# losing my second hive - please help!!!



## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

30-40 moderate....ok. At this time of year, that is not moderate. It is extreme. The bee trying to get out are bees which are weak due to the varroa feeding on them. Pick those bees out and you will see the wings are "chewed". DWV.
the dried out larva....probably chalkbrood or such
...no treat...no live...


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

That's how beekeeping has been in the Bay Area the last few years. I start at least 100% new ones each year to keep up. Protect the dead hive's combs from moths by stacking them on a live hive, or freeze them. Then stack them out next March 1 laced with lemongrass oil to lure a new swarm. Some good strong early bait swarms make a full crop. The one I caught in Berkeley does not seem too strong.


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Hi HoneyShack,
Where he lives, things are still in bloom. Some varieties of eucalyptus trees are in full bloom. There are rarely freezes in Berkley.

I'm seeing about the same mite # here using the 10 min powdered sugar drop, & the hives are strong, & doing well.

Sounds to me like you are low on nurse bees to care for the brood area. Did you have any robbing going on that killed off a lot of the bees?


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Honeyshack,

thanks for the input - I will do as you say and pull out a partially-emerged bee or two to confirm that they are covered with Varroa. If the problems with my hives is Varroa, this means that the frames themselves cannot spread the problem, correct? Assuming I freeze the frames and keep them until next spring, I should be able to safely use them in new hives, right? One of my chief concerns now that I am experienceing some hive loss is to assure that the problem cannot be spread from one hive to another by transferring frames. If the symptoms I have described are classic evidence of a hive being overcome by Varroa, at least I should not have to worry about the frames being contaminated, right?


Odfrank,

do you know if your hive losses are due to Varroa and are they characterized by the same symptoms I summarized (partially-emerged bees with tongues sticking out)?

Sounds like you let the hives you have being overcome by Varroa perish - do the hives that survive also have Varroa? I will be preserving the frames and next spring I will be setting out the wine-crate swarm lures/traps you helped me make earlier this year.


best regards,

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Classic varroa.
> 
> And as Honeyshack said, a natural drop of 30 to 40 is way too much.
> 
> He didn't say anything about sugar dusting, sounds like a natural mite drop. If so that's HUGE, and i doubt survivable.


Oldtimer,

thanks for the reply. Yes, 30 mites dropping naturally in 24 hours without dusting. This time last year I was dropping about 5 in 24 hours and the two hives I had at the time overwintered fine. The mite levels this fall are certainly much worse. If partially-emerged bees are a classic sign of a severe Varroa infestation, then I suspect that you are right that that is what I have.



Oldtimer said:


> Only thing that concerns me is the dried out larvae. This might be that the struggling hive just could not remove all the dead larvae & they have dried.
> 
> But, without seeing a pic of your comb, your description has a slight ring of AFB about it, which could be present as well as the varroa.
> 
> Could you either post a pic of the larvae for us to look at, or Google words like AFB scale, to get some pics to help you do your own diagnosis.



Will snap a picture next time I inspect the hive (it is raining today ) I researched quite a bit about AFB earlier this year, so I have seen pictures of 'scales' and am pretty sure that this is not what I have. The dried larvae are white, not black, and frankly just look as if the nurse bees have decided to abandon the frame and not cap the few spotty cells of open brood that remained. The larvae appear to be just approaching the pupae stage, they are lengthwise in the cell, and they are larger than any open brood I have ever seen in a healthy hive. Looks just the way you might expect if the nurse bees decided not to cap a cell and the larvae inside continued to mature on it's own for a while. 

As far as the bees with their tongues out, these are fully-grown, partially-emerged nurse bees. Looks like they died before they could push all the way out. Will yank some out next time to see if they have Varroa on them.



Oldtimer said:


> Also, going treatment free to produce resistant bees is a noble goal, but a better plan is to buy queens from someone like Beeweaver, who produce varroa tolerant bees, so you don't have to go through the heartbreak of losing most of your bees every year.


I have identified and bred three different strains of local feral stock with confirmed evidence of surviving fat least three seasons without assistance of chemicals or intervention. I was assuming that these strains could deal with Varroa on their own. If I confirm that it is Varroa killing off all of my feral strains, I may need to conclude that however the feral bees manage to fend off the Varroa on their own is disrupted by being placed in a man-made hive and that may cause me to re-think my objectives. May then experiment with Varroa-resistant strains such as those sold by Beeweaver to attempt to introduce that strain into the local genetic pool, but I am not there yet. I purchased a 'Varroa resistant' package of Yugoslavian bees this spring and that strain was the least successful of all of my hives and never really got beyond the nuc stage.

My main focus right now is to confirm that it is Varroa killing goff my hives and not something else. I am especially concerned to understand if my frames are contaminated or can safely be re-used after freezing...

thanks again for the inputs,

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer,

thanks again for the reply.

I have never lost a hive to Varroa before, so if the half-emerged bees with their tongues out is classic varroa, then I suspect that is the problem with my hives (also supported by the high Varroa drop counts).

So point #1, if I 'only' have a Varroa problem, the frames should be OK to recycle after freezing and I should not need to worry about decontaminating hive equipment and frames.

And point #2, if my colonies are declining and dying due to Varroa, then I probably need to accept the loss of this first feral strain and chaulk it up to 'surival of the fittest'

I have three other feral strains and will monitor them more closely - if all of my feral strains are overcome by Varroa then I may need to question the effectiveness of capturing and breeding feral strains. More importantly, since all of these strains had a track record of survival without assistance in the wild, I may need to think about why they become less effective at fighting off Varroa in Langstroth hives...

Thanks for the link. The VSH genetics seem to be a successful component in the evolution of bees to fend off Varroa and one has to hope that similar genetics are also available in the feral stocks that are surviving. And while you are correct about the dilution of attractive genetics through supersedure and open mating, this is all a part of nature and in some way the feral bees that are making it on their own are dealing with this as well.

I think an argument can be made for introducing good genetics such as VSH through repeated introduction of commercially raised queens because if the natural system is allowed to work undisturbed, 'survival of the fittest' should mean that those genetic characteristics eventually prevail. The problem is all of the weak, chemically-dependant commercial strains that flood the environment every spring through commercial queen-rearing operations...

best regards,

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

I found this:

http://plantboard.arkansas.gov/PlantIndustry/Apiary/Documents/honeyBeeParasiticMitesSyndrome.pdf

it generally describes all of the symptoms I have seen, with the exception of the partially emerged bees. Also checked my copy of the ABC & XYZ of Beekeeping and could find no reference to partially-emerged bees.

Several of you have indicated that dead partially-emerged bees are classic symptoms of severe Varroa infestation. If this is the case then I am certain this is what I am experiencing with my dwindling hives, but it is a bit unsettleing that I can not find any reference to partially-emerged bees in the literature.

Anyone else have experience with a hive that has died due to severe infestation by Varroa? Why is there not more written in the literature on this - because most beekeepers treat before an infestation reaches this stage?

thanks all,

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Searching on BeeSource, I found this post with a reference to half-emerged dead bees resulting from Parasitic Mite Syndrome:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-200850.html

This late in the season, it seems I have few options other than to let nature run its course. Would appreciate to hear from any other beeks that have lost hives to PMS - am I correct that the equipment can safely be reused following freezing?

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Also found the following thread that appears to describe exactly the symptoms I am seeing:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-246478.html




doc25 said:


> I found that there were larvae (capped) in cells that did not hatch and even some bees that were fully formed and did not make it out of their cells (you see their faces pointing out from the cells).
> 
> This happened from my strongest hive (I am a hobbyist).


with the following response from Michael Palmer:




Michael Palmer said:


> Sounds like Varroa related PMS. Your strongest colony died out with bees emerging. That figures as strong colonies are Varroa breeding factories. Not AFB. With AFB, the brood dies in the capped stage, never making it past early pupal stage. PMS brood is dying while emerging and often with tongues out. Pull some of these dead and dying bees out of their cells with your pocket knife. They have to be adults in the process of emerging when they died. Wings are the last thing to mature. Do they have fully formed wings? PMS bees won't. Do they have normal sized abdomens...not flat stunted abdomens? PMS bees won't.


I will pull some of the dead bees during my next inspection and report back what I find. Sounds as though I have a severe case of Varroa-related PMS...

-fafrd

p.s. BeeSource is a truly outstanding resource - thanks to those who made it happen and all of those who contribute


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer said:


> Very good points raised Fafrd.
> 
> Just not sure about the comments on commercially raised bees, I used to be a commercial queenbreeder . We do try to raise good bees!
> I'm just not sure about some of the inbreeding that's going on nowadays though, although from one standpoint it is the only FAST way to isolate smr and vsh genes. However your comments on flooding areas with good genes are right on the mark..


Oldtimer,

I don't mean any disrespect to commercial breeders - most everyone I have met involved in this hobby/industry is doing the best they can for the bees! My comments were directed more at the industry as a whole and in particular at the commercial queen and package bee outfits. I purchased a package to compare. It was my poorest hive. The hive that boomed and then died first was a commercial queen from Hawaii, the package that never took off and then dwindled to nothing was a commercial package from Nortern California.

The two problems I have with the commercialy bred bees are that:

a/ they are not local (by definition) and so may be less well adapted to the local climate

b/ they are medicated and hence represent a strain of genetics that are dependant on chemical treatments and intervention by man to survive (a reversal of 'survival of the fittest'). I believe the laws actually require treatment before shipping queens or packages, so even if they wanted to practice oganic beekeeping, a commercial breeder must treat bees before shipping.

This is in contrast to the local feral bee colonies that are by definition locally adapted and have survived without chemicals and interventions. The second hive that apparently has a severe case of PMS was captured from a birdhouse an I have assumed it was a feral stock that had survived in thewild for several seasons. On the other hand, the birdhouse was pretty small and so perhaps ths stock was a swarm from commercial stock that had only survived a single season. I'm going to let this hive go (or see if it succeeds to ressurect itself) and monitor my other hives more closely. There is a telephone pole in a neighboring town which has thrown of '5-6' swarms every spring for the past 6-7 years. Ive bred queen from that stock and so far that hive is growing well and not dwindling like the others.

If all my attempts to breed local feral stock end in PMS, I may need to rethink what my objectives are.



Oldtimer said:


> You don't need to worry about varroa contamination next year from combs from a dead hive. Once all the bees are gone, the varroa die very quickly. ( which is the annoying thing after all the harm they've done ). No need to deep freeze. But do guard against wax moths and maybe hive beetles, both of them love combs with protein material such as old pollen & dead larvae.



This is good to know. Not having experience with failing hives before, I was not sure what was going on and now I am pretty sure I understand. I will continue my experiment with the other feral strains and see how things look in the spring...

-fafrd


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## honeyshack (Jan 6, 2008)

edit my rant


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

> a/ they are not local (by definition) and so may be less well adapted to the local climate

This is one of the myths pro ported by the Organic Beekeepers and others. I have ordered bees from around the country fo 40 years and many have done fantastic. The local bees in this area in the early '70s were vicious and unworkable, I replaced them with bees from Texas etc. and had huge averages for decades until the mites showed up. Now I only use local bees I catch merely because I don't want to spend $20 on a queen when many hives die each winter. I bought a few Russian Queens from Velbert in Louisiana? and two years ago a few also did great. Pretty unlocal to California. Some California queens I bought then were worthless.


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

Like you said, let nature take it's course. the equipment is reusable. I would suggest restocking your equipment next spring with nucs. To prevent the mites from doing that agian, I would also suggest the use of formic acid. It's not the type of queen you have, even the most resistant bees will sucumb to mites (albeit it takes longer) and whether it's russian or VSH bees, they should be used only as a part of your larger IPM program. what I'm trying to say is that you can't get away without treating your hives for mites and that without treatment there going to die.


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## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

"This late in the season, it seems I have few options other than to let nature run its course. Would appreciate to hear from any other beeks that have lost hives to PMS "

Lost a hive last year to mites/virus. I would recommend using oxalic acid in vapor form immediately... you never know if they'll survive with this but it's immediate and can be used several times without bee mortality... if it were me I would use it every 10 days for a month, then check the mite fall again... since you don't have the severe winters we have this hive might survive and regain strength.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

odfrank said:


> This is one of the myths pro ported by the Organic Beekeepers and others. I have ordered bees from around the country fo 40 years and many have done fantastic. Now I only use local bees I catch merely because I don't want to spend $20 on a queen when many hives die each winter. I bought a few Russian Queens from Velbert in Louisiana? and two years ago a few also did great. Pretty unlocal to California. Some California queens I bought then were worthless.


