# My TF Trial is over - for the time being



## Oldtimer

Wow I've been reading your posts re sometimes TF stuff for several years.

Question though, since the treated yard did no better how do you judge that not treating was the problem?

Have the hives at both the TF & the T yard been analysed to find actual cause of death?


----------



## Andrew Dewey

Thanks OT for your quick reply.

I hope to do post mortems this weekend - I wasn't prepared to do them yesterday.

I have not seen evidence that convinces me that the TF vs non TF debate is concluded. I don't have the inclination to continue operating separate yards in bear country - and as the TF hives were the minority part of my operation - they lose. (And I can use the solar energizer on my soon to be built pig pen!)


----------



## rhaldridge

Andrew, very sorry to hear that. It gives me an uneasy feeling whenever an experienced beekeeper decides against continuing TF.

Have your treated hives in general done better than the untreated ones? I've read your blog, in which you mention that coastal Maine is not the best place to keep bees, forage-wise. And also that commercial beekeepers drop hives near you. I wonder if these factors make it more difficult for you.


----------



## Robbin

Hi Andrew, sorry for your losses. I'm going in the other direction, adding 5 TF hives to my 7 Treated hives. Also going with beeweaver queens to start with. They are suppose to ship this week. But I'm not going to put them in a seperate yard, mine will be side by side. The fact your treated yard did as poorly makes me think it had a lot more to do with a bad winter then being treatment free. I will monitor mine and will not wait till they die, I am prepared to intervine if the mite counts get way out of hand. We have some bears, but I've got a really big dog and I don't think they come anywhere near my property because of that. 

good luck!


----------



## Andrew Dewey

Let's just say I'm working with the cards I've been dealt and this TF trial has run its course. I will never relish the thought of using anything to control mites - I'd much rather bees and mites were able to coexist. My mom passed away several years ago and three years later her house still isn't cleaned out enough to sell. I'm determined not to do that to my kids, even though I hope my passing date is decades off. Consolidating two yards into one makes sense.

I found someone to get some packages from so I'll have some bees at home. That is good because I'm going to much effort to increase their forage. I've got common and rose milk weed seeds in the fridge stratifying now, 25 Heather plants on order for the end of April, 50lbs of Buckwheat seed in the kitchen... the list goes on... and the list got started almost ten years ago now. I should have some blossoms on the Lindens I've planted and last year I got fruit on some of my apples. The apples don't get treated for anything and if they wind up in the cider press I'm not going to complain.

And my giving up on this yard doesn't mean I'm going to start broadcasting Terramycin or dosing the bees with Fumadil. Some things won't change.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Andrew Dewey said:


> These were BeeWeaver Bees started from Packages in 2012 and their descendants.
> 
> A treated yard half a mile away fared similarly with one survivor out of eight.


I don´t want to turn your head, but as others have already commented, I´m not either convinced that treatment free was the problem. It is unbeliavable how winterlosses are affecting beehives like large waves according to the "big" weather. There is a study how winterlosses in Finland and Sweden are going up and down in similar pattern, when the lowpressures from Atlantic are hitting the Fennoscandia, all beehives in that region get little pollen, and so on. 

My biggest losses, as a tf beekeeper, have almost always been in the same years as other beekeepers in my region. Lately they have been some 10-20% more to the average of treating beekeepers. 

A local beekeeping advisor has many, many years stated, very much surprised, that my losses are similar to many treating beekeepers that he has visited or heard from. And, as a advisor he gets to know the real losses, not the ones told in public. Just this one fact has given me strengh to go on. (Of cource there are many treating beekeepers with very low losses, not denying that.)

Do you have any data of the miteloads from the fall?


----------



## Solomon Parker

I'm not sure I see the point in giving up on TF because one has a bad year. I had a bad year. I'm not giving up. I had two great years before it and some mediocre years before that.

I see no evidence leading to the conclusion that this year is a problem pertaining to the treatment-free realm. What I see is hives dying with plenty of honey and absent obvious varroa or other disease problems. The difference I see between this year and last year is record low temperatures and several times as much snow. The ample evidence from my own experience and the experience of others leads me to believe that this is a wintering problem not a disease problem. I see no other conclusion justified by the evidence.


----------



## Bee-52

Andrew Dewey said:


> A treated yard half a mile away fared similarly with one survivor out of eight.


It sucks to loose your bees but I see no point in moving backwards. I'm not tying to be a smart Alec but your logic kind of follows along the lines of the statement: I was driving while wearing blue jeans and got into an accident - therefore I'm not going to wear blue jeans from now on.

Just a suggestion, if I may, B-weaver bees are bread in the southern climate, and from what I hear, seem to do good in southern regions. If I had to try beekeeping in the northern climate that wouldn't be my first choice though. I would try to find some local TF bees or may be some feral bees.


----------



## Andrew Dewey

Folks - my decision to not maintain my TF yard is largely economic. Due to the large amount of colonies (something like 50,000) that are brought into my area I believe most swarms are recent escapees and not feral survivors. Importing TF stock is not cheap (try paying shipping for packages from Texas to Maine) nor is local TF stock available. I've tried Russians, I've tried BeeWeaver - at this point I don't have the dollars or more importantly the inclination to keep trying. I hope a robust TF bee will someday be available commercially. But I'm tired of searching the Internet for TF Queen sources only to not have my e-mail inquiries returned. It isn't good business, and it leads to the painting of the TF community as zealots who run around with their noses in the air, but are above common decency, somehow better than everyone else because of their world vision.

I have had the pleasure of reading many posts by knowledgeable and experienced beekeepers in this forum. I don't expect that to change, nor do I expect to abandon my goal of keeping bees as sustainably as possible. For me that means testing before treating, and not treating without the imminent threat of economic damage. Also - I have _*never*_ had a customer ask me about treatments I may or may not use.

My sense is that while the TF bee industry is growing, it is not ready for prime time. In the meantime there are other battles (like healthy forage and habitat for both honey bees and native pollinators) that need fighting. And those that know me know that I don't like much of what is allowed under current USDA Organic standards.


----------



## oklabizznessman

A lot reasons bees die in the winter.

Did they have feed?

What was your winter like?

One question I had was TEXAS BEES IN MAINE?

Anyway just a couple a thoughts!


----------



## Andrew Dewey

oklabizznessman said:


> Did they have feed?


yes - previously over wintered colonies were up to a weight of 135lbs in November.



oklabizznessman said:


> What was your winter like?


nasty and seemingly without end. There is still snow here on the ground. We experienced a Zone 4 winter in Zone 5A.



oklabizznessman said:


> One question I had was TEXAS BEES IN MAINE?


The one source of commercially _*available*_ stock I was able to locate. Like you I had concerns about regional compatibility.


----------



## Solomon Parker

Andrew, please correct me in case I'm not understanding this correctly.

1. You tested these bees and found mite counts low. 

2. You treated a yard down the road and got almost identical results.

3. Particularly harsh winter as evidenced by beekeepers across the country.

4. This is all the fault of keeping bees treatment-free and therefore it's time to give it up.

Now I don't want to be a zealot running around with my nose in the air, but I don't see the connection. Furthermore, despite every TF guru there is suggesting you use local stock, you buy bees from Texas. I mean, I don't want to be indelicate but maybe you could step back and exercise a bit more critical thinking.

If you want to successfully raise Texas bees, I'd suggest moving to Texas. I don't want to be insensitive, but you've just experienced exactly what I've been telling this forum for a whole bunch of years because I've done it myself. I'm almost as puzzled as I'd be if you were complaining about gravity causing a vase to break after you've knocked it off the table. I don't know how else to say this, but I told you. I told you and everybody else here, but for some reason, the idea of non-acclimatized bees is anathema despite years of experience backing up my statements.

I don't see the connection between your dead bees and any sort of treatment-free philosophy, this is a non sequitur.


----------



## Andrew Dewey

Solomon Parker said:


> Furthermore, despite every TF guru there is suggesting you use local stock, you buy bees from Texas..


'taint no such thing - at least in these parts.


----------



## squarepeg

Andrew Dewey said:


> 'taint no such thing - at least in these parts.


makes it tough alright andrew. don't blame ya for reverting to conventional methods.

i'm sure you thought about it already, but have you scouted wooded areas for wild bees? i have thought about setting some quail feeders out with syrup in or around some of our state and national parks to see if they would attract bees and try my hand at locating some. the next step would be to place swarm traps nearby and see if i could get lucky.

it could be that locally adapted might trump bred resistance. another path might be to get the heartiest bees around even if they are treated and see if you get any survivors to propagate from.

anyway, not trying to tell you what to do, just thinking about what i might try if it were me.


----------



## rhaldridge

Andrew, Tim Mcfarline sells TF queens in Vermont.


