveat that while we are all looking for genetic solutions there also appear to be epigenetic and behavioral mechanisms at work as well, at least specific to AM's collective response to varroa. So while we likely all can agree that specific structural adaptations in response to varroa pressure will take a relatively long time, behavioral (and possibly even coopted genetic) responses appear to already be at work.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

GregB said:


> OK, I am unsure IF the South (AL, LA, etc) is to be included into the "Appalachia" phenomenon or needs to be distinguished as a separate region


At least as relates the folks working with Purdue and studying mite biting in feral populations, they are generally talking about this region:


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Litsinger said:


> I'd say judging on his descriptions @joebeewhisperer has some of these up there on the Cumberland Plateau- dark, smallish, heavy propolizers, modest surplus gathering, small winter clusters, efficient on stores and explosive Spring build-up. Seems to be the architype bee form that is trying to develop in the Ohio Valley.


We have some weirdness indeed. The last time I opened my brother's hive, I didn't pull frames. Not because I hadn't come to do so, but because the amount of glue between them would have made it difficult and those bees are a little jumpy anyway. Only one other time have I seen that much propolis in a hive and it was last year where someone showed me his grandfather's old equipment he had been given.

Below is a link from where he (brother) had brought me a secondary swarm on April 26, 2020. It was 46F and the swarm from the same hive a week earlier had been a war of attrition (though on a warmer day). He hit these with a hose, scooped them into an aquarium and brought them to me. So early swarmers? ... you bet. 

He makes jokes about his bees only making honey so they can plot, scheme, and have meetings to plan carrying the resources away in a swarm. 

As far as wing detail, or other analysis, and my persistent belief that the black bees are still here, my evidence died last year in a nearby tree. 

I'm reasonably sure that enough drones are raised here to affect a 2-3 mile radius dramatically, hopefully for the better, so natives are getting an infusion of something slightly different (or maybe something they had 150 years ago). 

One thing to which I can attest is that bees survive here, maybe briefly then swarm and just play above the odds, but there are hollow trees in abundance and at least a few moderate flows every year. Take away the people and the manged hives and come back in 1000 years, .... and there would be bees, unaware and unconcerned by our interest or efforts. 


__
http://instagr.am/p/B_dEGwNFw27/


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregB said:


> I have been consistent all along - no disagreements with myself.
> 
> NOT much happened in 200 years in N. America but a non-ending and still ongoing melting pot .
> And so no - no rhyme or reason in bees exploding at my place in March (with still snow on the ground) and swarming in April (with still freezing nights and no forage to speak of). And yet this happens right and left.
> ...


hmm
is it a mutt or is it an an AmeraBee. All wings the same,, hey that's progress. 

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> At least as relates the folks working with Purdue and studying mite biting in feral populations, they are generally talking about this region:
> 
> View attachment 67299


hmm if they adapt to cold 6-8 years they can be swarming, into southern Michigan.......
At some point the DCA is big and consistent enough where a Package or 2 will not drift it much , hopefully add vigor.

GG

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

joebeewhisperer said:


> As far as wing detail, or other analysis, and my persistent belief that the black bees are still here, my evidence died last year in a nearby tree.


JoeBeeWhi,
You are are welcome to send me some wing samples and I will measure and look.
Your case is indeed interesting and worthwhile to bother with IF you get a handle on those "black bees" again.

Importantly, the true "black bees" have lots of M-lineage in them and are easy to pick out by the wing morphometry.
In fact, the entire method (the one I used) was developed to specifically separate the predominantly M-bees from all others.
The vast majority of the bees in the US are of C-lineage, some O-lineage mixed in (and some A-lineage mixed in down south).

From what I have found last year - C-lineage is predominant by far.
Only one special sample I did contained O-lineage suggestion (was a surprise, but the source of the sample confirmed that my finding made sense).

So, IF you indeed have significant M-lineage in the area, that should be in theory visible on the wing measurements - the M-bees are very distinct from the C-bees.

For ref about the lineages:
M - Mellifera (the true black bees)
C - Carnica/Ligustica/Carpathica
O - Caucasica
A - Scutellata


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> is it a mutt or is it an an AmeraBee.


AmeraBee ~ mutt.
By and large.

Add to this "intelligent" human mutt breeding (Buckfast, Saska, you-name-it) - which only make the picture worst as soon as those queens are sold and shipped out to where-ever someone paid for them. So now this human-created mutts will screw up the picture on top of everything else.

Case in point, a beek across the road from me gave up on his Russians and switched to Buckfast last year.
I think I caught a couple of swarms from him (some POS, screwed up swarms - I subsequently requeened to my VSH line).
But, last I drove by that "Buckfast" colony seems to be still alive. 
More drones and swarms to catch from there next year. 
Hell of a "local bees" we get here.

Consider that even in the Old World 80-90% bees are also a mutt now days.
The only pure bees are remaining in those few protected endemic, original pockets.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

A Novice said:


> The Africanized bees have been present in the US since the 80's, but they haven't managed to adapt so that they can survive where winters are harsh. If adaptation were quick and easy, they would be to Alaska by now. We know bees can adapt to the cold. Why haven't they? Because it would take a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Even interbreeding with other subspecies hasn't made any difference.


Right but no bee goes from the equator to the Steppes/tundra.
you have layers of desert bees ,plains bees, mountain, low land, highland bees etc.
the African bee, does not need to go north is has a "Zone" and is doing fine. That one mapped out faster.
the reasons may be interesting, weather it relates to Bringing in other Genetics like California, or relate to the initial mix, the escapees., could be several reasons. they do good enough down there to hold the turf so to speak.

the Application bees can expand there, and maybe a cali blend at some point emerges.
for north America, they can be like 8 strains for different starting point, mix rates, environment, Etc.

A few leaders need to think up a strategy, and try to see if it works.

Maybe roughly split the areas as the graph Russ shows. 

Because it would take a LOOOOOOOOOONG time. Right but look at how many different dogs we have now. After only a few thousand years. Starting something you will never see the end of is a challenge but maybe still needs be started.

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

GregB said:


> Case in point, a beek across the road from me gave up on his Russians and switched to *Buckfast *last year.


Interesting - I googled up a little about the M-lineage distributions.

Found this interesting PDF where the bees in Italy have now unusual A-lineage presence (what, African bees in Italy?).
Well, what about them *Buckfast*?

Well, then this also means that the A-lineage is now present even in Russia (if someone bothers to check).
Oh yes - they are testing the Buckfast as far as the Siberia as we speak.
Isn't it just great?

Yah - so much for the local bees.
Should we be still singing praises to Brother Adam?
Thanks to him, we now have the A-bee genetic presence tossed just about everywhere with unknown results.

Check it out:


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjg3cfds9X1AhVejokEHU-fB-4QFnoECAUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mdpi.com%2F2075-4450%2F12%2F7%2F620%2Fpdf&usg=AOvVaw3gcqmndo9pvUJE56kZ3vhY


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## JoshuaW (Feb 2, 2015)

I agree, up to a point, with what's been said about mutts.

Yes, with enough mixing through open-mating of lots of different strains, mutts can and do get made.

Then there are bees with actual pedigrees (I'm thinking New World Carniolans and other closed-population breeding programs), which I much prefer to use. Outcrosses in the first generation work pretty well, but my experience has been that second generation and on generally show traits I'd rather not have, and I replace with the pedigree line.


GregB said:


> Should we be still singing praises to Brother Adam?
> Thanks to him, we now have the A-bee genetic presence tossed just about everywhere with unknown results.


Yes, I believe bee breeders owe a lot to him for his observations on crosses and documentation of different strains around the world. Yet, at the end of the day, even the Buckfast program is one of selection based on desirable characteristics (and yes, you can call it a mutt if you want) rather than the maintenance of pure stock lines.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

A Novice wrote:

Changes in the environment may eliminate versions (such as AMM ....

Me: I believe the contrary. A while ago, but after mites, a State Bee official talked about finding feral bees in very remote areas that she believed where AMM, and how they get darker with time when left alone. That tells me they are the best adapted to Wisconsin.

Yes, the true NWC, from Strachan, are a different bee, and some interesting traits can be teased out (Jon, think of that graph of hive counts in the outlier yard)., specifically, the ability to come out of winter with a handful of bees, and surpass packages by mid June.

Crazy Roland

,


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Gray Goose said:


> Right but no bee goes from the equator to the Steppes/tundra.
> you have layers of desert bees ,plains bees, mountain, low land, highland bees etc.
> the African bee, does not need to go north is has a "Zone" and is doing fine. That one mapped out faster.
> the reasons may be interesting, weather it relates to Bringing in other Genetics like California, or relate to the initial mix, the escapees., could be several reasons. they do good enough down there to hold the turf so to speak.
> ...


True enough. The African bee did not "need" to migrate up from South America. It did so because it could.
Bees don't plan their vacations. They spread out from their natal hive when they swarm. They don't think "Oh, let's not swarm north, it is getting too cold."
Scutellata hasn't migrated further north because it is adapted to a tropical or subtropical climate, and when swarms of S move further north, they don't survive. Even though they all die, they aren't adapting. They are swarming further north every year, and then all dying because they aren't adapted. It isn't that they can't. They don't, because adaptation is a slow, random process that produces a lot of losers and few if any winners. 

It is easy to selectively breed dogs, a domesticated animal. Humans have almost complete control when breeding dogs.

If on the other hand you selectively bred dogs hoping that your purebred stock would be true to type after three generations of mixing with the local strays, you would be disappointed.

