# Leaving Them Alone



## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

Good luck with your plan. 

Please report back in the spring to let us know how many hives survive the winter.


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## hlhart2014 (Jun 11, 2012)

Check out the treatment free forum...sounds like you are heading that way and onto something!


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

:thumbsup:Sits well with me,,,


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## BBQBrew (Feb 27, 2013)

I'm with ya! I'm a new beek...first hive this year (Top Bar) and I plan to let the bees do what they do and hope for the best. I will feed if necessary but don't plan to treat for anything.


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## Greg Lowe (Feb 3, 2012)

woodedareas said:


> ... I have decided no chemicals and no disturbing of the hives except for limited periodic looks....


So, do you plan to pull honey from them, make splits, add supers, or anything like that?


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## hilreal (Aug 16, 2005)

Do a lot of reading, Michael Bush, Ross Conrad, Michael Palmer, etc. It can be done, but is more challenging and don't get discouraged with your losses. I would keep a fair number of nucs as backups going into winter every year. Good luck.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

hilreal said:


> Do a lot of reading, Michael Bush, Ross Conrad, Michael Palmer, etc. It can be done, but is more challenging and don't get discouraged with your losses. I would keep a fair number of nucs as backups going into winter every year. Good luck.


Why do you lump Michael Palmer in with Michael Bush & Ross Conrad? Ok, Bush and Palmer are both named Michael, and Conrad and Palmer are both from Vermont, but I'm not sure there are many parallels beyond those. The philosophies of these folks are way different... (Now if you're trying to say study the techniques of the best beekeepers you can find, I have no issue, except for wondering if you've listed "the best")

To the original poster - be prepared for your bees to die and work and hope that they won't. There may be bees that can thrive under the conditions you describe, but I haven't found the bee that will do it in my area!

I share your inclination for doing things naturally - but I have to warn you that unless you are starting out with bees that have shown they will survive without treatments, you are repeating an experiment that has ended badly (meaning with dead bees) for _many_ new beekeepers.

To finish the thought, ignoring a problem doesn't mean that it is going to go away. To find out if you have a mite problem you need to have very good eyes or you need to test. If you have a mite problem you need to take some action that is consistent with your beekeeping philosophy to resolve the problem. If your philosophy is non-involvement you ought to be prepared for a variety of outcomes, one of which is the likelihood that your bees will die.

Please don't dismiss my post as a "thou must use a miticide" rant. After loosing a high percentage of my Russian bees (a bee touted to better coexist with mites) this past winter I no longer believe that the bees can make it on their own. I acquired them and put them in a box - and I hate cleaning dead outs. So with my future efforts I need to take some sort of action to keep (or at least minimize) the deadouts.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Andrew Dewey said:


> I share your inclination for doing things naturally - but I have to warn you that unless you are starting out with bees that have shown they will survive without treatments, you are repeating an experiment that has ended badly (meaning with dead bees) for _many_ new beekeepers.


That's true, but to be fair, it is also true that even if you treat, there's a pretty good chance that new beekeepers will lose their bees.

The data I've seen indicates that the difference in colony survival between treated and non-treated colonies is not as large as I at first assumed. 

There are also fluctuations from one year to the next. It might be that you just had a very bad year, and that even if you'd treated, you might have lost many of those Russian bees. Certainly, it is true that many who did treat last year lost a substantial number of their colonies, and some of them are very good beekeepers.

I think what it comes down to is whether or not you believe that the short-term fix of killing some percentage of the mites, leaving the hardiest to breed the next generations, is really sustainable over the long term. If not, then you have to accept that you will lose bees, over the short term. The payoff for not treating is over the long term.


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## Laurabee (Apr 8, 2013)

Last month i stopped by an old abandoned house where an elderly beekeeper once lived. He past away several years ago and was in a nursing home before that. After at least 7? Years on their own, the colony continues, i sat and watched them for a little but. Some were bringing in pollen, some had found blue pollen, I'm guessing from spring beauty flowers? It was very special to see.


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## shinbone (Jul 5, 2011)

I also wonder how many new beekeepers start out treatment free, lose everything the first winter, and then give up and never come back to this forum . . . ?

I am in my second year. I treated my 4 hives the first year for mites. 3 survived the winter. Based on the mite drop after treating that first year, I don't think any of my hives would've survived that first winter without treatment. But I am still very new to all this, so I don't know much.


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## lenny bee (Oct 29, 2010)

We call this the bond method, live an let die. As long as you have deep pockets,go for it. So if you see mites are by July taking down your hives one by one your just going to let it happen an do nothing. LOL.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

woodedareas said:


> As a boy I remember a few feral be hives and they did quite well without any tampering by humans.


Go for it. I did. I use smoke though. It appears to calm the bees and make the intrusion less of a problem when you have to intrude.


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

Well, if I chose to not use smoke, I wouldn't be inclined to inspect my hives either. To each there own. I lean towards more natural bee keeping. Folks draw their lines in the sand in different places. I must admit, I have a hive at a friends house that we only get into in the spring, and the fall. They have done fine for the last three seasons. No treatments, we took one deep full of honey last fall, (5 gal) they had plenty come this spring. . My friend is 5'8" tall. He has to have me to help him get the top super off because it is taller than he is. We over winter them in four deeps. Crazy but it works. Now,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,he and I are pretty good at looking at the bees behavior at the entrance and their goings and comings, and being able to tell something is not right with the hive. We would go in and inspect. There is a book published called, "At the hive Entrance". One has to learn and find their own balance. IMHO, I wouldn't lock my heals in too deep. I 've had to dig mine out a few times


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

Very brave and noble intention. I completely support you ! I feel, it is unfair to tell something like - wait, let see how many will die in the winter! It is just unfair because people who treat - actually create the problem (at least partially) - they treat bees, they sent them 1000 miles (to collect more diseases on its way), they crowded bees in the package and sell it to us. Of coarse, these bees already inherited the inability to fight diseases, they are stressed by packaging process etc. And you know what? Nothing personal, but "manufacturers" of these bees actually are not interested that bees overwinter  It is cynical statement and I am sorry for this... but ... So, we start from weak bees and than, of coarse they may have a problems if they were treated-treated and suddenly stopped. In this sense, I do not feel I want to support this packaging business. I would rather find survival/feral local bees and start with them, which I did. I practice minimal invasion, meaning that I go into the hive only if there is obvious necessity. I observe my bees from outside as many others. But, I have to admit - I do treat them - with love and passion (they do not care ). We have a small "oasis" of nearly feral bees in the heart of Santa Monica, probably 10 hives total (2 per residence permitted). All our bees are doing their business. The population is doubled and we have to slow down because of city limitations. Bees are very instrumental. There are numerous discussions about to be or not to bee for top entrance... What is the problem? I gave my girls the top entrance thinking it is too hot outside - they blocked it with wax 2/3 already - clear message, apparently, they do not need the top entrance!


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

I'm working on a Hogan trap out on a ferrell colony that is going strong for the last 3 yrs I hope to do the same as you and these genetics will help


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

cerezha said:


> What is the problem? I gave my girls the top entrance thinking it is too hot outside - they blocked it with wax 2/3 already - clear message, apparently, they do not need the top entrance!


The difference is they can open it up if and when they choose rather quickly. Without the upper entrance they cannot.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

woodedareas said:


> I checked a few frames in each of my 8 hives since the packages were installed about 2 weeks ago.





woodedareas said:


> I believe if the major bee keepers who ship thousands of hives all over the country into every type of contaminated agricultural crop area stopped their operations, we would have a smaller but healthier bee population. Unfortunately where do you think your package bees come from and what kind of contamination resides in those bee package boxes?


Isn't this a kind of oxymoron?

You bought package bees. But the bee supply industry is bad? Would you buy again should you lose your bees? Should others not buy?

If you are successful to the point of having spare bees so decide to sell some, would that be bad?


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## libhart (Apr 22, 2010)

If the major beekeepers who shipped their bees all over the country would stop operations, you'd have very little in the way of fruit or vegetables to buy, and they'd be very expensive. Not to mention the beekeepers not being able to pay their mortgage or feed their families.

If you buy package bees and use the bond method, and then if the bees die you buy more packages and use the bond method again, you're simplying trying to "luck" your way into good genetics, hoping that this year's packages are the "good ones". I also question the genetic solution when buying treatment free survivor bees from anywhere but very close by. Sure there are genetics that allow bees to be able to better handle the problems they face, mites in particular, but I think location has a huge role in the survival of treatment free bees. I think an interesting (although essentially logistically impossible) experiment would be for successful treatment free beekeepers to bring two hives to where treatment free beekeepers have a low success rate and keep them there, testing those bees in that location vs their own successful location.