----------



## WBVC

rhaldridge said:


> Andrew, very sorry to hear that. It gives me an uneasy feeling whenever an experienced beekeeper decides against continuing TF.
> 
> Have your treated hives in general done better than the untreated ones? I've read your blog, in which you mention that coastal Maine is not the best place to keep bees, forage-wise. And also that commercial beekeepers drop hives near you. I wonder if these factors make it more difficult for you.


Correct me if I am wrong but I don't think discontinuing the tf yard was due to tf failure.
It seemed there were losses in both hive groups and fallen hives can hardly be considered a tf issue

My take is that regardless of cause of loss there is both effort and $$ in building and maintaining bee yards. So if time, effort and $$ are a consideration it was simply a choice of which yard to go forward with.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Andrew Dewey said:


> Due to the large amount of colonies (something like 50,000) that are brought into my area I believe most swarms are recent escapees and not feral survivors..


Ups, in my thoughts Maine was a remote wilderness...

I would not even dream of keeping bees treatment free without the possibiliy to controlled matings. If you don´t have that, I think your decission is right. If you can controll matings, I´d be happy to sell you treatment free bees from cold climates, but legistlation makes it impossible, I think. You should come for a visit... in July, preferably...


----------



## Daniel Y

Solomon Parker said:


> Andrew, please correct me in case I'm not understanding this correctly.
> 
> 1. You tested these bees and found mite counts low.
> 
> 2. You treated a yard down the road and got almost identical results.
> 
> 3. Particularly harsh winter as evidenced by beekeepers across the country.
> 
> 4. This is all the fault of keeping bees treatment-free and therefore it's time to give it up.
> 
> Now I don't want to be a zealot running around with my nose in the air, but I don't see the connection. Furthermore, despite every TF guru there is suggesting you use local stock, you buy bees from Texas. I mean, I don't want to be indelicate but maybe you could step back and exercise a bit more critical thinking.
> 
> If you want to successfully raise Texas bees, I'd suggest moving to Texas. I don't want to be insensitive, but you've just experienced exactly what I've been telling this forum for a whole bunch of years because I've done it myself. I'm almost as puzzled as I'd be if you were complaining about gravity causing a vase to break after you've knocked it off the table. I don't know how else to say this, but I told you. I told you and everybody else here, but for some reason, the idea of non-acclimatized bees is anathema despite years of experience backing up my statements.
> 
> I don't see the connection between your dead bees and any sort of treatment-free philosophy, this is a non sequitur.


Solomon, This post does a good job of showing the problems I have with your conclusions.

1. I consider September a bit to early to get reliable mite tests. Maybe not for Maine though.

2. 1 out of 4 survivors and one out of 8 survivors is hardly anything resembling identical results.

3. I see nowhere that Andrew stated he gave up on TF, other than for now. He said the bees are dead and he does not have the means to replace them.

4. The hives died. that is evidence that TF failed. That treating also failed does not diminish the facts as far as TF are concerned. Every word of your position that TF should continue to be pursued could be applied to pursuing treatment methods. Yet I am certain you see some additional merit in only pursuing TF. The only exception I see is that loses to treated hives where much greater than those of treatment free ones.

In total the losses where 83.4%. of that total 25% was to TF colonies 58.4% was treated colonies. As individual yards the TF yard sustained 75% losses while the treated yard sustained 87.5% losses.

That you or anyone else wants to make this about TF specifically just shows the bias toward ignoring the negative and claiming unfounded positives to the methods.

Sort of like it is all about TF. It is pretty clear to me it is about losses and the cost of replacing them. It is the twisting of that information that repels me from taking TF discussions seriously.


----------



## Saltybee

Running two different systems restricts flexibility and requires extra effort and focus.

Andrew Dewey has freely shared his multiple year efforts and been clear and upfront about his progress and his barriers to TF. Were there a new path in front of him that seemed viable for immediate progress, (shy of relocating) his decision might be different. That path would also have been previously offered and discussed on these forums. 

For some that path to TF has been short. Congratulations and thank you. For others it is a much longer journey, refueling on a long trip is not heresy.


----------



## Solomon Parker

squarepeg said:


> don't blame ya for reverting to conventional methods.


Reverting? Isn't buying southern bees mal-adapted to your area, the conventional method?

At the risk of repeating myself, let me instead explain to the uninitiated how one may be successful at treatment-free beekeeping.

The solution is using local bees and breeding like a mad person, ferals, swarms, any bees that survived your last winter, (Andrew has at least two hives that did that, these are now your local stock) and you multiply them. You take those two hives and turn them into five or 20 or 50 if you have the ability and then you try again next year. And when you get bees that survive consistently, then you work on other traits. You know as well as I how many have tried what you tried, either with BeeWeaver's bees (outside of BeeWeaver's climate) or any other, dropped hundreds of dollars, and blew it. All the time, I hear the argument "learn the basics and then try treatment-free" but in treatment-free, what I've outlined above _is the basics_. That's how it has to be done because that's just about the only way it really truly works.

If you want to know how to take two hives and make 50, I suggest grafting into a queenright cell builder (http://parkerfarms.biz/queenrearing.html). The limiting factor is equipment and brood donors. My equipment limits me to 27 nucs at a time. Two hives will probably put a hard limit at about 10 nucs. But if there are other hives to donate brood, the sky is the limit. At this stage, you want unnatural increase, to get as many new bees into your area as possible and let them figure out how to survive. Many of them won't at first, but the more years of adaptation you have, the greater the strength of the result.

I say this year was great. I lost all the bees that aren't going to survive a tough winter. And since I'm moving to Colorado, that's an important trait to have. It happened to Andrew too. This mindset that all hives should survive every year is conventional thinking and treatment-free is never going to stand up to that metric. That's not how it works in nature and it doesn't work that way in treatment-free. There is and must be an ongoing winnowing process that does and must kill some hives every winter and every summer. And some years, both summers and winters, are particularly harsh, but as Andrew has shown, there are always some that survive somewhere. It may be very few that take years to repopulate the area (naturally) but you as the treatment-free beekeeper use these things to your advantage and use your methods of rapid increase (I call it "Expansion Model Beekeeping") to give the process a kick in the hind end.


----------



## Oldtimer

The wandering sheep returns to the fold.

Facebook must be going slow.


----------



## JD's Bees

I don't accept the non-acclimated argument. Canadians source their queens from NZ, Australia, Hawaii and California and are able to winter these bees with as much success as locally produced queens. I believe breeding from survivors can fine tune the genetics but it isn't necessary to have good wintering results.


----------



## Solomon Parker

JD's Bees said:


> Canadians source their queens from NZ, Australia, Hawaii and California and are able to winter these bees with as much success as locally produced queens.


Right, treated bees from everywhere, which is what I said. But they don't seem to be able to do it without treating. That's why the acclimation argument is relevant for TF and not really for conventional. But it's only conventional beekeepers that argue against it. And why wouldn't they? It's all they have ever experienced.

All successful TF beekeepers advocate for local bees. And if you want to keep bees TF, why not ask someone who already does it?


----------



## Fusion_power

Solomon, there is a contradiction of terms in the above two posts. It is not logical to argue that unacclimated treated bees winter successfully while unacclimated untreated bees do not. This has to be read in light of your argument that cold susceptible bees were killed in your untreated apiary.


----------



## Solomon Parker

Why not? They are killed in everybody else's apiary too, while the treaters and commercials argue that source doesn't matter. My experience is but one data point. Andrew's is another.

All the data points that I see lead to the conclusion that localized bees are far more important in TF than in conventional. People who argue that source doesn't matter are treaters, almost to a man. TFs argue for local bees. Those are the data points. What am I missing?


----------



## WLC

I don't believe the local/acclimated stock 'requirement' is necessary for successful TF beekeeping.

My bees were from Texas.

First of all, I can't get that kind of genetics around here, and secondly, they made it through a particularly cold and difficult winter.


----------



## squarepeg

since you are artificially requeening your experimental hives wlc, i don't consider them comparable to the colonies that survived multiple generations for a number of years like the ones we are discussing. they are just not in the same category of 'successful tf beekeeping'.

for more typical operations like most of the contributors here are running it seems to be the common denominator.


----------



## WLC

Sorry, but the Weavers (BeeWeavers) are THE successful TF beekeepers in the U.S. IMHO.

So, I think you got it backwards. Just saying.


----------



## squarepeg

nope, i really think you have it backwards.

i'll bet you the beverage of your choice that my supermutts have more diversity than weaver's.

(i'm not claiming that they could perform as well in new york as they do here, but they don't have to)


----------



## WLC

squarepg:

I would love to have ordered the kind of genetics you have down there from you. With a ready supply of mated queens when required.