Fair enough Odfrak - while it make intuitive sense that bee strains that have survived in the local environment for many seasons should be better adapted to local conditions, this theory should not be confused with fact.

I did have two non-local commercial strains and those two have been the first and only two (so far) to perish, supporting my intuition, but this is not nearly large enough of a sample size to reach a definitive conclusion and I will remain open-minded on the question of this 'myth' regarding locality until I have more data.

If you are happy with the qeens you got from Velbert I may even try one or two of those this spring - are those hives/queens still strong? The Russians/Yugoslavians I purchased this spring from HBG did not make it into the fall (never really grew to size).

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

chillard willard said:


> you can't get away without treating your hives for mites and that without treatment there going to die.


Thanks for the advice Chillard, but I hope you are wrong. My interest in beekeeping will diminish rapidy if treatments and chemicals are really a requirement. I know for a fact that there are local feral hives which have overwintered and thrived for more than 5 seasons without the use of treatments, and I am hopful that there is a way to recreate that success without treatments in a managed hive.

Of course feral hives tend to be isolated and the hives in my apiary are all concentrated together, so aside from the hive cofiguration itself, there may be other aspects of a typical apiary that make it 'unnatural' for the bees and give the mites an unfair advantage versus what they have in the wild. If all the hives in the apiary can be weakened by the weakest hive in the apiary, this is something I may need to think about.

-fafrd


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

I just found a bait hive dead and empty today, that was caught two miles away 4/17/10, that then produced a 200 lb crop. I have watched several local bee trees thrive and die annually for the last few years.

Local smocal.


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

fafrd,

It is hard to actually know if the "hive" of bees has been alive for 5 year or not. Back when mites were starting to become a problem I started losing hives like everyone. For a while I replaced them with packages, but at one point decided that I didn't want to put chemicals into my hive and just let them die out.

The interesting thing was that the hives really never looked dead from the outside. There was alway some activity. Even on nice winter days there were bees coming and going. The warmer the day, the more bees I saw. When I pulled the top I would find that they were just robbers or scavengers. Each spring I would get swarms coming into some of the hives and they would live and produce honey before they died in the fall. 

This went on for a few years until I put the hives into storage. Even from a beekeepers prospective the hives looked like they had one long hiving group of bees. Only when I pulled the lid could I see the truth.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

odfrank said:


> This is one of the myths pro ported by the Organic Beekeepers and others. I have ordered bees from around the country fo 40 years and many have done fantastic. The local bees in this area in the early '70s were vicious and unworkable, I replaced them with bees from Texas etc. and had huge averages for decades until the mites showed up. Now I only use local bees I catch merely because I don't want to spend $20 on a queen when many hives die each winter. I bought a few Russian Queens from Velbert in Louisiana? and two years ago a few also did great. Pretty unlocal to California. Some California queens I bought then were worthless.





odfrank said:


> I just found a bait hive dead and empty today, that was caught two miles away 4/17/10, that then produced a 200 lb crop. I have watched several local bee trees thrive and die annually for the last few years.
> 
> Local smocal.


Odfrank,

thanks for your responses. I posted a reply to your first post this morning but looks like it got lost in the ether...

You raise good points and I do not want to confuse intuition with fact regarding this question of local adaptation. Intuition says that bees that have survived for many years locally should be better adapted to local conditions than bees that come from afar. I had one queen from Hawaii and another from Vaccaville (much warmer than Berkeley) and these were the first (and only up to now) hives to perish.

This is not fact and my sample size is obviously not large enough to reach conclusions. The queens I had bred from neighboring towns and purported to be 'long-term survivors' from feral stock have fared better up to now but this post was originally motivated by the fact that now one of those hives seems to be failing as well.

And as beedeetee point out in the previous post, even the factual basis of 'long-time' survivor hives can be questioned - it could in fact be a failing hive first visited by robbers and then inhabbited by a subsequent swarm (season after season). Just because local beekeeping lore claims that the same hive has lived in a telephone pole for more than 5 years does not make it true.

I want to avoid the use of treatments because of the cost, the trouble, and the genetic interference with nature. I had hoped (and still hold out some hope) that it is possible to maintain a few hives organically, as others claim to have done.

Whether from local feral stock, or commercial stock bred for characteristics such as VSH, I don't care. If all the bee strains perish no matter what I do (without the use of chemicals or manipulations), I will probably end up beekeeping off of new swarms each season as you are doing, but I am not there yet.


best regards,

-fafrd


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

I actually moved to the dark side and started treating. I missed the bees so after leaving my hives for 4-5 years in storage I bought packages and started over. 

Over the years I have gone from treating all of the hives to about 30% recently. This year, for the first time in a long time, I haven't treated any. But I have too many hives now anyway, so if I lose a few it won't be as big a deal as when I only had 3-4 hives going into winter.

This year my mite counts were only from 2-30/day in the middle of August. I am using 40/day on a sticky board in the middle of August as my decision point on treating (and have for the past couple of years). I have been using Formic and Thymol lately.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

beedeetee said:


> I actually moved to the dark side and started treating. I missed the bees so after leaving my hives for 4-5 years in storage I bought packages and started over.
> 
> Over the years I have gone from treating all of the hives to about 30% recently. This year, for the first time in a long time, I haven't treated any. But I have too many hives now anyway, so if I lose a few it won't be as big a deal as when I only had 3-4 hives going into winter.
> 
> This year my mite counts were only from 2-30/day in the middle of August. I am using 40/day on a sticky board in the middle of August as my decision point on treating (and have for the past couple of years). I have been using Formic and Thymol lately.


beedeetee,

do you find that you treat the same hives every year (and some hives never need treatment) or do all hives require treatment every 2-3 years?

also, how much time and $ do you typically spend treating a hive? 

thanks,

-fafrd


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

The hives treated are different each year. Most of my hives don't requeen themselves so the genetics are different after one or two years when I replace the queen. I think that the reason that I didn't have to treat this year was that I had a lot more swarms than usual. 

Swarms cause a break in brood, which in turn causes a break in mite brood also. I think that if I was really serious about not treating I would pull the old queen out of each hive just before the honey flow along with a couple of frames of capped brood. Then each hive could requeen which would take a month or so without new brood. About the time our flow is over (mid July) they should be back on track but the mites would have taken a hit. I have done this in the past and it seems to work.

I don't spend that much for treatments. Last year I spent $34.00 including the cost of HBH which isn't really a treatment and I think I treated 4 or 5 hives with Apiguard and 11 with Fumigilin. The treatments only take a couple of minutes.

My history is that most hives don't need treatment the first year. The second year will require treatments of most hives but not all.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Thanks beedeetee.

Interesting concept about dequeeing to control mite population - have you seen this idea practiced by other beeks or did you come up with it on your own?

I may eventually need to try treating a hive just to know what I am putting so much effort into avoiding.

Thanks for the inputs,

-fafrd


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## beedeetee (Nov 27, 2004)

Originally I had heard discussions about removing the queen a couple of weeks before the main flow starts. The theory being that since the bees don't have brood to take care of more will be foragers and they will store more honey rather than using it raising brood.

The other theory was that mites couldn't breed either. I didn't see much of a difference in honey but I did have less mites in those hives. It is a gamble though as some hives won't requeen successfully, some will have poor queens, etc. Then you are faced with recombining in the late summer when the bees are cranky anyway.

This year we had a wet long spring making swarm control difficult. The first sunny days they were ready to go. I think that I caught all but one. I was also raising my own queens and inserting queen cells so most of my hives had a broodless period. That is my theory as to why I don't have many mites this fall.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Interesting, beedeetee - thanks fo rthe additional detail.

I understand the risks of this method of queenremoval because the hive will requeen itself which may or mayot work out well. ave you seen any other references to reducing/eliminating brood witout actual removal of the queen?

I've been using the Nicot system for queen rearing, and this constrains the queen to a very small laying area. When the Nicot cage is being used, the hive does not requeen while the queen is limited to lay in a very costrained area. If you used something like the Nicot system to cage and constrain the queen for a full brood cycle (removing the capped brood within the cage if you want to be sure to get rid of any possible mites in brood cells), could this provide the benefits of requeening without the risks?

The last time I used the Nicot System I left the queen caged all the way through to having day-old larvae (kept her caged for over a full week, I believe) and it occurred to me that this was interrupting the overall brood cycle. I believe the same concept could be used to keep the queen caged for a full qeen-rearing cycle of 4 weeks or whatever length of time is considered necessary to kill off the mite population. Any thoughts as to wheher this could work and is worth a try?

I ran into qute a bit of old literature related to various cages to limit the queen to being contrained to laying on only a frame or two during my research on queen rearing. This was al intended for queen rearing way bac when, but it my be that some ofthese techniques could be valuable as a means to combat mites.

Interested in your thoughts on this idea...

-fafrd


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

A queen can be held in a hive for a month or two in a cage without any comb to lay in at all. It is called queen banking, you can google it, when i was breeding queens commercially we used to do this commonly when we had too many queens.

Mites will live around 100 days. So you can restrict their breeding, but not eradicate them by brood interuption without seriously weakening the hive because of the long time frame.

So if a queen was restricted for three weeks, there would be no brood at all, all mites would be adult and much more susceptable to some form of quick treatment, after which the queen could be released.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer,

thanks for the inputs.

I know a bit about queen banking as I have been rearing queens and researched it this summer (though I have never tried it). In general, I believe that queen banking involves putting caged queens above a queen excluder with the native queen free in the brood chamber below the excluder, so by definition, the hive is queenright.

If you believe banking the native queen results in a break in egg-laying without the hive thinking it is queenless, that could be an option, though I would think that leaving the queen free to lay on a constrained frame througout this period would be better than forcing her to stop laying by being trapped in a small cage. An additional benefit of allowing the native queen to lay in a constrained comb is that it would form a natral Varroa trap, similar to what many do with drone comb. Once capped, the frame could be removed and frozen and another empty frame could be put in its place.

100 days is a very long time - almost 5 brood cycles, so the hive will basically be dead before all of the Varroa are - which does not sound like much of a solution. On the other hand, the idea of interrupring the brood cycle for one cycle (21+days) so that all of the Varroa are adult and 'out in the open' before treating with some other method sounds attractive - do you do this and/or do you know of anyone else who does?

This subject is interesting to me and I want to explore it in more detail, but this is obviously a big digression from the subject that origially motivated this post, so I am going to make a new post dedicated to this subject of brood cycle interruption to combat Varroa.

-fafrd


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

fafrd said:


> On the other hand, the idea of interrupring the brood cycle for one cycle (21+days) so that all of the Varroa are adult and 'out in the open' before treating with some other method sounds attractive - do you do this and/or do you know of anyone else who does?
> 
> -fafrd


Yes I do, Me!

I've made "baskets", the size of one frame, that hang in the hive, and hold two very small combs. They have excluder each side and i put the queen in. The origional idea was that I would swap out the two combs alternately over a 6 week period and in this way remove the varroa as they try to breed.
Nice theory, but it didn't work, for reasons I don't yet know a lot of varroa remain in the hive & don't enter the little combs to breed.

But I now use the devise to restrict the queen for 3 weeks to allow a quick but very effective varroa treatment. In my particular climate I can do this just before swarming so it will be part of a total hive management system of varroa control and swarm control. 

Just as an aside, the swarm control effect is not by keeping the queen locked up, bad plan. It's by lowering the hive population by brood restriction just at the vital time.

I've only made and used this devise one season so it's going to be a while longer before I've got totally sussed how to best use it.

And to the queen banking thing, yes when I did this commercially, it was to bank queens over an excluder in a queenright hive. But the idea can be used to bank the hives own queen in the hive. Just one banking cage, middle of the brood nest area.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer,

very interesting. Have you ever tried using your 'basket' with drone comb? Have you ever experimented in general with drone traps for Varroa?

From what I have read, Varroa prefer drone larvae when they are available. By giving the queen a frame of drone comb to lay in within the basket, seems like you may be able to trap a large number of mites while the brood cycle is being interrupted and all of the mites are being forced out into the open.

The next step might be to include both a frame of worker and drone comb in the basket in parallel in the hopes that the mites would be attracted exclusively to the drone cells while some capped worker brood without Varroa was able to be produced by the queen on the other frame so the brood cycle can continue in a constrained fashion.

I'm interested to know how your system evolves - thanks to let me know when you experiment with it again next spring.


