# Sticky  Riverderwent Survival Treatment Free 2017



## bucksbees

Is your goal honey production or nucs, or a treatment free queen bloodline?

Looking foward to reading your log along with squarepeg.


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## Riverderwent

bucksbees said:


> Is your goal honey production or nucs, or a treatment free queen bloodline?


For some reason that makes me think about a cowboy being asked why he rode a bronco the way he did and him saying, "I was just trying to get to the other side of the corral without running into a clown." My primary goal is for the bees to teach me how to shepherd them in a sustainable way that will let them make a lot of honey for me without me treating them or feeding them. I don't want to fight against nature; I want to harness it and use it to get across the corral. Like a flu shot using the body's natural defenses, not an antibiotic working directly on the bacteria.

My goal is not so much to produce honey as it is to husband bees that are capable of producing honey at economically viable levels without treatment for varroa and without systematic feeding. I want them to feed me, not me to feed them. 

Having said that, it's hard to use husbandry to raise productive bees without producing quite a bit of honey. Someone who trains bird dogs is going to end up with some quail. I sell nucs, and I sell honey. I also do cutouts particularly looking for longstanding colonies with good genetics -- mining for genetic gems. I also trap swarms, and I enjoy building beekeeping woodwork. Thank you for asking. I don't know if I answered you question exactly, but that's why I keep bees and that's why I do it the way I do it. It's cheaper than golf.



> Looking foward to reading your log along with squarepeg.


I'm not in the same league as Squarepeg, but I'd like to be!


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## bucksbees

Riverderwent said:


> I don't know if I answered you question exactly, but that's why I keep bees and that's why I do it the way I do it.


Yes, you did, and now I understand the context.

To me Squarepeg has built a road map for others to one day learn from, one day, when I get above 100 hives, I hope to setup a treatment free out yard.


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## squarepeg

david, i'm glad to see you've started a thread to chronicle your experience keeping bees off treatments. we've got several pages of contributors on the 'tf member listing' sticky thread representing various locations around the country and the globe. in my opinion the more folks we have willing to report like this the better. i'm a firm believer that we can all benefit by learning from our collective successes and failures.

it really sounds like you and i have much in common with respect to our approaches. i too am mostly motivated by trying to be a good steward with the valuable resource that i find myself entrusted with for now. i don't feel the success i am having with the operation is due to anything in particular that i'm doing or not doing, but rather that i happen to have ended up with good bees in a good location.

our biggest difference is that we reside in completely different ecoregions. it's very encouraging to me to hear about populations of bees doing well off treatments in all of these different areas. it's my opinion that those populations can be built upon and have the potential in the long run to benefit the beekeeping community at large.

lastly, i am flattered with the kind comments by yourself and buck but as i mentioned in the op of my thread my sincere purpose for posting here is primarily for ground truthing vs. wanting to bring attention to myself. barry deserves all the credit for providing what i feel is the best forum available for the frank and honest discussion of this topic.

i'm very much looking forward to following your thread, thanks for starting it.


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## Nordak

Looking forward to the updates. Your 3 box configuration is what I'm going to be wintering in this year. Reassuring to see as I'm still a lang newb.


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## BEES4U

1st good luck in your project.

Can you provide information on your queen stock or genetics?
How close is your nearest apiary?
Is your annual precipitation over 20 plus inches?
What pesticides are applied near your apiary location.
Best regards,
Ernie


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## Fusion_power

Anywhere in Louisiana will have annual rainfall in the range of 40 to 60 inches.


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## BEES4U

40 to 60 inches is a lot more than our mere 8 last rain season and our 12.5 which has not been possible with an 8 year drought.
I am thinking of moving for more rain.
An area of high precipitation should be much easier to go TF because of lower stress on the bees.
Ernie


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> our biggest difference is that we reside in completely different ecoregions.


I believe that I am on the line between 8a and 8b.



Nordak said:


> Your 3 box configuration is what I'm going to be wintering in this year. Reassuring to see as I'm still a lang newb.


Keep an eye on their honey stores, particularly in late winter when it is warm enough for the bees to fly but there is little nectar coming in. My local mutts are frugal, but colonies with larger winter clusters will eat more.


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## squarepeg

i like looking at the terrestrial ecoregion map more so than the plant hardiness zones.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terrestrial_ecoregions_USA_CAN_MEX.svg

on this one you are in 48, or 'piney woods forests'.

my location is in 17, or 'appalachian mixed mesophytic forests'.

we are at about the same latitude so our seasons should be similar. 

another important similarity in my opinion is that both of our locations have vast expanses of wooded lands that host feral survivors.


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## bucksbees

I have done the same thing comparing my latitude to yours as well. Gives me an idea of the cross section and relation of climate. I lived in GA for a couple of years and seen alot of plants sharing the same biome.

I think your running log can be used by many along the gulf coast.


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## Riverderwent

BEES4U said:


> Can you provide information on your queen stock or genetics?


Most of my bees are feral survivors. I do a good number of cutouts and trap or catch swarms. We have some "swamp bees" in some river bottoms and wetland areas that remind me of feral hogs and are likely a few (or more) generations from tame. We have just enough rainfall to keep most, but not all, of the AHB genetic influence out. 

My best queens are from lines from a few gnarly old cutouts with good provenance. I have purchased a couple of Baton Rouge VSH queens to try them out. I've also bought a few Wooten queens to shift the curve a little in the direction of higher production and better manners. 



> How close is your nearest apiary?


Each yard is within foraging and mating range of both managed bees and feral populations. Some of those managed bees are typical commercial stock and some are feral mutts like mine.



> Is your annual precipitation over 20 plus inches?


51 inches.



> What pesticides are applied near your apiary location.


Suburban blend, a little cotton related. There is a fair amount of new housing developments, pasture, overgrown woods, and untilled land. I moved a yard that was near cotton fields and a crop dusting operation.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> I believe that I am on the line between 8a and 8b.
> 
> Keep an eye on their honey stores, particularly in late winter when it is warm enough for the bees to fly but there is little nectar coming in. My local mutts are frugal, but colonies with larger winter clusters will eat more.


Will do. Thanks. These bees were a swarm capture this year that seem a bit more brood heavy and lighter colored than the typical bee I'm used to seeing. Very productive. I'm a little paranoid about them. They by all appearances are doing well, will see what next year brings.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> i like looking at the terrestrial ecoregion map more so than the plant hardiness zones.
> 
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Terrestrial_ecoregions_USA_CAN_MEX.svg
> 
> on this one you are in 48, or 'piney woods forests'.


Well, I just learned something new.


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## Riverderwent

So, while I'm waiting for all my hives to die, I thought I might try to come up with a numbered answering system to try to be able to respond to most questions on Beesource with just a number instead of an actual verbal response, so:
1. Put a frame of eggs and very young larvae and see if they make queen cells.
2. PMS.
3. That means Parasitic Mite Syndrome.
4. They're starving. Give them a couple of frames of honey from a healthy hive.
5. Wait a couple of more weeks. It can take a virgin queen 21 days after emerging to mate and a few more days to start laying.
6. Laying workers. 
7. Just dump them out 150' from the other hives. 
8. DWV.
9. Don't feed them. They may become honey bound.
10. I wouldn't do anything.
11. Put the hive in full sun.
12. At least 80 lbs. in your location.
13. Suit up; there are AHB's in your area.
14. Africanized honey bees.
15. No, but you can send them off to a lab.
16. What difference does it make if they're that mean.
17. Email Cleo Hogan and ask for his instruction sheet.
18. Reduce the entrance.
19. Don't give up. You've learned a valuable lesson. Save all that drawn comb for next year.
20. That's normal for this time of year.
21. Some varieties of bees brood less than others.
22. Randy Oliver has an article about that on his website.
23. That's what Michael Palmer does.
24. Look at Michael Bush's website.
25. Thank you.


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## Nordak

10.


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## 1102009

10.