What can I say. They're successful because they can do it all.

It's just my definition of successful TF beekeeping.

Today, they're it. Tomorrow, it could be you.


----------



## squarepeg

i'm not sure it would be all that easy to produce what i have on a large scale. i'm putting a fair amount of effort in trying not to get to many colonies around here from the same lines. i am currently working with four lines that are the best of the best. plus all queens are mated in three deep frame mating nucs and not seperated after they begin laying. i won't be selling queens, but rather three frame nucs with the queens that others can combine with a queenless colony if needed.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Solomon Parker said:


> . This mindset that all hives should survive every year is conventional thinking and treatment-free is never going to stand up to that metric. That's not how it works in nature and it doesn't work that way in treatment-free. There is and must be an ongoing winnowing process that does and must kill some hives every winter and every summer. And some years, both summers and winters, are particularly harsh, but as Andrew has shown, there are always some that survive somewhere. It may be very few that take years to repopulate the area (naturally) but you as the treatment-free beekeeper use these things to your advantage and use your methods of rapid increase (I call it "Expansion Model Beekeeping") to give the process a kick in the hind end.


Salomon Parker writes exactly how it is.

Losing (hundreds of) hives, making nucs, raising queens from survivors, mating queens with survivor drones, this is really the only way to go to make a locally adapted tf stock and survive as a tf beekeeper. If you can buy tf stock to start with, it becomes easier, but the steps remain the same.


----------



## squarepeg

juhani,

i see from your march blog entry that you are estimating 20% overwintering loss this year. not bad.

that's about what i had this time, but anticipate being able to recover easily this spring with surplus bees and another measurable increase in honey harvest. 

i am dedicating 6 hives to honey production, although i will be splitting from three of these just before main flow.

another colony is designated as cell starter/finisher, and my remaining 7 lackluster colonies will be split up to make nucs for accepting queens grafted from the better ones.

i expect to harvest about 1000 lbs and possibly more depending on the weather. i also hope to produce about thirty to forty nucs, and sell all but about 10 of them which i will overwinter for myself.

it's taken a few years to get enough comb drawn to make this possible, but in those years the poorer genetics have dwindled away and with a little help the better genetics have been propogated.

i don't think i could have done it without drone support from nearby feral colonies.


----------



## mike bispham

WLC said:


> What can I say. They're successful because they can do it all.
> 
> It's just my definition of successful TF beekeeping.


Are they 'doing it all' WLC? To my mind tf involves a successful reproductive cycle. You have to be able to make replacement bees - successfully, and on an ongoing basis - to call yourself a beekeeper. 

Otherwise they're just pets. And there's a good chance you're undermining local development of standalone bees.

Mike (UK)


----------



## mike bispham

Juhani Lunden said:


> Solomon Parker writes exactly how it is.
> 
> [...] If you can buy tf stock to start with, it becomes easier, but the steps remain the same.


I agree wholeheartedly. It couldn't be any other way. Getting local-ish mite-managing ferals to begin with is even better.

My only grumble with Solomon's recipe for Andrew's situation is the lowering of drone numbers that heavy draining will have on the hives. The right drones matter too!

But yes, get numbers up fast, grafted from the survivors, and keep bringing in new likely resistant genes. 

Mike (UK)


----------



## Andrew Dewey

@Solomon - my "nose in the air" comment was not aimed at you - instead it was directed towards Outfits that advertise TF bees on the web, have web sites that accept orders, and then never communicate with their customers nor deliver product. I am sorry that my communications skills are such that you thought I was referring to you. 

My other treated yards fared much better than my TF yard - and so what I'm doing is adopting a single practice for beekeeping.

My hope is to: keep bees and have honey for sale; really follow an IPM strategy - in other words no treatments if conditions don't in my opinion warrant them; work to ensure/establish healthy habitat and forage opportunities for both bees and native pollinators (the NP being the for real TF creatures); and to have bees available for teaching and demonstrating. In May I have two groups scheduled to visit my bees - one is a local garden club and the other is the bee school field day where new beekeepers get to see for real bees.

And it should almost go without saying that altering or "improving" my bee stock so that they can thrive without treatments in my area continues to be a priority for me.

My interests evolve. I am taking my local Cooperative Extension's Master Gardener Class and I hope to pass the one exam I missed last year for the EAS Master Beekeeper designation. I like learning. I like bees. Beekeeping was for me the easy way to get a lifelong interest in agriculture kick started. Heck, I may even go for a pesticide applicator's license, not to use pesticides, but to understand them and the regulatory process better.

For those whose central drive is to keep bees without using treatments I wish you nothing but success. It never was my central drive but I was curious to see if it could be done *in my area.*

I don't write this to make myself look as some sort of a beekeeping super hero. I like to think that I'm plain spoken though my wife says that I need to be aware that condescension often invades my words. I've tried my best to describe my efforts at keeping bees TF, and how I'm going to be keeping bees in the future.

Pax Vobiscum.


----------



## Solomon Parker

squarepeg said:


> since you are artificially requeening your experimental hives wlc, i don't consider them comparable to the colonies that survived multiple generations for a number of years like the ones we are discussing. they are just not in the same category of 'successful tf beekeeping'.


Multi-generational management is absolutely necessary. I see no reason to requeen arbitrarily (and I include age in the definition of arbitrary). In case the news hasn't gotten around, I did lose my longest lived hive this year, nearly 11 years treatment-free, never artificially requeened.



mike bispham said:


> My only grumble with Solomon's recipe for Andrew's situation is the lowering of drone numbers that heavy draining will have on the hives. The right drones matter too!


Not sure where to go with that, maybe 'draining' means something different in the UK. Drone numbers are going to be raised and lowered by many effects throughout the year. You gotta build the building with the bricks you have. I have not paid a lot of attention to drone production but my hives do produce quite a lot of drones (via foundationless frames and natural production). And I must reject the idea that my drone or someone else's drone has THE traits that make survival possible. It's a whole lot more fuzzy than that. There are a lot of traits that affect survival (and I mean survival in current beekeeping conditions), no single one does it. Therefore, specific drones (and their control necessity by me) is not a factor I'm concerned about.


----------



## WLC

mike bispham said:


> Are they 'doing it all' WLC? To my mind tf involves a successful reproductive cycle. You have to be able to make replacement bees - successfully, and on an ongoing basis - to call yourself a beekeeper.
> Otherwise they're just pets. And there's a good chance you're undermining local development of standalone bees.
> Mike (UK)


I don't think there's any question that BeeWeaver is using a successful model of TF beekeeping.

Plenty of U.S. beekeepers replace their queens regularly with queens obtained from producers. So, individual beekeepers don't have to do it all.

The issues being addressed are the productivity and profit margins of TF beekeeping. 

Not everyone can justify TF beekeeping especially if the colonies are an important source of income.

Mike, I'm in midtown Manhattan. There are no local stocks. We import everything. So, right now, I'm the local source of TF genetics.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

WLC said:


> So, right now, I'm the local source of TF genetics.


So now you are selling bees? :scratch:


----------



## WLC

Rader Sidetrack said:


> So now you are selling bees? :scratch:


My drones are.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

WLC said:


> My drones are.


Well, if your drones _really are _spreading their genes and mating with virgins, then there must actually be _local stocks _of bees, right? How could it work otherwise? :s



WLC said:


> Mike, I'm in midtown Manhattan. [HIGHLIGHT] There are no local stocks. [/HIGHLIGHT]


----------



## WLC

After this past winter, most of the local hives are going to come from packages.


----------



## mike bispham

WLC said:


> Mike, I'm in midtown Manhattan. There are no local stocks. We import everything. So, right now, I'm the local source of TF genetics.


Fair do's. 

I wish we had the inclination, to tease these terms out a bit more. 'TF' covers too much ground to make proper sense. To me having someone else supply you bees that are replaced annually, and breeding your own are such different things that they really require different descriptors.

When we're talking its all too easy to lose sight of that. And then things get confusing.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Oldtimer

Well, he doesn't treat, so he's treatment free.

Course that definition could include someone who lets all their bees die every year and replaces them with packages of treatment requiring bees & let's them die again & does the same thing over. But I don't think WLC will do that he's buying treatment free bees.

There may be several methods of being treatment free but end of day you don't treat, you are treatment free. You do treat, you are not treatment free.


----------



## WLC

Fellas, I hate to bring this up, but the vast majority of TF beekeepers have to replace their dead-outs annually.

That's why so many of them quit.


----------



## Oldtimer

I had the impression that most of them were able to make up their losses from their own bees?


----------



## WLC

I'm referring to hobbyists.


----------



## Oldtimer

So was I. That's the impression I've gained from reading the writings of hobbyists on Beesource.