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## Ravenzero (Sep 26, 2012)

Checkout the works of charles martin simon, the backwards beekeeper 

http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/charles-martin-simon/principles-of-beekeeping-backwards/


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

libhart said:


> I think an interesting (although essentially logistically impossible) experiment would be for successful treatment free beekeepers to bring two hives to where treatment free beekeepers have a low success rate and keep them there, testing those bees in that location vs their own successful location.


Are there actually any such areas? What characteristics would make an area unsuitable for treatment free beekeeping? 

Maybe I have the wrong impression, but don't many successful treatment free beekeepers end up saying something like "Everyone told me that I couldn't keep bees here without treating them. Then I did."


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## fieldsofnaturalhoney (Feb 29, 2012)

shinbone said:


> I also wonder how many new beekeepers start out treatment free, lose everything the first winter, and then give up and never come back to this forum . . . ?
> 
> I am in my second year. I treated my 4 hives the first year for mites. 3 survived the winter. Based on the mite drop after treating that first year, I don't think any of my hives would've survived that first winter without treatment.


I have been treatment free ever since I started, and I believe most of us who start that way realize we are against the grain, and expect losses. Particularly, if you start with treated bees. Thats why we expand our successful treatment free hives. However, as more and more treatment free beeks have success maybe we will be the new grain, and offer treatment free bees to people who want treatment free bees. This puts them already ahead if this is the route they choose. I know back when I started I could not find any untreated bees, not even within my beekeepers association. Shinbone, how do you know they would not have survived there first winter if you hadn't treated them. You treated them, so you will never know. Maybe you should have had a control group and not treated one. Now that they have been treated they will most likely need to be treated again this year because your bees can not control mites on their own?

Lennybee, I guess you can look at it as the bond method, but I prefer to look at it as survival of the fittest. I don't think you need deep pockets to be a treatment free beekeeper. Heck,when I think about all of the money I saved not treating my hives, my pockets just got a lot shorter. Sure, I had winter losses but only attribute two of them to not being fit enough.


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## Waterbird17 (Apr 30, 2012)

I worked a hive today that was not touched in 10 months. They were a little out of order and required some definite tuning but they were good. Had very few/no mites. they did have signs of Sack Brood and EFB, looks like they swarmed and were stressed.


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

Acebird said:


> The difference is they can open it up if and when they choose rather quickly. Without the upper entrance they cannot.


 True, this is why I offered to them this chance.


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> ...If you are successful to the point of having spare bees so decide to sell some, would that be bad?


 I personally would not sell packages. I would sell nucs and/or established hives locally. But I am bad "businessman"


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Waterbird17 said:


> they did have signs of Sack Brood and EFB, looks like they swarmed and were stressed.


So....is this a testament to leaving them alone....or a complaint about their condition?


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

fieldsofnaturalhoney said:


> ...... I don't think you need deep pockets to be a treatment free beekeeper. Heck,when I think about all of the money I saved not treating my hives, my pockets just got a lot shorter...


 I spent zero on bees and they are doubled over last year. My spending is on fancy vented beesuit and hardware to keep expanding bees. If I could do splits - I could easily produce may be 10 new colonies per season, which is 500% increase. Unfortunately,in my situation, I am limited in number of beehives (2)  
My only fear is if somebody bring infected packaged bees in the area.


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## julysun (Apr 25, 2012)

This is not an "all die" game. It is a 50% die game which with splits and standby nucs makes it a contestable game. Of course there is always the Black Swan of luck. 
BWeaver is one TF supplier, I have seen other,s Ads. I am talking hobby Beeks the big guys play a different game. So bee of good cheer, if it was easy honey would sell for 50 cents for a pint.


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## xcugat (Mar 4, 2008)

Waterbird, out of curiosity how did you check for mites? The reason I ask is because a visual check for the most part is anecdotal, you need a mite counting method--If you did a sugar shake/ether roll and there were few mites, then the hive would be a potential candidate for breeding stock otherwise the lack of visual mites is more of an assumption


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

xcugat said:


> The reason I ask is because a visual check for the most part is anecdotal, you need a mite counting method-


OK anecdotal...

I have seen mite drops come and go and it doesn't relate to winter loses. So why is it important to have accurate mite counts at any one time?


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## xcugat (Mar 4, 2008)

how many hives are you running ace?? Mite counts directly relate to overwintering success a hive with a large mite population in August is usually doomed to death in the winter. When did you measure and how often--the mite population should be changing throughout the year depending on the amount of brood present


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

I would add that signs of sac brood and EFB could very well indicate the presence of mites.


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## Daniel Y (Sep 12, 2011)

Every time I read one of these "They do fine in nature" posts I think of the wild horses we have here. They do so well that they regularly have to round them up to thin the herds. they cannot be sold for $100 each. most of them cannot even be given away. The corrals they are kept in have grown from 2 to 12 in the past 10 years alone. and that is at just one adoption center. Last year on my way to one of my fields I passed over 45 horses standing on the side of the road. close enough I could have reached out and touched them. People will not even go to the effort to try and catch them. They are like weeds. no one wants them. That is pretty much how I see feral hives.


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## xcugat (Mar 4, 2008)

Do these wild horses have giant groundhog-sized mites biting them nonstop and sucking their blood out--I think not....Feral hives are alot harder to come by especially if by feral you mean over 2 years alive and not a new swarm


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Daniel Y said:


> Every time I read one of these "They do fine in nature" posts I think of the wild horses we have here. They do so well that they regularly have to round them up to thin the herds. they cannot be sold for $100 each. most of them cannot even be given away. The corrals they are kept in have grown from 2 to 12 in the past 10 years alone. and that is at just one adoption center. Last year on my way to one of my fields I passed over 45 horses standing on the side of the road. close enough I could have reached out and touched them. People will not even go to the effort to try and catch them. They are like weeds. no one wants them. That is pretty much how I see feral hives.


I guess if domesticated horses were dying at a rate of 30 to 40 percent every winter, those wild survivor horses would be in high demand.

That's not such a good analogy, is it?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Horses are not bees. 

The ancestors modern horses were bred from were preyed on by predators only limited by the supply of prey. So horses breed quite quickly. Without predators, population grows exponentially.

Bees were a bit like that pre varroa, I can remember when uncared for hives rarely ever died, just reproduced.


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## cerezha (Oct 11, 2011)

xcugat said:


> Waterbird, out of curiosity how did you check for mites?...


 Yes, I do check for mites using sticky board. It does not provide percentage of the infested bees, but sticky-board counts are proportional to mite's load. I fully aware that it is not accurate method. Nevertheless, it gave me the hive's dynamic if used regularly.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

Location, Location, Location

Just because bees survive mites in one location does not guarantee that they will do so in another.

When I purchased the Russians, they were touted as a bee able to coexist with the mites. Being the sort that doesn't always trust my own diagnosing skills, I arranged for the hives to be inspected by the state twice. The first time was in the year they were installed. Build up wasn't great. One hive had high Nosema counts (per lab test). Also observed were chalk brood and sac brood. Two falls later they were inspected again: all hives but one were already dead or collapsing under virus pressure. The one "survivor" was a split made last year with a queen won at the state assoc. annual meeting. All of the original hives are now dead. Expensive? Ah huh. In two yards I had 14 colonies total - figure the cost of the wooden ware and the bees, and the fact that in three years total honey harvested was one shallow super, I'd say it was expensive.

I'm testing a yard of what started out as 8 packages from Bee Weaver. For whatever reason there were several colonies that did not store adequate pollen in the fall for spring buildup. Will they be productive and survive without treatments - that is what I want to know. If bees are promoted as survivor they'd better at least be able to survive. This talk of loose 50% and split back to your original hive count is a means of having the stock continue but doesn't in my book earn the bees the title of "survivor."

The bees that I do treat and care for per general recommendations for this area do ok. I haven't calculated an exact annual loss figure for them but it is around 15%.

I'm hosting an open hive here in a few hours and I need to have live bees. Guess which yard will be open?


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Andrew Dewey said:


> I'm testing a yard of what started out as 8 packages from Bee Weaver. For whatever reason there were several colonies that did not store adequate pollen in the fall for spring buildup. Will they be productive and survive without treatments - that is what I want to know.


Nope.

The problem is if they survive with treatments you are now propagating bees that should have been eliminated naturally. So you and everyone around you will then have more inferior genetics in the mix. Leave them alone.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Andrew Dewey said:


> If bees are promoted as survivor they'd better at least be able to survive. This talk of loose 50% and split back to your original hive count is a means of having the stock continue but doesn't in my book earn the bees the title of "survivor."


Andrew, I have to say that your philosophy is far more rigorous than mine. I don't think there's anything wrong with splitting to make up losses-- to me this is just a management technique that can allow you to go on keeping bees despite high losses, without the high costs of importing bees. I think that the value of the technique is that each time you split, you may be acquiring local survivor genetics from nearby feral drones. If you make queens from your strongest hives, I think the process inevitably leads you closer to locally adapted survivor stock.