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## Riverderwent

Nordak said:


> 10.





SiWolKe said:


> 10.


25.


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## Fusion_power

37. The bees are all in bed asleep, why aren't you.


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## beepro

A classical case of insomnia 41. And bees don't go to sleep, you know on
the other post.


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## bucksbees

10

22


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## 1102009

http://www.neurobiologie.fu-berlin.de/menzel/menzel_sleep.html


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## Redhawk

Nice work, David. Didn't see anumber for that. Between you, SP, & Dar, I'm gonna learn something! I've been overly in loved with my local bee group lately & it just seems that they push so hard for treatment that sometimes I have to wonder who's financing this group. But there are a few of of still working tf so all is not lost. Best of luck!


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## Riverderwent

Redhawk said:


> Nice work, David. Didn't see anumber for that. Between you, SP, & Dar, I'm gonna learn something!


25.



> I've been overly in loved with my local bee group lately & it just seems that they push so hard for treatment that sometimes I have to wonder who's financing this group.


I doubt that there is foul play afoot. They are most likely well meaning folks working and trying to help others from the context of what they know and what they have experienced. We all have difficulty knowing the current limits of our own perspective.


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## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> In a couple of weeks, I plan to move some resources around and super the four frame nucs. I don't use sugar or syrup. This is my baseline for 2017.


In the last few days, we have bottled the last of our honey and checked all the hives. I was a little surprised that we still have twenty-five colonies and they are doing well. 

Three of the twenty-five colonies were from fall swarms. Two of those swarms were in small nucs -- single four frame medium depth boxes. The third fall swarm was in a swarm trap with seven medium frames. We transferred all three swarms into eight frame medium hives and added resources so that each of the swarms now has two eight frame medium boxes full of stores. We also moved around resources in the other twenty-two hives so that they each have plenty of honey for winter. Most of the twenty-five hives have three eight frame medium boxes. A few have either two or four boxes. All have good weight.


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## Riverderwent

The bees in two of our three yards were still bringing in a light colored pollen today.


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## squarepeg

nice reporting there david, many thanks. i build up my starter colonies for wintering with resources from the established ones in the same way.


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## Riverderwent

I knew what disease old pilots got: the flew. But beekeepers get the hives.


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## Riverderwent




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## squarepeg

hmm. obviously an infrared photo with the cluster centered in the second super and extending slightly into the supers above and below,

but what in the heck is causing the heat at the top gap?


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## Riverderwent

My poor carpentry and the bees' allowing the gap to remain for the time being for ventilation. A few bees were still flying today when I took pictures. This was with a Flir attachment and app on my phone. I was testing different camera settings.


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## squarepeg

ahh! very cool (i mean warm) david.


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## Redhawk

I bet you've got some duct tape around there some where. Nice photo though. With you phone??


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## Riverderwent

I re-read this Facebook post that I made last February: “Being supervised means that 911 gets called more quickly.” And I didn’t remember what I meant when I wrote it — until I read my comment below it: “Oh, it's not about me. It's just something I thought about yesterday while I was walking with a long metal pole underneath a power line on my way to get a swarm of bees from a gasoline pump without gloves or a veil.” True.


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## Riverderwent

According to this study: www.researchgate.net/publication/22...on_of_the_Parasitic_Mite_Varroa_jacobsoni_Oud (referring to relative humidity in the brood area):

"When relative humidity (RH) was set at 59–68%, on average, 53% of the mites produced offspring (N=174 mites); under 79–85% RH, only 2% (N = 127) of the mites reproduced. The difference in mite fertility was highly significant." 

In my location, for 90% of every day of year, the average highest relative humidity during the day is between about 88% and 100%. Likewise, on 90% of every day, the average low relative humidity is slightly below 50%. Here's a chart: 









Small changes in the reproductive success for varroa in conjunction with a few other variables could tip varroa levels to tolerable levels for some bees. Based on the above study of the effects of relative humidity, the ambient humidity in my area in conjunction with other factors such as using feral survivor bees and allowing brood breaks by not feeding during dearths, may be enough to tip the scale to allow bee colonies to maintain sublethal levels of varroa.


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## Daniel Y

On the idea of placing bees and expecting them to "Feed You". IF I where to put cattle to a pasture. there would first be a lot of evaluation of that pasture. basically is it adequate and healthy. Is there everything the cattle will need. What measures do you take to evaluate the bees ability to feed anyone in any particular location or numbers. IN regard to numbers. how do you evaluate how many hives can produce in a location as apposed to another. I know with other animals you can fairly well tell how many head can be placed in any given location. Any such evaluation for bee colonies?
Part of the reason I ask is that this method seems to be prone to blaming bees for things the keeper failed to do. put cattle in a pasture with no water and then call the cattle inferior when they die of thirst sort of effect. So I am seriously wondering what measures are taken to evaluate the environment and what potential that environment even offers for production.


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## Riverderwent

Daniel, you've jumped right to the nut of the thing. You might look at three variables, 1) area, 2) methods, and 3) capacity, and say, "I have these twenty acres, and I want to raise 100 head of cattle. How do I do it?" In that case, it is the method that varies. Or you might say, "I have these twenty acres and I want to raise cattle by rotational grazing. How many cattle can I raise?" In that instance, the capacity varies. (This is obviously a kind of gross over simplification for purposes of discussion.) 

Looking at the question of how much honey could I make in a particular bee yard using treatment free methods without routine feeding, I would look at, among other things, local land use, annual cycles of forage availability, and the density and productivity of existing hives in that area compared to the density and productivity of hives in similar areas. Where I am, fifteen miles can make a large difference in productivity. And for me at least, it's hard to really know until you try. The calculations are complicated (and made even more so by varying levels of risk associated with different scales of operation, purposes, resource availability, and even personal risk aversion). In my circumstances, I would just scale up as I climb the learning curve. I doubt that what I've said helps you much, but that's how I'd look at it.


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## Daniel Y

Thanks, actually helps more than you might think. I have been surprised by a location or two though. both for the good and bad. Plus it seems the target moves.


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## Riverderwent

Daniel Y said:


> Plus it seems the target moves.


The landscape is dynamic. But, over time, managed bees can actually increase the number of bee friendly plants in their range. Bees pollinate what they like, and what they pollinate spreads.


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## Riverderwent

My problem with small cell is that it is me telling the bees how to survive. I prefer foundationless frames in the brood chamber because, with my use of the hard Bond method, using foundationless allows the bees to tell me what size brood cells result in greater survival. This is working in conjunction with open breeding in an area with many feral colonies. These feral colonies are also self-selecting for the best brood cell size for survival. I could measure and track the size of brood cells in foundationless frames in strong hives as I go along. But the optimum size of brood cell for survival may be quite dependent on the variety of bee and the eco-region. So, saying 5.0mm foundation works best in northern Louisiana would not necessarily mean that it works best in southern Arizona, Kansas, or Vermont.


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## Daniel Y

My thought on the bees deciding how to survive is. This would be well and good and might even work well provided the bees actually know best how to survive. But I am not keeping bees for them to survive. I am keeping them for them to produce. and at least to some extent if production requires they die. then I will see of that can work for being profitable.


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## squarepeg

happy new year david. i see you are taking 25 colonies into winter this year, any losses yet?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> happy new year david. i see you are taking 25 colonies into winter this year, any losses yet?


Prospero año y felicidad. 2017, wow. I haven't checked on the hives during flying weather. I don't intend to inspect for awhile unless I see a problem. I do plan to check the hives' weights again in late winter and will likely do a drive by check on a warm afternoon. My guess is that I will be a humbled, but better steward by winter's end, or start raising chickens. Thanks for asking. Great thread on Randy O's new article. When I saw his article, I thought, "Oh no, he didn't," but you could see it coming in the tone of his recent articles and based on his general scientific approach. He's likely to be ostracized a little before it's over, but he's spot on with his main points, and he will be on the right side of history.