We can hope that over time the bees will adapt somewhat to the mites, and our need for treatment will decrease.
Perhaps the population of bees in Appalachia is moving in that direction, and if we leave them alone they will get to the point of effective resistance.

I seriously doubt that selective breeding will do much of anything to move the American bee population in the direction of resistance. It is worth trying, if you have a lot of bees and a lot of money. 

For the rest of us, just keeping our bees alive and renewing our populations from local sources is about all we can do.

At least that is how I see it.

Enjoy your bees!

Jon


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> Me: I believe the contrary. A while ago, but after mites, a State Bee official talked about finding feral bees in very remote areas that she believed where AMM, and how they get darker with time when left alone. That tells me they are the best adapted to Wisconsin.


be neat to have pockets of bees trending back to pure as the locale offers a "partial clones" of their original environment.

those areas "should" be mapped and disallow any other bees brought in.
there is an off chance Europe's bees are taken out by something, then we may still have the genetic stock to rebuild.

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Roland said:


> a State Bee official talked about finding feral bees in very remote areas that she believed where AMM, and how they get darker with time when left alone.


Whatever that "State Bee official" believed means nothing.

Without proper testing (or at least the suggestive pre-testing - the wing measurement and other morphological measurements) - one can not just claim some "blackish" bees are AMM.
By now there are so many black-enough mutts out there - no one really knows what they are.

And to be sure - the original Carni and especially the Grey Cs - are just as "black" as the AMMs are (whatever the "black-ness" means anyway).
So any mutts with the C and O inputs have very good chances to be qualified as "black".

In general, the presence of C-lineage (supplemented with some O-lineage) heavily infiltrated and ran over most all US landscapes.
Also, these both lineages (C and O) feel themselves as at home in most places just as well.
If one is to find any kind of "black" bees, most likely the C-lineage is predominant in those "black" bees before anything else.


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## Biermann (May 31, 2015)

crofter, good discussion you started.

Sorry fellows, I didn't read all 7 pages, but will say this:

In our area, just north of the 49° and just east of the Rockies, most hives will starve to death and everyone blames it on the mite. I will also quantify my statement.

Most stores are from syrup (water/beet sugar 1:1 by weight) or canola residue honey = crystalizes like mad and it will take the bee cluster a lot to get around this crystalized rock, warm, liquefy and digest it to heat there body. 

We have had -33°F on December 28 2021 and 60°F on January 13th 2022 and bees were flying (here they fly starting at 8°C, 46°F) and I don't believe they are able to liquefy enough stores when they need the feed. My reason to have feeder jars on all winter. Have survival of 3 of 3 in 3 years and 4 of 4 in two years. Sh...t has it that I treat with OAV for thus five years, bugger, how do you make that spreadsheet work?.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregB said:


> Interesting - I googled up a little about the M-lineage distributions.
> 
> Found this interesting PDF where the bees in Italy have now unusual A-lineage presence (what, African bees in Italy?).
> Well, what about them *Buckfast*?
> ...


Could those "A" lineage genetics in Italy be the same "A" genetics that naturally ranges into southeastern France? I wondered about whether the "A" lineage genetics in France and Spain are from Saharan bee genetics because the same sort of genetics are shared with the Saharan bees in Morocco that is near Spain. There certainly is Tunisian bee genetics in Spain, likely came from Morocco over a land bridge into Spain.

I had wondered whether they would find A lineage genetics in Siberia! I read about the Mt. Elgon strain Brother Adam bred that was being raised in Norway and Sweden which is very far north, so why not have those mountain African bees in Russia, too? Where they are from at the high altitudes in Mt. Elgon, Uganda, it freezes through the whole year during the night time if I remember correctly.

There could be three kinds of bees in Mt. Elgon, a new subspecies (?) of Y lineage, A. m. scutellata, and A. m. adansonii. The African mountain bees were thought to be A. m. monticola, but that subspecies is doubted to be valid now.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Could those "A" lineage genetics in Italy be the same "A" genetics that naturally ranges into southeastern France? ...... so why not have those mountain African bees in Russia, too?


HaploNut,
I don't know what are the A-bees in Italy.
No point in doing kitchen-level guessing analysis.

To be clear - the A marker is nothing but just a genetic marker found in certain mutt bees (not talking of the full-blown AHBs, etc).
The paper reasonably suggests those are likely markers of the *widely sold Buckfast*.
And btw, the *Buckfast *bees obviously winter in Siberia as we speak - just see what is happening.

But my point all along was - the A-bees don't belong in Siberia.
And yet here they are now.
For example, this Siberian vlogger has them:


https://www.youtube.com/c/DmitriyRomanov



True - One can argue that even M-bees don't belong in Siberia - they are ALL imports.
Basically, this is one giant melting mess where looking back to the bee origins in search of some pure bees make very little sense now.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

GregB said:


> Whatever that "State Bee official" believed means nothing.
> 
> Without proper testing (or at least the suggestive pre-testing - the wing measurement and other morphological measurements) - one can not just claim some "blackish" bees are AMM.
> By now there are so many black-enough mutts out there - no one really knows what they are.
> ...


I suspect that a "state bee official" has a reasonable chance of being able to form a well-founded opinion as to the lineage of a colony of bees. Most such people I have known have at least an undergrad degree in entomology and would at least know how to identify the different bee lineages.

I also suspect Roland would be able to pretty quickly assess if they were competent and wouldn't give credence to their opinions if they weren't.

So maybe there are a few surviving pockets of AMM. 

I have seen bees locally at my feeders that were so black they had no discernable striping. I am not suggesting they were any particular race, but I have never seen carnis that were blacker than a raven in a coal mine.

Haven't had any success trapping them yet.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

Biermann said:


> crofter, good discussion you started.
> 
> Sorry fellows, I didn't read all 7 pages, but will say this:
> 
> ...


The more I learn about beekeeping, the less I am willing to offer my opinions on why any particular colony didn't make it, unless I have looked inside it to see what I can see.

I have heard that most people who winter in cold climates winter on sucrose syrup, as it contains very little indigestible matter. If you had to hold your poop for 5 months, you'd want a low fiber diet too. It sounds like you get a few warm days in the winter, so probably it isn't so much of a problem for you.


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## Apinor (May 20, 2016)

Marcin said:


> 6 years ago I would have been offended by this term. Now I'm angry when someone is a beehaver. Maybe angry is too strong of a word. Frustrated is more like it.
> I've always said that managing bees is so easy when you compare it to managing beekeepers.
> 
> To answer Frank's inquiry, I can mostly get away with with TF beekeeping, but not management free beekeeping. Past 4 years winter losses have been around 23%. This year I'll be happy with 40%, but expecting 50%. Somewhat bad fall, but mostly my mistakes. Simple as that.
> Successfull beekeeping is all about experience in my opinion. The more experience you get the better you develop the skills to manage bees. Failure is part of success. Consistent failure is maybe a sign to take on some other hobby.





crofter said:


> I have been thinking about what all factors might be enabling some beekeepers to have good colony survival with very minimal treatments even be treatment free. I Have been thinking that beekeepers have varying levels of skill, and are more or less dedicated to getting the highest basic survival, aside from mite control. Some people seem to have been able to record 10% or less winter losses and others coast along at 25 or 30% losses and call it good. Your local situation controls what is practical survival targets for YOU. I am suggesting that this variance in operating methods could very well make the difference of which operator might be able to survive treatment free or not. If you are leaving a lot of money on the table in other areas you sure can also be losing a lot to mites!
> 
> Certainly we could make a list of things which favor the success of a treatment free proposition. Isolation (from transported bees) which would more easily allow local conditions adaptation, excellent foraging with wide variety etc. Feel free to add your thoughts as to what things constitute the local condition enablers.
> 
> ...


Beekeeping is learning by doing, but also learning from beekeepers having a lot of experience threw many years. I myself is beekeeper from Norway with close to 40 years of beekeeping, and my beekeeping is based upon other Norwegians results in combination of my own. When I am looking at videos om Youtube from US, I can see a lot of things which would have given dead hives by us. I think you are balancing on an edge giving big losses some years and small losses othe years without good explanations. In Norway we have artic beekeeping. The bees stays in the hives from October to May and often under the snow for months. This is our roules for trouble free winters:


Manage the varroa. If you do not manage the varroa, the varroa manage you. Too many varroa in fall will be at big risk in winter and losses in spring. I myself treat the bees two times with oxalic acid, the first time first of October with the bees in cluster and then the next time 8 weeks later. Both times a lot of varroa fall down and can be counted. This two treatments are all what I am doing to keep control of the varroa. But other actions can be done by us mainly taking away drone brod, furmaric acid treatment and lactic acid treatment. No acaricides are used in Norway to prevent resistence problems.
Use isolated hives, and decrease the number of frames to the number the bees are sitting on and which are filled up with feed. Too much space makes problems in the cold winters. We are using syropore beehives, very low weight and taking care of the bees in cold winters. The sides are 2 inch thick. Too much space makes problems in the cold winters.
Give enough 60% sugar brine to fill up all the frames where the bees are sitting. By late inspection after cluster formation, it is possible to take away frames which is too many and fill the empty spaces with isolated frame boxes.
Close the beehive upwards and open it downwards. Our bottom boards have 3mm gitter or perforated aluminium plate cowering the hole bottom surface. The enterence is kept open at all time, except moving. By keeping the bottom board open, the bees get rid og Co2 and too much moisture. The inside enviroment are kept warm, and no moisture condencate on the surface of frames giving growth of mould. The warm air is lighter than cold air and by arranging the hive like this, the warm air will move upwards making the hive heat stable and comfortable. Closed hive on top, keep the heatness stable threw the winter.
Shield the apiary against the strongest winds if the place selected are exposed to strong wind. Ask yourself if it is better to find an another place giving natural shield. In places with strong winds, consider to reduce the opening in the bottom board a bit.
After oxalic acid treatment, do not disturbe the beehives before the spring. Now they need peace and quiet until spring shows up.