I don't think it reasonable to hope that bees imported from elsewhere, established in your yards, and then left alone for several years, will survive, even if they have genetics that allowed them to survive without attention elsewhere. 

I guess I've wandered far from the original theme of the thread, but to me, it seems better to split hives and use brood breaks to knock down varroa numbers than to treat with foreign substances, which definitely do disrupt hive microbiota. Swarming is a natural part of bee biology, and it seems to me that bees in a natural setting make use of these techniques to cut down parasite loads. Beekeepers don't want to allow swarms, so they have to employ variations on that theme to get honey production as well as survival. If I were trying to produce honey, I think I might incorporate a regular system of using cut-down splits to give production hives a brood break, at the peak of the flow, so they'd put away a lot of honey, as well as generating replacement colonies.

I know Solomon takes a more rigorous view of treatment free beekeeping, too, but I don't understand how it would work to keep the same colonies in the same boxes permanently. Feral bees abandon bee trees periodically, I understand, so I think a beekeeper who wants to avoid treatment may have to borrow a page from bees that survive in an uncultivated setting. Individual colonies die out, but the species goes on. To me this is an acceptable model for treatment free beekeeping.

But of course, I'm just a beginner with a couple of hives, so I may at some point decide I am completely wrong.


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## Waterbird17 (Apr 30, 2012)

I check for mites by doing a quick scan visual and looking for deformed wing, checking drone brood, looking for mites on bottom board. the hive I was looking at was treated last spring or so. They looked pretty good mite wise, looked like a low mite load in my opinion. 

I mean i didn't search this hive high and low for mites but as a first inspection for checking the status of a new hive for me to manage, mites were not a huge concern for me at this point for this hive. they looked strong with a few correctable in imperfections. 



they looked to have sac brood and EFB cause by stress, I really don't think it was mite related stress at all. I'm betting that they swarmed a few weeks ago and cast off a lot of their bees and didn't have enough nurses to take care of the number of larva. from the looks of it there was not the amount of bees expected in a very strong 2 deep 2 medium hive. This weather this year could have thrown them off as well. 

This hive was managed by a bigger apiary that must not have had the time to go out and manage this one hive, they took 2 mediums full of honey through the winter, because the honey was never harvested. They were clearly strong, but in need of some management to get them back into what I consider i prefect hive.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

PMS can look just like sac brood & EFB.


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## xcugat (Mar 4, 2008)

Waterbird17 said:


> I check for mites by doing a quick scan visual and looking for deformed wing, checking drone brood, looking for mites on bottom board. the hive I was looking at was treated last spring or so. They looked pretty good mite wise, looked like a low mite load in my opinion.



Sorry but this is not an accurate means of assessing mite load you need a mite collection/counting method that is consistent and provides a means to get the mites off the bees for counting purposes


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

For reasons I can’t understand, there seems to be a common desire for deniability of mites as a problem. ‘I don’t see many’, ‘I don’t count them’ and ‘they aren’t a problem’ or ‘they aren’t ‘the’ problem’. 
When I see these statements (and numerous similar ones) I know that the author doesn’t understand the lifecycle and multiple, parasitic effects that varroa have on their bees. Practically EVERY colony collapse is influenced by mites and in many cases they are the primary contributor.
If you choose to be treatment free….no problem. If you do so without understanding the main enemy, then, in my opinion, you are destined to a never ending pattern of inexplicable failures.
Good luck.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beemandan said:


> Practically EVERY colony collapse is influenced by mites and in many cases they are the primary contributor.
> If you choose to be treatment free….no problem. If you do so without understanding the main enemy, then, in my opinion, you are destined to a never ending pattern of inexplicable failures.
> Good luck.


I don't disagree that mites are a terrible problem. Where I disagree is the idea that they can be treated as an isolated problem-- If only we could kill the mites, all would be well.

It seems to me, and please correct me if anyone can think of a counter-example, that we never have succeeded in completely destroying a disease or parasite through chemical means. The very best we can hope for is that the bees and the pathogenic organism can reach some sort of adaptation in which the bees can survive and be productive. If that is the case, then anything which weakens the superorganism of the hive is in some sense counterproductive. Treatments that kill off hive microbiota may have the unforeseen effect of crippling the superorganism's ability to adapt to threats like varroa.

I'm not going to treat for mites, and I'll only have a few hives this year, so no significant breeding program, for which the data might be useful. Aside from curiosity (which has caused me to examine drone larvae) why would it be helpful to me to count mites?


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

If you are not going to treat for mites regardless if they are overwhelming your hive or not, then there is no point in measuring them as long as you are not making any claims about your particular bees and mites. I have zero patience for people who publicly say mites are not a problem for them and decline to do any sort of mite counts. Then again, everyone gets to raise their bees according to their own inclinations, not mine, and that is as it should be. I simply don't pay much attention to those that make claims that they are not willing to (doesn't matter can't or won't) back up.


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## Mike Gillmore (Feb 25, 2006)

rhaldridge said:


> why would it be helpful to me to count mites?


In your case it would probably be a complete waste of time to count mites. Your colonies are either going to survive or crash, if you count mites or not. Counting mites, other than for informational purposes, is for those who plan to intercede in some fashion to reduce the mite population when they detect levels exceeding a certain threshhold. Those who have already decided to not treat have only mortality rates to count, and hopefully they will be low.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

Counting mites, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily tied to treating.
If you choose not to treat but count mites all the same, it provides you with an objective view of the relative size of an important parasite load. If your hives with high loads crash more often than those that have smaller populations…then you have some idea of the ‘why’ in your failures. It also provides you with an additional selection parameter in choosing breeding hives.
I can’t think of a single reason not to count….other than sheer laziness or ignorance. 



rhaldridge said:


> Aside from curiosity (which has caused me to examine drone larvae) why would it be helpful to me to count mites?


In your case...rhaldridge....I'd have to ask...why not count? Today you only have a few hives and no breeding goals but what would a count hurt? On the other hand...say next spring all but one of your hives has collapsed...it might tell you something. Otherwise you may simply join the ranks of those who lament...my hives failed last winter, I didn't see many mites so it must have been something else.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

beemandan said:


> Counting mites, in my opinion, isn’t necessarily tied to treating.
> If you choose not to treat but count mites all the same, it provides you with an objective view of the relative size of an important parasite load. If your hives with high loads crash more often than those that have smaller populations…then you have some idea of the ‘why’ in your failures. It also provides you with an additional selection parameter in choosing breeding hives.
> 
> In your case...rhaldridge....I'd have to ask...why not count? Today you only have a few hives and no breeding goals but what would a count hurt? On the other hand...say next spring all but one of your hives has collapsed...it might tell you something. Otherwise you may simply join the ranks of those who lament...my hives failed last winter, I didn't see many mites so it must have been something else.


Good points all Dan. Mite counts need not even kill a single bee, as a sugar shake shouldnt take more than 5 minutes or so. I would suggest putting everything you need including a notebook to record results in a properly sized sealable storage container keep it handy and just make it part of your inspection routine. Read up on some of the different mite monitoring methods. 

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/sick-bees-part-11-mite-monitoring-methods/


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i'm treatment free and i'll be doing alcohol washes later in the season, when the infestation rate should be the highest. i'll be doing this for informational purposes, comparing infestation rate to survival. i might split and requeen the ones with the highest counts using queens grafted from the ones showing better resistance.

hopefully this information will give another option to treatment free beekeepers. 

sure, allowing a colony to die stops that genetic line in its tracks but it also puts other colonies at risk when they pick up the mites and take them home via robbing. 

the same thing is accomplished by requeening, but without wasting resources and without the risk of spreading of the problem to your other hives, your neighbor's hives, and any feral hives that may be nearby.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

beemandan said:


> I can’t think of a single reason not to count….other than sheer laziness or ignorance.


Well, I'll try not to take that personally. I have limited time, like most of us, and in order to justify an activity, I have to have a good reason* to* do it. Not being able to think of a reason why I shouldn't do it would lead me to all sorts of activities that might not be in my best interests. If you know what I mean.

As to diagnosing deadouts, there are a number of indicators of mite problems in a hive that do not depend on making a formal mite count. As I said, I've examined drone larvae, and will probably continue that. I looked at several dozen drone larvae and didn't see any mites, but I'm sure they are in the hive. I look for DWV bees (haven't seen any since the first week, more than two months ago.) I look for mite frass on the bottom board.

My Langstroth hives have slide-in white bottom boards under screens, so I can at least get an idea of the extent of mite problems by watching those boards. 

