# It's a hard rain gonna fall - A southern package addict's trip to OZ.



## DaisyNJ (Aug 3, 2015)

I am hoping folks like Squarepeg will contribute their samples to RandyO on the DWV research he mentioned.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

WetWilly said:


> He covers a wide range of pertinent subjects, but what I found most compelling (and relevant to our forum) happens around the 27:00 mark.


i had not seen this one yet ww, thanks for posting it. i'll have to view it in it's entirety later, but at the 27:00 mark randy was answering questions about nosema. can you elaborate on what you found most compelling?



DaisyNJ said:


> I am hoping folks like Squarepeg will contribute their samples to RandyO on the DWV research he mentioned.


randy got samples from 5 of my survivor colonies daisy, and my understanding is that they were shipped to england for analysis back in december. no word on the results yet.


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## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I think he means 29min... randy is talking more or less about a admited long shot.... a DWV inoculation that would be aplyed to cellbuilders and then passed on from the queens razed there, knocking out DWV in only a few years.... kinda of how cow pox was used to illimate small pox

thanks for the link WW...


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

my bad, i somehow was watching a different you tube video. i understand ww's point now, thanks msl.


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

In a way it confirms a hard bond system. Hives with the right viral types survive and pass them on to new colonies when making increase.


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## Nordak (Jun 17, 2016)

msl said:


> I think he means 29min... randy is talking more or less about a admited long shot.... a DWV inoculation that would be aplyed to cellbuilders and then passed on from the queens razed there, knocking out DWV in only a few years.... kinda of how cow pox was used to illimate small pox
> 
> thanks for the link WW...


So if I'm understanding this correctly, the inverse to this scenario involving introducing foreign queens could cause potential problems to an apiary that has already struck a balance regarding the potentially beneficial forms of certain or unknown viral strains? Perhaps this should also be viewed as a precautionary tale to those who are having good success already. Following this closely.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

I sent Randy 10 samples, I also haven't heard any results. Did get a cute little plastic spoon out of the deal.

Unfortunately, 6 of the sampled hives have died since I collected the samples.

This illustrates the huge issue with "Survivor" breeding... There is a 75% chance the target breeder will expire over the winter, taking all its genetics with it. I wonder how Solomon's breeding program is working with the massive die off he has experienced.


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## WetWilly (Oct 4, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> i had not seen this one yet ww, thanks for posting it. i'll have to view it in it's entirety later, but at the 27:00 mark randy was answering questions about nosema. can you elaborate on what you found most compelling?


Hi SP. I can.

Why is it a long shot? Why would package producers want to improve their stock when they have such a ready supply of saps like us, willing to buy into the "save the bees" marketing scam and plunk down the cash, falling in line to repopulate our hives year after year with the same (ahem) product? Why would the local middle men who truck these packages north by the tens of thousands jump off that gravy train? Why would they sell us a product that we would only be required to purchase once when all they have to do is foster the image that were all bad Beekeepers and its all our fault for one reason or another if our bees don't thrive?

Non resistant bees
Hyper-resistant mites
Bees not suited to northern climates
Early supercedures (like after the first brood cycle)
Drone laying queens
Questionable populations (low nurse to field bee ratio = rapid die off)

The northern consumer is not to blame for these conditions and should not be expected to bear the burden responsibility THE FIRST TIME. 

After that, we have only ourselves to point the finger at. Just as my pal Cyborg did not (as predicted) miss the chance to make crystal clear. 

ys WW


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

WetWilly said:


> The northern consumer is not to blame for these conditions and should not be expected to bear the burden responsibility THE FIRST TIME.


understood ww, and thanks for the reply.

purchasing packages that come with a history of being treated for varroa and then expecting them to survive after the treatments are withdrawn cold turkey is not going to end well most of the time, and i think the same applies not just to northern consumers but is irrespective of location.

that you have come to the realization that it's time for another path means that you may have a decent shot at achieving a different outcome. collecting and working with local survivors is an approach that happens to be working for a fair number of folks here on the forum.

since back yarders like us represent a very small per cent of the total number of managed hives my assumption is that the package industry has other things to think about and better ways to make a profit than to get folks like us on a replacement treadmill.

for the big timers that manage 95% or better of all hives mite resistance is a secondary concern behind aggressive build up for pollination. randy oliver makes a compelling case for this in his series 'the varroa problem', have you had a chance to read it yet?


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## WetWilly (Oct 4, 2014)

squarepeg said:


> for the big timers that manage 95% or better of all hives mite resistance is a secondary concern behind aggressive build up for pollination. randy oliver makes a compelling case for this in his series 'the varroa problem', have you had a chance to read it yet?


Mite control is secondary because they treat for mites as a matter of course. And that is -AGAIN- a distraction to foucs of my thread.






squarepeg said:


> since back yarders like us represent a very small per cent of the total number of managed hives my assumption is that the package industry has other things to think about and better ways to make a profit than to get folks like us on a replacement treadmill.


Yeah your so correct. I'm sure its not that sinister. :applause:


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Nordak said:


> So if I'm understanding this correctly, the inverse to this scenario involving introducing foreign queens could cause potential problems to an apiary that has already struck a balance regarding the potentially beneficial forms of certain or unknown viral strains? Perhaps this should also be viewed as a precautionary tale to those who are having good success already. Following this closely.


I heard a presentation last year that showed most introduced viruses were on the workers, not the queens. So the recommendation is that attendants should not be introduced with the queen. This is not a recommendation to willy nilly bring in random queens from far away places


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

JWChesnut said:


> I sent Randy 10 samples, I also haven't heard any results. Did get a cute little plastic spoon out of the deal.
> 
> Unfortunately, 6 of the sampled hives have died since I collected the samples.
> 
> This illustrates the huge issue with "Survivor" breeding... There is a 75% chance the target breeder will expire over the winter, taking all its genetics with it. I wonder how Solomon's breeding program is working with the massive die off he has experienced.