This is the Norwegian method of overwintering. By this way of organizing the hives, we keep the winterlosses often below 10%. Before the varroa showed up in the nineties, winter losses was almost related to bad beekeepers doing unsatisfactory winter preparations. Now we have to analyse what is going on in summer. Do we have too many varroa or do we manage to keep the number low by taking away drone broad, using furmaric acid treatment and use of oxalic acid in the fall? It is always a question, and the situation is closely followed. No acaricides are used by us, and we do not want it giving chemical residues to honey, wax and pollen. But dead hives during winter is complex and often a result of different parameters in combination. Of that reason we can eliminate a lot of sources of error and reasons for death if the bees are given the best prerequisites in the fall to survive. Here I think you can save a lot of bee families, because from our point of view, the the conditions you are offering the hives are not satisfaction. You can say, in former years winter losses was never a big problem. You are right, but the bees enviroment has change dramaticly. Their immune system is weakened by viruses from varroa, pesticides, acaricides, monocultures and other external factors. This in combination with a bad winter preparation, I think gives the results wich you experience in US.


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## ursa_minor (Feb 13, 2020)

Apinor said:


> Manage the varroa. If you do not manage the varroa, the varroa manage you. Too many varroa in fall will be at big risk in winter and losses in spring. I myself treat the bees two times with oxalic acid, the first time first of October with the bees in cluster and then the next time 8 weeks later. Both times a lot of varroa fall down and can be counted. This two treatments are all what I am doing to keep control of the varroa. But other actions can be done by us mainly taking away drone brod, furmaric acid treatment and lactic acid treatment. No acaricides are used in Norway to prevent resistence problems.


Good post and interesting, I have a couple of questions, what is your method of lactic acid application and when. When you apply OA is it OA vaporization or dribble.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

A Novice said:


> I suspect that a "state bee official" has a reasonable chance of being able to form a well-founded opinion as to the lineage of a colony of bees. Most such people I have known have at least an undergrad degree in entomology and *would at least know how to identify the different bee lineages.*


This is really a stretch, IMO.
They don't know and have no capabilities to do it either (there is no allocated budget to be just liberally sending any random bee sample for expensive genetic testing at will - not in a state department without some official research program to allocate the money for it).

A qualified specialist should know better - without good-enough testing (*in the US!*), one has no good idea what kind of a bee is in front of them.
Outside of the obvious observation - this is a dark bee or that is a yellow bee, qualified generalizations should not be made on the looks alone.
Even arm-chair scientists should know this much.

External coloring in the intense, ongoing and random hybridization environment has little weight anymore - rather we are looking at the all kinds of new mongrelized bees afforded by the current environment (all kinds of "new" bees that would never have been possible just 100 years ago).


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

A Novice said:


> I have seen bees locally at my feeders that were so black they had no discernable striping. I am not suggesting they were any particular race, but I have never seen carnis that were blacker than a raven in a coal mine.


AN,
As soon as you see these bees again - I am all ears.
Then we can talk a real deal (especially because you are only a county away).








FREE tools for honey bee wing morphological analysis.


To compare, this VSH sample I have is predominantly Carnica with Ligustica flavor.




www.beesource.com


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I had wondered whether they would find A lineage genetics in Siberia! I read about the Mt. Elgon strain Brother Adam bred that was being raised in Norway and Sweden which is very far north, so why not have those mountain African bees in Russia, too?





GregB said:


> But my point all along was - the A-bees don't belong in Siberia.
> And yet here they are now.


Greg and Nathaniel:

Thank you for the information. Reading the study about 'A' genetics in Italy and considering the winter hardiness of genetics that should not survive at higher latitudes, I was reminded of Brother Adam's high-regard for the Saharan bee, and the non-intuitive results when this subspecies was crossed with other subspecies.

Per the attached 'Evaluation Matrix' from _Breeding the Honeybee_, Brother Adam scores the Saharan bee as a -3 versus Buckfast for Hardiness, but when crossed with Buckfast, the F1 is scored a +5, or equal to the Hardiness of Buckfast.

This just reminds me that we likely can't draw many straight-line conclusions relative to the hybrid results of various subspecies.

But what we can likely surmise is the relative representation of the various subspecies will likely be driven primarily by the survival advantage that the relevant hybrids provide in their specific context.

I am reminded of the recent study of AHB representation in the Americas and their base conclusions:

_These wide clines, coupled with the evidence for parallel genome-wide clines in North and South America, are consistent with selection tracking smooth climate transitions over broad geographic regions rather than a discrete environmental step. 

Thus, we conclude that honey bee fitness is more likely to be tracking environmental variables with smooth transitions over broad geographic regions (e.g. climate), which may create intermediate environments where ancestry intermediates have higher fitness, thus broadening the observed hybrid zones. These proposed dynamics are similar to well-studied cases in other systems where bounded hybrid superiority and/or local adaptation to continuous environments maintain adaptive clines across broad geographic regions._


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

Greg - it MAY have been the state Entomologist. at the time. 

Crazy Roland


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Litsinger said:


> Greg and Nathaniel:
> 
> Thank you for the information. Reading the study about 'A' genetics in Italy and considering the winter hardiness of genetics that should not survive at higher latitudes, I was reminded of Brother Adam's high-regard for the Saharan bee, and the non-intuitive results when this subspecies was crossed with other subspecies.
> 
> ...


I forgot that the Buckfast had Saharan bee within its mixture along with the A. m. monticola! That could easily mean that the Saharan bee has been spread all across Europe because the Buckfast bee is so popular. I think though that the Mediterranean climate would better suit the Saharan bee genetics because of the long summer dormancy. Siberia doesn't sound very hospitable to the Saharan bee! I could be wrong of course.

People don't seem to realize it, but Northwest Africa, where Saharan bees are from can get cold during winter. Here, a beekeeper in Setif, Algeria, got snow this early December. 



 When I looked up Setif weather it was snowing/raining many days in a row this year! His nectar flow ends in August, and I have seen his bees active in February in his videos. So he might get two separate nectar flows in a year, one in Spring and one in Fall.

The Saharan bees that Brother Adam tested were from a warmer part in southern Morocco. If the "A" genetics in Spain and southeastern France are from the Saharan bee subspecies that crossed over the land bridge from Africa to Iberia, along with the Tunisian bee, then that bee might be even more cold hardy because it would be the farthest north ranging. But, yes, I have read that hybridization can suddenly make a subtropical honeybee subspecies into a very cold hardy bee! Brother Adam said that pure Egyptian bees could not over winter in Europe, yet when hybridized they did just fine.

I am going to write to David Tarpy about what GregB posted about the A lineage bee genetics found in Siberia. He will probably be surprised!


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> --------------------------------------------
> 
> The Saharan bees that Brother Adam tested were from a warmer part in southern Morocco. If the "A" genetics in Spain and southeastern France are from the Saharan bee subspecies that crossed over the land bridge from Africa to Iberia, along with the Tunisian bee, then that bee might be even more cold hardy because it would be the farthest north ranging.
> ------------------------------------------


Sorry, I made a mistake. I just assumed there were "A" lineage genetics in southeastern France. Actually, it was "A" lineage genetics found as far as northeastern Spain, and so the "A" lineage possibly ranges into France. The "A" lineage genetic map of Spain on page 3: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.727.9745&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Incredibly some of the islands near Spain are pure "M" lineage from the testing!

Here in this "A" lineage genetics map of Algeria it writes about the shared genes of Saharan bees and bees in Spain (https://www.researchgate.net/public...lgerian_Honeybee_Populations_Apis_mellifera_L):
_*". The high frequencies and combination of the two haplotypes (A2 and A13) unique to this population (Figure 3) could provide a particularly interesting way to predict the expected spread of A. m. sahariensis’ range into this area [38,39,40]. However, assigning the A9 haplotype to A. m. sahariensis as proposed by Chahbar et al. [46] might not be appropriate, especially given that A9 was recorded in our study in almost all northern Algerian regions, and in Spain [35], where A. m. sahariensis does not occur (Figure 3). "*_

It could be that the Tunisian bee shares the same "A" lineage genes with the Saharan bee, too... maybe from hybridization of Saharan bee and Tunisian bee genetics? I am not sure.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> I am going to write to David Tarpy about what GregB posted about the A lineage bee genetics found in Siberia. He will probably be surprised!


To clarify - I did not say that A-lineage bee is *found *in Siberia (because I don't think anyone has done any genetics analysis in that regard - who really cares?).

However, based on that article about the A-lineage found in Italy, *I think* there is A-lineage in Siberia now.
This is because the Buckfast bees are just as common in Siberia as in Italy as of this moment.
In fact, the A-lineage may as well be all around me too - because Buckfast are for sale here just the same.
That is a reasonable assumption at this point.

Telling you this HaploNut so you understand - if you say "they found", David Tarpy's next question will be "show me the money". 
What you going to say?
"GregB from BS told me".
LOL


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Oops. I read too quickly and misunderstood. At least they are now testing for the "A" lineage in Siberia, right? It would be cool if they could find some African genetics in Siberia! People will be shocked. That is, if they don't know about the cold hardy mountain form of the African bee or that hybridization could cause tropical bees to become cold hardy.