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## gww

River
You better rethink the chicken ideal, You have to feed them.
gww
Ps sometimes chickens die too, I have a sick one right now.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> River
> You better rethink the chicken ideal, You have to feed them.
> gww


I laughed out loud at that. Maybe free range Old English Game chickens (with supplemental feeding).


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## Nordak

Haha! Good one gww.


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## Michael Bush

>You better rethink the chicken ideal, You have to feed them.

Back when they didn't clean the fields so well, I used to not feed them except when there was snow on the ground. Well, they got the food scraps, but mostly they ate bugs from spring to fall and corn from the field when the snow wasn't on the ground. I had to feed them when it snowed because they had too much trouble finding the corn in the snow. The Aracanas did great running loose. They managed to avoid the coyotes. Some of the others need to be closed up at night or they would get eaten by the coyotes, foxes, skunks, etc. Now the corn fields have nothing in them after harvest... but they still live fine on grasshoppers, crickets, ticks etc. all summer. Of course if you put them in a fence...


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## JRG13

I liked Randy's Fruit and Nut comment... anyways, pretty much what he's outlining is the approach that I've been undertaking as well. See if I can shift some trait expression into decent stocks or mine it out of the current decent stocks and try to stabilize them into a breeding population. River, do you have any aspirations to raise queens anytime soon?


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## gww

Michael


> Back when they didn't clean the fields so well, I used to not feed them except when there was snow on the ground. Well, they got the food scraps, but mostly they ate bugs from spring to fall and corn from the field when the snow wasn't on the ground. I had to feed them when it snowed because they had too much trouble finding the corn in the snow. The Aracanas did great running loose. They managed to avoid the coyotes. Some of the others need to be closed up at night or they would get eaten by the coyotes, foxes, skunks, etc. Now the corn fields have nothing in them after harvest... but they still live fine on grasshoppers, crickets, ticks etc. all summer. Of course if you put them in a fence...


Mine run "free as a bird" you might say. I think what they do is go out and play and then come back to the feed bowl and eat even more.

River
Sorry for the thread side track. I did think it was funny when I first typed my chicken responce knowing how you keep bees and all. I tried to do the same but "Chickened out" before the year was out. Thats how first year guys are. You did help me with some swarm advice once and you method of not feeding is in my plan book when I get over my yellow streak.
Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

JRG13 said:


> River, do you have any aspirations to raise queens anytime soon?


I do, but so far I'm terrible at it. I took awhile to learn to use larvae that were young enough. Then, I had to come to terms with how strong mating hives have to be, particularly in my location, since the advent of small hive beetles. A teacup of bees didn't cut it. So I could burn through even more bees while learning to deal with dragonflies (and birds) that seemed to have a taste for my virgin queens and while building and trying unsuccessfully to use Cloake boards and a few other gimmicks. All while our largely short, strong flows are going. And being hesitant to feed, which is not particularly compatible with queen rearing. And, as both my wife and my partner in the bee bidness might say, being a little stubborn, which is not necessarily good when you need to listen and learn. So, although I enjoy and am pretty decent at the actual grafting part, the queen rearing learning curve has been steep for me. 

I have had good success raising queens with splits using both supercedure and emergency cells. But the number of queens that you can raise from a single mother queen is kinda limited when you're splitting rather than grafting. And I do have some colonies that I would like to be able to have a larger number of queens from than I would get with splits. But at the moment I'm regrouping before trying to jump back into queen rearing. Thanks for asking.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> I do, but so far I'm terrible at it. I took awhile to learn to use larvae that were young enough. Then, I had to come to terms with how strong mating hives have to be, particularly in my location, since the advent of small hive beetles. A teacup of bees didn't cut it. So I could burn through even more bees while learning to deal with dragonflies (and birds) that seemed to have a taste for my virgin queens and while building and trying unsuccessfully to use Cloake boards and a few other gimmicks. All while our largely short, strong flows are going. And being hesitant to feed, which is not particularly compatible with queen rearing. And, as both my wife and my partner in the bee bidness might say, being a little stubborn, which is not necessarily good when you need to listen and learn. So, although I enjoy and am pretty decent at the actual grafting part, the queen rearing learning curve has been steep for me.
> 
> I have had good success raising queens with splits using both supercedure and emergency cells. But the number of queens that you can raise from a single mother queen is kinda limited when you're splitting rather than grafting. And I do have some colonies that I would like to be able to have a larger number of queens from than I would get with splits. But at the moment I'm regrouping before trying to jump back into queen rearing. Thanks for asking.


I can relate to about 90% of this post after trying my hand at it this year. Going to try another go this year. I've come to terms I don't have a natural gift for grafting and It's going to take a lot of practice to get it right. And the cell starter hive...don't get me started. Started...ha.


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## Riverderwent

Michael Bush said:


> Now the corn fields have nothing in them after harvest...


Leviticus 23:22.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> I tried to do the same but "Chickened out" before the year was out. Thats how first year guys are. You did help me with some swarm advice once and you method of not feeding is in my plan book when I get over my yellow streak.


Feeding heavy syrup in the fall is wise if you're not comfortable knowing how much honey a particular colony is reasonably expected to need during the winter and what opportunities you will have to feed if conditions are unexpectedly harsh. Different breeds have different needs, weather is unpredictable, and our schedules don't always match up with the weather. I've been fortunate.


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## gww

river


> Feeding heavy syrup in the fall is wise if you're not comfortable knowing how much honey a particular colony is reasonably expected to need during the winter and what opportunities you will have to feed if conditions are unexpectedly harsh. Different breeds have different needs, weather is unpredictable, and our schedules don't always match up with the weather. I've been fortunate.


Thats what I did and not knowing what is normal is my weakness right now. Reading about stuff is not the same as seeing it long enough to know what works. Throw in the fact that feeding too much is bad also and me not having much comb yet also put me in a funny situation of not really knowing which way to turn. My goal is to learn enough to know when what is right. I would rather not be greedy on honey (getting it sounds like pretty hard work and getting rid of it doesn't sound easy) but would like some for me and the kids. My goal is to not have much money in bee keeping and to keep enough bees alive to never have to buy any. 

I couldn't tell you what breed my bees are. All are mutts I believe. Of course one of the swarms I caught could have come from someones new hive, who knows.

I will decide more of what I want later when I know more. I take some chances to learn which is why I didn't feed till fall and also why I haven't treated. I might kill some bees but figure I won't know for sure unless I try it. I don't want to lose bees but also don't want to do but the bare minimum and not lose them. Mostly I am just building stuff and staying busy and staying home and hopefully being just a little productive or at least not moving backwards.

No matter what happens, I believe I will learn a little along the way.
I liked your queen rearing post earlier in this thread. It sorta keeps things in perspective with real life experiances.
There is a lot to pick through and the actual trials and outcomes are a bit more handy then the Things that might work but can't be seen. It is a trick for a new guy to pick through it all and find what works for him.
Thanks for posting and I try to learn from you.
Cheers
gww


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## 1102009

Riverderwent said:


> So I could burn through even more bees while learning to deal with dragonflies (and birds) that seemed to have a taste for my virgin queens and while building and trying unsuccessfully to use Cloake boards and a few other gimmicks. All while our largely short, strong flows are going. And being hesitant to feed, which is not particularly compatible with queen rearing.
> 
> I have had good success raising queens with splits using both supercedure and emergency cells. But the number of queens that you can raise from a single mother queen is kinda limited when you're splitting rather than grafting. And I do have some colonies that I would like to be able to have a larger number of queens from than I would get with splits. But at the moment I'm regrouping before trying to jump back into queen rearing. Thanks for asking.


This is a great thread to learn I´m not alone in my struggles.

Thanks, David and happy new year to you!
Thanks to all the others for posting their experience.

Dave, what do you do with the dragonflies and birds? Could be the mating problem at my bee yards too but I´m not the kind of person trying to change nature`s ways.


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## Riverderwent

SiWolKe said:


> Dave, what do you do with the dragonflies and birds?