-fafrd


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes good point Fafrd, when I made them I just stuck worker foundation in the little cubes. But the method has not worked as good as i expected & this coming year I'll be trying with drone comb, which is more attractive to mites.

The reason I didn't use drone comb was that if there was no worker comb available to the queen i was not sure how well it would work, but I'm gonna have to try it. Your idea of running some worker comb alongside could have merits, although i'd have to make a few changes to the management method to acheive that. Part of the plan was to have NO brood of any description emerging in the hive to ensure complete break of the mite cycle.

One way to do it could be to start the little combs with a 1/2 sheet of foundation so they'll finish off with drone and there will be a mix.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

I may try this technique next season as well. I'd be interested in how you designed your basket, if you can describe. I may try to rig up a basket holding two frames like I saw described in some of the queen rearing literature.

A few interesting questions to answer:

a/ if the queen has only drone comb to lay on, will she lay drones or stop laying?

b/ if the queen has both a frame of drone comb and a frame of worker comb to lay on, will she lay in both, or only one?

c/ if the queen lays into both drone comb and worker comb, will the worker comb have any significant number of mites are will the mites prefer the drone comb?

If the mite density is so high that every cell, worker or drone, is getting contaminated with mites, then both combs would need to be frozen, but if the mites primarily contaminate the drone frame and largely leave the worker comb untouched, the drone comb could be removed and fronzen, while the worker comb could br transferred outside the basket to keep some continuous brood flow going.

I be interested to compare notes on our experiments as the new season unfolds...

-fafrd


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Can't answer those questions totally, I'm not far enough down the track!

Still some work to do.....


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Oldtimer,

wasn't expecting you to have answers for me yet, but if you agree that those are interesting questions, perhaps we could both try to answer them with the experiments we are making next season and compare notes.

The idea of rotating drone comb through a central brood cage seems like an advanced form of the drone trap. Not sure if others have experimented with the idea before, but I am interested to give it a try.

And if in addition some worker brood can be laid up in a way that it has few mites in it and can be salvaged, seems like that would be a big plus for the health of the hive (and would allow the confined queen to be maintained that way for several brood cycles without decimating the hive).

What I plan to do is sample a number of capped larvae from the worker brood to estimate the level of contamination by mites. If contamination of the sample is low enough, I will transfer the worker brood frame outside of the cage for emergence, and if it is highly contaminated, I will freeze the frame of worker brood along with the frame of drone brood.

Have you seen anything written about this idea of sampling contamination by varroa on a frame of capped brood? Any idea what the appropriate threshold level of contamination would be to decide cantamination is low enough to allow the brood to emerge? If you sample 100 cells and find no mites, it ought to indicate a contamination level below 1% - shouldn't that level of contamination be OK?

-fafrd


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes, to most of that! 

As to brood sampling, a not 100% accurate, but fairly simple method I use, is to use a cappings scratcher, to dig into a patch of drone brood and pull out a bunch of larvae. If there's varroa they are clearly visible against the white larvae. A 25% drone brood infestation rate is maximum against which the hive MUST be treated or survival is in question.

remember that since varroa prefer drone brood, a 25% drone brood infestation will equal a much lower worker brood infestation.

And happy to share any info on the queen restriction thing, or anything else.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Great. By the way, I did a little searching on line and found this:

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/444/444-103/444-103.html

Makes it sound like if less than 5 mites are discovered in a sample of 100 worker brood cells, it is probably OK to allow the worker brood to emerge.

And from what you say above, when drone brood is 5% contaminated, the worker brood contamination would be far below that level.

Will let you know when I get around to designing my brood cage...

-fafrd


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

Here's a photo of mites on drone brood.
http://i301.photobucket.com/albums/nn41/KQ6AR/IMG_2653varroa.jpg


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Thank you Kq6ar, very nice pic, and exactly what I was trying to explain!

Wow looks like a bad case of mites though! Is that dead, point of hatching, larvae in the pic also?


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Was sufing Randy Oliver's website (ScientificBeekeeping) and look what I found:

http://www.scientificbeekeeping.com...ask=view&id=24&Itemid=40&limit=1&limitstart=1

(Look at the section on 'Restriction of Queen Laying') This seems to be exactly what you were describing, Oldtimer (though this caged frame appears to be different from your design and different from the design I was planning). Claims that with a 2-drone-comb-frame queen cage, up to 96% of mites can be trapped and eliminated using this technique alone.

I think the technique could be enhanced to be less disruptive to the hive by including both drone comb and worker comb in the same cage (so drone comb can be frozen and worker comb can be allowed to emerge unless too highly contaminated).


-fafrd


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## chillardbee (May 26, 2005)

fafrd said:


> Thanks for the advice Chillard, but I hope you are wrong. My interest in beekeeping will diminish rapidy if treatments and chemicals are really a requirement. I know for a fact that there are local feral hives which have overwintered and thrived for more than 5 seasons without the use of treatments, and I am hopful that there is a way to recreate that success without treatments in a managed hive.
> 
> Of course feral hives tend to be isolated and the hives in my apiary are all concentrated together, so aside from the hive cofiguration itself, there may be other aspects of a typical apiary that make it 'unnatural' for the bees and give the mites an unfair advantage versus what they have in the wild. If all the hives in the apiary can be weakened by the weakest hive in the apiary, this is something I may need to think about.
> 
> -fafrd


 Don't get me wrong, if there was a way to go chemical free I'd be on the band wagon for sure. For me it's about being productive with the bees. 
Something that is often overlooked with feral hives is that they swarm every year. It is not that they are resistant (though they might be to some extent) to the mite but that they have a large break in the brood cycle when they do swarm. You will notice that nucs that are made in the spring and are allowed to make there own queen will have a lower level of mites at the end of the season also. 

Cumophos and apistan are about the harshest chems you could use in the hives today but there effectivness is next to nill. I won't use cumophos and apistan would be for emergency only. Formic and oxalic acid on the otherhand are organic acids found in nature and won't taint the wax like those other chems would. 

If you have only a few hives, try the drone brood method and the powder sugar and screened bottom board method as well to control the mites.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

chillard willard said:


> Something that is often overlooked with feral hives is that they swarm every year. It is not that they are resistant (though they might be to some extent) to the mite but that they have a large break in the brood cycle when they do swarm. .


Interesting observation. If correct, it means that a beekeepers manipulations to prevent swarming could greatly amplify the problem with Varroa.



chillard willard said:


> If you have only a few hives, try the drone brood method and the powder sugar and screened bottom board method as well to control the mites.


This is my plan. I did alot of things right in my first year of beekeeping, but controlling/removing drone brood was not one of them. Either controlling drone brood and/or simulating swarming seem like a relatively 'natural' manipulation if the intent is to provide the managed bees the same advantages fighting the Varroa that they may get in the wild by swarming.

The powder sugar method (which I am trying for the first time today - a ton of mites!) seems like a mild treatment that needs to be applied because the other technique did not work. At least, this will be my plan for next season...

-fafrd


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## BeekeeperJoy (Sep 4, 2010)

I learned Wednesday night that half emerged pupae with their tongues sticking out is also signs of AFB. I think you need to get your comb tested. Sorry you are having troubles. We lost our hive today (just figured it out) to robbers. All the honey gone, the queen dead, wild bees dancing on their graves.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Hmmm.... Kinda.

Fully developed larvae that are emerging ( day 21 from when the egg was laid ), but haven't got the strength, and die half out of the cell, with their tongues extended, is most often a sign of PMS ( caused by mites ).

AFB infected larvae die just before, or just after, pupation. That's around day 8 from when the egg was laid. They die laying on their backs, and turn into a blob, sometimes with the tongue extended pointing towards the top of the cell. They are not half emerged they are fully in the cell.


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## BeekeeperJoy (Sep 4, 2010)

ah ok... and are they gooey?


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

The emerging dead bees with thier tongues sticking out from PMS are _*NOT*_ gooey. They are emerging baby bees that did not have enough strength to get all the way out of their cells and died midway through the process of emerging. They look like perfectly healthy baby bees in every respect (ie: dry and not gooey) except for the fact that they only got their head or at most their head and shoulders out of their cells before dieing and their tongues are sticking out (perhaps because they starved to death).

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

This is still a sign of AFB, with consideration that most genetics now have higher levels of hygenic behavior... The question is...what were the live bees on the frame doing at the time you discovered this? Also were there was clipping below the frame, as house bees can uncap the dead brood and even begin to remove them from the cells, at the time of your observation, this may have been "mid-process".

About the "feral" swarms that you have noted... take in mind that almost ALL true feral hives have been wiped out due to mites (both tracheal and varrora) and more recently SHB... Some strains are still maintained by breeders and keepers (mainly for their base genetics), but the reality is that those swarms are most likely just that... swarms...When a hived colony swarms it is very likely to find its way to the same location as one from the previous season as there is usually wax left behind for the new swarm to track... also the once hived swarms are likely to have resistances bred into their genetics, which can indeed allow them to live much longer in the "wild".

This coin is "two-sided" of course... The few truely "wild" colonies remaining have undoubtedly been exposed to "domesticated" drones... thus during their own swarming or requeening processes, they too have taken on a blend of genetics from hived colonies... as do the hived colonies when they are swarming and requeening within range of "wild" colonies...

This "neutralization process" can take many many many generations, but none the less... it does happen, and has already for nearly every "wild" colony in the US.

So that "feral" colony that has lived without treatment for so long, my very well have been swarm from a hive that was already highly resistant to these pests as well as disease.

The use of treatment has always been a HUGE debate amongst bee keepers... To each his own... and of course the one thing that ALL agree on is that they would ALL rather NOT use ANY form of treatment at all... The simple truth is that evolution does not take place over night... having a serious infestation of varrora will NOT make a colony stronger in any way... it will only wipe it out. Resistance is developed much like our own bodies develope immunities... a VERY TINY dose of the bad in a controlled environment and ONLY in a HEALTHY host, so the body can identify it and eventually learn how to fight it off. 

In bees this is not a quick process, as bees die and are born each day, and the colony is requeened... this process begins with an extremely tiny threat in a multitude of colonies (say every hive in a region)... the control of this environment is all of the bee keepers in that region carefully watching and standing by to "help" with either chemical or methodical treatments in order to keep the infestations at a minimal threat level.

Take russian bees for instance... how many "controls" were there to help them develope their resistance to mites over the past 150 years??? Extremely frigid winters, short brood cycles, an array of scientists and bee keepers working around the clock to maintain and preserve their apiaries... thats just a few.

In other farming industries (such as cattle, poultry, swine, and even crops), you would treat any illness or infection with the VERY LEAST INVASIVE METHODS POSSIBLE, however, you would use the method that would work to completely wipe out the problem before it spreads or...and this is one that is commonly overlooked amongst bee keepers... the threat can build immunities to the weak treatments... The other industries have rules about illness, disease, and pests that are not treated, the main reason for this is because one cow with a disease can mean several more cows "carrying" the disease... which can easily spread from that pasture, to the next pasture, to the arena, to the neighboring state, to the entire industry... see the pattern with bees? Thats how the pests got this bad in the first place.

PLEASE DO NOT MISS UNDERSTAND ME!!!! I am not telling you that you should use chemicals or that you are wrong for not wanting to... Just carefully consider how and when you decide to treat, so that you treat with the least invasive method...that is still successful in stopping the pests... 

I have often had to ask myself, "if my bees lose this fight, what will become of the mites that were in that colony?" The answer is... in the hive closest to that one... be it mine or someone elses.. 

Just a thought.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell6870,

first, I want to thank you for a very thoughtful and thought-provoking post. I'm still very much a newbie (entering into only my second winter with bees and a year ago all I had were two 3-medium-frame nucs in November), and my understanding, goals, and philosophy about beekeeping is still very much evolving. In my own way and at my own pace, I believe I have been headed in a direction regarding feral bees, natural/organic beekeeping, and the question of treating or not which is pretty closely aligned with what you have expressed in your message below. There are a couple areas where I may have specific differences or questions which I have highlighed in the detailed responses below. Again, thanks for taking the time to make such a considerate and educational post.

-fafrd



rrussell6870 said:


> This is still a sign of AFB, with consideration that most genetics now have higher levels of hygenic behavior... The question is...what were the live bees on the frame doing at the time you discovered this? Also were there was clipping below the frame, as house bees can uncap the dead brood and even begin to remove them from the cells, at the time of your observation, this may have been "mid-process".