But I just don't see the utility, for me, of doing formal counts-- like alcohol washes or sugar rolls. Even if I determine that a hive died from mites or mite-borne diseases, how does that help me? I'm still not going to treat. My main approaches to keeping bees in my hives are to avoid artificial feed when possible, use brood breaks judiciously, make backup nucs, add feral genetics, and in the future import genetics from resistant lines. I _am_ trapping SHB, using beetleblasters-- and CD traps with a mixture of honey, pollen sub, and boric acid. SHB may be a bigger problem for me than mites, at least in my relatively weak package hives in FL. Judging by my results so far, a booming hive is the best defense against SHB-- the traps are just hopeful stopgap measure, whose appeal for me is that they do not significantly affect hive microbiota.

The main indicators of success to me are survival and productivity, not low mite counts.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

squarepeg said:


> sure, allowing a colony to die stops that genetic line in its tracks but it also puts other colonies at risk when they pick up the mites and take them home via robbing.
> 
> the same thing is accomplished by requeening, but without wasting resources and without the risk of spreading of the problem to your other hives, your neighbor's hives, and any feral hives that may be nearby.


Are you saying that your strategy is a brood break given to only the hives with the highest mite counts?

Why wouldn't it be better to give all your hives a prophylactic brood break?


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

rhaldridge said:


> As to diagnosing deadouts, there are a number of indicators of mite problems in a hive that do not depend on making a formal mite count.


EVERY collapse has a varroa component to it. Many without leaving overt evidence.
At the end you will have absolutely no idea.



rhaldridge said:


> My Langstroth hives have slide-in white bottom boards under screens, so I can at least get an idea of the extent of mite problems by watching those boards.


By the way….ungreased screened bottom inserts won’t retain mites for any significant amount of time.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Can think of one Canadian beekeeper who had, when they were alive, around 6 hives. She loved her bees, and was a firm no treatment person. She wrote about problems with her bees, the description was clearly mite issues and I tried to talk to her about that, but she wanted to be in denial about mites, and lost all her hives that winter. Then she posted about how much she was missing her bees and couldn't wait till her new packages arrived, but said the cost was a lot for her. She duly installed the new packages, but changed nothing of her methods, and they all died too. Again, from what I could tell, mites. She then posted a few times talking about her disappointment, and the anguish of having to buy yet more packages, and discussing whether this was "right".

I seemed to have a lot of discussions with her, trying to exhort her to do something that would save her bees. She didn't agree with me as her philosophy was kind of opposite to mine, but she was always friendly and polite.

Anyhow, haven't seen her this last year, a shame, she was a lovely lady. Unfortunately she had been convinced to use a system that was not viable for her, cost her a lot of money, and heartache.

There are others, I have not been so involved with, but have seen come, and go. And by what they were saying about their hives, I knew that with their philosophy, the mites I could tell they had, but they wouldn't acknowledge, would be the end of them.

Personally I don't count mites, but I've been around long enough to recognise when there is a problem needs sorting. But I would not recommend this to a beginner you are GUARANTEED to get it wrong. Testing can do more than just tell you when your hive is approaching death, but also can explain why some hives do better than others, and over time you may learn something of mite population dynamics, which will help your management choices.

Ray, you won't treat chemically. But you mention your are planning on some mite management measures. To quote - "My main approaches to keeping bees in my hives are to avoid artificial feed when possible, use brood breaks judiciously, make backup nucs, add feral genetics, and in the future import genetics from resistant lines". Knowing what's going on with mite populations would help you in these management choices, rather than just blindly doing them. For example, those resistant queens you are planning to get, why not, if a hive is losing the battle with mites, use one of those queens to requeen the hive, instead of letting it die.

I guess, I'm from a commercial background so only deal in success, and one way or another, somehow make that happen. Anything else, is not viable commercially. A small beekeeper can lose a hive or two, shrug their shoulders and move on. But now I have some treatment free hives, and the related poor performance and even total losses, I've realised the huge cost of this to my operation. I'm trying to make money. But losing hives and poor hives, directly hold me back. not just a loss of any growth but something has to use resources from other hives, to be replaced. The cost is huge. The winter we are in now, I think I'm going to lose a lot of the TF hives. Next year, I've decided I cannot just keep carrying this investment that is largely non productive. I am going to reduce TF hive numbers next year and hold them at whatever survived, plus maybe some small natural increase, but not put resources into bringing about big increase.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> Are you saying that your strategy is a brood break given to only the hives with the highest mite counts?
> 
> Why wouldn't it be better to give all your hives a prophylactic brood break?


not exactly ray. i was able to replace last year's losses (6/18) with 'spare' hives that i had from splits and caught swarms. this year i want to make up 20-30 nucs to overwinter. those hives with the highest mite counts will be the most likely candidates for frames of bees to make up my mating nucs with.

it's an evolving plan, but i'll likely pinch the queens in the heavily infested hives, wait a couple of weeks until most of the brood has emerged, give them a powdered sugar dusting, make up mating nucs with 2-3 frames of bees each, and requeen.

i've only one colony that has been showing dwv all season, so it's a likely candidate for splitting and requeening.

i've also caught 7 swarms so far this year, and will likely use some of those bees for splits as well. 

since i'm experimenting to see if infestation rate is a predictor of survival, i don't mind leaving a few with high mite counts alone to see what happens. since my bees are where i can see them throughout the day, i can guard against robbing.


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

since i'm experimenting to see if infestation rate is a predictor of survival, i don't mind leaving a few with high mite counts alone to see what happens. since my bees are where i can see them throughout the day, i can guard against robbing. 
Squarepeg,,,,,,,,,seems to me, that is a good path to follow. Probably think I'm out to lunch, but, if I had an otherwise healthy hive with a high mite count, last thing I would do is re queen. Pressure evokes adaptation. I believe bees have to not only deal with mites, but the maladies they vector. Just MHO and I'm ducking
Rick


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## Proskene (Mar 15, 2013)

You have people talking. . that almost always is a good thing. I agree with much of what you have said. I have a swarm in my backyard in a Langstroth. I really do believe that bees are teaching us about money. The less we crave money, the better off they will bee. I will however say this, ancient hominids were smoking hives. . . for a reason.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Rick 1456 said:


> Squarepeg,,,,,,,,,seems to me, that is a good path to follow. Probably think I'm out to lunch, but, if I had an otherwise healthy hive with a high mite count, last thing I would do is re queen. Pressure evokes adaptation. I believe bees have to not only deal with mites, but the maladies they vector. Just MHO and I'm ducking
> Rick


yes rick, this is the counterpoint that i have gotten regarding my plan. for me its a balance between giving them that opportunity come up with an adaptation vs. losing resources and risking spread.

this is why i am interested in mite counts, and if they are a good predictor, it will make the decision a little easier.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Rick 1456 said:


> Probably think I'm out to lunch, but, if I had an otherwise healthy hive with a high mite count, last thing I would do is re queen. Pressure evokes adaptation.
> 
> Rick


You know, I agree, and maybe that's a good reason to do mite counts even if you don't treat! I think it unreasonable to expect to get rid of mites, and that the only realistic hope is for bees that can co-exist with mites. Maybe when I'm a little further along in my learning curve, and want to try to start breeding more resistant bees, I _will _start doing mite counts.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yes ray, that's the goal. my bees are derived from feral cut outs and the lineage has survived mites treatment free for 16 years. this is my fourth season and i've only seen collapse from mites on one occasion. my hope is to take these bees and propagate from the best of them. the mite count is just one of the measures i'll be using.

i noticed a fair number of novices last fall and winter asking for help in diagosing their deadouts. very few had taken mite counts, which made the determination speculative at best.

it's really a pretty easy test to perform, and i think it will be interesting to see what levels of mites treatment free bees are co-existing with.


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

I didn't do mite counts last fall. Shame on me. Fall before I did. Some DWV but counts were single digits. This was August. I tell this story a lot on this forum but it changed my bee keeping world. And,,,,it is the only one I have like it so far LOL That spring, I caught a swarm. Did well till late summer. Lots of DWV in front of the hive. Hive population was dwindling. Did an alcohol wash mite count. Stopped counting at forty. Man I was bummed. Majority advice was to just treat, or they would die. I thought about bagging them because I needed the resources for some of my other hives. A few advised to see what happens, you never know. Made it through the winter, exploded late spring and pretty sure they swarmed. They made a new queen at least as the swarm queen was marked. Slow on the spring build up this year but are doing fine. 
Whatever works for you and your bees and makes the hobby, in my case, enjoyable and worth it.  
Rick


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i would never say 'shame on you'...... 

and i agree with to each his/her own! cool story rick. :thumbsup:


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Yes I had a case maybe 6 weeks ago, giving my small cell TF nucs a pre winter check plus feeding if need be. Mite wise, most were OK ish, 3 or 4 not. One was really bad, all brood dead from PMS, plenty sick bees with DWV, and bee cluster not much bigger than my fist. 