Serendipitously moved the hives to yards with less concentration of relatively defenseless small hives and less convenient natural cover from which the bees' predators could lay in wait without having to place themselves in jeopardy. Some of the predation is seasonal anyway.


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## Redhawk

I agree, David. Great thread! I feel your pain with locations. Not moving to a new yard location but falling more trees that most go. My only reward there is that a healthy forest is a balancing effort. As the Blues called it "Question of Balance"


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## Riverderwent

Today, I looked at the bees in a yard where I keep seven of my hives. All were active. They were bringing in a little pollen from somewhere. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> Today, I looked at the bees in a yard where I keep seven of my hives. All were active. They were bringing in a little pollen from somewhere. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.


Very cool. Mine are bringing in pollen sporadically, very light yellow. I was happy to see it.


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## lharder

What pollen already? I have at least a month before 1st pollen. Still frozen solid around here though gradually warming up. I think I may get a warmish day (7 C) this week to pop some inner covers, clean up some deadouts, assess food and see if I have to get in gear or not.


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## Riverderwent

lharder said:


> What pollen already?


It's light beige. I don't know what it is. Maybe a variety of willow or maple?


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## Riverderwent

I did a drive by check of another one of our three yards today. I was pleasantly surprised to see ten of ten hives alive and active. A few dandelions are blooming, and the bees were bringing in some yellow pollen. We have checked another yard within the last few days. So far, seventeen of the seventeen hives that we have checked are active.


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## squarepeg

nice!


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## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> I am going into the 2016-2017 winter with twenty-five hives.


As of today, 25 of 25 are active. The bees are bringing in a fair amount of both yellow and putty colored pollen.


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## lharder

That is a really good result David.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> As of today, 25 of 25 are active. The bees are bringing in a fair amount of both yellow and putty colored pollen.


:thumbsup:


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## squarepeg

:applause:


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## Riverderwent

lharder said:


> That is a really good result David.


I was coming back from inspecting the last yard with my oldest daughter in the truck. I said, "I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop." She said, "What happened to the first shoe?" Kids. I'm still expecting the worst and hoping for the best. These bees come from some strong feral stock and have weathered hard Bond husbandry with no syrup. Gotta respect 'em.


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## Riverderwent

So, the other day, one of my smaller hives (two 8 frame medium boxes) was very active. Suspiciously so. Some of the bees took off just a little slower and lower than usual, and none of the bees were having trouble landing. There was no pollen coming in. You've seen this. Trying to be optimistic, I'm thinking, there's no fighting, maybe they are orienting. But that would mean that a good sized cohort of brood had already emerged. Way too early, right? Right. I did a quick check today and that two box hive is empty.

The good news is the other hives I checked on were doing well. I lifted the back of the hives to check the weights. Two of the hives were what I would call normal for this time of year, not heavy but not light, and will need to be watched. The other hives were good and heavy. It was good flying weather, and the bees were bringing in a lot of beige pollen and a little yellow pollen. And I didn't see any more of those "orienting" bees.


----------



## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> ... And I didn't see any more of those "orienting" bees.


 thanks for keeping us updated david. we should be able to start peeking inside before too much longer.


----------



## Riverderwent

This article has an interesting proposal of a soft Bond or blended method of selection. https://www.researchgate.net/public..._of_varroa_tolerance_on_Marmara_Island_Turkey. The article suggests treating colonies with relatively high mite levels and requeening them with queens from untreated colonies with low mite levels.

I suspect that Randy Oliver will be proposing a method along these lines in connection with his series of articles on varroa. A reservation that I have about this approach is that it does not select for resistance to viruses or mite "tolerance", by which I mean the ability to survive and be economically viable with relatively high levels of mite infestation.


----------



## 1102009

Riverderwent said:


> This article has an interesting proposal of a soft Bond or blended method of selection. https://www.researchgate.net/public..._of_varroa_tolerance_on_Marmara_Island_Turkey. The article suggests treating colonies with relatively high mite levels and requeening them with queens from untreated colonies with low mite levels.
> 
> I suspect that Randy Oliver will be proposing a method along these lines in connection with his series of articles on varroa. A reservation that I have about this approach is that it does not select for resistance to viruses or mite "tolerance", by which I mean the ability to survive and be economically viable with relatively high levels of mite infestation.


Thanks for that link, David and best wishes to you.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> The article suggests treating colonies with relatively high mite levels and requeening them with queens from untreated colonies with low mite levels. I suspect that Randy Oliver will be proposing a method along these lines


In this study the difference between relatively high and low mite levels was a bit more than 1 percent. The infestation level not to treat was <1%, and the level to treat and requeen was little over 2%. This is where my doubts rise towards this kind of IPM treatment method to increase varroa resistance. They were doing sugar shakes which have very big margin of error, somewhere 50%, I suppose. It does take into account mite on brood. To make the right decisions which colony is the one to be treated (bad genetics) and those to be left without treatments(good genetics) is hard. 

After treating some and some left without, the colonies form many sub groups. Evaluation between hives becomes harder each year. I think varroa reproduction rate would be a better assay to select between hives than infestation rate itself.


----------



## Daniel Y

Riverderwent said:


> by which I mean the ability to survive and be economically viable with relatively high levels of mite infestation.


Since when does natural selection favor economical viability? That falls in the realm of breeding. Bees can't be bred. I don't think any level of infestation will result in acceptable results. Not when beekeepers attempt to calculate the cost of making wax and drone rearing in their bees. Any mites will be recognized as loses and considered unacceptable. Develop a resistant bee. it is destined to be rejected. Beekeepers want a bee with no mites.


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## tpope

I think that the part that most explains the problems associated with mites is: "These experiences underlined that a major part of the 
varroa problem or its solution is to induce changes in beekeeper habits and convictions."


----------



## Riverderwent

tpope said:


> I think that the part that most explains the problems associated with mites is: "These experiences underlined that a major part of the varroa problem or its solution is to induce changes in beekeeper habits and convictions."


That caught my attention as well. You have to respect the authors' use of the best movie ever made. But to me it seemed like the authors were using a successful example of the "bad" to support their argument for the "good", if I am recalling their use correctly. Hard Bond worked in South Africa, so soft Bond is the answer.


----------



## Fusion_power

> Bees can't be bred. I don't think any level of infestation will result in acceptable results. Not when beekeepers attempt to calculate the cost of making wax and drone rearing in their bees. Any mites will be recognized as loses and considered unacceptable. Develop a resistant bee. it is destined to be rejected. Beekeepers want a bee with no mites.


 BLUP based breeding programs are primarily focused on commercial traits. They are now shifting to include mite resistance. IMO, a day late and a dollar short, but definitely counters the statement that bees can't be bred.

There are plenty of mite resistant bees. The problem is that they are not yet developed for commercial use. Once they are, mite susceptible bees will be phased out. This will take another 10 to 20 years. As always, just my opinion.


----------



## Riverderwent

I am using the phrases "mite resistance" and "mite tolerance" to mean two different things. As Randy Oliver said, "Mite 'resistance' implies active fighting of the mite; mite 'tolerance' includes viral resistance, or other tolerance mechanisms." Treating colonies with relatively high mite levels and requeening them with queens from untreated colonies with low mite levels _selects for mite resistance_. It does not select for _resistance to mite vectored viruses_ or _other tolerance mechanisms_. I have not fully considered whether that method has a neutral or harmful selection effect on mite tolerance. It might be best to say that it is a good start. Having said all that, I respect the adults in the room like Randy Oliver who take seriously their well earned influence and who recognize that there are practical limitations on even their ability to "induce changes in beekeeper habits and convictions." Different folks have different lanes.


----------



## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> Treating colonies with relatively high mite levels and requeening them with queens from untreated colonies with low mite levels _selects for mite resistance_. It does not select for _resistance to mite vectored viruses_ or _other tolerance mechanisms_.