The house bees were sparse and all signs were that these were emerging bees that died halfway through the process of emerging. Next time I see a dead bee halfway out of a cell, I will dig it out with a toothpick to confirm that it has mites. Certainly not AFB from what I have read, these were baby bees that chewed and pushed their way partway out of their cells - they did not appear to have been yanked out by house bees. Don't understand what you mean by "clipping below the frames."



rrussell6870 said:


> About the "feral" swarms that you have noted... take in mind that almost ALL true feral hives have been wiped out due to mites (both tracheal and varrora) and more recently SHB... Some strains are still maintained by breeders and keepers (mainly for their base genetics), but the reality is that those swarms are most likely just that... swarms...When a hived colony swarms it is very likely to find its way to the same location as one from the previous season as there is usually wax left behind for the new swarm to track... also the once hived swarms are likely to have resistances bred into their genetics, which can indeed allow them to live much longer in the "wild".


I have started to realise this on my own, as I have also come to realize that even the local beekeeping lore of feral hives that have been in place and throwing off swarms every spring year after year for 5 years or more needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There is no beekeeper or camera keeping track of what is going on in these feral colonies 365/24/7 and it is impossible to assure that the original colony has not succumbed to Varroa and been replaced by another swarm moving into the empty combs before anyone notices they are gone. These supposed long-lived feral colonies could easily be a sequence of swarms each surviving only a season or two.



rrussell6870 said:


> This coin is "two-sided" of course... The few truely "wild" colonies remaining have undoubtedly been exposed to "domesticated" drones... thus during their own swarming or requeening processes, they too have taken on a blend of genetics from hived colonies... as do the hived colonies when they are swarming and requeening within range of "wild" colonies...
> 
> This "neutralization process" can take many many many generations, but none the less... it does happen, and has already for nearly every "wild" colony in the US.
> 
> So that "feral" colony that has lived without treatment for so long, my very well have been swarm from a hive that was already highly resistant to these pests as well as disease.


I use the word 'feral' loosely and by it I generally mean a colony of bees which is able to survive in the wild without assistance from man. I am not really hung up on the source of the genetics, as much as the fact that the process of natural selection is now in place and hopefully those genetics able to survive without management and chemical assistance from man begin to take a larger piece of the bee genepool 'pie'. More importantly, as just discussed, I am now coming to question the very existance of these surviving 'feral' (unassisted) colonies, at least in areas populated with commercially-raised bees (as you pointed out).




rrussell6870 said:


> The use of treatment has always been a HUGE debate amongst bee keepers... To each his own... and of course the one thing that ALL agree on is that they would ALL rather NOT use ANY form of treatment at all... The simple truth is that evolution does not take place over night... having a serious infestation of varrora will NOT make a colony stronger in any way... it will only wipe it out. Resistance is developed much like our own bodies develope immunities... a VERY TINY dose of the bad in a controlled environment and ONLY in a HEALTHY host, so the body can identify it and eventually learn how to fight it off.
> 
> In bees this is not a quick process, as bees die and are born each day, and the colony is requeened... this process begins with an extremely tiny threat in a multitude of colonies (say every hive in a region)... the control of this environment is all of the bee keepers in that region carefully watching and standing by to "help" with either chemical or methodical treatments in order to keep the infestations at a minimal threat level.


In general, I believe that I agree with the points you are making here. In bringing bees from the wild into a managed hive within an apiary, the environment is being changed and so it is no longer a true reflection of 'nature'. Even if you wanted to select for bees able to survive in that artificial environment, starting them out with a serious infestation does neither the bees nor the process of natural selection any good. It's for this reason that I am now putting so much effort ito treating my 'feral' colonies to give them a fresh start in the spring. If bees which have been given as good of a start as possible are unable to combat Varroa on their own, that is another thing and they should probably be allowed to perish in the least damaging (to the rest of the apiary) way possible [see your final point and my response].




rrussell6870 said:


> Take russian bees for instance... how many "controls" were there to help them develope their resistance to mites over the past 150 years??? Extremely frigid winters, short brood cycles, an array of scientists and bee keepers working around the clock to maintain and preserve their apiaries... thats just a few.


Again, I am not hung up on the source of the feral (unmanaged) survivor stock. If Russians can survive in the face of Varroa, then I am all for it and want to release as many swarms of Russian stock into the environment as I can. This is the main reason that I purchased my only-ever package of bees this spring and I selected Russians. Unfortunately the package did not do well and eventually dwindled to nothing. It was probably just a poorly-mated queen and so I will likely try another package of Russians next spring, but my point is that what I feel is important is identifying strains of bees that are able to survive in the environment without assistance from man (which means no treatments on an ongoing basis) and create an environment within which they can thrive and spread their genetics into the environment.




rrussell6870 said:


> In other farming industries (such as cattle, poultry, swine, and even crops), you would treat any illness or infection with the VERY LEAST INVASIVE METHODS POSSIBLE, however, you would use the method that would work to completely wipe out the problem before it spreads or...and this is one that is commonly overlooked amongst bee keepers... the threat can build immunities to the weak treatments... The other industries have rules about illness, disease, and pests that are not treated, the main reason for this is because one cow with a disease can mean several more cows "carrying" the disease... which can easily spread from that pasture, to the next pasture, to the arena, to the neighboring state, to the entire industry... see the pattern with bees? Thats how the pests got this bad in the first place.


If I was a commercial beekeeper depending on the continuation of my colonies for survival, I absolutely would use the best available techniques to combat illnesses and pests whenever I saw signs of them affecting my apiary. The point is that this is not necessarily what is best for the bees and their evolution as a species. I am not an expert, but I would suspect that the same is true for cows and that without assistance from man, the species of domesticated cows as we know them would quickly dissapear off of the face of the planet. Commercial beekeepers, like commercial cattleman and dairy farmers, have a clear and understandable need to do what is best to maintain the health of their stock, even if it is not necessarily in the best interests of the survival of that species in the wild and over the long run. Hobbiest beekeepers like myself do not necessarily have the same constraints and we have the luxery to consider and decide what objectives we have in keeping bees - are we in it for the honey and the other products that can be produced by managing an apiary, or are we in it to help the species improve its chances of survival (or ideally a little bit of both ).

Another point that I feel has to be made here, is that both for the cattleman and for the commercial beekeeper, some of the practices of the industry can make a difficult situation worse. I won't say more about feedlots and steroids - everyone has seen Food Inc. by now - but in the case of beekeeping, migratory pollination practices have almost certainly allowed the problem with Varroa to spread much more quickly and seriously than it would have otherwise (as well as other diseases and pests). In addition, the annual migratory pilgrimage and cross-contaminations that likely result mean that even if the bees within a certain region of the country begin making some progress against Varroa, by the next season it will be start-over-on-square-one-time all over again.

I believe that the recent article that came out on CCD being caused by a combination of a virus and a fungus listed several control groups of bees that did not show any signs of Varroa infestation, including 'a large non-migratory beekeeping operation in Montana' which I thought was interesting food for thought.




rrussell6870 said:


> PLEASE DO NOT MISS UNDERSTAND ME!!!! I am not telling you that you should use chemicals or that you are wrong for not wanting to... Just carefully consider how and when you decide to treat, so that you treat with the least invasive method...that is still successful in stopping the pests...


While I am open to the idea of helping the bees with treatments and have begun applying powdered sugar treatments, I have a strong aversion to chemica treatments for several reasons:

1/ It's not the kind of thing I like and needing to get involved with chemical treatments will undermine most of my enthusiasm for this hobby and will frankly make me question if it is worth it. I do not have this same problem with mechanical treatments and manipulations, so needing to sprinkle some powdered sugar on my bees from time to time or needing to bait my hives with drone comb and remove the frame full of capped drone brood before it emerges fits my ideals of this hobby much more closely. As a commercial beek, it is unlikely that I would have either the time or the resources to treat hundres of hives in this way, so I would likely resign myself to the need to treat in the quickest, most effective and economical way possible.

2/ While I have not gotten much of a crop yet (about 30 lbs my first year), my bees make truly exceptional honey (better than anything we can buy in the local stores) and we do enjoy sharing that honey with family and friends. Even overlooking the possibility that you accidentally do something 'wrong' and inadvertantly contaminate honey in some way through incorrectly applying chemical treatments, I am not an expert in these chemicals and their effects, and so even if I did everything 'right' I will never have the same certainty of harvesting uncontaminated honey that I have by never bringing chemicals near my hives.

3/ Chemical treatments are dangerous (to varying degrees) - the worst thing that can happen to me by doing a bad job of powdered sugar treatments or drone trapping is to get stung a few times...

All of this being said, I absolutely agree with you that a treatment has to be successful in stopping the pests or it is a complee waste of time and may also be dangerous to the species and the environment. I am going to be fact-based about this powdered-sugar treatment and I am either going to convince myself that it can be effective if applied in the right way (in which case I will share my results and my techniques) or I will abandon it and search for something more effective (even if that may mean considering some chemical-baSed alternatives).



rrussell6870 said:


> I have often had to ask myself, "if my bees lose this fight, what will become of the mites that were in that colony?" The answer is... in the hive closest to that one... be it mine or someone elses..
> 
> Just a thought.


This is a very good point and now that I have experienced how devestating a severe Varroa infestation can be and have lost my first hives to PMS, I understand this much more clearly. I am currently treating ALL of my hives (with intensive powdered sugar dusting) and want ALL of my hives to enter the spring with very low mite counts. Next season, I plan to actively use drone trapping on ALL of my hives to monitor the level of Varroa in the hives and hopefully also help the bees in combating the mites. If any of my hives shows signs of the mite counts increasing significantly despite this assistance, I plan to requeen and treat with powdered sugar to eliminate that strain and give a fresh strain a chance. Any new swarms I bring into the apiary next season will be intensively dusted well before the first brood is capped.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

I want to say first that my post was not aimed at you... it was aimed at helping anyone that may be researching this type of situation.

As to your ideas of trying to develope a stock that will survive "Out-of-the-box" so to speak... PLEASE DO! Honestly, I have worried many many times about what this world will go through if ALL of the "wild" bees are gone worldwide... However, such creatures do already exist and are not that uncommon... of course they would Rather be in the box, as we have made it quite perfect for them, but none-the-less, they can very easily live in a hollow tree or an attic and swarms from our yards do so quite often... several have kept the same new homes for even more than 5 years... No, we can not call them "Feral" or 'Wild" bees, because they are specially bred to withstand the pests of today... which its the PESTS that are the "unnatural" part of the equation... They would NEVER be such a burden on bees if it were not for mans travels, transit, and mass crop production.

The truth is.. you are right in assuming that the weak would die off and the strong would get stronger... but for that scenario to truely playout, every human on earth would have to leave... lol. Everything about our presence causes a ripple effect, thus WE are the ones cleaning up OUR mess...

The bees in the boxes are actually no different than the ones in the trees... they are simply a step in a process that started with a bee, and will end with a bee. They may be adapted to better suit a commercial growers needs, or a queen breeders needs, or a honey producers needs, but what they are today is only a step in their continuing process of change.

Say a hive gets mites and you use every natural method you can to save it, yet it still dies... That certainly does not do Good for the species, actually it is Harmful. You have to see your hives for what they are, a rolling ball of genetics... able to change at the drop of a hat several times per year... this is why they are so adaptive... instead of wasting that hive, help it, and the next generation will have that much more insight to the threat that almost wiped them out... with each passing season that threat will come again, and each time you may have to help (and dont get me wrong, "help" means whatever you want to use, so long as it works, powdered sugar is fine), but each time they will remember that stress genetically, and become more and more hardened in their defense to that threat. This is how resistance is built...

Lets say that a deadly chicken pox virus swepted over wyoming...

If each year 100,000 people took a chicken pox vaccine...and 2,120 of them died from the vaccine alone, it would not help the human race...in fact it would simply kill 2,120 people each year... which seems better than losing all 100,000 per year, right?

Now lets take the same scenario and say that taking Pennicilin would stop you from dying after you start to show symptoms from the chicken pox vaccine... Now keep in mind that to some people, Pennicilin itself can be fatal and can cause very serious discomfort and even long term damage in lite cases... So, now the 2,120 people all take Pennicilin... 12 die, 41 are very ill for several months, and 9 lose their sight completely... What is the first figures that our minds want to find?? The answer....how many people were saved by the Pennicilin... but the question that should be asked is.... what was the total loss and how many years do we have to go through this before the virus is gone, changed, or we become immune to it.