However in keeping with the bond method I didn't do anything for it. Hardly had any honey but I didn't feed it as I didn't want it to get robbed when it died.

Went back to that yard a few days ago, and went to throw that nuc on the truck to take home to protect the comb from moths, but noticed a bee fly in. Opened it, amazing. all dead brood removed, and a healthy little patch of good brood being raised. All sickly and DWV bees gone, and the fistful of bees in the hive were acting healthy and happy. It's definitely going to make the winter, so I fed it.

I've heard of this kind of thing happening to others, but just never thought it would happen to me, so glad I have seen this. The other varroa overun nucs though, well, they are dead, or so few bees there is no way they will make it.

So. How to know with a sick hive, if they will be able to pull this survival trick? That is the million dollar question I would like to know.

In any case, I'll be watching this nuc with interest next season. I am torn whether to breed from it. Yes, they survived being overrun by mites. But it's a slightly more aggressive bee, I could not sell such a bee.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

very cool ot. so this is a one out of how many occurrence?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

As a treater, I never let things get this bad so have never seen this. Since having some TF hives I have let them die, but that is what always has happened, they died, no last minute recovery.

Of these nucs, there were 21, with 3 or 4 at critical mite levels and showing it. The worst, which I thought had no hope at all, has recovered, the other bad ones have died or will die (too few bees to have any chance now). I'm going to monitor them monthly through winter just to keep up with what's happening.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood ot, but you've been operating your tf yard for some time now, so could you muster a guess as to how many colonies over that time you identified as critical that didn't make it compared to this one?

i don't want be misunderstood, i think it's awesome that a colony can pull it out like that, and i agree it furthers natural adaptation. for my goals the bond method isn't practical because i am trying to be productive, although i'm happy that it is occuring in the nearby feral colonies that they might contribute those adaptations to my gene pool.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Understood. All other hives that have got to a bad point, have just continued on down hill and died. This is the only one to have recovered in this way.

And I understand what you are saying about being productive. With the high losses I've had in the TF hives recently, which is a major cost, I have been wondering about scrapping the TF program altogether. there seemed no light at the end of the tunnel. But then this happened so I'll continue.

But I'm not expanding TF hive numbers any more, so far they have hardly earned me a nickel. Not just due to deaths, but poor production. TF hive numbers can stay where they are, and I'll just see what happens.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> So. How to know with a sick hive, if they will be able to pull this survival trick? That is the million dollar question I would like to know.


It is not a million dollar question, all you got to do is wait it out. The survivors will tell you. If you don't wait it out it will always be a guessing game.


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

I had a somewhat similar experience this week OT. Not a tf hive….but one of last year’s boomers. Checked in late March…end of winter here…..and there were only a handful of bees and a nonlaying queen. Not a quorum for a new queen, so I planned to shake them out in the yard. As the bed of the truck was already overflowing with stuff, I decided to shake them out on my next visit….which turned into several visits later. This week I arrived at the yard with room to spare, started disassembling the hive and discovered two frames of solid brood and a laying queen. Six weeks ago, if you had told me that this colony would recover….I’d have laughed. It was one of those eye opening….step back….and wonder…..how many of these have I shaken out in the past?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Acebird said:


> It is not a million dollar question, all you got to do is wait it out. The survivors will tell you. If you don't wait it out it will always be a guessing game.


It's a million dollar question cos it would be worth a lot of money to know. If you are in bees as a business, you cannot wait it out, unless you want to go broke.

I have only realised just how much being treatment free actually costs, since I've tried it. It's not so much about money spent, as about money you don't make. Which if bees are just a hobby, would pass unnoticed.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Good story Dan.

Yup we've probably all done that a few times.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

dan i know you know what you're doing but i have to ask,

could it be that a swarm has taken over this hive?


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

I actually had gotten a plastic trash bag in hand,,,,,,,and was headed out the door when I just changed my mind/ decided to let nature take it course. Last year early spring, I gave a queenless hive a frame of eggs from that 40 count hive. The queen seemed to do well but the bees superceded her. I took a QC and made a nuc. This was late June. Not a big nuc but some stores, pollen, capped brood to give them a fair shot.( (The parent hive did not survive winter. Ran out of stores. (another story)They expanded quickly from my experience. Instead of putting them in a ten frame, I just stacked another five frame deep on top. First part of september we were getting some fall flow so I put another five frame on. They really did well IMO. Over wintered like that. This spring, I moved them into a double eight frame deep. Not an impressive spring build up but a swarm in july ain't worth a fly. They are doing fine right now. She would be great grand daughter. 
Also, took that nuc to a different location before she emerged to mate with different drone pool 
Rick


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

Daniel Y said:


> Every time I read one of these "They do fine in nature" posts I think of the wild horses we have here. They do so well that they regularly have to round them up to thin the herds. they cannot be sold for $100 each. most of them cannot even be given away. The corrals they are kept in have grown from 2 to 12 in the past 10 years alone. and that is at just one adoption center. Last year on my way to one of my fields I passed over 45 horses standing on the side of the road. close enough I could have reached out and touched them. People will not even go to the effort to try and catch them. They are like weeds. no one wants them. That is pretty much how I see feral hives.



Horses are something I actually know about, as you can see from my signature. And what everyone seems to be missing in this argument about "natural" vs "managed" is that feral horses have, according to the BLM, an average lifespan of 10-15 years. I can tell you from long-term copious personal experience that domestic horses have an average lifespan of 25-35 years and some breeds live into their 40s. So which would you rather be--the romanticized "wild" horse dead at 10 or the comfortable, cared-for domestic who lives well into his 30s?

Now my experience with bees is not so in-depth, but I have read that the average feral hive manages to live 2-3 seasons. I have personally had hives that were continuously occupied by the same descendents for 10 years until a hurricane got them. So which hive would you rather be a part of--the feral one or the one where a beekeeper actually works to help you survive? Maybe his efforts aren't as successful as they could be, but they do seem to offer more longevity than the feral girls get being all on their own.

Fact is once I've dumped my bugs into their box, I feel a moral obligation to them. I feel responsible for their well-being. I feel a duty to do the best by them that I know how to do. Maybe my best isn't going to help them at all, but I feel obliged to try.

JMO


Rusty

edited to add that the other thing that bothers me about the whole "leave them alone" thing is that many of the problems bees are currently dealing with are problems we humans created, such as pesticides, mite problems, SHB, poor forage. Yes, I did say we are responsible for mite/SHB problems. After all, how did we get these problems? WE imported them and now the bees have to live with our mistakes. All of this is why I feel obliged to try to do something about the mess we humans created for the bees instead of just shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Oh just let them be bees and live naturally." That's what they were able to do BEFORE we made the mess. Now I think we owe it to them to clean up that mess, either through treatment or by breeding bees that can handle mites. Personally, I opt for the 2nd option and that is what I am trying to do in my own small way. Maybe someday they actually WILL be able to go back to living naturally IF we do our part.

As always, JMO!


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## beemandan (Dec 5, 2005)

squarepeg said:


> dan i know you know what you're doing but i have to ask,
> 
> could it be that a swarm has taken over this hive?


Never...not for a single moment...EVER....believe that I know what I'm doing.
It crossed my mind. Such a thing surely happened to one of its neighbors last year. A queenless hive, overrun with hive beetles. I was so po'd that I dropped the cover back on and stormed away. Came back two weeks later to clean up the mess....and the hive was FULL of bees and brood...and not a beetle to be found. I couldn't conjure up any other explanation.
But....this year's hive....if it was a swarm that moved in....it was a small one. Could it be? Yep. Do I think so? Nope.


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Rusty Hills Farm said:


> All of this is why I feel obliged to try to do something about the mess we humans created for the bees instead of just shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Oh just let them be bees and live naturally." That's what they were able to do BEFORE we made the mess. Now I think we owe it to them to clean up that mess, either through treatment or by breeding bees that can handle mites. Personally, I opt for the 2nd option...


Me too. I have a feeling that many of the treatments people try are actually making the problems worse. We've been in a long spiral of problems, and every solution seems to carry within it the seeds of the next problem.

I look at this from the perspective of an organic gardener. Folks who are skeptical and not well-informed about that philosophy tend to think it's all about just not spraying for bugs, or using slightly less destructive pesticides. Or using cow manure instead of ammonium nitrate. But that's not the essence of the method. That essence is the idea that you feed the _soil_ instead of the plant, make that soil healthy and alive, avoid damaging its microbial life, and the plants you grow in that soil will be able to withstand pests and diseases. It actually does work. It works even in the case of imported pests and diseases which devastate gardens in which the health of the soil is not the focus.

I think that the same philosophy could be usefully applied to the hive, which like the soil in a garden is an entire ecosystem of interdependent life forms. Treatments, in my view, are like bludgeons that takes out much more than the stuff you want to kill. 