Although I have seen people talking about buying packages but most of what I read is people talking about breeding from their own.

Course, I only know what people choose to divulge.


----------



## WLC

In my own situation, I prefer to rely on the skill of the queen breeder, Daniel Weaver.

He's not my only choice by the way. Look at it this way, I get to try out different stocks from around the country without having to flood Manhattan with drones.


----------



## mike bispham

WLC said:


> In my own situation, I prefer to rely on the skill of the queen breeder, Daniel Weaver.


To illustrate what I mean, consider this characterisation by Randy Oliver:

"I've been encouraged in recent rears by the number of beekeepers who appear 
to be successfully keeping locally-adapted stocks of bees without treatment 
for varroa. I am a strong supporter of their efforts, and see them as the 
wave of the future." [1]

The key to what he means is in 'locally adapted'. While he doesn't say it, I'm pretty sure he's referring to people who carefully select and breed. Who do 'husbandry' in its full sense - 'population husbandry'.

Randy goes on:

"Unfortunately there is also great deal of confusion as to what 'treatment 
free' beekeeping really means." 

Part of that confusion is found here. We need to distinguish between - apart from anything else - TF beekeeping as described by Randy, and TF beekeeping as practiced by people like yourself. Just because... they are worlds apart. 

We can't talk clearly unless we do that. And that's a good enough reason.

Mike (UK)

[1] QUEENS FOR PENNIES, Randy Oliver, American Bee Journal, March 2014, 273-277


----------



## Oldtimer

Good point Mike.

I think you should write a plan and submit it to WLC to guide him as to how to run a selective breeding program with his 2 hives.

Or failing that, perhaps he is doing the best that is practical already?


----------



## Solomon Parker

mike bispham said:


> To me having someone else supply you bees that are replaced annually, and breeding your own are such different things that they really require different descriptors.


In my view, if you're not doing something successfully, consistently, you're not really doing the thing named. If you can't get to the corner market without hitting a light pole, you're not a driver, you're a crasher. Buying bees every year and not treating them (resulting in crash) is not "treatment-free beekeeping." It's treatment-free bee crashing.




mike bispham said:


> I'm pretty sure he's referring to people who carefully select and breed.


The selection need not be careful, as anybody who has tried it has found. One is always selecting for something, and the first thing we can select for is basic survival without even trying.


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> The selection need not be careful, as anybody who has tried it has found. One is always selecting for something, and the first thing we can select for is basic survival without even trying.


You can speak for yourself Solomon! I'm doing everything I can to maximise my chances of having treatment free bees at all. I've invested a lot of work in it and I think its worth going the extra mile. I want the best quality bees I can make - not just basic survival.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Solomon Parker

How can you go the extra mile? Do you put them in a freezer in winter? Do you put them under a sprinkler?

Or are you talking about making it easier (helping, or treating as it could be called)?


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> How can you go the extra mile? Do you put them in a freezer in winter? Do you put them under a sprinkler?
> 
> Or are you talking about making it easier (helping, or treating as it could be called)?


Lets just back up a little:

[Originally Posted by Solomon Parker]
"The selection need not be careful, as anybody who has tried it has found. One is always selecting for something, and the first thing we can select for is basic survival without even trying."

[Mike Bispham]
You can speak for yourself Solomon! I'm doing everything I can to maximise my chances of having treatment free bees at all. I've invested a lot of work in it and I think its worth going the extra mile. I want the best quality bees I can make - not just basic survival.

First, that wasn't intended as an insult, or a criticism of what you do. I'm a big fan of your approach. If I've insulted you in the past it wasn't intentional.

It meant what it says. I put a great deal of time and thought into my resistance raising project. (I don't mean to say you don't!) I'm not sure how resistant my bees are, or whether things will all fall apart. While I'm pretty sure I have feral bees around, I also have a big commercial over the hill. 

So I'm planning to do what I can to influence my drone space. I'm planning to make increase only from my best - and that means carefully creating the circumstances in which tests show up the things I want to see. I don't want to make bees that can only survive if you split them every year. (I'm not accusing you of that!) I want to make the best bees I can, without in any way damaging my surrounding ferals. I want performers, not 'survivors'.

And I want to see how far this kind of thing can go - as much as anything to prove a point and make the experience and method available to others. I hate the industrialisation of bees, the stupidity of the system, more than is healthy.

I make no compromises whatsoever with treatments or maniplulations - in fact I'm working hard to ensure that manipulations that benefit the bees aren't created accidentally.

I'm aiming high and investing a lot of effort - this project occupies about a third of my work time and swallows a not insignificant proportion of the hard earned money earned in another third. 

There are plenty of half hearted - and wholehearted - efforts that fail - and spread the word that 'tf doesn't work.' I don't want to be one of them. 

Those are some of the things I meant by 'going the extra mile.'

Mike (UK)


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

At last you are a noble man, Mike, and you will be successful if you keep up the good work. Less discussing, more learning from the bees. I see you working hard, but do not too easily dismiss reality. Than you will not belong to the treatment free bee crashers.


----------



## mike bispham

BernhardHeuvel said:


> ...you will be successful if you keep up the good work. Less discussing, more learning from the bees. I see you working hard, but do not too easily dismiss reality.


That's the last thing I want to do Bernhard. But I'm not restricting myself to learning from my bees. I believe there are very sound scientific explanations that I - and others - can use to very good effect. Not everyone is sympathetic to that approach - but some are. And we'll continue to have discussions that try to improve our comprehension of the realities.

All the best,

Mike


----------



## Daniel Y

Solomon Parker said:


> In my view, if you're not doing something successfully, consistently, you're not really doing the thing named. If you can't get to the corner market without hitting a light pole, you're not a driver, you're a crasher. Buying bees every year and not treating them (resulting in crash) is not "treatment-free beekeeping." It's treatment-free bee crashing.


I do not agree this comparison is accurate. I would consider "Did you build the car before you drove to the market" a more accurate comparison. Not everyone is a car manufacturer. not everyone is a breeder. I am in the process of just rearing queens. It is not easy. It is likely part of the reason not everyone does it. It requires a lot of time effort expense and resources.

I do agree with the idea that if all you are doing is killing bees then you are not in fact keeping them. If what you are doing is primarily failing then you are in fact practicing failure. I do not see that treatment free and success go together. To often the argument about treatment free want to ignore that point. First establish that you have anything that works better than normal. Which so far I do not see. Show a higher survival rate. a more disease free apiary on average. Higher honey yields. anything. But as far as I can tell the average treatment free beekeeper runs neck and neck with any other beekeeper. this indicates that treatment free causes no change at all. And the treatment free beekeeper suffers much higher losses in getting their.

I see much reason to think that the success of some regardless of weather they treat or do not treat has to do with experience and becoming a better beekeeper.


----------



## Solomon Parker

mike bispham said:


> I put a great deal of time and thought into my resistance raising project. (I don't mean to say you don't!)


I don't. I put a great deal of time into explaining it. In my view, it's pretty simple. Bunch of bees, don't treat, many die, rapidly multiply from the survivors.




mike bispham said:


> I'm not sure how resistant my bees are, or whether things will all fall apart.


Neither am I, but that's the glorious simplicity of treatment free! That part takes care of itself. There's no testing you can do (except one kind) that tells you everything you want to know. You can only learn something about just a couple traits, the existence of which does not guarantee survival. Only the Bond test teases out the truly valid information.




mike bispham said:


> I hate the industrialisation of bees, the stupidity of the system, more than is healthy.


*See, now this is what I'm talking about when I complain about insults. You've just called somebody stupid. That is not okay!*




mike bispham said:


> Those are some of the things I meant by 'going the extra mile.'


I'm still not sure what you're talking about by going the extra mile. "Going the extra mile" is a biblical term which refers to carrying a Roman soldier's pack further than legally required or allowed. Are you doing some tests? What are you doing that constitutes going the extra mile? I'm not asking to be combative, I'm curious because as a promoter of treatment-free beekeeping, I want to know how methods can be improved so I can disburse this information. But it's got to be vetted first.


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> *See, now this is what I'm talking about when I complain about insults. You've just called somebody stupid. That is not okay!*


No, I called _the system _stupid! A system is not a person!



Solomon Parker said:


> I'm still not sure what you're talking about by going the extra mile. [...] Are you doing some tests? I'm not asking to be combative, I'm curious because as a promoter of treatment-free beekeeping, I want to know how methods can be improved so I can disburse this information. But it's got to be vetted first.


Well, I'm trying hard to think of ways of making my assay system as good as possible. So for example I'm trying to arrange things so that I can compare hives on a like-for-like basis. 