In bees, it takes a long time... humans are faster because our bodies are designed to stay here longer... we have to adapt... but the colony is intended to do that very same thing... stay here forever via adapting... it simply does this through cycles of genetics... a naturally mating queen can mate with around 17 drones... thats upto 18 different strains mixed at once... and this process can take place several several times each year... if one hive in an area is getting pounded by the mites, doesn't it sound reasonable to help it survive so it can adapt or "learn" from the stress of that infestation and become stronger, and produce drones with these "learned" traits for the other hives in the area to "learn" from?

Again, this is just dicussion material... not directed anyone


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## KQ6AR (May 13, 2008)

I read an article a few years ago, about a country that couldn't afford any Varroa treatments. 
Sorry I don't remember the source.

The article said the bees in that country took about 9 years without treatments to survive with the mite. 

We have an advantage over them, with resistant queens being raised by several universities, & breeders. This should shorten the time-line, as long as you let drones go out & be fruitful in the area. True raising the drones is counterproductive for mite control, but if the capped drone brood is clean when you check it, let them fly.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

When we first got hit by the mites, we had several hives that already showed hygenic behavior... These were base 3 banded itallians that apparently just didnt want to be infested... ;-) 

Great point about the country going for nine years with no treatment and the bees withstanding the mites... 

I agree that if you just let them be, most will die out, but the strong will survive and will get stronger...

Here's something to think about though... after the nine years went by, didn't they start treating again? Also wonder how many they lost vs how many they had...


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## frazzledfozzle (May 26, 2010)

I can understand the need for some beekeepers to want to keep their hives "chemical free" but I do wonder why there is almost a paranoia about using miticides to save your bees from dying.

There are many things that come to mind when I think about this,
one of the first is how can you stand by and watch your bees die? knowing that all it would take to save them is a treatment?

Do people do this with their dogs,cats, hens,etc etc ? Most people dont.
so why is it so acceptable to do it to your box of bees?

I also wonder about the whole concept of "chemical free" some of the deadliest toxins known are in fact "natural" from nature does this make them better?
Do you have to wear aprons, gloves and a respirator to put strips into a hive?

What about the bees and where they are foraging what chemicals are they bringing into the hive? maybe they are foraging along a roadside with all the poisens from vehicle exhausts accumulating in the soil and on the plants.

Maybe they are foraging in the neighbours garden and they have just sprayed their roses.

I think that we can get too precious about being so called chemical free and allowing our bees to die or to abscond and go into some other poor buggers hives down the road while being quite happy to pollute the air that we breathe with our cars and lawnmowers our fires and our industry.

If my kids get sick I give them medicine I dont tell them to either fight it off or die, the same goes for my dog and my bees, I couldn't stand back and watch my bees die for any reason it makes no sense to me at all.

How anyone can think they are "helping the bees" by doing this is beyond me.

none of what I've said is aimed at any one person.

frazz


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## Omie (Nov 10, 2009)

frazzledfozzle said:


> how can you stand by and watch your bees die? knowing that all it would take to save them is a treatment?...I couldn't stand back and watch my bees die for any reason it makes no sense to me at all.


I think it's not so simple as you describe. Keep in mind that _most_ beekeepers treat their hives, yet there are many who treat and then 'stand back and watch their bees die' anyway. If treatments were the perfect solution, then there would _be_ no more mite or disease problems...yet the problems do persist, even among treated bees.

I always think it's odd to compare not treating your bees to not treating your child or your dog if they are ill. Bee colonies are not children, despite our fondness of them. 
If you were a dog breeder and you owned 100,000 dogs that were breeding like mad and their normal life spans were only 6 or 7 weeks long, wouldn't you be smarter to let the sickly ones die off and only breed from the strong healthy ones? Or would you start giving antibiotics and medications to all the sickly ones to try to keep them alive _and then use them for breeding stock_?


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell6870 said:


> I want to say first that my post was not aimed at you... it was aimed at helping anyone that may be researching this type of situation.



rrussell6870,

first of all I want to say that I did not take your post as being aimed at me and I hope that you did not take mine as being aimed at you. The fact is, I am very encouraged by this interchange and appreciate anyone who wants to make constructive contributions to this debate. I do not know how long you have been keeping bees, but I suspect that it is much longer than me, and especially for newcomers to this hobby/occupation, the early phase in an important time to ask questions, try things, and ultimately decide on which 'direction' you want to go with beekeeping - from that perspective an opportunity to raise some of these issues and debate them in a healthy manner with beekeepers who have more experience or a different perspective, is enormously valuabe - so thank you again for your contributions to this interchange.

More details on the other points you raise in your post below:

-fafrd



rrussell6870 said:


> As to your ideas of trying to develope a stock that will survive "Out-of-the-box" so to speak... PLEASE DO! Honestly, I have worried many many times about what this world will go through if ALL of the "wild" bees are gone worldwide... However, such creatures do already exist and are not that uncommon... of course they would Rather be in the box, as we have made it quite perfect for them, but none-the-less, they can very easily live in a hollow tree or an attic and swarms from our yards do so quite often... several have kept the same new homes for even more than 5 years... No, we can not call them "Feral" or 'Wild" bees, because they are specially bred to withstand the pests of today... which its the PESTS that are the "unnatural" part of the equation... They would NEVER be such a burden on bees if it were not for mans travels, transit, and mass crop production.


I hope you are correct that there are in fact "wild" (or unmanaged) bees (feral genetics or otherwise) that do exist and that can survive on their own for five years or more. I have to admit increasing scepticism on that score since I have seen first hand what the Varroa mites can do, a position that has been formed partly from other posts on this board.



rrussell6870 said:


> The truth is.. you are right in assuming that the weak would die off and the strong would get stronger... but for that scenario to truely playout, every human on earth would have to leave... lol. Everything about our presence causes a ripple effect, thus WE are the ones cleaning up OUR mess...


Agree completely, which then raises the question of exactly what type of mess we want to contribute to the creation of (and eventually contribute to the cleaning-up of, hopefully). If there are unmanaged bee colonies capable of surviving sustainably despite infestation by Varroa, they are using 'foundationless' hive structures building whatever cell size and comb type (worker or drone) suits them, they are raising what ever type of bees (worker, drone, queen) suits them as the season evolves, they are swarming as often as they like (typically every spring if they are truly thriving) and they are likely living more spaced out and sparsely than is found in the typical managed apiary.

So if these unmanaged surviving bee colonies do in fact exist, and they perish when they are kept in boxes within an apiary, it is likely that either one or a combination of these factors leads them to fail and defines the mess 'we' are creating for them:

1/ our foundation or foundationless frames cause them to increase the Varroa problem in ways they can avoid when unmanaged

2/ the drones they raise on their own when unmanaged cause less problems than the drones they may raise in a managed hive

3/ our efforts to keep our colonies from swarming eliminate an important weapon in the bees fight against Varroa

4/ cross-contamination and the concentration of colonies within an apiary which we prefer to increase management efficiency greatly increase the stress levels on the bees and increase the burden on each individual colony - instead of 'survival of the fittest', we end up with 'no colony can be much better off than the weakest' 

Of course, migratory pollination is an additional factor more specific to the commercial beekeeper than the hobbyist, so to me the 4 factors above are the more critical, at least within my current understanding.



rrussell6870 said:


> The bees in the boxes are actually no different than the ones in the trees... they are simply a step in a process that started with a bee, and will end with a bee. They may be adapted to better suit a commercial growers needs, or a queen breeders needs, or a honey producers needs, but what they are today is only a step in their continuing process of change.
> 
> Say a hive gets mites and you use every natural method you can to save it, yet it still dies... That certainly does not do Good for the species, actually it is Harmful. You have to see your hives for what they are, a rolling ball of genetics... able to change at the drop of a hat several times per year... this is why they are so adaptive... instead of wasting that hive, help it, and the next generation will have that much more insight to the threat that almost wiped them out... with each passing season that threat will come again, and each time you may have to help (and dont get me wrong, "help" means whatever you want to use, so long as it works, powdered sugar is fine), but each time they will remember that stress genetically, and become more and more hardened in their defense to that threat. This is how resistance is built...


I agree with your point that allowing a colony to completely perish does no good for the species in general, except for the issue of propping up weak genetics. If the colonies which are saved using chemical treatments are therefore allowed to have a bigger slice of the bee genepool 'pie' than they otherwise would have had if they had been allowed to perish, saving the weak colonies is actually detrimental to the process of evolution and natural selection - it becomes 'man-assisted' selection. This is the reason that my current thinking is to give my new colonies as clean a start as possible (so that they can be evaluated from a level-playing field with no unfair disadvantages), but them to eliminate the queen (and her genetics) if they are unable to make it on their own from that starting point and have clearly started to fail. If one wants to evaluate several strains of genetics and try to promote processes of natural selection, one must promote the winners and allow the losers to stop contributing their weaker genetics to the genetic pool. Of course it is not the bees themselves and the failing colony they are a part of, but the queen and her genetics that are to blame and must be allowed to perish - the colony should be saved if possible, but the queen must go.



rrussell6870 said:


> Lets say that a deadly chicken pox virus swepted over wyoming...
> 
> If each year 100,000 people took a chicken pox vaccine...and 2,120 of them died from the vaccine alone, it would not help the human race...in fact it would simply kill 2,120 people each year... which seems better than losing all 100,000 per year, right?
> 
> Now lets take the same scenario and say that taking Pennicilin would stop you from dying after you start to show symptoms from the chicken pox vaccine... Now keep in mind that to some people, Pennicilin itself can be fatal and can cause very serious discomfort and even long term damage in lite cases... So, now the 2,120 people all take Pennicilin... 12 die, 41 are very ill for several months, and 9 lose their sight completely... What is the first figures that our minds want to find?? The answer....how many people were saved by the Pennicilin... but the question that should be asked is.... what was the total loss and how many years do we have to go through this before the virus is gone, changed, or we become immune to it.


I've read this section of your post several times to fully absorb its meaning and consider my perspective. I believe that the main point I want to make is to repeat a point I made in my earlier response to your first post: if your goal is to to develope strains of bees that depend on man for survival, the above analogy to vaccines and pennicilin is correct. If, on the other hand, you want to promote bee genetics that maximize the chances of the bees surviving without assistance from man, the vaccines/penniccillin analogy is not correct. There is no appropriate analogy for this latter situation based on mankind, because what would be the point of promoting genetics for mankind that did not depend on mankind for survival:scratch: 

Said another way, just because man will understandably use every technology at his disposal to propogate the survival of mankind, does not mean that we should blindly use the same array of man-made technologies to propogate the survival of other species such as bees.



rrussell6870 said:


> In bees, it takes a long time... humans are faster because our bodies are designed to stay here longer... we have to adapt... but the colony is intended to do that very same thing... stay here forever via adapting... it simply does this through cycles of genetics... a naturally mating queen can mate with around 17 drones... thats upto 18 different strains mixed at once... and this process can take place several several times each year... if one hive in an area is getting pounded by the mites, doesn't it sound reasonable to help it survive so it can adapt or "learn" from the stress of that infestation and become stronger, and produce drones with these "learned" traits for the other hives in the area to "learn" from?.


You make a good point here that in evaluating a colony it is not only the quality and genetics of the queen which is being evaluated, but also the quality and genetics of the many drones she has mated with. That being said, helping a weak colony survive (again, by this I mean allowing the queen and her genetics to survive - the colony in any case can be salvaged through requeening) may cause more harm than good, since it creates the risk of propogating weak genetics at the expense of (hopefully) stronger alternative genetics. Said another way, the drones from that failing hive that was saved with chemical treatments are probably not the preferred drones for mating the next virgin to wander into the DCA, compared to the drones from whatever local colonies may have been doing better without such assistance.

I am not sure that the bees "learn" from being allowed to survive with assistance, and suspect that the continued existance of these failing bees actually crowds out the genetic influence of any strains of bees that have truly "learned" something about how to survive by doing so without such assistance from man.



rrussell6870 said:


> Again, this is just dicussion material... not directed anyone


I truly appreciate you contribution to this dialog. It is absolutely not intended to be personal or directed to any specific individual, but hopefully raises questions for debate that are of general interest to those with a passion for this hobby/occupation and these tiny, fascinating critters.


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Omni,

I think we are getting off track. It is not an issue of "bees" dying, the issue is "colonies" dying... 

You can't compare the life of a colony to the life of a bee... the colony (if allowed to be subjected to a particular stress in low levels, AND "helped" along if things get out of hand) WILL get stronger. 