I suppose that if someone could offer me a plausible example of a treatment which permanently eliminated a parasite or a disease from beedom, I might take a different view. But it seems to me that the only longterm solutions have involved better bees (tracheal mites, for example.)

Bees are a kind of livestock with a very high reproductive rate. It makes sense to me that they will just have to evolve resistance to these pests, and I think there's evidence that they can. 

They've been on the earth for millions of years, and it seems impossible that they have not met and triumphed over formidable challenges many times in the past. I fear that our efforts to help them may be making it harder for them to meet the most recent challenges they've faced.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

> Bees are a kind of livestock with a very high reproductive rate. It makes sense to me that they will just have to evolve resistance to these pests, and I think there's evidence that they can.


I know that they can, but where is it written that we can't help the process along a bit? What is so terrible about trying to breed a bee that can withstand the ills they are now facing? Why are we supposed to sit on our hands and do nothing and just wait for them to "evolve" or "survive"? We've got pretty good brains and I sincerely believe we can think our way through our current problems and find helpful solutions.



> They've been on the earth for millions of years, and it seems impossible that they have not met and triumphed over formidable challenges many times in the past. I fear that our efforts to help them may be making it harder for them to meet the most recent challenges they've faced.


Yes, they have. But this time most of their problems are of our making, which is why I feel strongly that sitting on our hands is not an option this time. 

I like your organic slant on this. But as an organic gardener, personally I look for varieties that have resistance to pests so that I'll still get a crop even though I don't spray. Good soil does do a lot but so does breeding in some resistance!

JMO


Rusty


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Rusty Hills Farm said:


> I know that they can, but where is it written that we can't help the process along a bit? What is so terrible about trying to breed a bee that can withstand the ills they are now facing? Why are we supposed to sit on our hands and do nothing and just wait for them to "evolve" or "survive"?


I would never advocate doing nothing. I think we should all be breeding for varroa resistance. But treatment is a hindrance to that process, in my opinion, in several ways. Treatment props up weak genetics, for example. If you treat, how do you know whether a certain line of bees is surviving because it is resistant? It might be surviving because you treated. Another way that treatment hinders the process is that it damages the hive's interior ecology-- some of the beneficial organisms die right along with the mites. You might have a line of bees that could survive if hive conditions were optimal, but you treated, so you'll never know because hive conditions are no longer optimal. And then there's the matter of increasing resistance in the mites. You might say that won't matter if the goal is to not use acaricides some distant day, but you don't know what strategy the mites may evolve to protect themselves from the poison-- it might lead to a more virulent mite that would prevent or delay the development of bees that can co-exist with the mites without treatment.

I think breeding better bees is the *only* long term solution. I should have made that clearer.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

rhaldridge said:


> Treatment props up weak genetics, for example.


I hear that argument a lot. But it's flawed, at least in relation to the present situation with farmed bees. Because among other reasons, bees have more than one gene.

If you allow a genetic line of bees to die, along with the bad, you lose the good.

I do not believe, that of all the bees that have been lost to varroa, that they contained only bad genes, and no good ones have been lost. Treating for varroa has allowed the breeding of varroa resistant bees of various types, now being used by treatment free beekeepers, that wouldn't have happened had they never been treated, they would have died before the good genetics were put together in one bee.

The US has millions of farmed hives. Any backyarder with 2 hives who think that letting one of their hives live or die is going to affect the US gene pool in any significant way, is dreaming. Those with resistant bees, are reaping the benefits of work that has already been done by professionals, much as they often like to claim the credit themselves.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

> I do not believe, that of all the bees that have been lost to varroa, that they contained only bad genes, and no good ones have been lost. Treating for varroa has allowed the breeding of varroa resistant bees of various types, now being used by treatment free beekeepers, that wouldn't have happened had they never been treated, they would have died before the good genetics were put together in one bee.


I believe this as well, and I admit that I am fearful that the good genetics we so desperately need are being senselessly squandered in the rush to become treatment-free. It's kinda like we're running with scissors before we've really mastered how to walk.

I do like the organic gardening analogy. It IS all about the soil. But the gardener works hard to build up that soil using every tool in his organic arsenal from compost to ground rock minerals. He feeds his soil just as we should be feeding our hives. He uses resistant seed/stock and treats them using safe, organic solutions to problems and we should be doing that with our bees. There is NOTHING hands-off about organic gardening and there should not be anything hands-off about keeping bees. Just as the organic gardener doesn't use chemical treatments to help his garden flourish, we don't need them either. BUT there are many, many things we CAN do--non-chemical things that are helpful. They aren't cure-alls but they certainly are legitimate weapons in our arsenals. Oil traps and sugar dusting are the first things that come to mind, but there are others and we should be actively looking for them INSTEAD of grabbing the invasive treatments that come in a box or a sprayer or letting the hive flounder and die. We need to start SAVING the good genetics while we're overcoming the bad.

As always, JMO!

Rusty


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## madasafish (Aug 24, 2010)

Anyone suggesting sugar dust treatment sf bees is "natural" and not treatment is of course kidding themselves.

I tried non treatment - never again. The losses are too large...


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> Those with resistant bees, are reaping the benefits of work that has already been done by professionals, much as they often like to claim the credit themselves.


The amount of artificially inseminated bees in the world compared to natural breeding is a spit in the ocean. So if you think the gene pool is affected in any significant way by mankind's selection you are dreaming. The millions of farmed hives are a result of natural breeding. Beekeepers guess at selection traits. Nature decides what happens.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

Of course it is a treatment--just not an invasive chemical one. We NEED some treatments. They need to be safe and not harmful to the hive. Just as I don't let the bugs eat my tomatoes, I won't let the varroa "eat" my bees. I just don't poison my tomatoes to kill the bugs and I don't poison my bees either. I either pick off the hornworms or I use soapy water to wash off the ants, etc. and that is what I am suggesting doing with the bees--using safe treatments.

JMO

Rusty


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Acebird said:


> The amount of artificially inseminated bees in the world compared to natural breeding is a spit in the ocean. So if you think the gene pool is affected in any significant way by mankind's selection you are dreaming. The millions of farmed hives are a result of natural breeding. Beekeepers guess at selection traits. Nature decides what happens.


Agree with the last part of your post but not the first. A lot of breeders have and do come from II stock. Their descendants are numerous.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

madasafish said:


> Anyone suggesting sugar dust treatment sf bees is "natural" and not treatment is of course kidding themselves.
> 
> I tried non treatment - never again. The losses are too large...


i'm not sure if that is in response to my mention of dusting in the previous post. but to clarify, i am not proposing dusting as a treatment for established colonies, but rather as a way to rid a mating nuc of phoretic mites before introducing a queen cell in order to give that nuc a 'fresh' start.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

> The amount of artificially inseminated bees in the world compared to natural breeding is a spit in the ocean. So if you think the gene pool is affected in any significant way by mankind's selection you are dreaming. The millions of farmed hives are a result of natural breeding. Beekeepers guess at selection traits. Nature decides what happens.


So we should just do nothing? Hey, WE made this mess. Shouldn't we at least TRY to solve it?!? Of course, it is always easier to kick back and do nothing because the problem is so big. That's the easy way. The "safe" way. The cheap way. It's a whole lot harder to roll up the sleeves and go at it tooth and nail. So maybe I won't accomplish a thing. But at least I'll know I tried.

JMO

Rusty


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Rusty Hills Farm said:


> So we should just do nothing? Hey, WE made this mess. Shouldn't we at least TRY to solve it?!?


Every attempt to solve a mess that man has created creates a bigger mess. Leave it alone and nature will solve the mess that man has created. It just takes time.


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## Rusty Hills Farm (Mar 24, 2010)

My problem is that I don't think we have the time to wait. We are passing the tipping point on so many issues that even Earth cannot fix our messes anymore. It's time we stopped acting like spoiled children and started cleaning up after ourselves. Or--better yet--stop making the messes in the first place.


Rusty


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

I can have some influence in the gene pool in the little area where I keep bees. Two circular miles,,,,,80 plus thousand acres. In listening to the discussions, some have success, some do not. Lots of variables in there, a huge one is bee stock, but it would seem there are places the bees can be treatment free and places they can not. That's another million dollar question I wonder if my bees would do as well way down south??
We've walked on the Moon(rumor has it LOL ) landed a space vehicle on Mars,,,,,,,
Rick


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## rhaldridge (Dec 17, 2012)

Oldtimer said:


> Agree with the last part of your post but not the first. A lot of breeders have and do come from II stock. Their descendants are numerous.


And the only ones whose genetics are controlled are those descendants that are also II.

Unless you believe that all the feral bees are gone, the gene pool is still pretty deep. 