I remember reading from Brother Adam about the Sicilian black bee being in southern Italy, hybridized with the Italian bees. Also, that the Italian bee was imported into Sicily. Could this be why there is A lineage in Italy, from the Sicilian black bee? With Global Warming, the Sicilian black bee might be spreading farther into Italy.

But the article that GregB posted of Italy A lineage testing says (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjg3cfds9X1AhVejokEHU-fB-4QFnoECAUQAQ&url=https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/12/7/620/pdf&usg=AOvVaw3gcqmndo9pvUJE56kZ3vhY):
*"suggesting that an increased frequency of A and M mitotypes is present in the middle of the north of Italy, in the Po valley."*
Which doesn't make sense if it was Sicilian black bee genetics because you would expect the Sicilian black bee to come up from the South.

And the A lineage genetics concentrated in northern Italy are different from the Sicilian black bee's genetics:
*"Honey bees that were indicated to belong to A. m. siciliana and were sampled in Sicily carried only the A mitotypes, which were, however, not identified in any other continental sites"*

The A lineage is even dominating in certain areas of northern Italy:
*"It was also surprising that honey samples with only the A lineage were from Trentino-Alto Adige (north of Italy) and Lazio (central of Italy), which probably means that all the colonies of the two beekeepers in these regions had only the A lineage."*

I guess they are right about it being Buckfast imports that brought in A lineage genetics:
*"If we exclude Sicily, which has a peculiar A. mellifera mitotype distribution, there is no clear geographic pattern or gradient for all three mtDNA lineages over the rest of Italy. The diffusion of A mitotypes over the peninsula could be eventually explained by a natural south-to-north movement of the A mitotypes, starting from Sicily, but this hypothesis does not hold according to all logistic models. Therefore, the most plausible explanation of the presence of the African mtDNA lineage all over continental Italy points to human-mediated dispersion, probably derived by the importation of non-native subspecies and/or by the extensive use of hybrid queens of not autochthonous lines, referred to as “Buckfast”. The importation of queens from South America, mainly Argentina, where Africanized bees have been identified [63], could have created a potential route of introgression into the Italian colonies. “Buckfast” bees have been reported to be not very homogeneous at the mtDNA, having, in some cases, A mitotypes [2] that could be spread all over Italy by the use of some lines carrying A mitotypes. Similar explanations of the unexpected occurrence of the A lineage have been proposed by some authors, who reported African mtDNA lineages in other European countries. For example, Oleska et al. [60] recently reported that about 2% of the honey bee colonies in East-Central Europe had A mitotypes.

The presence of some continental hotspots for both A and M mitotypes, mainly in the north of Italy, where a high concentration of beekeeping activities and enterprises are located, further support the hypothesis that beekeeping practices might be the main explanation of the updated A and M lineage map distribution of Italy. The M lineage seems to move in parallel with the A mitotypes, suggesting that despite its original presence in the peninsula, it could be possible that since the study of Franck et al. [40], some changes in its distribution could have occurred, driven by the following same events suggested to explain the presence of the A mitotypes in continental Italy: the import of non-native subspecies and the use of hybrid queens, carrying, in this case, the M mitotypes, with subsequent introgression in native populations, which, in turn, might have modified the original A. m. ligustica populations that are known to be present in this area. The putative reduction in the frequency of the mtDNA M lineage in Italy could also be due to not only the introduction of the A lineage in the peninsula, but also to the expansion of the C lineage. This explanation could match the results we obtained for the honey samples in the Northwest borders of Italy, where it seems that the C lineage has substituted, at least in part, the M lineage. "*


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

HaplozygousNut said:


> At least they are now testing for the "A" lineage in Siberia, right?


Again - who are "they"?

When we say "they", we mean some specific interested parties in doing some specific work.
No one does anything willy-nilly for the fun of it - such projects are non-trivial work and it takes qualified people and money.

I don't think anyone is testing for anything "A" lineage related in Siberia.
It may show up as a by-product of non-native lineages estimates and such (there were such projects in the past).

If anything was being tested in a targeted fashion the last I heard - existence of "M" lineage.
The authentic black bees preservation and restoration - this is a worthwhile cause that is being cultivated in Russia (and thus has a potential for some financial support).

To be sure, I have no clue of the future either.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Okay, thanks!


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

GregB said:


> And btw, the *Buckfast *bees obviously winter in Siberia as we speak - just see what is happening.


I'll be darned if the YT vlogger I follow - doesn't follow me back on BS. LOL

Cause he just posted this:








Buckfast in Siberia after four seasons - video report.


A fresh release by a Siberian vlogger I follow... He shares his experience with keeping the Buckfast in Western Siberia after four (4) seasons. Use auto-translate captions.




www.beesource.com


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> -------------------------------------------
> 
> I remember reading from Brother Adam about the Sicilian black bee being in southern Italy, hybridized with the Italian bees. Also, that the Italian bee was imported into Sicily. Could this be why there is A lineage in Italy, from the Sicilian black bee? With Global Warming, the Sicilian black bee might be spreading farther into Italy.
> 
> ----------------------------------------


Here is what I read from Brother Adam's book about the bees in Italy:
page 38
*"In the region of Imperia and San Remo the French black bee - with its characteristic spitefulness - encroaches on Italian territory."*

*"The geographic distribution of the bright yellow variety is in the north of Italy mainly confined to the Plain of Lombardy, and southwards to the entire Peninsula as far as Catanzaro. South of this region, the worst possible type of mongrel extant dominates the remainder of Calabria - a heterogeneous conglomeration of the yellow Italian and black native bee of Sicily. Though I was not able to explore entirely the regions north of the Plain of Lombardy, yet judging from the sectors visited and the information obtained, hybrids predominate in the southern foothills of the Helvetic Alps. In the Dolomites and the region around Bolzano, the prevalence of hybrids is very marked. On the other hand around Lake Como and the adjoining Tessin, the yellow Italian is found more commonly. But black bees and mongrels clearly dominate the area further west, in the valley of Aosta, as I ascertained. In the regions where the bright yellow Italian bee is indigenous, the tendency to propilise increased progressively the further south the search took me"*

page 39
_*"Not so many years ago, only the native bee of Sicily (Apis mellifera var. sicula) could be found throughout the island; but in recent years queens from northern Italy have been widely imported. Whether these importations of the bright yellow bee will eventually prove to the good of apiculture in Sicily is at the moment an open question."*_

Page 4 on this article has a range map of the color of the bees that shows where bees are hybridizing in Italy:


http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol71-2018-257-271fontana.pdf


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Here is what I read from Brother Adam's book about the bees in Italy:
> page 38
> *"In the region of Imperia and San Remo the French black bee - with its characteristic spitefulness - encroaches on Italian territory."
> 
> ...


Ideally we stick to the thread topic.
If you wish to discuss the French Black bee perhaps start a thread.

thanks
GG


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

crofter said:


> I have been thinking about what all factors might be enabling some beekeepers to have good colony survival with very minimal treatments even be treatment free. I Have been thinking that beekeepers have varying levels of skill, and are more or less dedicated to getting the highest basic survival, aside from mite control. Some people seem to have been able to record 10% or less winter losses and others coast along at 25 or 30% losses and call it good. Your local situation controls what is practical survival targets for YOU. I am suggesting that this variance in operating methods could very well make the difference of which operator might be able to survive treatment free or not. If you are leaving a lot of money on the table in other areas you sure can also be losing a lot to mites!
> 
> Certainly we could make a list of things which favor the success of a treatment free proposition. Isolation (from transported bees) which would more easily allow local conditions adaptation, excellent foraging with wide variety etc. Feel free to add your thoughts as to what things constitute the local condition enablers.
> 
> ...


Well I've been treatment free for about 12 years it is a little more labor but you don't have the miticide bills. The closest migratory beekeepers yard is 45 min to an hour away so I dont have to deal with that. As far as breeding I had a head start as my mentor when i started had been breeding his bees for about 10 years for traits conducive to tf beekeeping. I took over his work in 2010 and believe I've improved on his work. Average winter losses are less than 10% so far this year around 4%. In my experience people want tf bees and honey they will pay a premium for both. I'm in SW Arkansas and have people from all over the state's drive in to buy nucs. When other beekeepers in my area are getting $100-$150 per nuc I get $200 and take a waiting list for any extras I can produce later. So for me it's worth the little extra work. For others maybe not. Hope this gives a litle in site, tf works it just takes time and a different mind set. But it is a viable beekeeping method and if your honest with yourself you have to realize it's probably the best if not the only way to avoid mite resistance to treatment. These are just my experiences and opinions not ment to ruffle any feathers.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> Well I've been treatment free for about 12 years ........
> I'm in SW Arkansas ........


Sounds like many have good luck with TF in AR.
Even Solomon P. was able to be TF in AR (then he incorrectly assumed it was the same everywhere).

This is basically consistent with the "Appalachian phenomenon".
Some kind of resistance pool is floating around there.
I don't doubt it.

I had queens from AR.
Here they faded in 2-3 seasons under the mite pressure.
It was too much to ask.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregB said:


> Sounds like many have good luck with TF in AR.
> Even Solomon P. was able to be TF in AR (then he incorrectly assumed it was the same everywhere).
> 
> This is basically consistent with the "Appalachian phenomenon".
> ...


maybe it is in the dirt....
micro nutrients, in pollen and nectar.

? who knows

GG


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

Gray Goose said:


> maybe it is in the dirt....
> micro nutrients, in pollen and nectar.
> 
> ? who knows
> ...