I had quite a few 2nd year hives die this year. But I think the cream is definitely rising to the top and I may have identified a couple of strong queen lines. One originated locally, the other from Pederson apiaries in Saskatchewan. I also have taken the strategy of taking queens from the most promising of 1 winter survivors, as well as my 2 winter survivors. So I have maintained some of the genetics of 2nd year failures. But I have noticed that my Saskatraz bees are taking a smaller role while my local bees are becoming a bigger part of the apiary. The local bees happen to be mediocre at hygienic behaviour compared to Saskatraz and the Pederson queen. 

I had an interesting conversation with a local sheep farmer the other day. She was mentioning that when they brought in new genetics, the new genetics themselves would fall apart when brought to their farm and need to be babied. Their goal was to get lambs out of them as soon as possible mated with their local stock. She made a number of interesting observations about local adaptation to local feed, and bringing in feed from other places or feed that was irrigated, that it would trigger nutritional crisis in their sheep. I don't think it was just about genetics, but probably also about metabolic pathways developed with environmental stimulii from the time a lamb is conceived I would guess. I think it may have interesting implications when thinking about expecting new stock from outside a region to perform well. 

So I'm thinking it could be like throwing out the baby with the bath water to give up on certain traits too soon. Its only when they get integrated with local bees that we will see a new traits true potential.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

> So I'm thinking it could be like throwing out the baby with the bath water to give up on certain traits too soon. Its only when they get integrated with local bees that we will see a new traits true potential.


Are you saying that bringing in outside genetics increases the genetic arsenal from which the local bees can draw to integrate new traits into the local population even though the first generation purebred outsiders die? (Like the opposite of a genetic bottleneck?)


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## lharder (Mar 21, 2015)

Riverderwent said:


> Are you saying that bringing in outside genetics increases the genetic arsenal from which the local bees can draw to integrate new traits into the local population even though the first generation purebred outsiders die? (Like the opposite of a genetic bottleneck?)


Basically yes, don't expect immediate success. Be patient, work at it until the traits start showing up in your local bees. Once its in the local population, then its worth will be shown, or not.


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## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

WetWilly said:


> After that, we have only ourselves to point the finger at. Just as my pal Cyborg did not (as predicted) miss the chance to make crystal clear.
> 
> ys WW


You probably do not know I ran treatment free for several years using local ferals. My first year I wintered four out of four such swarms. I had also recovered a fifth feral swarm and gave them to a friend who also wintered them without treatment the first winter. Actually, that one was the best of the bunch. They all went on foundation as I did not have drawn comb and a couple made a very small surplus of honey that first fall. Over three winters I averaged about 20% winter hive deaths on production colonies and around 30% on wintered nucs. I used zero bee keeper induced mite treatments. I did not even do drone brood removal. I simply practiced good bee keeping practices. I made sure they had food. I made sure the equipment was safe from bears. I made sure poor queens that were not laying well got pinched fast and replaced with queens I raised from my own bees from the best hives. I made sure hives were not queenless for very long. Like no more than a week. I did not find TF particularly hard at all. I kept enough nucs on hand so any dead hive in the spring was repopulated fast. I recognized EFB and did use antibiotics on those cases which cured them in a week.

So, why did I change my practices? Those ferals were swarm crazy and I could not keep them out of the trees long enough to make much honey crop. I even had problems with nucs swarming. I had a hive with only six frames of bees swarm in mid September. I had a nuc swarm in mid August when there was not a drop of nectar coming in. Now, I suppose in a few years I could have bred a lot of the swarming out of them. Why waste the time when others have already done the work of getting swarming down to reasonable and also done the work of developing bees that do as good a job, if not better, of dealing with mites than those ferals? I am sure I could go TF with the bees I run right now and not see awful losses even if most of my queens are the offspring of southern commercial queen producers. I just see no purpose in 20% or 30% winter death rates when I can hold it to 10% with next to no extra effort or cost.

But, thinking about my own history I really wonder how many dead hives are the result of EFB? I wonder how many people on here would recognize EFB if they had it? I can tell you from experience if you are looking for text book symptoms you are not going to see them. Most bees these days have some hygienic traits in them regardless of source. Larva with EFB are not in the hive long enough to see regardless if they are ferals or the Minnesota Hygienics I run. And bees with a load of hygienic genetics are well proven to show no resistance at all to EFB. The commercial guys I talk to seem to generally think EFB is a bigger problem than most realize. I see a case or three every summer in my hives. I expect the problem to get a lot worse with the new antibiotic rules unless you have a good relationship with a local vet. I have never seen a case that was solved by requeening. If I did not recognize EFB and take care of it promptly I would bet I would have at least 10% summer hive deaths from it. Maybe a lot worse than that if it ran uncontrolled.

My point is simple. There is a heck of a lot more to bee keeping than simply mite control. Good overall cultural practices can take care of many of those problems and if taken care of the mites are frequently not all that awful a problem. If you are not doing regular inspections or do not know what to look for during an inspection and are not keeping some written records on each hive you have lost half the battle. If you think you will ever find genetics that allows you to neglect your hives and they will still survive you are in a dream world. One hundred years before varroa 30% hive deaths per year was viewed as normal by commercial bee keepers. And every 25 or 40 years it was more like 75%, or more, when the latest disease epidemic swept the country. Of course those guys back then did not have the knowledge or resources we have today. They were also mainly producing comb honey which is way harder to manage than extracted honey.


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