I think it takes an astounding lack of imagination to believe that this is the first time this species has faced a devastating challenge. In the millions of years before they were kept by human beings, they must have had many such encounters with pests and diseases for which they had no immediate answer. The fact that they have survived for such a long time in basically the same form as today should be a hopeful sign of the species' resilience.

Of course, as Rusty points out, there are uniquely difficult challenges now, chief among them is probably habitat loss. But I believe that beekeepers are part of the problem too, and that many of the wounds are self-inflicted. I can't think of any other plausible explanation for the fact that some highly skilled beekeepers who treat and feed in accordance with widely-accepted best practices still are losing large percentages of their colonies every year. Couple that with the fact that some who don't treat are experiencing lower losses, and it's a conundrum.

As for the idea that smalltimers can have no effect on bee breeding... well, the "I can't do much so why do anything?" rationale has always been a popular excuse for folks who prefer to believe in their own powerlessness. Besides that, you'd have to think that a lot of people are lying to you to accept that excuse. There are a number of people right here on this forum who claim to have developed resistant bees without access to thousands of colonies or II. There are even those barely beyond the smalltimer category that are selling no treatment (or low treatment) bees. I bought some this spring from Wolf Creek, which does only so-called soft treatments, such as essential oils. I may believe that such treatments do more harm than good, but the existence of this business seems to indicate that small apiaries can have an effect on breeding. Then there's the Fat Beeman, who makes a living selling similar bees. There are sideliners who don't treat, like Tim Ives, who gets a lot of honey from his hives, and has an average 8 percent winter loss in a fairly harsh climate. There's Solomon Parker here on this forum. There's Michael Bush, who may know a little about bees. Unless you can make yourself believe that all these people are conspiring to give you bad information, you have to take their existence into account when formulating your opinions.

You may now point out that I'm a beginner... and use this clever observation to avoid responding to my arguments. I'm used to it.


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

From Oldtimer: Personally I don't count mites, but I've been around long enough to recognise when there is a problem needs sorting. But I would not recommend this to a beginner you are GUARANTEED to get it wrong. Testing can do more than just tell you when your hive is approaching death, but also can explain why some hives do better than others, and over time you may learn something of mite population dynamics, which will help your management choices.


Oldtimer, will you share with us what you look for? I seldom count mites myself, and have been criticized for it.
I'm guessing:
1: fewer bees than other hives results in closer inspection, as which time you look at:
2: health of brood, and health of workers (any chalkbrood, sacbrood, dwv?)
3: do you look for mite feces in open cells?

I'm still learning about this as we only have had mites for a few years and I don't enjoy the process of counting mites. Care to enlighten us as to your methods?


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

the fact that bees have been around for millions of years and have obviously survived untold challenges was offset when langstroth revolutionized beekeeping and we now inflict artificial pressures on them are relatively new. i think that has more to do with why bees struggle than anything, along with increasing demand for decreasing habitat. 

i agree that we owe it to the bees to help them out since we have taken them out of their natural element. i don't criticize anyone for treating and i would do so also if my livelyhood depended on it. but even the experts acknowlege that treating carries the risk of impeding the development of natural resistance as well as the problem that treatments become ineffective over time.

the back and forth on this is revealing, and suggests to me that we find ourselves conflicted during what could be described as a transition period. for mites in particular, progress is being made by the bees and their keepers, and i am optomistic by this trend.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

>So which would you rather be--the romanticized "wild" horse dead at 10 or the comfortable, cared-for domestic who lives well into his 30s?

I know what I'd like to be, and it agrees with what the horse would choose, and what the people of New Hampshire would choose if they actually believed their own motto... but apparently doesn't agree with what you would choose... but that has nothing to do with bees...

>I look at this from the perspective of an organic gardener. Folks who are skeptical and not well-informed about that philosophy tend to think it's all about just not spraying for bugs, or using slightly less destructive pesticides. Or using cow manure instead of ammonium nitrate. But that's not the essence of the method. That essence is the idea that you feed the soil instead of the plant, make that soil healthy and alive, avoid damaging its microbial life, and the plants you grow in that soil will be able to withstand pests and diseases.

That is exactly the perspective of treatment free beekeeping. A bee colony is not just bees, it's an ecosystem and that whole system is disrupted every time you treat. A healthy system is what keeps the bees healthy.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfoursimplesteps.htm#ecology
http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmorethan.htm


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Gino45 said:


> Oldtimer, will you share with us what you look for? I seldom count mites myself, and have been criticized for it.
> I'm guessing:
> 1: fewer bees than other hives results in closer inspection, as which time you look at:
> 2: health of brood, and health of workers (any chalkbrood, sacbrood, dwv?)
> 3: do you look for mite feces in open cells?


This is an interesting subject and I know my own views are a minority, and I'm fine with being disagreed with, each to their own method, no worries. So I'll just say what I do and why but I'm not trying to convert anyone, mite counting is fine, good even. 

The perspective I'm coming from is of an ex commercial beekeeper. I had to look after a lot of hives, one outfit I worked for had more than a thousand hives per man. Under those circumstances you are forced to become a " lazy beekeeper", ie, you have to use the quickest and fastest method for everything. Longer and more intricate procedures might be great in theory, the reality though is that they won't happen if you want to get all the hives done.

Even for a small beekeeper, the faster and easier you can make a task, the more likely you will actually do it.

When I got back into bees as a hobby I did count mites, and found it great for my education. It is not 100% accurate though. I noticed on my drop boards, one day there might be say, 20 mites. I'd put the board back without cleaning it, but next day there would be no mites. Where did they go? One day I found ants removing them. Maybe it was that, don't know. If you sugar dust 2 jars of bees from the same hive, it's likely you will get 2 different results. Alcohol wash is likely the most reliable. But it doesn't take into account seasonal factors, for example in late fall you test your bees and get a certain number. A few weeks later you test again and get a massively increased number. Did the mites increase that much? No. The bees stopped raising brood, so the 80% of mites that used to be in the brood are now phoretic, and show in the alcohol wash. These things make interpretation of counting results open to subjectivity. 

Mite counts do not reveal virus levels in hives, and it is viruses do the real damage.

Having said all that I fully recommend anyone starting out does mite counts. You need to do this to learn about mite population dynamics.

But what I do now, is go by what's actually happening in the hive, and this will be the combined effect of mite levels, virus levels, and ability of the particular bee in that hive to deal with these things.
The big giveaway a hive is in trouble is PMS (parasitic mite syndrome) in the brood. You will see some abnormal looking cappings, and when you poke a stick in the larva is dead. There will also be dead larvae that didn't get to the capping stage. Some of them look like sac brood, and some of them are still white. If you poke a stick in & do a ropiness test, they don't rope, so you know it is not AFB. 
Visible PMS in the brood indicates the hive is at a critical level, regardless of what the mite count says, as PMS is an indicator of the combined effect of mites plus viruses. Most bee larvae can tolerate one foundress mite in the cell with it. When mite population builds to the point that many worker larvae have two, or more, foundress mites in the cell with them, they cannot cope. the mites, plus their viruses, kill the larvae. This starts a downward spiral that can be pretty quick. Less larvae hatch, the hive gets smaller and has less brood. Mites are forced to go even more to a cell with the larvae, soon little / no brood survives to hatching, the hive dies.

The other main thing I look for is DWV, an easily seen mite associated virus.

Just the bee behaviour, ie excessive cleaning and looking " uncomfortable", can indicate mites. The hive can have a general kind of demoralised look to it.

If a hive with PMS and DWV is treated so mites are removed, provided the hive is not too far gone, ie, there are enough bees to survive till some healthy brood emerges, the PMS and DWV will disappear, evidencing that these viruses are symbiotic with mites.

Mite faeces in cells are also a giveaway, me, I don't look for them too much purely because my eyesight is not as crisp as it used to be. 

As a backyard queen breeder my goals with mites are different to those of a honey producer. A honey producer wants no mites, so his hives are performing at maximum. Me, I'm wanting to breed from the best bees, and only way to know which ones are best, in terms of mites, is to allow mites relatively free reign so I can find out which hives suffer badly (don't breed from those), and which hives do well. So going by actual damage to the hives, rather than a pure mite count, is the most useful tool to me, and is faster than doing mite counts as I can check during the normal course of working the hive. 

Really what we want is bees that are not damaged by mites. So my method, is the best method for me. But for people starting out, counting mites is likely best, as these other signs can easily be missed. After a few years of counting mites and noting the effects on the hives of various mite levels, a person can switch to not counting mites, but only if that works for them. I'm convinced that different people see hives in different ways.