Feral populations most likely.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

Reading all of this reminds me of my travels in Europe. While there, and frequently staying in campgrounds, I learned that an individual's ethnicity, or should I say ethnicities in most cases cannot be defined simply by their appearance. Even the language they speak is no guarantee! Now I realize that their may be exceptions to this (probably are), but in order to remain PC, I won't name any.

This reminds me of the bees! I have mostly American Italians {should I say Kona Italians?}, but I know in fact they may include some Carniolan in their ethnicity and perhaps some others. My bees can be defined as hard working, slow to swarm, gentle to handle, and they do have a tendency to use propolis to gum up {Caucasian?} the works. IOW, like most everything else in this world, they're all mixed up. And I will admit to never purchasing a Kona queen; however, at times in the past I was gifted some KQ queen cells, and no doubt have 'flown' my queens over KQ drones...in fact, most of the time that has been true.

I'm pretty happy right now as I have finally rescued my computer from the Russian drones that took it over due to my opening the wrong website. Yahoo!


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> Sounds like many have good luck with TF in AR.
> Even Solomon P. was able to be TF in AR (then he incorrectly assumed it was the same everywhere).
> 
> This is basically consistent with the "Appalachian phenomenon".
> ...


Well I believe it is roughly the same, but you can't be th with a conventional mentality you have to change your management style or your going to fail. You also need localized stocks, and you can add in traits for whatever you want as long as the end result is beneficial. If not you scrap it and start over.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> you can't be th with a conventional mentality you have to change your management style or your going to fail.


Now we are talking.
Can you outline your management style in a brief outline?


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> Well I've been treatment free for about 12 years...


@TysonHoneyFarm: Glad to see your recent posts on Beesource. I do hope you will continue to share your TF experience on the forum.


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## drummerboy (Dec 11, 2015)

TF was working just fine around here until 2013-14 when 'coincidentally' a local cranberry marsh operation began bringing in migratory colonies for pollination from 'who knows' where. Initially, whoever was supplying this farm bees for pollination would pick them up mid day, leaving the foragers to find another home...if possible. I was able to set them straight, and they began demanding that their suppliers pick up bees after dark. They've since realized through trail and error that indigenous bees seem to do a fine or better job pollinating cranberries (for FREE) than honeybees and no longer bring in bees in from around the country (Hoo-Ray!). They are one of the 'few' cranberry operations wanting to produce an organic product and are not linked with Ocean Spray, so are resistant to spraying any chems. Good folks, but its a hard road to run on when your trying to do anything different than what the stats quo dictates. 

A few years later, someone with more $ than sense began making up bee yards all around us (at least a dozen within 2-4 miles of our place), even getting permission from our own farmer/neighbors who just thought they were being neighborly, till I informed them of what we were experiencing. That guy lasted 'one' season, his bees all died, the electric fencers are all gone, but in most cases the yards are still fenced in with the 'wide type' fencing material, most are located right off the road. 

We have rejoiced every Spring since then that he hasn't returned, he must have lost a bundle.

Now - Did the above events affect our bees, forcing our small operation to begin treating for mites? No way to know for certain, but I've sure got my suspicions. So it goes, now we treat...


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

drummerboy said:


> TF was working just fine around here until 2013-14 when 'coincidentally' a local cranberry marsh operation began bringing in migratory colonies for pollination from 'who knows' where. Initially, whoever was supplying this farm bees for pollination would pick them up mid day, leaving the foragers to find another home...if possible. I was able to set them straight, and they began demanding that their suppliers pick up bees after dark. They've since realized through trail and error that indigenous bees seem to do a fine or better job pollinating cranberries (for FREE) than honeybees and no longer bring in bees in from around the country (Hoo-Ray!). They are one of the 'few' cranberry operations wanting to produce an organic product and are not linked with Ocean Spray, so are resistant to spraying any chems. Good folks, but its a hard road to run on when your trying to do anything different than what the stats quo dictates.
> 
> A few years later, someone with more $ than sense began making up bee yards all around us (at least a dozen within 2-4 miles of our place), even getting permission from our own farmer/neighbors who just thought they were being neighborly, till I informed them of what we were experiencing. That guy lasted 'one' season, his bees all died, the electric fencers are all gone, but in most cases the yards are still fenced in with the 'wide type' fencing material, most are located right off the road.
> 
> ...


drummerboy

Sadly this story plays out for almost every area.
the farmer does not know the granularity of the difference in keepers.
by the time it is discovered the mites are out of the bag.
I had the same experience.
to some we are experiencing "Dogma"

good luck with your work arounds.

GG


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> Now we are talking.
> Can you outline your management style in a brief outline?


I will start by saying that while I consider my bees to be treatment free some might disagree. I feed sugar and pollen sub. I know some feel that feeding is a treatment I feel it's just good animal husbandry. Plus I need a lot of bees early for producing nucs and queens etc.
So as far as my management style it's really pretty simple I do alcohol washes on the entire operation in early spring and assess each colony. I only breed from colonies that show a 0 on a mite wash no exceptions (not saying I don't have mites just they aren't showing up in the washes) I Nuc everything in the spring except for colonies used as cell builders, so everything basicly gets a brood break in early spring. Then I pick out my honey producing colonies 30-50% of the colonies that were split earlier. The other 50+% will be nuc producing colonies until late July or August. I also do mite washes on a random 25% or so colonies in each yard just so i know whats going on. I give myself a low threshold no more than 3 mites in a wash, if so it gets nuced out in 2 framers and a new queen cell. Then more brood breaks every month until fall for over half the colonies most of the year and every thing gets split in late July, so more brood breaks and new queen cells for all the nucs. Then I feed from mid Sept till it gets cold or until they have enough weight on them. That's it that is a whole year of management it is a longer post than I thought but that's what it took to say what I needed. All that to also say I'm not the type of tf keeper to just be hard headed and let all my bees die I've never had to treat but if for some reason I ever have to I will use the more natural treatments oa , formic, etc. And as fast as were growing we may do some sort of preventative on the colonies that don't quite cut it but haven't decided on that yet. Hope this gives the in site you were wanting. Sorry it's not the brief outline asked for the devils in the details you know.


GregB said:


> Now we are talking.
> Can you outline your management style in a brief outline?


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> That's it that is a whole year of management


Wow.
That is a LOT of splitting...
Not a good option up here.

Up here the latest viable splitting must be done by the end of July - to have a viable wintering unit.
And the feeding must be done by October - before the cold nights.
At the same time, this also means that latest possible splits still have enough brooding to build-up damaging levels of mites (due to the young queens) - August/September/October.

Anyway I have tried double rounds of splitting with the same bad results.
Even lost my most resistant lines anyway after the double-splitting - in 2019 summer if I recall.
After two rounds of splitting it just becomes too labor/equipment intensive for me (and most any hobby person with under-20 colony holdings, for that matter).

Considering shorter active (not foraging!) season (AND much longer winter), it is hard to push it beyond just the two rounds of splitting up here.

PS: NOT to forget, some of our colleagues who operate in *the real Northern conditions *(forget Wisconsin) can only afford a single round of splitting.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

GregB said:


> Feral populations most likely.


Or the local use of agricultural chemicals, perhaps/


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

A Novice said:


> Or the local use of agricultural chemicals,


right, its not the mites, its the use of modern pesticides that are much less toxic to bees then the ones in a pre mite aera.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

A Novice said:


> Or the local use of agricultural chemicals, perhaps/


Though I am very much into the theory of this "Appalachian phenomenon" of a certain bee population developing (with elevated resistance traits).
Here is a relevant map provided by @Litsinger.
I just think the actual region must be wider than depicted and also should include Arkansas and Missouri and few other adjacent areas. After a trip into the region and criss-crossing it I feel the region has some prerequisites for such a thing.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

GregB said:


> Though I am very much into the theory of this "Appalachian phenomenon" of a certain bee population developing (with elevated resistance traits).
> Here is a relevant map provided by @Litsinger.
> I just think the actual region must be wider than depicted and also should include Arkansas and Missouri and few other adjacent areas. After a trip into the region and criss-crossing it I feel the region has some prerequisites for such a thing.
> 
> View attachment 67520


to be fair any map of a species is a snapshot.
may grow or shrink.

to be sure that is interesting habitat, plenty of old growth trees for cavities. poor folk who will likely not come home from Walmart with 18 type of powders and sprays for the garden. not much industrial farming due to the poor soil and the terrain. More likely from Walmart to get 25lb bags of sugar, but I digress. (lots of bee keepers I assume.)

not likely to go much more south as that is Big queen rearing operations, lots of gene stuff down there.
but sure east west and north is a possible expansion route.

be nice if keepers in that zone used local bees, rather bring in the Cali queens.
must be well over a 1000 bee trees in that zone, the German guy was talking 600 in his group.
a few inconspicuously placed hollow log bee gums may be warranted.

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> a few inconspicuously placed hollow log bee gums may be warranted.


Your idea of Warre swarm generators has certainly paid-off in my operation.

If you're on FB, you can check-in on the 'Chasing Feral Honey Bees' page which is a loose confederation between Purdue, the Heartland Honey Bee Breeder's Association and the Kentucky Queen Breeder's Association. In short, they are catching, evaluating and cross-breeding feral stock from the Ohio Valley, and sometimes back-crossing with Purdue MBB stock.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregB said:


> Feral populations most likely.


Yes, that is what I think! Feral populations are what I believe is the reason why people are successful with Treatment Free beekeeping. Even the popular Italian bee has gotten resistance in its native Italy.