It's kind of academic for purposes of this point, but interesting to me that in some instances mite tolerance may actually depend less on virus resistance than on virus tolerance. The findings in one study suggested “that resistance to DWV (i.e. reduced DWV titres) was not a factor in the enhanced winter survival of the mite-resistant bees, but that enhanced tolerance to DWV infection (i.e. better survival of DWV infection) may be a factor.” http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0099998.


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## Riverderwent

Duplicate.


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## squarepeg

i'm not sure david, but it appears that the plosone study was published prior to the discovery that different types dwv exist, some of which are more virulent than others, and with the less virulent form is showing up in mite 'tolerant' colonies.

so it may be not so much virus 'tolerance', but perhaps the colonies described as 'mite resistant' in the plosone study were dealing with high titres but of the less virulent dwv.


----------



## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> i'm not sure david, but it appears that the plosone study was published prior to the discovery that different types dwv exist, some of which are more virulent than others, and with the less virulent form is showing up in mite 'tolerant' colonies.
> 
> so it may be not so much virus 'tolerance', but perhaps the colonies described as 'mite resistant' in the plosone study were dealing with high titres but of the less virulent dwv.


Yes, which shows the importance of selecting for successful biotic communities within entire colonies and not just queens. That may be able to be done practically with a non-treatment approach that includes requeening untreated colonies with high mite counts with new queens from untreated colonies with low mite counts. But there may have been some contribution to mite tolerance from the genetics of the old queen which will now be lost. Of course, that happens when a hive collapses, but at this point I'm admittedly more comfortable when nature elegantly makes the choice than when I clumsily do so. I felt it worth mentioning.


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## squarepeg

it's a point well taken david. fortunately for you and i nature accomplished that elegant work before we arrived on the scene. given the importance that biota may be playing in our successes it could be that propagation of our stock would be better served with nuc production vs. just queens. it's also why i'd like to provide baton rouge with a couple of nucs instead of just shipping queens to them. perhaps they would be interested in studying some of your colonies as well.


----------



## Riverderwent

I've checked on all my hives in the last couple of days. Twenty-three out of twenty-five have survived winter so far. Both losses were smaller hives, the second loss being a 4 x 4 medium nuc. All of the remaining hives have pollen coming in. Today, particularly, there was a steady flow of pollen, some yellow but mostly tan and off white. Our swarm season is still 49 days away, and I haven't seen the massive activity that comes with a good flow of nectar after the brood buildup. But there are already a variety of small flowers blooming in pastures and woodlots. I also noticed some Dutch clover on one stretch of road today.


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## squarepeg

nice report david. seeing very much the same here with lots pollen coming in to my 21 out of 22 winter survivors, although there are two not bringing in near as much as the rest. the color is mostly a dirty pale yellow (trees?) with an occasional brighter yellow (daffodils?). we are close to the same latitude but i may be at a higher elevation. swarming here starts more like mid to late april.


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## Riverderwent

January showers bring February flowers.


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## AvatarDad

squarepeg said:


> with an occasional brighter yellow (daffodils?).


I am seeing some nearly florescent yellow from some ornamental cherry trees around here. Also, there is just a bit of forsythia beginning to bloom.


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## Fusion_power

I saw dozens of pear trees in full bloom today. Two more weeks will put cherry, plum, apple, and ornamentals in bloom. This is 3 to 4 weeks earlier than normal.


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## Riverderwent

We picked up our first swarm for the season from a swarm call today. This is a prime swarm, and it is not from one of our hives. I am grateful for drawn comb. We are now 23/25 for the winter, plus 1.


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## Nordak

Good stuff! How big was the swarm?


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## Riverderwent

Nordak said:


> Good stuff! How big was the swarm?



View attachment 31061


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## Nordak

Good looking bunch of bees.


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## Riverderwent

We did our first cutout of the year today. 40 pounds of honey. Lots of bees.


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## Riverderwent

The swarm that we got on February 22 has a laying queen and brood.


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## squarepeg

does that put you back to 24 david?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> does that put you back to 24 david?


25 if the cutout from today gets established.


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## squarepeg

excellent. sorry if i missed it, but are you going to do any queen rearing this year?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> excellent. sorry if i missed it, but are you going to do any queen rearing this year?


Probably not other than OTS splits.


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## Riverderwent

I'm planning to inspect hives tomorrow. Stay tuned.


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## squarepeg

looking forward to it.

are your looking to increase your hive count with the splits this year david, making some of that survivor stock available to other beekeepers, perhaps a little of both?


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## Riverderwent

So, I inspected the hives. Of the 25 that I had on November 4th, 23 survived winter and now have a laying queen with brood. The hives are generally teaming with bees, brood, and honey. I was also putting out swarm traps and when I took one down that I had left up, I was caught with my veil down so to speak. Turns out, I trapped my first swarm of the year! We have also picked up a swarm cluster and done our first cutout of the year. So with the splits I made today, we have thirty hives.


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## gww

River
So just how bad did you get caught with you viel down.

Thirty is good.
gww


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> River
> So just how bad did you get caught with you viel down.


Mainly just surprised. The swarm in the trap was already bringing in pollen. This is three weeks earlier than our normal first swarm date.


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> This is three weeks earlier than our normal first swarm date.


blooms up here have been about 3 weeks ahead of usual. the growing degree days for today's date are about 3 weeks ahead of last year's.


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## squarepeg

on the growing degree days huntsville, al is at about 400 since jan.1, whereas shreveport, la is at about 650.


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## Riverderwent

When I inspected today, I was surprised at how strong the hives were. I quickly used up the supers that I had with me and plan to add more tomorrow. There were already emerged drones and capped drone brood. This is shaping up to be an interesting year.


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## Nordak

Sounds great, David.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> blooms up here have been about 3 weeks ahead of usual. the growing degree days for today's date are about 3 weeks ahead of last year's.


Rain and temperatures have come together well this year.


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## gww

River...


> Mainly just surprised. The swarm in the trap was already bringing in pollen. This is three weeks earlier than our normal first swarm date.


My hives are going gang busters at least when looking at the action at the entrances.

I am in a cooler area but it makes me glad that my traps are out and baited up already.

Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

This yard had 9 hives this morning. It had thirteen when I finished inspecting and making splits. I did not see any dwarf wings, crawlers, or noticeable signs of PMS. The swarm traps were to protect queen cells on the bottom of medium frames. You can see the Dutch clover blooms in the foreground.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> I am in a cooler area but it makes me glad that my traps are out and baited up already.


Well done getting them up in good time. I would like to have been a week earlier.


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## bucksbees

I am 2 hours north west of you, and the one hive I did not get to over the last two weeks has swarmed. I was surprised to see the queen cells being capped, and larva not more then 3 days old. So I just missed the queen by a day I am thinking. I made two splits out of the hive and balanced the resources. Each split still had 6 full frames of bees and and 2 frames each of capped brood/ larva. If these queens work out, I should be able to get some honey out of them.

If you are looking at testing your queens, let me know, I can setup another yard.


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## Riverderwent

So, should someone ask, "What are you having to give up?" Or, "What are you doing differently than beekeepers in your area who are losing there bees?" Or, "Aren't you really treating?" Or, "Would you be interested in working on a grant study with me?" Or, "Don't you know that all your colonies are about to crash in a cascading episode of parasitic mite syndrome?" Something?


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## clyderoad

squarepeg said:


> on the growing degree days huntsville, al is at about 400 since jan.1, whereas shreveport, la is at about 650.


what base temperature?


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> So, should someone ask, "What are you having to give up?" Or, "What are you doing differently than beekeepers in your area who are losing there bees?" Or, "Aren't you really treating?" Or, "Would you be interested in working on a grant study with me?" Or, "Don't you know that all your colonies are about to crash in a cascading episode of parasitic mite syndrome?" Something?