It will develope its own ways of dealing with the stress, and it will produce drones and swarms that will add small amounts of this resistance to the colonies around it.

Unless you have 100,000 COLONIES, you cant really compare this to the 100,000 dogs... and the COLONY does not have a 6-7 week lifespan.

You are correct about the treatments not neccessarily working though... we were discussing that very issue earlier... It is the very weak treatments that the mites become resistant to very quickly... the stronger ones kill all of the populating mites thus there are no mites to become resistant.

Several goverments have made treatments mandatory for commercial and hobbiest alike in an effort to actually eradicate mites in certain areas... none here in the US that I know of, but I know several in germany, canada, etc.

In considering eradication, you have to consider where and what it takes for the pest to survive... In this case most commercial operations treat (when needed only) AND use resistant stock... very few hobbiest actually treat with anything more than powdered sugar and sbb... Most side-liners do not treat either...

So there is a place for the mites to live and a source for them to transfer from one place to another.

All and all, I wish none of us had ever even heard of mites, but we have, I wish we had never had to even think about miticides, but we did, and the sad truth is... it seems much more natural to care for your livestock if they get sick, just as it is much better for that creature as a species.

As you pointed out, bees die in a short amount of time... the colony however, can adapt and live on...the colony can be transfered to different comb and boxes, the honey supers can be removed before treatment...

Basically, the conoly can be treated, then completely seperated from ALL of the chemicals that were used to treat it, and the colony would once again be pure as ....well....honey! And if it has to be done once every 2 years... then that just means that your "Colony" has developed a bit more resistance each time it happens... let it die and the resistance it was building will die along with it.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

KQ6AR said:


> True raising the drones is counterproductive for mite control, but if the capped drone brood is clean when you check it, let them fly.


This is one of the things I am really struggling with. From what I have read, it is the drone brood that truly allows the Varroa problem to spin out of control, and the VSH genetics only addresses worker brood - there is apparently no genetics/behavior that exhibits behavior of house bees cleaning out contaminated drone brood.

If this is correct, then how do wild "unmanaged" bees contribute drones to the environment? I would appreciate any inputs or perspectives on this question. It seems like allowing a colony to raise unlimited drones within foundationless frames (as I have done in my first year as a beekeeper) is a death sentence (as I am now learning from painful experience) - so how do any "wild" unmanaged colonies survive? Raise the drones in the spring which allows the Varroa to start growing out of control but then swarming to creat a period of broodlessness allowing the Varroa to be brought back under control before the next cycle begins?

My current plan is to control drone brood through the use of drone traps to assist the bees in containing Varroa, but this is obviously not something the bees are able to do "in the wild." Assuming that this is successful, my next step may be to simulate swarms through a forced period of broodlessness by caging the queen. It seems to me that the question of managing drone brood is smack at the center of the question of managed versus (simulated) unmanaged beekeeping...

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Fafrd,

They dont. Thats what I was actually saying earlier... The colonies that are "Out-of-the-box" WERE managed bees that swarmed.... These are colonies that were already specially bred for resistance to mites and disease, thus giving them a fighting chance in the wild...

Here is the big issue... THE WILD... Is no longer THE WILD... Man transported things and creatures to all parts of the globe... in doing so WE have created an UN NATURAL "Wild"... full of threats that would not have existed if we had not wanted to import/export so badly... THUS... For honey bees to live in the WILD in the US, they will have to be able to withstand the threats that were not here 100 years ago... Threats that actually would not survive here on there own if it were not for our ways and means in the first place. 

You stated that:
"saving the weak colonies is actually detrimental to the process of evolution and natural selection - it becomes 'man-assisted' selection."

This is not true... The part that was Man-Assisted was the threat... and the colony is what evolves, if it dies all of the years of resistance that it has built will die along with it. These hives that are considered "Weak" are nothing of the sort... they are simply targets of the mites for whatever variable that is there... be it drone comb, etc... but they are not weak... as a bee they are exactly what they are suppose to be... WE produced the threat, so we either kill off ALL of the threats, or help the bees adapt to get around them. When a person is sick, they seem weak, but actually their body is building up a defense to the illness to keep it from being so bad the next time it encounters it... same thing here... not weak, learning...


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

frazzledfozzle said:


> how can you stand by and watch your bees die? knowing that all it would take to save them is a treatment?
> 
> Do people do this with their dogs,cats, hens,etc etc ? Most people dont.
> so why is it so acceptable to do it to your box of bees?


Frazz thanks for the post. I think in answer to your question, first it is the difference between focusing on what is best for your specific colony of bees versus what is best for the species of bees as a whole. Personally, it breaks my heart to see a colony dwindle and perish (as I would expect that it does for any of us), but if I know that propogating that colony using artificial means runs the risk of creating a negative impact on many future generations of bee colonies, I can accept the loss of that weak colony for the greater good of the species.

Second, as I have stated in an earlier post, I don't think what is important is ultimately a question of being prepared to watch your bees and you colony die, as much as it is a question of being prepared to replace the queen and her weak genetics.



frazzledfozzle said:


> I also wonder about the whole concept of "chemical free" some of the deadliest toxins known are in fact "natural" from nature does this make them better?
> Do you have to wear aprons, gloves and a respirator to put strips into a hive?
> 
> What about the bees and where they are foraging what chemicals are they bringing into the hive? maybe they are foraging along a roadside with all the poisens from vehicle exhausts accumulating in the soil and on the plants.
> ...


The point about pesticides and other man-made chemical influences on bees which we cannot control is good and very valid. That being said, I do not accept that just because there are other sources of chemical contamination which may exist in the environment and which we, as beekeepers, cannot directly control, gives us an excuse to blindly apply chemical treatments to our hives without thinking through the implications. I know many beekeepers who are probably too 'precious' in the way you describe - blindly allowing the bees to survive or die, take residence or abscond, without really thinking much about what it means for the environment or the species. I do not necessarily agree with that approach/philosophy and that is certainly not my philosophy of beekeeping. I think that bees need help, should not be expected to deal with all of the unnatural stresses our environment and our industry have placed on them, and the important question is what type of help we should be providing them. For me, the right answer is driven not by what I believe will be best for any specific colony, but what will be best for the adaptation of the species over the long run...



frazzledfozzle said:


> If my kids get sick I give them medicine I dont tell them to either fight it off or die, the same goes for my dog and my bees, I couldn't stand back and watch my bees die for any reason it makes no sense to me at all.
> 
> How anyone can think they are "helping the bees" by doing this is beyond me.
> 
> ...


I appreciate your input and have attempted to address your questions. Personally, I never 'stand back and watch my bees die.' I lost my first colony this summer from what I thought was a failing queen and only recently have come to understand was a severe case of PMS. This thread was originally motivated by my recognizing I had a second hive beginning to follow the same trajectory and reaching out on BeeSource for help. Many beekeepers have given me that help and from the learning I have gained over the past weeks, I am now deeply engaged in trying to save that hive using intensive powdered sugar dusting. 

It is not yet a done deal, but I am very happy with the progress I have made over the past two weeks. Hopefully the hive will have been saved with intensive but non-chemical intervention, and if ultimately I determine that this approach is doomed, I am prepared to use some other means to save the hive (including the use of chemicals). I just don't believe that resorting to chemical treatments as the solution of first resort is necessarily good for the bees, nor for the hobbiest industry. 

And finally, as much as I care about these little critters, I do not feel that a comparison of how I feel about and treat my bees with how I feel about and would treat my children or even my dogs and cats is appropriate for me personally. Any beekeeper knows that it is not about each individual bee but about the colony as a whole, and in my case, a major element of beekeeping is not about any specific colony but about the species as a whole.

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Omie said:


> I think it's not so simple as you describe. Keep in mind that _most_ beekeepers treat their hives, yet there are many who treat and then 'stand back and watch their bees die' anyway. If treatments were the perfect solution, then there would _be_ no more mite or disease problems...yet the problems do persist, even among treated bees.
> 
> I always think it's odd to compare not treating your bees to not treating your child or your dog if they are ill. Bee colonies are not children, despite our fondness of them.
> If you were a dog breeder and you owned 100,000 dogs that were breeding like mad and their normal life spans were only 6 or 7 weeks long, wouldn't you be smarter to let the sickly ones die off and only breed from the strong healthy ones? Or would you start giving antibiotics and medications to all the sickly ones to try to keep them alive _and then use them for breeding stock_?


Thanks for your post, Omie. I believe you have understood the points I have been tying to make perfectly (and have expreseed them much more effectively and succinctly than I was able to do )

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

fafrd said:


> This is one of the things I am really struggling with. From what I have read, it is the drone brood that truly allows the Varroa problem to spin out of control, and the VSH genetics only addresses worker brood - there is apparently no genetics/behavior that exhibits behavior of house bees cleaning out contaminated drone brood.
> 
> If this is correct, then how do wild "unmanaged" bees contribute drones to the environment? I would appreciate any inputs or perspectives on this question. It seems like allowing a colony to raise unlimited drones within foundationless frames (as I have done in my first year as a beekeeper) is a death sentence (as I am now learning from painful experience) - so how do any "wild" unmanaged colonies survive? Raise the drones in the spring which allows the Varroa to start growing out of control but then swarming to creat a period of broodlessness allowing the Varroa to be brought back under control before the next cycle begins?
> 
> ...


Favrd,

The reason that colonies are able to withstand these threats in the wild is because the queens in these colonies were naturally replaced instead of requeening as you had mentioned before... Requeening is a great way tro spread resistant treaits and to quicken the process of building resistance as long as the new queens were developed from colonies that were allowed to "learn" these traits already and for a longer amount of time...

Part of the resistance depends on swarming and drone production... this is why the orginal queen was left to swarm at her own ready is early stages of developing resistance... the longer she was stressed by the mites, the more of an impact her offspring will have... and so on...


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell,

another very stimulating post for which I want to thank you. You've raised some central points, and whether you are correct are not, I believe they represent some central questions. More below:

-fafrd



rrussell6870 said:


> the colony (if allowed to be subjected to a particular stress in low levels, AND "helped" along if things get out of hand) WILL get stronger.
> 
> It will develope its own ways of dealing with the stress, and it will produce drones and swarms that will add small amounts of this resistance to the colonies around it.


You have made reference to this point several times, though never as clearly as here. I understand what you are saying, I just do not believe it is fundamentally correct. Just because we help a colony overcome a stress to which it would otherwise succumb, how do you know that the result of assisted survival will be increased resistance to that specific stress? 

Vaccines are chemical interventions that *do* increase resistance to specific stresses by introducing a weakened version or minute dosage of a stress to allow antibodies and resistance to be built up. After recieving a vaccine, a surviving organism should have built up increased immunity to that specific stress, as you are suggesting.

Antibiotics are a different matter and I do not believe they contribute to increased resistance but to unchanged resistance at best and to decreased resistance (due to the liklihood of development of antibiotic-resistant strains of the stress) at worst. When mankind uses antibiotics to contain the black death, it *does not *make us more resistant to the black death as a species, and if we ever found ourselves without access to antibiotics for an extended period (years/decades), we would once again face the black death as a catastrophic and species-threatening stress.

So if I have the basic elements of this argument correct (I am not an expert, so please feel free to challange me in case I am missing something critical), then the central question becomes which is the better analogy for the chemical treatments we are using on the bees - vaccines or antibiotics?





rrussell6870 said:


> You are correct about the treatments not neccessarily working though... we were discussing that very issue earlier... It is the very weak treatments that the mites become resistant to very quickly... the stronger ones kill all of the populating mites thus there are no mites to become resistant.


Agreed. As I say above, antibiotic-class treatments can actually decrease resistance because of the eventual emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of the stress...



rrussell6870 said:


> Several goverments have made treatments mandatory for commercial and hobbiest alike in an effort to actually eradicate mites in certain areas... none here in the US that I know of, but I know several in germany, canada, etc.
> 
> In considering eradication, you have to consider where and what it takes for the pest to survive... In this case most commercial operations treat (when needed only) AND use resistant stock... very few hobbiest actually treat with anything more than powdered sugar and sbb... Most side-liners do not treat either...
> 
> So there is a place for the mites to live and a source for them to transfer from one place to another.


You make a good point here. If we could truly eliminate mites we would no longer have to be concerend with mite-resistant genetics in bees. Just like if the black death could truly be eradicated, the fact that mankind continues to have a major vulnerability to that stress would not be of further importance.