I read in a beekeeping book that a person in Italy had been watching the feral bee population in Italy and lamented how the feral bees disappeared when the Varroa mites first arrived there. He said it took ten years to regain the full population of feral bees there. Even then they may not have been fully resistant and may have shown signs of stress still from Varroa. But they were surviving! 

Here is a quote from the book (Top-Bar beekeeping by Les Crowder): _* 
"Around that time, I read about an Italian beekeeper who was keeping track of feral beehives in Italy. He wrote about how he had lamented the loss of the wild Italian bee to varroa mite predation after it had first arrived in Italy. Eight years later, these wild bees began to return to the various sites he was checking on, and within ten years he found the wild colonies had returned to their pre-varroa population levels."*_


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> Your idea of Warre swarm generators has certainly paid-off in my operation.
> 
> If you're on FB, you can check-in on the 'Chasing Feral Honey Bees' page which is a loose confederation between Purdue, the Heartland Honey Bee Breeder's Association and the Kentucky Queen Breeder's Association. In short, they are catching, evaluating and cross-breeding feral stock from the Ohio Valley, and sometimes back-crossing with Purdue MBB stock.


interesting ideas
hope they make progress

I am not on FB

I am actually thinking of a couple "warre like" cavities.
I have 2 corners where I can make a 300mm x 300 mm square hive and keep drone mother in there.

need to get the wall hive done first, I may just make a "Wall Warre" if the others turn out.

I think from the German guy who spoke having some hives "wild" can help to keep a few from getting to domesticated. If done correct I can always do a shook swarm or a real swarm.

GG


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> Your idea of Warre swarm generators has certainly paid-off in my operation.


how many did you get?

no wonder the grafting never took front stage.

Should act like a tree cast a swarm re queen etc. 



GG


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> Wow.
> That is a LOT of splitting...
> Not a good option up here.
> 
> ...


We can get by with late Aug nucs we usually shoot for late July I know I said in the post splits till fall that is not correct sorry for the miscommunication. But we so split from late March to late July about once a month if we need the nucs for sale or mating nucs. If not we take them to late summer bean fields for build up during our natural dearth and full colonies to make a late honey crop. Usually not bean anymore but sometimes mainly from weeds growing along the irrigation ditches between the farms. Hope this clears things up a little


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> we so split from late March to late July about once a month


So that is 4 months of splitting window.

Our splitting frame is June - July (2 months) - about as twice as short.
Some people will do in May - that is risky and they are trying for the earliest local sales.
Basically, shorter splitting season affects a lot the TF management options.


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## plantman (May 30, 2020)

@GregB I think I may be quite colder and the season was (different) last year,bees here we're ready to swarm before May...That gives several splits.


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## plantman (May 30, 2020)

I will add..I've sat here on Mother's Day in May watching ice rain and heating greenhouses to keep Plants warm..
Generalizations for everyone doesn't work in Beekeeping..


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

plantman said:


> @GregB I think I may be quite colder and the season was (different) last year,bees here we're ready to swarm before May...That gives several splits.


Depends on your priorities and your bees and even your very bee yard setup.

Often I did not have many bees left at all - due to the TF experimentation - speaking of the splits. 

But when had them I didn't push them either (no patties, no stimulating liquid feeding).
In general favor the later starting bees - no need for them to be swarming here too early.
Not feeding them through the cold March/April.
I don't sell bees either so to push, push, push them.
Some people do push them early even way up there in Canada.


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## plantman (May 30, 2020)

I get that..And I've read your whole thread👍.
Tried it ,,didn't work....I have to start another thread probably as to (possibly) why..fairly easy explanation after meeting neighbor beehavers.I don't push either ,last year drone were flying in November..
The bees will swarm when they choose to...


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> how many did you get?


So your question caused me to go back and do some ciphering.

In the last three years, I have hived an average of 6 swarms annually from the Warre colonies, and they have easily issued double this number that I have been unable to retrieve or have given away.

Big picture- I decided that if I was simply 'borrowing' genetics from the locally-adapted population, it was not too much to ask to allow Mother Nature have some of her material back.

Another way to look at this- I figured out that between the (8) Warre colonies I have and (11) Langstroth colonies I have that are occupied by swarms which came out of the Warre's, this represents half of my current stock.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Duplicate


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> So your question caused me to go back and do some ciphering.
> 
> In the last three years, I have hived an average of 6 swarms annually from the Warre colonies, and they have easily issued double this number that I have been unable to retrieve or have given away.
> 
> ...


good
so you are keeping the local bee thing going.

put and take.

should stay quit stable then.

compare, I caught 2 not my own, and know I sent more than that, like 5 or 6
both caught were very yellow bees, when OAV 100's of mites dropped, so fairly mite ridden stock.
it has been 4 years since I had a swarm make it thru winter.
Not doing that so much, this year looking to do increase with a purpose. Likely treat and requeen all swarms.

GG


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> So that is 4 months of splitting window.
> 
> Our splitting frame is June - July (2 months) - about as twice as short.
> Some people will do in May - that is risky and they are trying for the earliest local sales.
> Basically, shorter splitting season affects a lot the TF management options.


We used to start in March but that wasn't worth, it the weather seemed to always turn cold and wet. So we started a few weeks later in April and still have bees ready about he same time and less work. The shorter season does do away with several brood breaks but it is still doable. Until about 6 years ago we only split twice a year, mainly because we had most all of our colonies in honey production to keep up with demand. Now we have a few more colonies so we changed our management strategies. By you can still do brood breaks maybe have queen cells on hand to re queen with, or cage the queen for a little while and then release her. Or pull a couple frames of brood from each hive make some nucs and put in a cell. That will lower the mites in your full size colonies and the cell will provide a slight brood break. Just a couple of ideas. I think breaking the brood cycle is a very important tf management strategy. The one thing I will say is what m old mentor used to say NEVER experiment on the whole operation only about 10 to 15% so if something goes wrong your not out of business.
Just some ideas to think about.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> ......Just a couple of ideas. I think breaking the brood cycle is a very important tf management strategy. The one thing I will say is what m old mentor used to say NEVER experiment on the whole operation only about 10 to 15% so if something goes wrong your not out of business. Just some ideas to think about.


Clearly it works for you THF and maybe you want to "blog" in more detail about it the TF subforum.









Treatment-Free Beekeeping


Discussing and formulating honeybee management methods that cooperate as much as possible with natural bee biology without resorting to the use of chemicals and drugs.




www.beesource.com





As for me I am done with the TF efforts in its most idealistic forms - enough, and time to regroup.
This is nowhere close to the "lazy beekeeping" as promised by M. Bush or the "set it and forget it" style as used to be promoted by L. Sharaskin

In fact, THF you are a very good example how the TF even in a favorable setting can NOT be "lazy". At least in your particular management approach it is rather very labor intensive.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> ... looking to do increase with a purpose.


Same here- thus far I've been perfectly content to simply re-hive swarms to boost my colony count. 

But now that I am close to my limit of colonies I think I can reasonably manage, it's time for me to invest more time in managing the Langstroth colonies for production to see what this does to the mite and survival dynamic.

Having the Warre genetic resources hanging around does make me a bit more risk tolerant as it gives me a sense of comfort that there will still be active reproductive processes going on for needed retrieval in the event that production-focused management activities causes some stock to crash-and-burn. I see the Warre colonies as kind of my insurance policy or an annuity- no big gains, but hopefully no big losses either .


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> Same here- thus far I've been perfectly content to simply re-hive swarms to boost my colony count.
> 
> But now that I am close to my limit of colonies I think I can reasonably manage, it's time for me to invest more time in managing the Langstroth colonies for production to see what this does to the mite and survival dynamic.
> 
> Having the Warre genetic resources hanging around does make me a bit more risk tolerant as it gives me a sense of comfort that there will still be active reproductive processes going on for needed retrieval in the event that production-focused management activities causes some stock to crash-and-burn. I see the Warre colonies as kind of my insurance policy or an annuity- no big gains, but hopefully no big losses either .


you can /should sell a few Nucs from them.

no free rides on the Goose farm.

glad It is going well.

GG


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Gray Goose said:


> you can /should sell a few Nucs from them.


That's the plan- at least after you teach me the secret GG way of making up surefire winners .


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> Clearly it works for you THF and maybe you want to "blog" in more detail about it the TF subforum.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Well we do it the way we do because we sell a lot of nucs for a small outfit and are trying to build up our bee business if. I didn't need the bees I would still be splitting just twice a year spring and late summer after honey. Maybe someday we'll be big enough that my current methods dont work as well or not at all. In that case i guess bring on the organic acids, they seem to have less resistance to them than the synthetics in my research. But I have never used them so I don't know 1st hand. But TF or not nothing in life worth having is free or easy, in our operation the labor has a very good return on investment for us, but I guess it's not for everybody. So if you have to treat to stay in business I'm not against treating I'm just really cheap, and so far it has been working so ill stick with it till it quits working. I'll shut up now, good luck this season hope you find the management strategy that works for you, and I hope it's a natural one.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

TysonHoneyFarm said:


> Well we do it the way we do because we sell a lot of nucs for a small outfit and are trying to build up our bee business if.


Though re-thinking about it all...

What you really do is just - making and selling bees.
That is the gist of your "management" - just like you said, in fact.

Nothing special that you do can be called the "special TF trick".
OK - monitoring and selecting better bees - but that is general work anywhere to be done.

Rather, you get away being a TF because your location affords it (akin what Solomon P did in AR too - and started the "movement").
That is my take on it.