LOL, 


In the post 13 you wrote:

"Most of my bees are feral survivors. I do a good number of cutouts and trap or catch swarms. We have some "swamp bees" in some river bottoms and wetland areas that remind me of feral hogs and are likely a few (or more) generations from tame. We have just enough rainfall to keep most, but not all, of the AHB genetic influence out. 
My best queens are from lines from a few gnarly old cutouts with good provenance. I have purchased a couple of Baton Rouge VSH queens to try them out. I've also bought a few Wooten queens to shift the curve a little in the direction of higher production and better manners. "

Have you noticed any differencies how diffrent origins of bees are doing?


----------



## squarepeg

clyderoad said:


> what base temperature?


50


----------



## bucksbees

Riverderwent said:


> So, should someone ask, "What are you having to give up?" Or, "What are you doing differently than beekeepers in your area who are losing there bees?" Or, "Aren't you really treating?" Or, "Would you be interested in working on a grant study with me?" Or, "Don't you know that all your colonies are about to crash in a cascading episode of parasitic mite syndrome?" Something?


If I was testing your queens, then it would be following your protocol. If your results can be repeated, following your procedures, then any and all results will speak for themselves. 

I would apply the same thought process as when I test games for companies. I might be testing them, but the research, and said results of that research would be theirs. Any results of the research would belong to you, and I even be willing to sign a NDA.

What I would get out of it is a boost of drones in the local area that may or may not pass on helpful genes. Along with learning more and understanding even more of bee husbandry. I will never be like the great beekeepers of lore who travel the world and learn from different methods, but I can travel 2 hours, and learn a lot.


----------



## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> on the growing degree days huntsville, al is at about 400 since jan.1, whereas shreveport, la is at about 650.


So now you've gone and made me learn about something else, growing degree days. Next, I'll be checking ground moisture or moon phases. "You're killing me Smalls."


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## squarepeg

before walt's passing he was in communication with a new jersey group that was looking carefully at growing degree days and attempting to relate that to the starting and stopping of swarming.

i was being copied on their email list, and my understanding is that they were going to publish their findings, but i haven't heard anything in some time now. i'll try reaching out and see what became of that.


----------



## squarepeg

i received a prompt reply from the new jersey beekeeper. he's sending me a power point presentation on their results. 

as it turns out, (and not too unexpectedly) the growing degree days correspond nicely to the bloom dates that we have been associating with swarming. 

gdd may be just another interesting metric to pay attention to with respect to predicting colony operations as the season progresses.


----------



## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> Have you noticed any differencies how diffrent origins of bees are doing?


For the most part, no. As Yogi Berra might have said, the ones that are left have survived. They get diffused, both genetically and logistically, pretty quickly. I know "that hive on the left on the back row" came from an F-2 Baton Rouge queen in 2014, but she's long gone. And "that one on the right" was an open bred graft I made a couple of years ago from an open bred queen from an emergency cell after I rolled a Wooten queen. And the one next to that one was from an old cutout with good provenance. But they are fairly consistent and where they are not, it's almost random and more about how "old" the colony is (that is, how big the colony was before the dearth) and what yard they ended up in. 

The quote from post 13 is largely about genetics. One thing that I'm thinking about is that good survivor genetics are _necessary_ but _not sufficient_ by themselves for the colony to predictably survive without treatment. Likewise, the right "protocol" as Bucksbees says, and procedures, are _necessary_ but _not sufficient_. And an acceptable location is required, but without good genetics and the right methods, is not enough. What all that means, I'm not sure. I do think that the relationship between the life cycles of the mites and the bees is an important key to all of this.


----------



## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> as it turns out, (and not too unexpectedly) the growing degree days correspond nicely to the bloom dates that we have been associating with swarming.
> 
> gdd may be just another interesting metric to pay attention to with respect to predicting colony operations as the season progresses.


I don't think that it's just another metric because when you refine it and track it, it's likely that it can be used to fairly map and predict the day when the hive will "click" into pre-swarm planning mode. And that day is important to beekeepers. You'll need to write a book called _Following the Degree Days_. You're still killing me, Smalls.


----------



## squarepeg

i went back to my notes from the last year or two and the first swarm dates correspond to 600-650 gdd starting from january 1.

here's the tool i used to do that:

https://www.wunderground.com/q/zmw:...Card&utm_content=Button&cm_ven=HomeCardButton

search locations>your zip code>report>temperature>send report>three blue horizontal bars to the upper right of page>history>custom>from:january 1, year>to: first swarm date, year>get history>scroll down to gdd (base 50)


----------



## squarepeg

(sorry for the derailment, i'll start a new thread in 'swarms...')


----------



## Riverderwent

> i went back to my notes from the last year or two and the first swarm dates correspond to 600-650 gdd starting from january 1.


So I've been playing with the growing degree days calculator. I've got a couple of thoughts. One is that the key date may be a few days or even a week or two before the actual swarm date, when the queen is put on a diet and training plan to get her in shape for the exodus. Two is that the 50 degree base growing degree days seems a little more erratic that the first swarm dates here. But after this winter, I'm not as confidant of that. Common sense would say that there is a link. Walt would have told us that it's about the honey dome, and the honey dome depends on the bees winter eating habits and the spring nectar flows. And the nectar flows relate to growing days. Drone numbers play into this some kinda way. I'd like to see a simple pattern emerge.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> For the most part, no. As Yogi Berra might have said, the ones that are left have survived. They get diffused, both genetically and logistically, pretty quickly. I know "that hive on the left on the back row" came from an F-2 Baton Rouge queen in 2014, but she's long gone. And "that one on the right" was an open bred graft I made a couple of years ago from an open bred queen from an emergency cell after I rolled a Wooten queen. And the one next to that one was from an old cutout with good provenance. But they are fairly consistent and where they are not, it's almost random and more about how "old" the colony is (that is, how big the colony was before the dearth) and what yard they ended up in.


Makes sence. How many years have you been without treatments?


----------



## Daniel Y

No intention of miss directing this thread. I did not know Walt passed away. How very sad. His writings where very helpful to me when I first started. Possibly one of the most studied directions on my part of all I have seen. He certainly made some detailed observations. I will miss him.


----------



## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> Makes sence. How many years have you been without treatments?


I've never treated. I started beekeeping about May 3, 2013, in the evening. My bees started before that. I'm waiting for them to crash.


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> I've never treated. I started beekeeping about May 3, 2013, in the evening. My bees started before that. I'm waiting for them to crash.


Reading the statements of Fusion Power and Squarepeg from that relatively same corner of US, I doubt very much they will ever crash.


----------



## bucksbees

Juhani Lunden said:


> Reading the statements of Fusion Power and Squarepeg from that relatively same corner of US, I doubt very much they will ever crash.


For me, they are 1000 miles away, but River is about 120 miles away. I wish him all the luck and hard work in the world. I am really looking forward to more updates through out this year.


----------



## Riverderwent

Thank you, Bucks.


----------



## Nordak

Like bucks, I'm looking for trusted sources of TF queens to throw some diversity in. If you ever get to where you're selling these queens, or want to swap with me for that very reason, let me know David.


----------



## Riverderwent

I want to talk about methods, techniques, protocol, my formula, the old "how to", or at least the old "what I do". I'm a little touchy about changing any of the little things even if I don't know if it matters, or, more precisely, exactly because I don't know if it matters. And things have rocked along swimmingly, as the guys with sunglasses and sports cars would say. So, to the point ...

Frames and foundation. I buy foundationless for the brood chamber. I still have quite a few one piece plastic small cell frames that also stay in the brood chamber. We mostly use 5.4 plastic foundation in wood frames in the supers. That's not to say that the one piece small cell frames don't wander across the queen excluder 'cause they do, and the 5.4 ends up in the brood. It's an aspirational goal, but we're getting there.

But my point is (I'm getting there) that the foundationless lets the bees build whatever size they want. And it will eventually let me measure that and tell you about it, don't you know. With the Bond method, only the survivors will get to vote on cell size. I was noticing inspecting the hives Thursday that when there was large cell and small cell in the bottom three boxes, the bees (actually the old girl herself) were selectively using the small cell for brood and moving up or down to get to small cell frames. I had not seen that before. 