You may be right in lots of ways. Just making lots of new ones from the survivors might be as good as it can get. But I'm cautious. I want to know whether I can guard against loading up trouble by making increase from a bunch 2 year old hives that will collapse at the end of the year. 

It might be that making a lot of new hives from the survivors in the wrong sorts of ways supplies help to the bees, thus giving misleading readings about resistance capability. I want to foresee problems of that sort, rather than have to learn the hard way. So I'm raising brood and bees to make nucs in special hives that won't be part of the evaluated group.

There's a whole lot of other stuff. Maybe I'm overthinking things. But I'd rather do that than underthink them.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Barry

mike bispham said:


> No, I called _the system _stupid! A system is not a person!


Yes, I think most of us read it that way.


----------



## Solomon Parker

I think the opposite.


----------



## tommysnare

so sorry for the losses....we had a few colonies die this winter as well. its always a bummer to see them thriving one week/month and check them again to be saddened. but, dont give up. to even have the sympathy to attempt TF keeping shows heart. just do what you see fit for them to stay tough. we are lucky here i guess. very rural area. we live in a town of about 300 people max and one old man keeps bees across the street. 2 hives. it seems hes not much of an involved beekeeper and only moves them out by the garden. last summer his 2 hives swarmed and i dont think he really understood it haha. neat ol' guy. he knows we have a larger apiary and are more active with our beekeeping. splitting,raising queens and such. but other that that,we have alot of feral colonies surrounding us in the woods and farms. my point being is that IMO, TF success depends heavily on locality. meaning, we are soo for away from people who do heavy treatments on bees. i believe that has quite a bit to do with it. 

just dont give up on it. relax for a few days and set some guidelines and baselines for the year. when we decided to invest more in a beekeeping operation,we decided to do as little as possible and approach what we do as HIVE management and very little bee management. TF,foundationless,and less intrusive. it has been working for a while now....but like i said we are lucky i guess and locale is very overlooked. remember you want to create (no matter how you mange ur bees) a strong line for that area u have them in.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Mike, do more work at the bees. The time is better spend in the apiaries. Take some pictures, too, I love to see pictures of bees and bee stuff. Can't get enough of it. Combs are flooded with nectar right now. Lovely sight and smell.


----------



## mike bispham

BernhardHeuvel said:


> Mike, do more work at the bees. The time is better spend in the apiaries. Take some pictures, too, I love to see pictures of bees and bee stuff. Can't get enough of it. Combs are flooded with nectar right now. Lovely sight and smell.


Bernhard, I have 27 hives - do you think I don't do work with my bees! Yes, I love the sight, smell, sound of a hive too! I love too the way my bees connect me to the landscape, and to the seasons; to Nature itself. 

Mike


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Still you spend too much time to discuss things. So that is a strong hint: you need more hives.


----------



## Daniel Y

squarepeg said:


> since you are artificially requeening your experimental hives wlc, i don't consider them comparable to the colonies that survived multiple generations for a number of years like the ones we are discussing. they are just not in the same category of 'successful tf beekeeping'.
> 
> for more typical operations like most of the contributors here are running it seems to be the common denominator.



So you reject any other methods of not treating. even if they work. based upon they are not the same as your methods? even though your methods result in large losses. Or what some would define as failure. Sort of cornered into being right no matter what your results are.


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> [Mike Bispham: "I'm not sure how resistant my bees are, or whether things will all fall apart."]
> 
> Neither am I, but that's the glorious simplicity of treatment free! That part takes care of itself. There's no testing you can do (except one kind) that tells you everything you want to know. You can only learn something about just a couple traits, the existence of which does not guarantee survival. Only the Bond test teases out the truly valid information.


I agree with all that, though we should all note that 'treatment free' as used here means ... 'along Solomon's Bond Method lines.'



Solomon Parker said:


> I'm still not sure what you're talking about by going the extra mile. "Going the extra mile" is a biblical term which refers to carrying a Roman soldier's pack further than legally required or allowed. Are you doing some tests? What are you doing that constitutes going the extra mile? I'm not asking to be combative, I'm curious because as a promoter of treatment-free beekeeping, I want to know how methods can be improved so I can disburse this information. But it's got to be vetted first.


There's something more I want to add to this, apart from what I wrote in my first reply.

I also want to work hard at improving my understanding of the relations between bond husbandry (or traditional husbandry as I prefer) and the understanding of population health dynamics supplied by the joint sources of bio-evolutionary understanding and traditional husbandry. And I want to work hard to at explaining how that works, and why an understanding of it is helpful to beekeepers.

Its often the case here that my arguments fail to impress, not because they are wrong, but because I've failed to get across the the fact that the sort of simplicity you describe is also, identically, the core of an evoltionary understanding which is remarkable and beautiful, and simultaniously, the core method used for thousands of years to maximise productivity and safeguard health in livestock. 

And that consideration of the parallels is a marvelous aid to good beekeeping. It helps you see what might be going wrong - and it does go wrong. It provides an explantion that leads toward an understanding that while it might be going wrong for some people, the same methods might work well elsewhere. It provides a framework to talk about the various factors, as mechanisms that play out according to circumstances.

So going the extra mile is about that too. Its about developing a sound theoretical understanding of what influence selective propagation has on bee health, to add to the simple strategic moves that wrap them up - that apply them. To explain to myself why what work, works. And its about trying to make that understanding available to people who might never have come across it, or who might want to go deeper. 

To come back to your question: I think that methods can be improved this way.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Solomon Parker

mike bispham said:


> Its often the case here that my arguments fail to impress,


As I said, I'm not accustomed to reading your posts, but you are saying a whole lot about the methods I'm asking about without seeming to mention a single one of them.

Maybe I'm strong on methods and weak on explanations, but I am failing to be impressed because I'm failing to see any actual information. Everybody knows my methods, but precious few agree with the explanation. In your case, I don't know your methods. Please expound upon your methods. What are you doing?


----------



## mike bispham

Your methods with my tweaks. Read my posts. Read my website.

Mike (uk)


----------



## Solomon Parker

I'm sorry, but that's not how it works on internet forums or in real world discussions and debates. If you want me to know something, put it in front of my face. Telling someone to go look it up is arrogance, especially when it's your arguments you're trying to impress upon your audience. 

If your arguments are failing to impress, perhaps you should find out why. Because I think I'm starting to understand. I was driven away by incivility, but there appears to be a corresponding lack of meaningful content.

But we're getting off topic. If you don't want to answer a simple question, it's not my job to go on and on trying to get it out of you.


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> I'm sorry, but that's not how it works on internet forums or in real world discussions and debates. If you want me to know something, put it in front of my face.


The converse is true. If you want to know something look it up.



Solomon Parker said:


> Telling someone to go look it up is arrogance, especially when it's your arguments you're trying to impress upon your audience.


I'm not trying to impress you Solomon. Frankly you've been rather rude this past few days and I'm not inclined to be bullied. 



Solomon Parker said:


> If your arguments are failing to impress, perhaps you should find out why. Because I think I'm starting to understand. I was driven away by incivility, but there appears to be a corresponding lack of meaningful content.


You're entitled to your view. Since you appears not to have read anything I've written I'd say it was tenuously founded.



Solomon Parker said:


> If you don't want to answer a simple question, it's not my job to go on and on trying to get it out of you.


Its made me think it would be a good idea to write up what I do, and why, and post it to my website. As and when I get around to that I'll let you know. Till then you are welcome to read and comment on my posts. 

Mike (UK)


----------



## Solomon Parker

Upon review of some of your old post, I guess I should have been prepared for such an eventuality. I had just been told my whole life that the way to get information was to ask, but perhaps that's not the way it works in the UK. However, I have listened to dozens of debates with learned Brits, and never have I heard "look it up." When someone asks me something, I tell them, but that's just me.

I wish you good fortune with your beekeeping.


----------



## mike bispham

Solomon Parker said:


> I had just been told my whole life that the way to get information was to ask, but perhaps that's not the way it works in the UK.


No, it isn't. The way to get information is to ask nicely. Being rude then demanding information pretty much puts the other person in the position where refusing is the only choice.

That's how it works in the UK.


----------



## rhaldridge

I don't read Mike's posts much any more. He seems excessively relentless to me. He takes over threads, pounds the polemic pedal way too hard, and ends up saying nothing new. This thread is a good example; it isn't about Mike. It's about Andrew and his decision. I appreciate Andrew's honesty in reporting his results; too often the presumption is that folks who do not have good results with TF techniques, just quit keeping bees and are never heard from again. I look forward to hearing about Andrew's further endeavors, keeping bees in a less than optimal area. He strikes me as one of the most thoughtful members of the forum and I always read his posts.

All that said, I did take a look at Mike's website, and found that he doesn't know what CCD is.