I have taken it for granted that the mites can never be truly eradicated, which is why efforts to contain them through chemical interventions runs the risk of promoting genetics that depend on those man-assisted interventions for survival.



rrussell6870 said:


> All and all, I wish none of us had ever even heard of mites, but we have, I wish we had never had to even think about miticides, but we did, and the sad truth is... it seems much more natural to care for your livestock if they get sick, just as it is much better for that creature as a species.


As I have said earlier, for the commercial beekeeper, the need to treat is completely understandable. The bees are being depended upon for livlihood and survival of the species without assistance from man is of secondary importance. For the hobbiest, the priorities can be reversed and it is hard to find a hobbiest livestock owner to try to make an appropriate anology. Bees are more wild than any pets or any livestock and they are sort of hanging in the balance between being like livestock (purely existing as a result of intervention by man) or being like ants (becasue no one has yet figured out any product or output that can be created from an ant colony, they are left to develop completely "in the wild" and in the worst are considered pests.



rrussell6870 said:


> As you pointed out, bees die in a short amount of time... the colony however, can adapt and live on...the colony can be transfered to different comb and boxes, the honey supers can be removed before treatment...
> 
> Basically, the conoly can be treated, then completely seperated from ALL of the chemicals that were used to treat it, and the colony would once again be pure as ....well....honey! And if it has to be done once every 2 years... then that just means that your "Colony" has developed a bit more resistance each time it happens... let it die and the resistance it was building will die along with it.


Again, the central point for me is whether you are correct that the colonies survival with assistance will result in increased resistance. I would like to understand more about this. If you are correct and can help me to understand, I may be prepared to reconsider my position. Salvaging colonies by transferring them to fresh combs and boxes amount to nothing more than a major manipulation to which I am open (even as an after-effect of resorting to chemical treatments) - the key question is whether this manipulated/assisted survival truly results in a stronger species or a weaker species. I value your thoughts and contributions to this dialog and hope that we can continue this interesting debate.

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell6870 said:


> Fafrd,
> 
> You stated that:
> "saving the weak colonies is actually detrimental to the process of evolution and natural selection - it becomes 'man-assisted' selection."
> ...


rrussell,

I missed this earlier post of yours - probably our posts crossed in the ether .

Anyway, I am coming to understand that this is the main point of difference between us. You believe that a colony of bees 'learns' and 'builds up resistance' by being helped to survive a threat (man-made or otherwise). I am pretty sure it does not work that way with bee colonies.

In natural selection, those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to do better (in the face of adversity and threats or otherwise) will grow and spread their genetic influence more widely and effectively than those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to collapse in the face of that same threat. There is no 'learning' involved and there is no resistance being 'built up' through survival - only increased genetic success and influence versus competing genetic strains.

In man, resistance *can* be built up through exposure to weakened strains of a threat (a vaccine) that results in a new class of anti-bodies being developed and retained. A bee colony is not building up any anti-bodies to mites by surviving (with assistance or in the wild) - they either have the genetic make-up to survive the threat or they do not and they perish.

I am interested in the point you are raising and would like to understand more about the reasons you believe colonies 'learn' and 'build up resistance' by surviving (with treatments or otherwise). If you are correct about this, I am making a mistake to evaluate a queen and her genetics over only a single season, and should be prepared to treat over two or three seasons to evaluate if new each season the same stock does better than the last (evaluate the 'learning', not only the surviving). I suspect if I ran this experiment I would be dissapointed and that each season with the same queen would result in a repeat of the last season, but if you have evidence to the contrary I am all ears.

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

fafrd said:


> rrussell,
> 
> Just because we help a colony overcome a stress to which it would otherwise succumb, how do you know that the result of assisted survival will be increased resistance to that specific stress?
> 
> ...


It is not "Assisted survival" to remove a stress would never have naturally been there. I think this is mainly where you are misunderstanding the principle... I am NOT saying that you prop-up weak hives... a hive with a strong queen, good number of bees, and good brood and food is not "Weak" genetically... it is exactly what it should be... ALL honey bees would have fallen to mites if the mites were suddenly spread world wide and there was no form of intervention... The ONLY reason there are resistant strains today is because of long term exposure to the mites... the process took the russians over 150 years to develop... the method was to keep the mites "at bay" while the bees developed their own resistance (like a vaccine... btw through out the idea about antibiotics, that does not fit in any of these scenarios, the mites ARE the vaccine WHEN they are under control and only allowed to infect the colony in small numbers) ... if they had simply spread the mites across the country and not taken any steps to limit their progress, they would have simply lost ALL of their bees...

you stated
"Bees are more wild than any pets or any livestock and they are sort of hanging in the balance between being like livestock (purely existing as a result of intervention by man)"

This is not the case.. Hundreds of thousands of colonies are kept to serve agricultural purposes, they are bred to better serve certain agricultural needs, we manipulate them to stay where we want them, and they have been adapted to serve these needs in climates that would have been Void of bees if not for many centuries of "hardening off" (forcing a species to adapt to a different climate..another form of genetic "learning")... so yes, they are definitely a form of livestock.

you stated
"In natural selection, those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to do better (in the face of adversity and threats or otherwise) will grow and spread their genetic influence more widely and effectively than those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to collapse in the face of that same threat. There is no 'learning' involved and there is no resistance being 'built up' through survival - only increased genetic success and influence versus competing genetic strains."

Again, this goes back to wether we are considering the honey bee "weak" because it falls to varrora... There ARE indeed WEAK genetics in every line... these traits show themselves from time to time and this is where we requeen and move on.. these weak genetics are NOT based on a colonies ability to fight varrora... the way the resistant strains fight off mites is through hygenic behavior... this is not a chemical compound within the bee, it is a learned behavioral trait that will follow through the generations to come (btw it takes some 140+ generations of honey bees before a trait begins to show itself again and again.. even if it happens after only a few generations, the genetics will revert back to the original base if these traits are not re-inserted...which in this case is another "vaccination"... this is what draws the resistant treats to the serface so that it can contiue to remain a common trait)... So if you experiment with this for a few seasons, you will indeed be dissappointed... A large queen rearing operation with focus on several strains of genetically specific bees and a staff of several entomologists, thousands of hives, and tens of thousands of queen nuks, CAN produce a very large number of generations in each season... this is why buying stock from them would move you lightyears ahead instead of trying it with your own hive... Like I said, this discussion is just that, a discussion. ;-)

you stated
"In man, resistance can be built up through exposure to weakened strains of a threat (a vaccine) that results in a new class of anti-bodies being developed and retained. A bee colony is not building up any anti-bodies to mites by surviving (with assistance or in the wild) - they either have the genetic make-up to survive the threat or they do not and they perish".

This is true, but anti-bodies are not what we are looking for here... the mites are an "outer force", not a disease (even though they do cause them)... Lets think of them as mean dogs... and we walk past them everyday on the way to work... So each day this mean dog runs out and bites your right leg... after 2 years of this if the dog runs out and bites your right leg again, what would you have??? The answer is... another dang dog bite. lol. You can not build any type of IMMUNITY to an "outer force", however, if you get bit enough time while walking past that house, you will certainly either A) choose a different route.. B) get some sort a weapon to defend yourself.. C) call the pound to remove the dog from your route.. etc... Now if the dog runs out the very first time that you encounter it, and he KILLS you during his attack, would you have had a chance to figure a safe way to get past him??? And does it make you a weak link in the human race just because you were not able to stop the dog??? Also does the dog get a chance to continue attacking others (i would hope not, but in the mites case they would so I had to say it. lol).

Yes, honey bees of all types DO adapt or evolve, due to stresses. Just like ALL creatures do. This is where the different breeds come from... they have been carried farther into the north than they had ever been, thus they adapted or "Learned" how to survive... if they did not have this ability, they would have all been wiped out many centuries ago.. as would most all creatures on earth... 

Here is a good example... The bees that our staff currently produce are indeed resistant to mites... how? not by purchasing queens that were already this way, but by using the mites to our advantages (as a vaccine) while we process a vast multidude of generations in order to speed the process along... Where does chemical treatment fall into play??? The chemicals are simply a way to keep the mites from ever wiping out a colony that has been subjected to them in small doses for multiple generations... As I said, NO BEE IS MITE PROOF. But by letting them get wiped out by varrora, all you do for the species is end one more line of developed genetics that had a chance to adapt. 

Lastly I will say that the genetic institute in Kirchhain Germany, has been trialling their Carnica against Primorsky Queens brought straight from Baton Rouge and representing all the lines they maintain there. Their data shows that their best Carnica is as tolerant as the average Primorsky, and light years ahead when it comes to temperament, productivity, and swarming. (i.e. the Primorsky swarm much more readily then do Carnica.) These improvements in Carnica are developed from this very method... as are most improvements in any stock. 

Thanks and hopefully we can meet one day!


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell,

first I want to say that I am really enjoying this interchange, there is absolutlely nothing personal in my comments (merely a mutul effort to 'get to the facts' as accurately as we are able), and if chance ever afforded us the oportunity to meet face-to-face, I would truly enjoy that. Some coments on our debate below:



rrussell6870 said:


> It is not "Assisted survival" to remove a stress would never have naturally been there. I think this is mainly where you are misunderstanding the principle... I am NOT saying that you prop-up weak hives... a hive with a strong queen, good number of bees, and good brood and food is not "Weak" genetically... it is exactly what it should be... ALL honey bees would have fallen to mites if the mites were suddenly spread world wide and there was no form of intervention... The ONLY reason there are resistant strains today is because of long term exposure to the mites... the process took the russians over 150 years to develop... the method was to keep the mites "at bay" while the bees developed their own resistance (like a vaccine... btw through out the idea about antibiotics, that does not fit in any of these scenarios, the mites ARE the vaccine WHEN they are under control and only allowed to infect the colony in small numbers) ... if they had simply spread the mites across the country and not taken any steps to limit their progress, they would have simply lost ALL of their bees...!


I think I fundamentally disagree with your position that 'the mites ARE the vaccine WHEN they are under control and only allowed to infect the colony in small numbers' I will say more on this in additional comments below, but I do not believe that the bees 'learn' anything from successfully surviving with the mites. The bees either have genetic traits and mutations that allow them to survive or they do not. This is a basic process of natural selection and there is not any learning involved. Those strains that do well will increase their relative influence on the genetic pool of the species and those that do not do well will diminish in genetic importance.

That being said, I think you raise a valid point regarding what degree of infestation or infection is an appropriate environment to evaluate survival traits. If you are seeking strains of bees that are genetically able to withstand very severe infestation by Varroa mites, this may not be representative of the environment the bees will be facing in the wild (unmanaged) and you may be discarding or dooming genetic stock that otherwise would represent a significant step forward because of their genetic ability to withstand a typical or average level of infestation.

This is the reason I have begun treating my hives this fall/winter. By allowing my bee to raise drones this summer but not allowing them to swarm, I believe that I have caused a level of infestation that goes far beyond what I believe the bees would be encountering 'in the wild' and so I want to help them to get the mite levels down to managable levels before evaluating how well the various strains of bees that I have will manage the problem of Varroa infestation on thier own.



rrussell6870 said:


> you stated
> "Bees are more wild than any pets or any livestock and they are sort of hanging in the balance between being like livestock (purely existing as a result of intervention by man)"
> 
> This is not the case.. Hundreds of thousands of colonies are kept to serve agricultural purposes, they are bred to better serve certain agricultural needs, we manipulate them to stay where we want them, and they have been adapted to serve these needs in climates that would have been Void of bees if not for many centuries of "hardening off" (forcing a species to adapt to a different climate..another form of genetic "learning")... so yes, they are definitely a form of livestock.