What I really like about foundationless is, well I'll get to that in a minute. Remember, there are three necessary things for succeeding at successful treatment free successfully. They are good bees (genetics), good methods, and an acceptable location. Three legs on the stool.

Okay, back to foundationless. Having foundationless frames lets the old girl lay drones with abandon. She can lay drones before breakfast, lay drones in the afternoon, and if she gets bored at night, she can lay a few more drones. This lets my bees have a big genetic footprint. My little survivor drones will be be hanging out on the corner of every DCA in town. The only competition are the feral hives, and guess what. If you think I'm big on the Bond method, go take a walk through the woods at night. Nature's got me beat hands down. It's a jungle out there. So those few treated drones that grew up in some random bridge comb in their fancy painted, store bought, deep framed hive box are going to have some unfair numbers of River's raiders and nature boys to get past to dance with the ladies.

Now the point of that is that with foundationless you get to actually make your location better. The third leg in your stool of success, location, is not set in concrete. You can change it. "Be the stool". Assert yourself. I got more. But it's for another post 'cause I was droning on, don't you know.


----------



## bucksbees

I like it all, I love Rivers Raiders, the most.

For location, you run beside swamps, and flooding creek beds correct?


----------



## Riverderwent

> For location, you run beside swamps, and flooding creek beds correct?


You say "creek"; we say "bayou". You say "swamp", we say, "future home of Whole Foods". But yea, more or less. There are large bands of overgrown hardwoods along the Red River and it's associated waterways, and oxbows. There's also just a lot of lowland and upland woods, hayfields, and pastures. We call some of them oil farms. And general suburbia, or for one location subfarmia. You know, when my five year old granddaughter was four, she said, "Girls don't go to Texas." I thought it was funny.


----------



## bucksbees

Other than slightly higher elevation, and distance, location maybe close enough to the same. 

Do you find the bees making small cell on their own, or do they push the 5.4 cell width?

Do you feel you bees swarm more with the extra drone?


----------



## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> Now the point of that is that with foundationless you get to actually make your location better.


:thumbsup:


----------



## Riverderwent

> Do you feel you bees swarm more with the extra drone?


They should, but they don't. My bees actually don't swarm a lot. I had one hive this week with swarm cells, and there were plenty of drones and capped drone cells. But there just aren't a bunch of swarmed hives. I've been a little puzzled or at least thoughtful about this. A few of my bees come from recent swarms. But most all of them came from a swarm at one time, even old cutouts. I've thought that it had something to do with "nadiring" boxes of empty drawn comb just above the queen excluder. Part of it may be that we limit the brood area to three eight frame medium boxes. But I kinda think part of it may actually be varroa's doings. They may tamp the population just enough at just the right time to reduce swarming.


----------



## 1102009

My first hive on natural comb built 5.0 in broodnest area and bigger cells around. 

I wonder if the space between the frames is more important than cell size. My space was 35mm ( 1,37 inch). 
This year I will try natural comb with narrow space in the broodnest area and more space in honey area. 8 frames narrow, 4 wider apart.

What is your space, David?


----------



## Riverderwent

SiWolKe said:


> What is your space, David?


That's a fine question. Don't get me wrong; it's not, "Whence, whither, and wherefor?" But it's a fine young question. The kind that could grow up and become philosophical like, "What, after all, is ... space?" Or even useful like, "Can you scoot over more and give me more ... space?" To your point, my frames are all 1 3/8" wide on centers. Plus the propolis that builds up on the shoulders of the sidebars. I'm not proud of it, but that's just how it is. I do tend to space the frames tight in the brood area and let them spread out a little in the supers (but still eight frames in the eight frame boxes). I was late to the small cell party. I'm still more about foundationless than small cell. And I don't see me cutting down frame shoulders, particularly on used, drawn frames. I have wondered if the bees try somehow to compensate for too much space. Like making the mid-wax thicker or lengthening the cells.


----------



## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> I want to talk about methods, techniques, protocol, my formula, the old "how to", or at least the old "what I do".


Small Brood Area. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.” Anyway, let’s get this part over. I use all eight frame medium boxes. (More on that in a bit.) When the danger of isolating and chilling the queen is over, I put the queen excluder on top of the third box. So for better or worse, the nursery is at most 24 medium frames in size, a relatively small brood area.

Does this help me be treatment free, and, if so, how? I have no idea. This talks about it: _How Honey Bee Colonies Survive in the Wild: Testing the Importance of Small Nests and Frequent Swarming_, (Loftus _t al_., 2016), www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4788434/#!po=46.0000. 

I winter, for the most part, in those three little eight frame medium boxes. They are chock full of honey, but still, I don’t get a lot of kudos from the Italian contingent of my bees for their modest winter quarters. I do make exceptions for the few colonies that think that a dearth is just an excuse to lay more eggs. 

Keeping a relatively small brood chamber puts the upper limit on the number of bees in a hive. Not good, right? Maybe. I do lose some economy of scale for foragers. Less honey per bee because I supposedly have more house bees (nurse bees, undertakers, or guard bees) per forager than a more populous colony. And it takes more honey to support those house bees so the colony produces less revenue per bee. Really? That’s carrying the decimals a little far for me.

Nature has had awhile to cipher out the most efficient colony size. I don’t see a lot of 400 liter feral colonies. Make the entrance a little smaller so there are fewer guard bees. (More on that in a bit, too.) That will offset some of that critical “per bee” efficiency. The queen will last a little longer with a smaller brood area so, arguably, the bees save a little time and energy by superceding the queen less often. Who’s to say it doesn't even out somewhere.

Eight Frame Medium Boxes. I mentioned above that I use all eight frame medium boxes. Two main reasons: they’re handy. That seems like only one reason, but its really two. Ergonomics and logistics. I can lift them (that’s ergonomics), and they’re largely interchangeable (that’s … wait for it … logistics). I also don’t have to change the fence on my table saw as often when I’m cutting wood for boxes. There’s a time saver. 

Using eight frame medium boxes ties in with the small brood chamber because, I think, that three eight frame mediums gives me just the right size. Using them lets me nadir with drawn comb just above the queen excluder over the third box which, as I've mentioned, breaks up the honey dome in just the right place and reduces swarming.

Now, would I save a little money by having fewer bottom boards and covers by having one hive that is ten boxes tall of ten frame deeps versus two hives that are eight boxes of eight frame mediums? Not so much because I make bottom boards, inner covers, and outer covers from old cedar fence pickets and scraps ripped off when I make boxes. I do lose a dollar or two on the aluminum flashing on the additional outer covers. But I almost make up for that by not having to buy a forklift or hire a seasonal work crew. And morale was improved because my vertebrae felt like they got to weigh in on the box size feasibility study.

So does using all eight frame boxes help with varroa. Like with the small brood chamber, I dunno. But it’s part of the fine tuned, highly sophisticated system that I’m trying to talk about here. I do quite a few one off, slightly oddball, out of the mainstream things, and I don’t know which if any make a difference. Stay tuned for more exciting episodes.


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## squarepeg

nice post david.

i hope i'm not getting ahead of your story but...

do most of your colonies get split each year?

do you keep feeding new foundationless frames both above and below the excluder? 

do you have a feel for what percentage of your colonies go into all out swarm mode each season (despite management) and what do you do when that happens?

it's ok if you would rather address these questions as they come up over the course of your narrative, many thanks.


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## bucksbees

Thank you, for the meat and taters.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> do most of your colonies get split each year?


Probably half or less. About this time (in normal years it would be about three or four weeks from now), I make a very few splits from healthy, medium sized hives or from hives with swarm cells. Mainly 'cause I can't help myself. Large production hives typically don't get split before the end of June except to steal a frame or two of brood when they look swarmy. It's all very unscientific. After June, we may do some summer splits. Our increase comes from a mixed bag of splits, swarm traps, swarm calls, and cutouts. As you know, when you handle a lot of calls, you get to know the neighborhood bees, good and bad. You also get to know the bees' personality pretty well when you run a Sawzall through their living room. You fix the bad and build on the good.