So when you say:


> but you can't be th with a conventional mentality you have to change your management style or your going to fail.


What is in this "conventional mentality" that needs to change that magically will make you able to go TF? 
To *what management style* one needs to change?
What is that "magic management style" to go to?

Frankly, I have done as aggressive splitting as my location supports - with nothing to show for it.

Back to the location/local population properties - that what really does the trick IMO (with a little help from you, of course).
One can manage all they want, but it is impossible to "turn the tide" so to speak.

A simple case in point, Joe Bessetti (well know pro-TF person) actually lives near my locality.
He started his project yeas and years before I started.
And..... To this day Joe has no bees and no queens to sell.
Nothing.


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## TysonHoneyFarm (Dec 30, 2014)

GregB said:


> Though re-thinking about it all...
> 
> What you really do is just - making and selling bees.
> That is the gist of your "management" - just like you said, in fact.
> ...


What I do is similar to what a lot of the commercial guys do to make up losses, I just do it all year. The main difference I think is that I don't depend on a "chemical crutch" so to speak. And we take great pains to produce the best queens to head our colonies. While this aspect should be general work at all bee operations sadly it's not. If it were there would be more mite resistant bees available. And not that the mites wouldn't be there the bees would be able to handle the pressure of the infestation and viruses etc. The folks in parts of Africa that keep European bees when they were first hit with mites lost a huge amount of bees but after a few years the bees developed a type of tolerance to the mites and viruses so it can work it just takes time and patients. Also here in the states it seems that most of the TF stocks are coming out of the North look at Kirk Webster and Michael Palmer two well known natural beekeepers both in the far north of the country, so location not as big a deal as some would be led to think. As far as conventional mentality most folks lose 30-60% annually and they change nothing they keep splitting and putting synthetic bug killers in boxes full of bugs and wondering why there bees die. As for any magic there is none good ol trial and error is how you get results. And bee sales is not what makes TF work for me as stated before we used to only do 2 walk away splits a year so if there would have been a mite problem the hive would have died and some did but most didn't which is why I'm sticking with it. On to your local TF guy the live and let die method only works if some bees live if they all die it isn't TF beekeeping it's just bee killing plain and simple. All in all you just have to find what works for you for some it's TF others it's a super fund hive and others fall somewhere in between. I'm not against them but chemical treatments are the lazy way out for hobbyists, sideliners and most all commercial beekeepers. If you want a solution to the problem the best man for the job would be the one with the problem. All the universities study is more chemical or tech nonsense instead of bee breeding because the commercial guys want it fixed last week and breeding takes time. In the end I think that is what is going to happen anyways because chemical controls can only get so strong before they kill the bees from exposure to the treatment and not just the residues left behind. Just my opinion.


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## A Novice (Sep 15, 2019)

msl said:


> right, its not the mites, its the use of modern pesticides that are much less toxic to bees then the ones in a pre mite aera.


I assume you are trying to express yourself through the use of sarcasm, so I rephrased your statement as (roughly speaking)
"you must be really ignorant, stupid or misinformed. What you suggest is ridiculous. Modern chemicals are substantially less toxic to bees than the ones in use before Varroa, so obviously what you suggest is entirely without merit and worthy of scorn."

It may be true that I am ignorant, stupid and misinformed. However, I particularly dislike having that pointed out to me, and like most people, if it is true, I am unaware of it.

It isn't clear what chemicals you are comparing, or their acute vs chronic effects, or their relative prevalence in a particular locality, or their effects on immune health, or synergistic effects with the viral pathogens which are now endemic due to varroa.

So please enlighten me.


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## gator75 (Apr 21, 2021)

1st year beekeeper. 2 hives and single nuc overwintered. Both hives booming. Nuc still coming along. So, my vote is good luck.


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

gator75 said:


> my vote is good luck.


The "good luck" somewhere in Florida, USA - to be clear.
You and I have very different "luck".


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

I don't know if I qualify as a 'minimal treatment ' beekeeper. I use OAV.
But I vaporize once a week, which according to the experts doesn't work. It has to be once every 4 days, or even better, every 2 days to be effective. 
So maybe that makes me TF.....😄

Last year I got delayed doing vaporization and we had 20% losses.
This year so far zero losses. But it's early yet.
I checked entrance activity today (it was warm out) and all hives looked very happy and still are quite heavy with honey. 

So I think survival is not terribly complicated; control the mites, have good queens, a good amount of stores, keep an eye out for robbing in the fall, a little protection from the wind is a good thing. Reduce the entrance. 

I have always liked to give a little upper ventilation and my buddy prefers no upper ventilation. I have noticed no difference in survival either way. 

I don't do anything fancy, just the basics. 

Generally we are looking at zero to 5 percent losses. Last year was unusual to lose 20 percent.


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## Roland (Dec 14, 2008)

MSL is actually on to something about change in pesticide toxicity over the years. 

If we can all roughly agree that pesticide buildup in the beeswax is an issue, It could be logically deduced that the more toxic a pesticide is, the lower the chance of the bee making it back to the hive alive . With the converse, a less toxic pesticide allows the bee to live long enough to return to the hive, with the pesticide in or on itself, and distribute it around the hive. Add in the synergy issue, and you have two different bees bringing in two different pesticide, neither of which kill the bee, but once in the hive beeswax, they can synergize with sub-lethal effects on the brood. (it is in contact more than a walking bee)

Crazy Roland


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Roland said:


> MSL is actually on to something about change in pesticide toxicity over the years.
> 
> If we can all roughly agree that pesticide buildup in the beeswax is an issue, It could be logically deduced that the more toxic a pesticide is, the lower the chance of the bee making it back to the hive alive . With the converse, a less toxic pesticide allows the bee to live long enough to return to the hive, with the pesticide in or on itself, and distribute it around the hive. Add in the synergy issue, and you have two different bees bringing in two different pesticide, neither of which kill the bee, but once in the hive beeswax, they can synergize with sub-lethal effects on the brood. (it is in contact more than a walking bee)
> 
> Crazy Roland


agree
I was about to try to say the same
you did better.

pesticide, fungicide, herbicide, and the eye of a newt,, mix in bee pollen, try to make the winter on it. or not

GG


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

HaplozygousNut said:


> Yes, that is what I think! Feral populations are what I believe is the reason why people are successful with Treatment Free beekeeping. Even the popular Italian bee has gotten resistance in its native Italy.
> 
> I read in a beekeeping book that a person in Italy had been watching the feral bee population in Italy and lamented how the feral bees disappeared when the Varroa mites first arrived there. He said it took ten years to regain the full population of feral bees there. Even then they may not have been fully resistant and may have shown signs of stress still from Varroa. But they were surviving!
> 
> ...


The African bee in South Africa got varroa resistance within 6 to 7 years, which I guess is a bit earlier than the Italian bee:
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/11/12/873/pdf

_"However, infestation with varroa mites does not seem to lead to colony losses, nor to greatly negatively affect bee colonies [39–42]. It has been reported that, in South Africa, resistance to varroa developed within six to seven years after first invasion [41], but few data are available from other parts of the continent. "_

My honeybees here in central North Carolina have become resistant to varroa over several years from when I first got bees. My bees might have become the feral population of bees here over the generations. 

It could be that the feral population is somehow able to breed pure to its strain/s despite having varroa susceptible commercial "Italian bees" in the area. Our bees are incredibly resistant without variation, as if there is very little hybridizing with varroa susceptible bees. That is a reason why I think they are breeding pure somehow.

Here are some thoughts on how the feral population could breed pure to its kind:


Litsinger said:


> Nathaniel:
> 
> I don't know if you've been watching many of the winter BIBBA webinars recently posted on YouTube, but many of the talks touch on this question in attempting to explain how AMM has persisted on the isles in the face of relentless importation pressure. Three main theories are put forth:
> 
> ...


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

I thought of this thread again today as I spoke to a local kid who wanted some nucs last fall but took my advice on waiting until spring. ... Well almost. He traded around for a couple hives and one perished with nearly a full deep of honey in the top box.

The other has a great population but is living entirely on sugar on top of frames with zero resources. He said the honey frames from the dead out were in a refrigerator. I told him to get out at least a coupe frames, allow them to warm up a bit, and install them (gave different scenarios/config options). I told him to do this immediately. Also told him he could put them all back in the box, allí to warm/dry, and put the whole box on them.

Credit where credit is due, he’s read tons of stuff and did the whole sugar thing with no help from anyone. He’s also built a bunch of boxes, frames and such since I spoke with him in Dec. But expecting a large colony to balance out moisture enough to live on dry sugar is a gamble, not one I’d take if there were alternatives. But putting capped frames in was not naturally occurring to him.

I think this kid has the makings of a really good beek. But like most of us, he is being schooled by insects. I sometimes feel like I’m backing up.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

joebeewhisperer said:


> I thought of this thread again today as I spoke to a local kid who wanted some nucs last fall but took my advice on waiting until spring. ... Well almost. He traded around for a couple hives and one perished with nearly a full deep of honey in the top box.
> 
> The other has a great population but is living entirely on sugar on top of frames with zero resources. He said the honey frames from the dead out were in a refrigerator. I told him to get out at least a coupe frames, allow them to warm up a bit, and install them (gave different scenarios/config options). I told him to do this immediately. Also told him he could put them all back in the box, allí to warm/dry, and put the whole box on them.
> 
> ...


make sure the box id FULL
if it is 20% gone there is a dry dome in the center a gap of sorts.
In that event, I bring the full frames to the center.
like 5,4,3,2,1,10,9,8,7,6 Ideally the bees touch honey not a 2 to 3 inch gap. by now they may have brood and not want to leave it.
your weather is different, hope it works for him
I often put a box on the bigger hive to get them ready for splits, nothing like getting 4-6 nucs out of a big 3 deep.
have fun

GG


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## joebeewhisperer (May 13, 2020)

Gray Goose said:


> make sure the box id FULL
> if it is 20% gone there is a dry dome in the center a gap of sorts.
> In that event, I bring the full frames to the center.
> like 5,4,3,2,1,10,9,8,7,6 Ideally the bees touch honey not a 2 to 3 inch gap. by now they may have brood and not want to leave it.
> ...