But I noticed something else as well. He doesn't take pictures, or if he does he doesn't post them. This seems odd to me. He is evidently able to spend hours every day fulminating about what is wrong with the tactics of other beekeepers, but doesn't have a moment to illustrate his own results pictorially 

For all we know, he doesn't actually have any bees. I for one would like to see at least one picture of Mike's beeyard. Though I must admit, unless he's in the picture, holding up a sign that says "This is Mike's beeyard" I may continue to be doubtful. And even if he does that, I reserve the right to check the pixels.


----------



## Fusion_power

So how do you get your questions answered?

I've always thought that you could just post your question and some kind soul would come along and provide an answer or at least a pointer to some documentation. I finally figured out that this is the slow way and often gives impractical results.

The best way to get an answer to a difficult question is to post the wrong answer and then watch as 400 people trip all over themselves to tell you why you are wrong and provide the correct answer with documentation and pictures as fans cheer and sideline arguments galore erupt, experts are called in to harrumph and state their opinions, and in the end, a thorough answer is provided. Don't believe it? Try it sometime and watch the spectacle. 

Human nature ain't.


----------



## Saltybee

Fusion Power, I can never get that smile icon to work, but you got one out of me.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

I too laughed at _Fusion_power_'s post. :lpf:


And as the designated _advocate _  at Beesource for disadvantaged/underemployed smileys, there are alternate ways to employ most smileys - if you know the secret code. For instance, you can get the happy face smiley shown in post #77 simply by typing a colon, then a right parenthesis (put spaces on both sides of the code). The secret code looks like this :) and results in this 

You can find the secret code for other smileys by doing a 'rollover' of smileys after clicking the smiley button (at least on PCs), or just look underneath the smiley in that window for the 'name' of the smiley. It is always preceded by a colon. Not surprisingly, the secret code for the 'run over by a bus' icon is this :bus 


:bus


----------



## Oldtimer

Mike if you could take those last few comments as a learning experience some of these threads could go a whole lot better.

The reason you and I got offside with each other pretty quick was this sequence of events which happened repetitively. First, you would make ( in my view ), some theoretical, oversimplistic statement. Thinking it to be wrong / incomplete I would ask for evidence / reference. Invariably you would refuse, instead telling me to "go look for it". If I pressed the matter, you would then resort to name calling and abuse. After that, you would then repeat the whole thing in further posts adding nothing new, and then tell me you had "proved me wrong" when in fact, you hadn't.

Whether you are willing to change I don't know. But take a look at your threads and you will see how you tend to get the same reaction from everybody.

When someone asks for a link or evidence, it can sometimes be a gentle way to teach you something. If you cannot prove what you say, maybe it is wrong. A persons ability to learn is at least in part linked to their ability to question themselves.

The other gripe I have with your posts is they are all theory and never substance, and I mean never. Read other peoples posts you will see constant reference to their own bees, their own experience, their own research (with references), etc. Do likewise and these threads will take a turn for the better.


----------



## jfb58

>Do likewise and these threads will take a turn for the better.

There was a poster on another beekeeping forum using the same name and employing the same technique. He was eventually ignored, but reincarnated here.


----------



## beekuk

rhaldridge said:


> For all we know, he doesn't actually have any bees. I for one would like to see at least one picture of Mike's beeyard.


 Yes, if he has any bees it would be good to see some recent photographs of Mike working his bees, maybe a you tube film or two.


----------



## Solomon Parker

To be fair, my face doesn't appear (unobscured) in any of my pictures on my website that I am aware of. And the one picture that does have part of my face was actually taken at Michael Bush's place in Nebraska.

http://parkerfarms.biz/equipment.html#The_Top_Bar_Hive


----------



## Tim Ives

Andrew Dewey said:


> The colony that survived was in three deeps.


Hmm..Never would of guessed that.


----------



## mike bispham

beekuk said:


> Yes, if he has any bees it would be good to see some recent photographs of Mike working his bees, maybe a you tube film or two.


You horrible suspicious people. 

Recent I can't help with. I'll get you some new ones when I can borrow a camera. I know that sounds lame but I don't have one at the moment. No, not even a camera phone. That's the sort of thing that can happen when you sell your house, buy some land and try to build a business without any capital. I barely have a car.

Here's some old ones - 2011 and 2012. They show my early mating hive block and some outstands. The top one, showing a few hives to the right under a long hedge, is now the site of a new working area, and there are 15 hives in that field. 

















































This is my record sheet. I'll be completing checks today (the blank ones, number 10 in column A - a priority column used for sorting.)

View attachment bee records apr 2014.pdf


I couldn't work out how to display spreadsheets so a tried a pdf. It looks like you might have to download it.

I hope that helps.

Mike (UK)

PS I don't know how that attached thumbnail got there. I can't figure out how to get rid of it.


----------



## mike bispham

rhaldridge said:


> I don't read Mike's posts much any more. He seems excessively relentless to me. He takes over threads, pounds the polemic pedal way too hard, and ends up saying nothing new. This thread is a good example; it isn't about Mike. It's about Andrew and his decision.


What happens is that I say something, and then people leap on me from all directions, and the thread becomes about me. I dislike it as much as you do. But I've stopped reading the worst offenders, and that seems to be helping. Hopefully before too long we'll be able to have conversations about raising resistance.

Most of the threads I post on btw are started by me, with a specific question to address, and I do try to return to topic from time to time. 

What I'd like to see is a detailed account of how Andrew set up and ran through his tf experiment. that way we could try to see what might have gone wrong, which might just be helpful to him in future and helpful to others wanting to do tf beekeeping. Any chance Andrew?

Mike (UK)


----------



## Fusion_power

Andrew posted enough info to make a good guess what happened to his bees. A large component was wintering failure that does not appear to be connected to mites.


----------



## mike bispham

Fusion_power said:


> Andrew posted enough info to make a good guess what happened to his bees. A large component was wintering failure that does not appear to be connected to mites.


One further thought: Andrew wrote:

"These were BeeWeaver Bees started from Packages in 2012 and their descendants."

That 'descendents' ... on the queen side yes, but how much of a chance to inherit mite management behaviours did the offspring get on the drone side?

Whether or not that had anything to do with the result, its a question tf and prospective tf beekeepers can think about. I think if you don't have ferals - Andrew thinks he doesn't - who've made a start on resistance, its worth making a well planned effort to maintain it in offspring of bought resistant bees. 

Mike (UK)


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

In a deadout you won't find too many mites. To find out if it was mites or something different, do the following.

Take a good cup full of dead bees and sort them by their body size. The smallest bees go to the upmost row, the biggest bees to the lowest row. You end up with say five rows of dead bees. If the picture of this is like a upside down pyramide, the row with the smallest bees being the longest, the bees were damaged by varroa most likely. If the overall picture resembles a pyramide shape, the row with the bigger bees being the longest, mites weren't the problem.

Good way to find out mite problems in a deadout. You also should check the ceiling of the cells, if there is whiteish stuff, this is varroa faeces. The more cells have it, the more mites the colony has had.


----------



## Oldtimer

Very interesting Bernhard never thought of that, always something new to learn!


----------



## Oldtimer

I liked your pics Mike, somehow, they are pretty much how I imagined your operation. Those frames, they home made?

But hey this -


mike bispham said:


> You horrible suspicious people.


Suspicious? LOL that is rather funny. You want suspicious try this 




mike bispham said:


> So the question: 'why is OT being so dumb?' cannot be resolved by the explanation: 'he is dumb'.....
> 
> And then there's the third hypothesis: OT isn't a 'someone' at all. He's a compound, several different people all working together toward the same end.....
> 
> It also fits with the odd reluctance to discuss any feature of your own beekeeping. There is no 'you'.


You horrible suspicious person LOL. 

You can actually see the OT "compound", there's 2 videos right here on Beesource.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Oldtimer said:


> I liked your pics Mike,
> 
> You can actually see the OT "compound", there's 2 videos right here on Beesource.


Maybe we should start a thread introdusing ourselves. Videos and pictures...and put a special rule that this thred can be answered only when there is picture attached with the beekeeper in front and the hives behind. Beekeeper in picture should carry a clearly visible sign " I do exist, I can take part in beekeeping discussion in BeeSource."


----------



## Oldtimer

Scary. Whenever I see a pic of someone here they are usually totally different than I imagined. 

Mike, you can see a movie of the OT compound here, partly concealed behind a bee veil of course! 

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?263737-Killing-a-Wasp-Nest&highlight


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Juhani Lunden said:


> ...picture attached with the beekeeper in front and the hives behind.