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## Moonfire (Apr 2, 2013)

libhart said:


> I also question the genetic solution when buying treatment free survivor bees from anywhere but very close by. Sure there are genetics that allow bees to be able to better handle the problems they face, mites in particular, but I think location has a huge role in the survival of treatment free bees. I think an interesting (although essentially logistically impossible) experiment would be for successful treatment free beekeepers to bring two hives to where treatment free beekeepers have a low success rate and keep them there, testing those bees in that location vs their own successful location.


so check this out.. If I ( a treatment free beekeeper ) raise a good stock of untreated healthy bees and sell them to other local treatment free beekeepers, who in turn sell them to other treatment free beekeepers and so on and so forth... eventually "local" becomes a very large area indeed!! and that my friend is the whole point that should be broadcast here!! Survivor bees from one region can in fact over time have relatives in other regions!! I call it spreading the love!!


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

The idea has merit, let's hope it happens.

At this point I can count the number of successful TF beekeepers on my fingers, and they don't represent a lot of hives.

However I do believe progress is being made, and don't think it's impossible we may one day beat the mite. IMHO, we should not just shoot for bees that live in balance with mites, that would be an outcome of just letting nature taking it's course. With human intervention we can do better than that, and have done with other species we farm.


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## Acebird (Mar 17, 2011)

Oldtimer said:


> At this point I can count the number of successful TF beekeepers on my fingers, and they don't represent a lot of hives.


That you know. I would hazard a guess that there are many more that you don't know.

If a gardener grows some food to eat is he successful or is he a failure because he cannot grow enough food to be self sufficient. 

Many of your methods and what you say is logical but as you have said your background is commercial beekeeping so when you use the word successful you are thinking from where you came. I think everyone that is practicing treatment free is trying to help the bees in their own way.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Agree.


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## Rick 1456 (Jun 22, 2010)

One has to define what "success" is when it comes to bee keeping. That can be/is a wide range of answers. I suspect it is, at least in part, why there are some many views on TF as well as other bee keeping subjects. A person with two hives in their back yard vs part timer vs commercial. Certainly healthy to talk about. Lots of good ideas come from that 
Rick


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## Gino45 (Apr 6, 2012)

Excellent answer! Thank you! Or, as we say here, Mahalo! What do the Maoris say?


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Gino you are Polynesian? Maoris would say kapai, ='s good, nice one, or similar, this word has been incorporated into NZ English, many Europeans would not use it, but would know what it means. There are some words the same in Hawaii & Maori, likely because orally handed down Maori history says they came from a place called Hawaiiki, probably Hawaii. When Maoris die, their spirits travel to the northern most part of NZ, and from there return to Hawaiiki.


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## virginiawolf (Feb 18, 2011)

I like reading this forum. It makes me believe that despite so many things that may have become worse for the bees that the beekeepers all of us will be the ones that save the bees in the long run. What I have learned from my approach was that at first my bees died partly because of rookie mistakes. Then the next year I tried some" Survivor bees" Local bees that had survived one season that someone gave me. Then I tried package italians from Georgia. Very different bees from my first Russian Nucs I bought. Then I learned to raise a few queens and see that the brood break did seem to make the mites disappear that I was seeing. I got some Late season queens from Russells and fed them to give them stores for winter. Some survived some didn't. I raised some more queens and used swarm cells to make little hives before winter and surprisingly some of the tiny hives that I thought wouldn't make it made it through winter which was long. I didn't need 90lbs of honey like I thought. 60% got through winter on like a medium or a shallow of honey. Survivors included queens reared in the summer. They had barely any time to build up so I fed them and they made it fine. Now I have several different queens from different places and I am raising like 8 queens plus from survivors. I am counting on the brood break which seems to knock the mites back considerably to ease mite pressure. I plan to keep breeding off of surviviors and then each spring during swarm season just split my hives and keep them in fresh clean wax with no treatments. I am optimistic that with a coninuous attention to rearing new queens from hives that seem to handle mites well will work well. I am kind of following the Mel Disselkoen philosophy of splitting and re generating a queen during the honey flow to give the bees a chance to break brood and store honey. I am optimistic that as we all experiment and try new things our odds of developing treatment free strains will increase.

Starting the bees with the plan of low management may work well. It will give a reference of what low management results in. Then research can be sought and utilized. We are all trying to keep our bees alive and healthy so we can support eachother as we try things and that is invaluable. It takes time to build up your stocks and try different set ups. We are here for eachother so we can come up with great improvements. Good stuff.
VW


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## GLOCK (Dec 29, 2009)

virginiawolf said:


> I like reading this forum. It makes me believe that despite so many things that may have become worse for the bees that the beekeepers all of us will be the ones that save the bees in the long run. What I have learned from my approach was that at first my bees died partly because of rookie mistakes. Then the next year I tried some" Survivor bees" Local bees that had survived one season that someone gave me. Then I tried package italians from Georgia. Very different bees from my first Russian Nucs I bought. Then I learned to raise a few queens and see that the brood break did seem to make the mites disappear that I was seeing. I got some Late season queens from Russells and fed them to give them stores for winter. Some survived some didn't. I raised some more queens and used swarm cells to make little hives before winter and surprisingly some of the tiny hives that I thought wouldn't make it made it through winter which was long. I didn't need 90lbs of honey like I thought. 60% got through winter on like a medium or a shallow of honey. Survivors included queens reared in the summer. They had barely any time to build up so I fed them and they made it fine. Now I have several different queens from different places and I am raising like 8 queens plus from survivors. I am counting on the brood break which seems to knock the mites back considerably to ease mite pressure. I plan to keep breeding off of surviviors and then each spring during swarm season just split my hives and keep them in fresh clean wax with no treatments. I am optimistic that with a coninuous attention to rearing new queens from hives that seem to handle mites well will work well. I am kind of following the Mel Disselkoen philosophy of splitting and re generating a queen during the honey flow to give the bees a chance to break brood and store honey. I am optimistic that as we all experiment and try new things our odds of developing treatment free strains will increase.
> 
> Starting the bees with the plan of low management may work well. It will give a reference of what low management results in. Then research can be sought and utilized. We are all trying to keep our bees alive and healthy so we can support eachother as we try things and that is invaluable. It takes time to build up your stocks and try different set ups. We are here for eachother so we can come up with great improvements. Good stuff.
> VW
> View attachment 6107


Well said BEE SOURCE is great.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yep, good post vw.

i think that even when you start with 'good' bees, it takes a few seasons of selecting and propagating from the best ones to end up with good stock.

plus, the beekeeper has a chance to get the hang of it and hopefully learns how not to get in the bees' way too much.

getting nice supply of drawn comb comes in handy as well.


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## Tom Davidson (Mar 20, 2012)

I try and intervene as little as possible ... but I paid the price for not opening often enough this spring when small hive beetles had other plans for 5 of my spring starts. Word to the wise.


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## dfortune (Aug 10, 2012)

Nice experiment if you have that kind of money to blow.


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

I haven't treated my bees since I started into this hobby 8 yrs ago. Starting out with a couple of hives that way resulted in major losses. I now keep around 20 hives and expect to loose around a 1/3 every winter, which I'm ok with. I think the key to going treatment free is to get the queen out of there and let it go broodless for 30 days. I do this by selling nucs with the over wintered queen and also by doing splits.


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## Tom Davidson (Mar 20, 2012)

Spencer, that's my tact as well. I stumbled into a bizarre but wonderful situation this spring. One of my most bountiful hives had gone queenless. I found a queen by herself in a dead hive I hadn't gotten around to cleaning out. Apparently she was confused when returning from a mating flight. Based on my calendar she was in there for at least 2 weeks by herself (how could she have survived?), OR I overlooked a new queen in another hive. Anyway, that queenless hive? Since it had no brood, it had stored nothing but nectar and starting capping like wildfire in all of its frames, every single one. I combined with another strong hive (I bungled releasing the lone survivor queen into that hive, she flew away) and all is well. I'm now going to institute a queenless situation in my hives each spring with little or no brood, keeping the overwintered queens with their brood in nucs to sell or keep or recombine in 30 days. This queenless hive hadn't developed laying workers. How long does that take to occur? I'm suspecting that breaking the cycle when the fall flow is on also may help them build up stores for winter (and recombining after 30 days).

Is 30 days the appropriate time to significantly diminish the varroa count?


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

If you have eggs in the queenless hive the chances of developing a laying worker are few. I've only ever had a few laying worker hives and that was due to the bee yard being so far away.

I've never done a mite count so I'm not sure how much it drops it.


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## Nabber86 (Apr 15, 2009)

spencer said:


> I I think the key to going treatment free is to get the queen out of there and let it go broodless for 30 days. I do this by selling nucs with the over wintered queen and also by doing splits.


But how does that help breed mite resistant bees? I thought that was one of the goals of going treatment free.


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## spencer (Dec 7, 2004)

Breeding mite resistance bees isn't my goal. My goal is to get the bees through the winter so I will never have to buy package bees again. This method has worked for me now for 5 yrs.
For more info look up Mel Disselkoen.


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