I think that my opinion is different here. I do not believe that bees today are purely a form of livestock. Bees are also like ants - they are insects. They survive in the wild without control and intervention from man. If this is not the case and bees only survive only because man helps them along, then I am afraid it really is too late for the species, but I think it is too soon to reach that conclusion. The impact of mankind on the environment of bees and the genetic evolution of bees can make the difference between whether the species ends up as only a human-assisted species which is no longer able to survive unassisted, or a wild species able to survive in an unmanage/unassisted manner.



rrussell6870 said:


> you stated
> "In natural selection, those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to do better (in the face of adversity and threats or otherwise) will grow and spread their genetic influence more widely and effectively than those strains that exhibit a genetic propensity to collapse in the face of that same threat. There is no 'learning' involved and there is no resistance being 'built up' through survival - only increased genetic success and influence versus competing genetic strains."
> 
> Again, this goes back to wether we are considering the honey bee "weak" because it falls to varrora... There ARE indeed WEAK genetics in every line... these traits show themselves from time to time and this is where we requeen and move on.. these weak genetics are NOT based on a colonies ability to fight varrora... the way the resistant strains fight off mites is through hygenic behavior... this is not a chemical compound within the bee, it is a learned behavioral trait that will follow through the generations to come (btw it takes some 140+ generations of honey bees before a trait begins to show itself again and again.. even if it happens after only a few generations, the genetics will revert back to the original base if these traits are not re-inserted...which in this case is another "vaccination"... this is what draws the resistant treats to the serface so that it can contiue to remain a common trait)... So if you experiment with this for a few seasons, you will indeed be dissappointed... A large queen rearing operation with focus on several strains of genetically specific bees and a staff of several entomologists, thousands of hives, and tens of thousands of queen nuks, CAN produce a very large number of generations in each season... this is why buying stock from them would move you lightyears ahead instead of trying it with your own hive... Like I said, this discussion is just that, a discussion. ;-)


The fundamental statement you make above with which I disagree is that VSH "is not a chemical compound within the bee,* it is a learned behavioral trait* that will follow through the generations to come"

You are correct that VSH is not a chemical compound such as the anti-bodies we humans develope in response to a vaccination, but I believe that you are incorrect in stating that VSH is a learned behavioral trait. My understanding is that VSH is a genetic mutation that allows those strains of bees that have it to do a better job of dealing with Varroa than those strains that do not have that genetic characteristic. On an even playing field where Varroa are an unfortunate part of the environment, those colony's exhibiting the genetic trait of VSH should do a better job of surviving than those colonies that do not, and so VSH colonies should grow stronger in terms of genetic influence on future generations (through the more plentiful drones, virgin queens, and swarms they should issue). The only 'learning' is through the process of natural selection whereby the more successful genetic traits for survival are 'learned' through greater influence on the genetic evolution of future generations.



rrussell6870 said:


> you stated
> "In man, resistance can be built up through exposure to weakened strains of a threat (a vaccine) that results in a new class of anti-bodies being developed and retained. A bee colony is not building up any anti-bodies to mites by surviving (with assistance or in the wild) - they either have the genetic make-up to survive the threat or they do not and they perish".
> 
> This is true, but anti-bodies are not what we are looking for here... the mites are an "outer force", not a disease (even though they do cause them)... Lets think of them as mean dogs... and we walk past them everyday on the way to work... So each day this mean dog runs out and bites your right leg... after 2 years of this if the dog runs out and bites your right leg again, what would you have??? The answer is... another dang dog bite. lol. You can not build any type of IMMUNITY to an "outer force", however, if you get bit enough time while walking past that house, you will certainly either A) choose a different route.. B) get some sort a weapon to defend yourself.. C) call the pound to remove the dog from your route.. etc... Now if the dog runs out the very first time that you encounter it, and he KILLS you during his attack, would you have had a chance to figure a safe way to get past him??? And does it make you a weak link in the human race just because you were not able to stop the dog??? Also does the dog get a chance to continue attacking others (i would hope not, but in the mites case they would so I had to say it. lol).


Again, you raise a valid point that if the 'outer force' is overwhelming, is destroys any ability to ascertain if a strain or genetic stock has randomly achieved some improvement in its ability to withstand gentler forms of the 'outer force' (same point I made above). That being said, the bees will *not* A) choose a different route or B) get some sort of weapon to defend themselves or C) call the pound to remove the dog from the route. The bees will die, but not before they randomly leave behind some offspring that may I) dislike the smell of dogs and choose a different route when they sense that a dog is near or II) attack a dog when they sense one is near and drive it off or III) exhibit some other random genetic strategy to withstand the attack of the dog.



rrussell6870 said:


> Yes, honey bees of all types DO adapt or evolve, due to stresses. Just like ALL creatures do. This is where the different breeds come from... they have been carried farther into the north than they had ever been, thus they adapted or "Learned" how to survive... if they did not have this ability, they would have all been wiped out many centuries ago.. as would most all creatures on earth... )


Genetic adaptation and learning are fundamentally different processes. Genetic adaptation requires random genetic mutation and a level playing field for rules of 'survival of the fittest' to determine the winners versus the loser and to increase the influence of the winners. Learning requires intelligence. Assisting bees that would otherwise die to survive will not disturb the process of learning (and would probably assist it, as you claim), but is will wreak havoc with the processes of natural selection.



rrussell6870 said:


> Here is a good example... The bees that our staff currently produce are indeed resistant to mites... how? not by purchasing queens that were already this way, but by using the mites to our advantages (as a vaccine) while we process a vast multidude of generations in order to speed the process along... Where does chemical treatment fall into play??? The chemicals are simply a way to keep the mites from ever wiping out a colony that has been subjected to them in small doses for multiple generations... As I said, NO BEE IS MITE PROOF. But by letting them get wiped out by varrora, all you do for the species is end one more line of developed genetics that had a chance to adapt.


When I read the above paragraph I fell that we may not really have so much a fundamental difference of opinion as much as a difference of expression and definition.



rrussell6870 said:


> Lastly I will say that the genetic institute in Kirchhain Germany, has been trialling their Carnica against Primorsky Queens brought straight from Baton Rouge and representing all the lines they maintain there. Their data shows that their best Carnica is as tolerant as the average Primorsky, and light years ahead when it comes to temperament, productivity, and swarming. (i.e. the Primorsky swarm much more readily then do Carnica.) These improvements in Carnica are developed from this very method... as are most improvements in any stock.


I would be interested to purchase one of these queens - do you know where I can order one?

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Sorry, I have been extremely busy and just do not have time to keep posting on the matter...

Later, when I have more time, I will try to find this thread and pick back up where we left off. lol.

For now, lets just agree to disagree... About the queens... Man just get you a good queen from any good breeder that has resistant stock, we are booked up until later in the year for 2011, but just ask around on the forums and see if you can get a few people to point you in the right direction.

PS... Better go ahead and get your order in soon... the US is closing the border to Australia... meaning packages and queens will be in VERY high demand. We usually sell out by the first of feb, but we extended production this last year to help out all of the guys that were getting hit so hard by the beetles.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

Between business travel the holidays, I have not had time to update my post in some time but several of you have expressed interest in knowing how my intensive sugar dusting treatment has worked out, so here is an update on the results:

I started this post because after losing my first hive to PMS, I had a second hive showing signs of advanced PMS. Very high 24 natural drop mite counts (100's), bees with DWV outside the entrance, spotty brood pattern. This hive had been a strong double deep hive coming out of the summer, but by late October had started to dwindle and was down to about 1 deep (2 half-deeps).

I had never tried powdered sugar dusting before but decided to see if I could save the hive by dusting extensively (daily / whenever possible) over a several week period.

Between October 26th (when I started) December 3rd (the last time I have dusted), I dusted this hive a total of 25 times.

My earlier posts report the detailed mite drop data, so I will just recap a summary here:

Date(s) . . . starting 1-hr dusting drop . . ending-1-hr drop . . average over period 
10/26-11/1 . . . . . >250 mites . . . . . . . . . . 15 mites . . . . . . 685/7=98 mites
11/6-11/14 . . . . . . 110 mites . . . . . . . . . . 30 mites . . . . . . 207/7=30 mites
11/23-12/3 . . . . . . . 25 mites . . . . . . . . . . . 1 mite . . . . . . 123/10=12 mites

The last three times I dusted the hive, there were only 2,3 and 1 mite, so this is when I stopped.

So one conclusion is that by dusting 24 times over a 38 day period, I virtually eliminated mites from the hive.

Another conclusion is that daily dusting did not appear to harm the bees in any way. The brood cluster was always cleaned of sugar by the next day (though as the hive dwindled from the effects of PMS, the empty frames towards the outside began to show signs of residual sugar from one day to the next).

On October 26th, when I started, the hive had 2 frames of open and capped brood in the upper deep, on top of 4 frames of open and capped brood in the lower deep. There were probably about 10 frames of bees total at that time and the brrod pattern did not look good (spotty).

By November 14th, the hive had dwindled down to 3 frames of brood and less than 5 frames of bees but the brood pattern had improved on one frame to a small, solid cluster.

On December 1st, the hive had dwindled to 2-3 frames of bees, no open brood, only a single frame 25% full of capped brood. I spotted the queen and she looked fine. At this point I was down to a small nuc and compacted the hive/nuc into a single deep with the cluster in the middle and stores on either side.

On December 24th, I did a quick inspection and the hive/nuc now has a softball-sized cluster spanning three frames with open and capped brood and a good pattern. Quick inspections of the bottom boards have not shown any signs of mites, but I will try to do a more careful 24-drop measurement or another dusting when we next get a clear day.

In a colder climate, this hive would be dead by now, but because I am in California where our winters are relatively mild, I think this hive/nuc has a good chance to make it now. The bees are already bringing in tons of pollen and the nuc is expanding, so unless we get a severe cold snap and the bees do not survive because of lack of critical mass to maintain the temperature of the brood cluster, I believe this hive which was severely stricken with PMS has been saved with nothing but powdered sugar:applause:.

If I were to try this experiment again, I think I would not have tried to save the brood at the beginning. If I had removed all open and capped brood (brushing the bees back into the cluster) and confined the queen to my Nicot cage for a few days, I believe I could have eliminated all of the mites in the first few days of dusting between 10/26 and 11/1. Then releasing the queen she could have immediately started to establish fresh uninfested brood while she had a larger mass of bees to establish a larger cluster and I would not have had to keep dusting to clean out the newly-emerging mites from the infested capped brood.

The theory about dusting is that it knocks off approximately 50% of the phoretic mites in a single 24-hour dusting. My results generally support this, and assuming that this is correct, sacrificing all open and capped brood, confining the queen, and dusting 5-7 times as quickly as possible should reduce the phoretic mite count to between 1/32nd and 1/128th of the starting level. Strictly speaking, the queen can be freed 4 days before the dusting is finished, since the mites should not be able to enter open brood that is less than 5 days old. 

Another option if one has a spare queen or is treating two infested hives would be to split the hive and use one split/hive with a confined queen to emerge all infested open and capped brood over a full 21-day period, only dusting down the phoretic mites once the brood has all emerged, and use the other split/hive to begin establishing uninfested brood after first dusting out the phoretic mites over a 5-7 day period. 4 weeks after this treatment, one uninfested split will have uninfested open and capped brood, many foragers and few nurse bees, and the other uninfested split wll have no brood but many uninfested nurse bees - recombining the splits (or rebalancing the hives) should result in a stronger hive(s) than if an entire generation of open and capped brood is lost.

I hope I never allow one of my hives to become this infested with Varroa again, but I have learned a great deal from this experiment and it has made me a believer of the powdered sugar treatment approach if it can be applied properly. Dusting once a week for three weeks is pretty much of a complete waste of time but dusting daily for 5-7 days without brood should be an effective way to all but elimiate mites from a hive. This technique would probably not be practical for a commercial operation, but for any hobbiest searching for ways to help his bees fight off the mites without the use of chemicals, I believe that intensive broodless dusting is an option to strongly consider. 

-fafrd


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

I did a careful 24-hour natural mite drop check on this recovered hive, and there were a total of 5 mites (one of which appeared to be immature). I believe this hive has been recovered and is on the rebound. I plan to continue to monitor mite levels and the health of this hive through the following spring and summer. I started a seperate post on the subject of this hive which I saved from advanced PMS with nothing but intensive dusting with powdered sugar, so I do not plan to continue to provide any further updates to this post.

I would like to include a link to the new post in case someone stumbles onto this post in the future using the search function and wants to find the other thread, but I do not know how.

If anyone can explain to me how to include a link to another post within a reply such as this, I would appreciate it, and otherwise, this is the last post I plan to make on this thread.

-fafrd


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## rrussell6870 (May 14, 2009)

Go to the new thread and simply highlight and copy the address in the address bar at the top of your screen... then return here and paste it into the text.


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## fafrd (Aug 22, 2009)

rrussell6870,

thanks for the tip. Here's a try which hopefully makes this my last post on this thread...

For anyone who is interested, here is the new thread I started on this recovered hive:

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=249245

-fafrd


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## Scrapfe (Jul 25, 2008)

http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees/disorders/bacterial.html
This is the best example of testing for American Foulbrood I could find on the net. 

I am not sure but I have heard AFB is most common in areas colder than Costal Centeral or Northern California. Good luck.


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