Is not enough. Must be half-naked when working the bees to be a beekeeper.  Take your stings.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Oldtimer said:


> Scary. Whenever I see a pic of someone here they are usually totally different than I imagined.
> 
> Mike, you can see a movie of the OT compound here, partly concealed behind a bee veil of course!
> 
> http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?263737-Killing-a-Wasp-Nest&highlight


You don´t look old Alastair! Is that your name? Beautiful Australian accent!


----------



## WLC

Call him by his 'Oldtimer' handle. It's against etiquette to call him by his first name, unless he's cool with it.


----------



## Oldtimer

OT is fine, abbreviations are pretty commonly used saves typing. 

Where's your pic WLC?


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Oldtimer said:


> OT is fine, abbreviations are pretty commonly used saves typing.
> 
> Where's your pic WLC?


Mine is here:
http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/mating_places.html

roll the page down, little under half way,under Finland


----------



## WLC

OT:

Although I bought a new camera, I'm not a shutterbug anymore. I've completely lost interest in taking photos.


----------



## Oldtimer

Thought as much I was just messin' with ya WLC.


----------



## Oldtimer

Juhani Lunden said:


> Mine is here:
> http://perso.fundp.ac.be/~jvandyck/homage/elver/mating_places.html
> 
> roll the page down, little under half way,under Finland


Checked it out Juhani a good pic, and somehow, you do look how you sound on the forum.


----------



## Daniel Y

beekuk said:


> Yes, if he has any bees it would be good to see some recent photographs of Mike working his bees, maybe a you tube film or two.


This could be said of nearly anyone here. In fact where are you photos and videos?
Threads go poorly because to many people make poor posts. I have posted form my experience and what I have seen in my bees. or what I have read in the very books it was suggested I read and gotten the exact same response from the members of this group. So it is not about someone making unsupported comments. it is about anyone that is not approved to make comments making any at all. In fact that was the answer I got when it happened to me. I was told they just did not like someone with not enough experience posting. So I asked them to point out what in my post was not accurate or correct. they could not offer one thing. They had no problem with any point my post had made. they only had a problem that I was the one posting it.

Not many people that post anything here can prove that it works. certainly not anything to do with treatment free.


----------



## Oldtimer

Daniel Y said:


> In fact where are you photos and videos?


To be fair, check his profile. There is a link to his web site with plenty of pics, pretty sure he exists.


----------



## jonathan

This is me demonstrating at a queen rearing training day last summer.

http://nihbs.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Jonathan-takes-us-through-Colony-Assessment.jpg

Someone needs to buy the guy at the back a washing machine!


----------



## Saltybee

jonathan, interesting deep there. Strongback and handle in one piece. Fewer frames in deep than medium?


----------



## jonathan

Saltybee
It wasn't my equipment, I was just demonstrating at the event.
Most people in Ireland use British national size rather than Langs so I think from memory that is what it was.
They measure 18 1/8 inch square and take 11 frames which have a brood area of 14 inches by 8 inches.
The supers take frames 14 inches by 5 inches approx, depending upon spacing there can be 8-11 in there.

Pete/Beeuk will tell you exactly. He makes them in his business.


----------



## rhaldridge

mike bispham said:


> I hope that helps.
> 
> Mike (UK).


Very nice pictures. Thanks. I now retract my doubts as to the existence of your bees. I like the homemade nuc closures.


----------



## Barry

BernhardHeuvel said:


> If the picture of this is like a upside down pyramide, the row with the smallest bees being the longest, the bees were damaged by varroa most likely. If the overall picture resembles a pyramide shape, the row with the bigger bees being the longest, mites weren't the problem.


I imagine this was written with a big grin on your face as well.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

No. Being serious, it is a well known method over here.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Some pictures of a course teaching the method:
http://www.imkerverein-greven.de/index.php/guido-eich-mein-volk-ist-tot-was-habe-ich-falsch-gemacht


----------



## Barry

If you have something in English that is a true study, I'd love to read it. I find dead winter bees to be a poor specimen. There are many elements that can affect the dead bee.


----------



## mike bispham

rhaldridge said:


> Very nice pictures. Thanks. I now retract my doubts as to the existence of your bees. I like the homemade nuc closures.


They work well, but you have to watch out for them dropping if you have them half closed. I'f I have a vulnerable colony in I close them down trapping a piece of stick at the sort of diameter I think appropriate. Its not ideal - I suspect they guard one side while wasps and bees sneak in the other. Its easy to pin mesh across the front which seems to help.

Last year I bought a lot of sawn wet cedar, air dried it, and made about 10 improved versions. These are a tad wider, allowing a division board, and have two entrances at the front and one at the back. I can divide the contents anytime I think they're ready and add a queen cell or let them raise their own queen. 

The floors are fixed, and I always make a note of colonies that keep them nice and clean. I also made deep roofs, and they hunker down well over winter. I'll take some photos when I get hold of a camera.

Mike (UK)


----------



## Oldtimer

So you have a workshop with sawbench etc? Everything looks home made.


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

Barry, in Europe they spend hundreds of millions of Euros on varroa research. Unfortunately it all goes into studies like: what is the varroa resistance gene? and the like. Nothing down-to-earth or practical. At least one electric device that beeps and blinks/flashes has to be involved in a decent study. You won't find a pratical approach like the one described in recently published studies. It is a pitty. Beekeepers are own their own to develop hands-on solutions.


----------



## Oldtimer

mike bispham said:


> Are they 'doing it all' WLC? To my mind tf involves a successful reproductive cycle. You have to be able to make replacement bees - successfully, and on an ongoing basis - to call yourself a beekeeper.
> 
> Otherwise they're just pets. And there's a good chance you're undermining local development of standalone bees.
> 
> Mike (UK)


How about you Mike, have you bred any replacement queens, successfully and on an ongoing basis, so that you can call yourself a beekeeper? 

If so, how many?


----------



## wissler

Tim Ives said:


> Hmm..Never would of guessed that.


Tim, that's what I was thinking. And although I read through this topic pretty quick, it doesn't seem that anyone else commented on this. 
All 5 of my 3-4 deeps made it through the winter here in N.Tx. I often wonder what the definition of a treatment free hive or colony is, in terms of size and believe a lot of TF beekeepers give up because they can't keep a TF single deep or nuc alive. I am new here and don't post very often, so I'm not familiar with everyone's operations. How many practice unlimited brood nests, small cell, 3 deeps or more, local mated queens, 
and no artificial feeds?

Thanks,
Mike in N. Tx.


----------



## WLC

I'm trying to follow Tim's hive configuration, etc. .

3 deeps certainly didn't hurt. Not really small cell, though I had them in the lowest super. BeeWeavers from Texas, so no locally mated queens. I'm not opposed to artificial feed, but I have a super of honey in reserve for each colony when I'm ready to 'light the fuse'.

I think I lost a lot of bees this winter to the cold. So, I lost some initial momentum.

I'll have to wait to see how things work out.


----------



## sqkcrk

WLC said:


> I think I lost a lot of bees this winter to the cold. So, I lost some initial momentum.


How many out of how many did you loss WLC? What did you find in the hives to lead you to believe that cold killed them and not starvation or something else?


----------



## WLC

Sqkcrk:

I've seen piles of dead bees on the bottom board this winter, but they've since cleaned them up.

Both hives look fine now, but I found a wind blown pile of bees, and a wide streak of dead bees leading to the pile. It looked like it came from my 'best' hive. This was in March.

There was a warm up, then a cold snap that coincided with it. They were flying just the week before that.

Right now, the night time temps are still below 50 degrees F.

It's almost May, and the Callery pears are STILL in bloom.

Things have been pushed back a few weeks.

So, I've got to roll with it.


----------



## mike bispham

wissler said:


> How many practice unlimited brood nests, small cell, 3 deeps or more, local mated queens, and no artificial feeds?
> Thanks,
> Mike in N. Tx.


I've successfully overwintered everything from tiny nucs to double brood box hives through a record cold and a record wet winter successively. Mind our record cold isn't that cold at all - minus 8 max - it just went on being cold a long time. I keep entrances small and hives dryish, and don't use foundation - just starter strip. I feed syrup in the autunm if they're light. (If they don't have a good excuse for being light they're marked down for re-queening). They're all local swarms and cut-outs or raised from from those initial stock and mated in places I think are sensible to mate bees that I want to be self-sufficient health wise.

I can't help thinking the free celling might be making a difference.