My first suggestion was to get just outside the brood on both sides with at least one full frame. And yes, as much as I’m digging my 6-frame nucs (most doubled) it is very satisfying to have stacked 10-frame Langs with brood everywhere in the spring. Like 3 for you, 4 for you etc. Having mated queens to set in them is even better.


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## cfalls (Nov 26, 2017)

I'm a bad beekeeper with excellent survival rates, >90%. Upstate NY. I treat for mites and requeen annually. Otherwise I make lots of mistakes and try lots of different things and it all works. 

For example, sometimes I've left the queen excluder on over the winter, which is terrible because the bees can move up and leave the queen to freeze below, but it's been fine. 

People argue about ventilation. I've tried lots and I've tried almost none. I can't tell you which is better because it all worked fine. 

Sometimes I take a long vacation in the middle of swarm season. I assume I lose a lot of swarms. Also fine. 

I used to feed syrup and pollen patties but got too lazy. Still fine. 

Each year, each colony produces about one deep super of honey and one spring split, which I sell as a nuc to avoid increase. That's not amazing production by commercial standards, but it's already more than I want. 

So, I don't know if it's luck, or if mites and queens are the only things that really matter. Maybe a bit of both?

All of my losses have been queens that went drone layer in late fall, or at least that's been my diagnosis.


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

Wow, 90 percent survival rate! And you say that you don't really have anything special in your management. That is great!


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## thill (Nov 30, 2020)

I've had 100% survival, but it's mostly luck. Here is my story...

Bought two miserable hives October 2020. No reserves at all, VERY hungry hives. I had no idea what I was doing, but got the advice to feed, feed, feed., so I fed them constantly until frost. Did OAV from a hot pan. My hives were very light. March of 2021, a few were flying from the "bigger" hive, zero activity from the smaller one. Figured it was dead, but when I opened it up I found a softball sized ball of bees. YAAY! They are alive! Fed them, and soon, both hives were booming. Then they started to swarm. Didn't know to stop feeding them when the flow started. Lost 6 swarms and caught two. Lame! But now I had 4 colonies at the end of 1 year.

Now, it's Feb of 2022. Two weeks ago, it seemed like my hives were dead. Then it got warm, and now all 4 hives are very active. Put 2:1 syrup and BeePro out in open feeders, and they are all over it. Looks like all 4 hives will make it. Mostly dumb luck to have 100% survival again. But that's only 4 hives, not 40.

I'd guess 50% is luck and good advice, and 50% good bee genetics. These bees have survived the previous owner and me. Good bees! I was told they were Carnies. So far, I like Carnies a lot.


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## Arnie (Jan 30, 2014)

Cfalls, I used to live in Chateaugay NY.
Kinda cold up there in the winter. 

I think you hit on something.....that is, The Basics. Low mite numbers, good queens, good forage, and plenty of stores for the winter. 
The bees can deal with a lot of beekeeper bumbling........trust me, I've done my share. Just be sure you get the basics right and you're in business. 

Good job.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

While listening to the below podcast, I thought of this thread. When we generally discuss location as a variable impacting survival, one of the inputs I think many of us associate with location is nutritional quality:

Nutrition and Viral Resilience

In this discussion, Dr. Alex Walton discusses the importance of diet quantity and quality on a whole range of worker bee behaviors, including viral response. From the corresponding paper Developmental environment shapes honeybee worker response to virus infection:

_Our findings show that both forms of early life nutritional stress, whether induced by lack of alloparental care or diet quality restriction, significantly reduced bees’ resilience to virus infection and affected the expression of several key genes related to immune function. These results extend our understanding of how early life nutritional environment can affect phenotypes relevant to health and highlight the importance of considering how nutritional stress can be profound even when filtered through a social group. These results also provide important insights into how nutritional stress can affect honeybee health on a longer time scale and its potential to interact with other forms of stress (i.e. disease)._

Both experiments utilized in the study demonstrated no difference in individual bee survival based strictly on short-term starvation or only being fed low-quality pollen- but when coupled with virus inoculation, both stressors resulted in significantly higher mortality versus the control.


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

Apiary site , is a very big factor in all that happens in the hive.
trace minerals need be there, pollution need be gone.
bloom Diversity need be there. the dirt needs to be right.
Nice confirmation

GG


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## coalsmok (Jan 27, 2017)

As far a colony survival I feel a large part of it is on the beekeeper. Genetics play a part as well but you can feed any colonies that are light on stores at any time of the year to keep starvation down. So the big thing is are the bees being kept healthy by some means and do they have plenty of food, both carbohydrates and protein. These are factors that the beekeeper can influence.
I put it like this when talking to people. Bees are a form of livestock just like horses and cows. If you don’t let them starve or be sick knowingly why would you do your bees the same way.




Litsinger said:


> I'd say judging on his descriptions @joebeewhisperer has some of these up there on the Cumberland Plateau- dark, smallish, heavy propolizers, modest surplus gathering, small winter clusters, efficient on stores and explosive Spring build-up. Seems to be the architype bee form that is trying to develop in the Ohio Valley.


 As far as this goes I helped a older gentleman the last couple years before he passed last fall. He had always told me to take any extra queen cells I found home with me because his bees were the “little black bees like his grandfather and dad kept”. I always kind of shrugged this off since mites supposedly done the black bee in. However I was given his hives after his passing and when I picked them up to put in my apiary they were so light I didn’t think they would make it. I could pick up a double deep hive by myself. To date they have not eaten enough of the emergency feed I gave them to notice and due to a storm last week I can say they still have honey and good size clusters. They will probably be on my grafting list this spring due to the way they have wintered


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## Gray Goose (Sep 4, 2018)

coalsmok said:


> As far a colony survival I feel a large part of it is on the beekeeper. Genetics play a part as well but you can feed any colonies that are light on stores at any time of the year to keep starvation down. So the big thing is are the bees being kept healthy by some means and do they have plenty of food, both carbohydrates and protein. These are factors that the beekeeper can influence.
> I put it like this when talking to people. Bees are a form of livestock just like horses and cows. If you don’t let them starve or be sick knowingly why would you do your bees the same way.
> 
> 
> ...


make some queens from them all
try to keep as much as is now there generically.

G


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## GregB (Dec 26, 2017)

coalsmok said:


> As far as this goes I helped a older gentleman the last couple years before he passed last fall. He had always told me to take any extra queen cells I found home with me because his bees were the “little black bees like his grandfather and dad kept”. I always kind of shrugged this off since mites supposedly done the black bee in. However I was given his hives after his passing and when I picked them up to put in my apiary they were so light I didn’t think they would make it. I could pick up a double deep hive by myself. To date they have not eaten enough of the emergency feed I gave them to notice and due to a storm last week I can say they still have honey and good size clusters. They will probably be on my grafting list this spring due to the way they have wintered


Wow,
Another case from Appalachia about those "little black bees".
Envious here!
That kind of winter frugality would fit right in here too.


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## thill (Nov 30, 2020)

Coalsmok,
I would bet that if you posted some nukes of "little black bees", a bunch of us would buy them. If for no other reason than to see how they did.

THAT would be something different than what anyone else is selling. I bet you would gain a booming business from them. So let me be the first to pre-order a nuc! 

One issue might be cell size. They must be smaller than the US standard. I wonder if you can order small-cell foundation? You might have to have natural comb if not.


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## Litsinger (Jun 14, 2018)

Litsinger said:


> If you're on FB, you can check-in on the 'Chasing Feral Honey Bees' page which is a loose confederation between Purdue, the Heartland Honey Bee Breeder's Association and the Kentucky Queen Breeder's Association. In short, they are catching, evaluating and cross-breeding feral stock from the Ohio Valley, and sometimes back-crossing with Purdue MBB stock.


Anyone near Dayton, Ohio might want to consider attending this event in Early June- lots of exciting progress being made in the realm of resistance selection:

_'Kentucky Queen Bee Breeders' and Chasing Feral Honey Bees is teaming with Dr. Hongmei Li-Byarlay of Central State University in Ohio and Heartland Honey Bee Breeders' Co-op Insemination Festival which is normally held at Purdue University Bee Lab in Indiana. This will be the first insemination event that is a satellite program from Purdue University. The event will be held the first week of June at Central State University, 1400 Brush Row Road, Wilberforce, OH.'









Welcome to Heartland Honeybee Breeders Co Op







hhbbc.org




_


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## HaplozygousNut (Dec 30, 2015)

GregB said:


> Wow,
> Another case from Appalachia about those "little black bees".
> Envious here!
> That kind of winter frugality would fit right in here too.


Swarm of little black bees was caught in Florida. Likely a different kind from the Appalachian ones though, because of the different climate...


CessnaGirl said:


> *Re: Please Post your Swarm Dates?*
> 
> OK, Barry, I got it.
> 
> ...


Feral bees of Spanish black or Tunisian bee genetics?


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