Mike UK


----------



## wissler

mike bispham;1097273 I keep entrances small and hives dryish said:


> Same here, using 4.9mm starter strips. Usually cutting full sheets of deep into 4ths. I recently started wiring the frames, especially those 3rd and 4th boxes for extraction purposes.
> Do you practice using the housel positioning of the foundation when placing the frames?
> 
> And WLC, just to clarify, I do have some single and double deeps that overwintered, from last year's splits and swarms, but they have not built up like the 3-4 deeps did this spring. I am trying to build up "honey production hives" at least 3 deep going into the following winter. It just seems they cope better with weather, pests and other variables. Thank you for the replies and good luck to everyone this Spring.
> 
> Mike in N. Tx


----------



## mike bispham

wissler said:


> Do you practice using the housel positioning of the foundation when placing the frames?


I only leave some 1/2" of wax strip, often odd ends, just to give them the hint. It seems enough. I don't look at the housel business.



wissler said:


> Thank you for the replies and good luck to everyone this Spring.


And to you Mike

Mike (UK)


----------



## Oldtimer

wissler said:


> Do you practice using the housel positioning of the foundation when placing the frames?


Not me either, I have not found the wild hives I've looked at practising it so why would I practise it?

Please read http://bwrangler.litarium.com/housel-positioning/


----------



## wissler

Thanks for the link Oldtimer. When doing cutouts and swarms with comb under the eaves of houses, I've often noticed the so-called "Y's" in the comb start tilting to one side in more of a spherical configuration around the center of the combs. I'm not sure about how much the housel positioning in man-made foundation affects the way a hive draws out comb or the location of brood, which is why I like using the starter strips. The bees can adapt and change as they see fit. But that's the way I start them out and have seen them start tilting the orientation in the hives as well.


----------



## Oldtimer

I think that has more to do with the way it suits them to start building the combs, than the necessity of housel position. I too will see what you say, but as often as not they do not build in a way consistent with housel theory. However, if someone wants to do it there is little harm in it.


----------



## AHudd

BernhardHeuvel said:


> In a deadout you won't find too many mites. To find out if it was mites or something different, do the following.
> 
> Take a good cup full of dead bees and sort them by their body size. The smallest bees go to the upmost row, the biggest bees to the lowest row. You end up with say five rows of dead bees. If the picture of this is like a upside down pyramide, the row with the smallest bees being the longest, the bees were damaged by varroa most likely. If the overall picture resembles a pyramide shape, the row with the bigger bees being the longest, mites weren't the problem.
> 
> Good way to find out mite problems in a deadout. You also should check the ceiling of the cells, if there is whiteish stuff, this is varroa faeces. The more cells have it, the more mites the colony has had.


Now this is something I can use. Thank you.


----------



## Michael Bush

>Take a good cup full of dead bees and sort them by their body size. 

Newly emerged bees are always smaller than older bees and very noticeably smaller than field bees. I fail to see what you will prove.


----------



## Oldtimer

is that true when they are dead?


----------



## BernhardHeuvel

And small cell bees are smaller, too. I learned from you... So no method for your apiary...for all others it is a well established test over here, so you give it a try.


----------



## AHudd

I used to keep bees when I was a young fella'. My Grandpa took over for me when the wonder lust struck. I didn't start again until last late spring with 3 packages of BeeWeaver VSH and all new equipment. I wish I had gone with small cell. I guess I can go small cell with any increase I get. My intent is to go TF. All three hives made it through winter in good shape. I plan to monitor for mites beginning this year.

I have spent many hours reading on this site. Thank you all for the help.


----------



## BadBeeKeeper

OK, I've read through this whole thread, and there were some comments about bees being "acclimated"- "warm weather" bees in cold climates. My bees came out of GA, from a commercial operator who trucks them back and forth. They spend the Winters in GA, so they are in no way "acclimated" to the Winters here...but, it doesn't seem to make much difference. My Carniolans (when I take care of them properly) seem to do much better than my Italians, though to be fair, this is the first Winter I've tried to keep Italians. Personally, I think the breed matters more than whether they are "acclimated" or not.


----------



## Michael Bush

>is that true when they are dead?

I haven't done any carefully planned measurements on the topic, but from my observations I would say yes, it appears to be true.


----------



## crofter

BadBeeKeeper said:


> OK, I've read through this whole thread, and there were some comments about bees being "acclimated"- "warm weather" bees in cold climates. My bees came out of GA, from a commercial operator who trucks them back and forth. They spend the Winters in GA, so they are in no way "acclimated" to the Winters here...but, it doesn't seem to make much difference. My Carniolans (when I take care of them properly) seem to do much better than my Italians, though to be fair, this is the first Winter I've tried to keep Italians. Personally, I think the breed matters more than whether they are "acclimated" or not.


Since all the bees other than the queen do not live from year to year, I doubt _they_ become acclimatized. I suspect that the bees that are survivors for a few generation in long wintered climates, start to have a higher percentage of Carniolan like genetics. From talking to people who have seen a lot of Ontario bees, they report dark queens, aside from cases where bees are brought in from Ca. or Hawaii. Not saying the Italian type cannot be kept up here but the Carnies seem to need less care and certainly less feed to keep them over the 6month winters.


----------



## BadBeeKeeper

crofter said:


> Since all the bees other than the queen do not live from year to year, I doubt _they_ become acclimatized.


Yeah, LOL, I knew that but the thought didn't make it out through my fingers.



crofter said:


> I suspect that the bees that are survivors for a few generation in long wintered climates, start to have a higher percentage of Carniolan like genetics. From talking to people who have seen a lot of Ontario bees, they report dark queens, aside from cases where bees are brought in from Ca. or Hawaii. Not saying the Italian type cannot be kept up here but the Carnies seem to need less care and certainly less feed to keep them over the 6month winters.


That makes sense to me. I know that I intentionally chose the Carniolans to start with because I reasoned that their characteristics were likely to be more beneficial than the Italians in this climate and I wanted to put the odds in my favor as much as possible. I had a choice between the Carnis and Italians. I don't know how much different the Winter is in Ontario than here, though I've been to both Ottawa and Quebec City in the Winter and I have the impression that it gets a little colder.

I didn't get a choice when I bought some nucs last year, but I had wanted to start bringing in some Italians anyway. Due to my PPBK and PPRK I've kinda lost track of which hives had Italian queens in them, I had bought some extra queens and kept them banked for emergencies, and I used all but one. But, I also made some splits off of Carni hives and may possibly have re-queened an established Carni hive with an Italian...and then some hives got combined in the Fall.

I REALLY need to get better at keeping records before I get totally screwed up.


----------



## crofter

BadBeeKeeper said:


> .
> 
> I REALLY need to get better at keeping records before I get totally screwed up.


Oh my! Tell me about it! I have such good intentions of marking things down as soon as I get in the house but you know how good intentions are. I have one hive with some different habits that I want to breed from and see it they pass down. Cluster stayed deep and used virtually none of the loose sugar on top. Will have to see how they brood up and produce. Could be they are extra efficient but could be they are ailing. Without good record keeping we wind up chasing our tails!


----------



## shinbone

crofter said:


> Without good record keeping we wind up chasing our tails!


----------



## squarepeg

i take a cheap voice recorder out to the yard and dictate notes after each inspection, and then write them up later on the laptop.


----------



## mike bispham

I take notes and enter them to a spreadsheet. This tells me how many days to next visit, and what to take. I can automatically reorder the data to make to make a priority list. I changed the number of days till next visit on the first two to show how the number of days left entry automically supplies a traffic light column.

The next sheet is a linked map that shows where the priorities are on the ground

Overdoing it a little, but 80+ hives (back in the summer) meant it was worth developing a well targeted system. Now I have it its a piece of cake to use.

Mike (UK)


----------



## AHudd

squarepeg said:


> i take a cheap voice recorder out to the yard and dictate notes after each inspection, and then write them up later on the laptop.


I happen to have one of those from my work in construction. Thanks for jogging my memory.


----------



## jwcarlson

AHudd said:


> I happen to have one of those from my work in construction. Thanks for jogging my memory.


I believe there are apps for smartphones that do this as well.


----------



## AHudd

jwcarlson said:


> I believe there are apps for smartphones that do this as well.


Those smartphones are too smart for this old man.


----------



## THALL

Andrew have you tried sourcing good northern raised queens from respectable breeders here in the North East? I have found some success with buying queens from local breeders (that treat for mites) and incorporating them into my apiary which has now been without treatments for 5 years.


----------



## Andrew Dewey

THALL said:


> Andrew have you tried sourcing good northern raised queens from respectable breeders here in the North East? I have found some success with buying queens from local breeders (that treat for mites) and incorporating them into my apiary which has now been without treatments for 5 years.


I have, and I am continuing to. I've got queens coming from Ferguson's in August.

You're in Plainfield? I used to live in Cornish and my family still has land there.

I'm concentrating for the time being on creating the healthiest bee friendly environment that I can.


----------



## THALL

Yes I am in Plainfield. Its a small world, Where about in Cornish did you live?


----------