> do you keep feeding new foundationless frames both above and below the excluder?


No. Just below the excluder. Anything above the excluder is normally wood frames with 5.4 plastic foundation. As you know, it extracts better. If foundationless shows up when we're harvesting honey, we try to get it back where it belongs after extracting it. If we later decide to sell (or keep for ourselves) some comb honey, we'll use some foundationless in the super. Where we feed the foundationless is into trapped swarms and cutouts. 



> do you have a feel for what percentage of your colonies go into all out swarm mode each season (despite management) and what do you do when that happens?


I don't have much of a feel for it. I talked a little about this in #139. I don't get down to the bottom box much when the hive is six boxes high. That happens kinda quick with eight frame mediums. I seldom notice the sudden decrease in population associated with swarming. We never actually see our bees in the trees, but that doesn't mean it's not happening. We nadir with drawn comb over the brood and below the honey dome (over the third eight frame medium box) during the height of swarm season. And varroa may reduce swarming by tamping down the population some during the height of swarm season. (Tell me that's not trying to make lemonade when life gives you lemons.)



> it's ok if you would rather address these questions as they come up over the course of your narrative, many thanks.


Now it should be obvious that I don't mind repeating myself. And I don't mind saying the same thing more than once.


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## Riverderwent

bucksbees said:


> Thank you, for the meat and taters.


 : )


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## squarepeg

i appreciate your thoughtful and detailed reply david, here's wishing you a great 2017 season!


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> i appreciate your thoughtful and detailed reply david, here's wishing you a great 2017 season!


Please don't step in a big hole 'cause I'm a'follerin' right behind you.


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## squarepeg

understood david. at least we be able to keep each other company. i'll bring the beer and you bring some chips and a deck of cards.


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## 1102009

Thanks for explaining again your methods, David.


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## Fusion_power

River, Here are some numbers to go with your description. 24 medium frames gives 108,000 cells. This is low middle of the sweet spot for wintering in the deep south. However, since bees prefer not to use the outer combs for brood, this leaves 18 frames the queen can lay in. Since she prefers to avoid corners and edges of combs, she only uses 75% of the cells in the 18 frames which gives 81,000 cells and 75% of 81,000 is 60,750 cells. Guess what? With 60,750 cells for brood, you are in the satisfaction zone for most queens. The only caveat is that you will get a bit more swarming.


Similar numbers for my Dadant hives are: 14 frames gives 126,000 cells at 5.4mm, 12 frames can be used for brood giving 108,000 cells, the queen has the option to lay in 75% which is 81,000 cells.


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## Riverderwent

Fusion_power said:


> With 60,750 cells for brood, you are in the satisfaction zone for most queens.


Even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then.



> Similar numbers for my Dadant hives are: 14 frames gives 126,000 cells at 5.4mm, 12 frames can be used for brood giving 108,000 cells, the queen has the option to lay in 75% which is 81,000 cells.


I've thought about the similarities between your one box Dadant's and my three box eight frame mediums. Your numbers help _a lot_.


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## Riverderwent

> The old "how to" (continued)


Cedar Hive Components. There was a project in Maine that showed mixed results using cedar shavings to control varroa. http://mysare.sare.org/sare_project/fne05-559/?page=final. I don't know if there have been other projects or studies. Cedarwood oil contains cedrol and thujopsene. I don't know if the direct affect of these has been tested on varroa. Thujopsene has been shown to have some acaricidal effect on dust mites. http://db.koreascholar.com/article?code=288588. 

I think that the jury is still out on whether using cedar wood hive components makes a difference on a colony's varroa resistance or tolerance. The effect may be incremental and may vary by location. I build hive components out of cedar, I don't treat, and, so far, I've had good success as I measure it in the face of varroa. So I plan to keep using cedar.


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## Riverderwent

> The old "how to" (continued)


“Storm’d at with shot and shell, 
Boldly they rode and well”

Not Feeding. This is a big ‘un. No syrup. No fondant. No pollen patty. Without late winter feeding, the spring buildup starts later. The winter brood break lasts longer. _No brood, no baby varroa_. We have a dearth starting July 1st. Frugal bees reduce brood during the dearth. Less brood, less baby varroa. Because of the different life cycles of bees and varroa, these brood breaks give the bee population a chance to catch up with the varroa population. This is why frequent swarming helps feral bees survive.

But there is more. The brood break is not just about the interaction of the life cycles of bees and varroa and letting the number of bees catch up and overtake varroa. _It’s also about the bees’ immune system and resistance to viruses_.

Hang with me here. This is about to get tedious, but it won’t take long. Vitellogenin is varroa’s food of choice. Brood breaks allow the bees that would have been nursing the brood to maintain high levels of vitellogenin. Vitellogenin plays a key role in immunity in honey bees. Heli Salmela, et al. _Vitellogenin in inflammation and immunity in social insects_. Inflamm Cell Signal 2017; 4: e1506. doi: 10.14800/ics.1506. http://www.smartscitech.com/index.php/ICS/article/view/1506/pdf.

“[V]itellogenin is constantly present at high levels in the tissues of the long-lived individuals [winter bees in our case] in social insects. Hence, this protein is instantly available to bind pathogens and interact with the immune cells all the time, which might importantly contribute to social insect immunity.” Salmela, et al., 2017. This immunity may play an important role in virus resistance.

There is another advantage of not feeding. It greatly reduces robbing. Robbing kills bees and takes down hives. It also spreads parasites and disease. Not feeding saves time and trouble, particularly for smaller scale beekeepers. It also saves a little money on supplies and special equipment.

I won’t let my bees die of starvation. I leave plenty of honey and lift the hives regularly to check their weight. I will feed them when things gang agley. Usually a frame of honey. Nothing’s too good for these bees.

Housel Positioning. Just kidding.


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## squarepeg

another good post david, revealing several common denominators with what i am seeing and doing over here.

(had to look up 'gang agley')


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> had to look up 'gang agley'


Education takes a lifetime.


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## Riverderwent

> The Sacketts Go to Malibu and Become Treatment Free


Small Entrances. My entrances are ⅜” tall, not ¾”. Since I don't use OAV, I don’t need the taller entrance. Where I am, this means that I don’t have to put mouse guards on and take them off. More importantly, this means that I don't forget to put the mouse guards on and end up with a mouse in the hive. 

Since I use eight frame boxes, the entrances are also only about 12½” wide. So my entrances are only about 4½ square inches. The small entrances reduce robbing, which reduces hive loss, the spread of disease, and stress on the bees. Since the brood chamber is relatively small (three eight frame medium boxes), these small entrances are not a traffic problem. 

Monitoring Mite Levels. I don’t. (See, I can be brief.)

Replacing Queens Routinely. I generally let the bees decide when to supersede the queen. If the bees are particularly aggressive and the queen fails the hive tool test, they usually decide to replace her.

Hive Inspections. There are reasons to inspect a hive. Like splitting a hive that is about to swarm or making sure that a virgin queen got mated. But there are reasons not to inspect a hive when you don’t need to. When a hive is opened and boxes are removed or frames are pulled out, bees get killed, the risk of robbing is increased, and the colony is disrupted and agitated. They are disrupted and agitated if I smoke them, and they are disrupted more and agitated longer if I don’t. So I try not to go into a hive unless I need to. It seems the fewer times I go into a hive, the fewer times I need to.


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## R_V

squarepeg said:


> (had to look up 'gang agley')





Riverderwent said:


> Education takes a lifetime.


me too, maybe it's the Cajun version of the saying?


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## Riverderwent

R_V said:


> maybe it's the Cajun version of the saying?


We got our haggis crossed up with our boudin.


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## 1102009

Education needs a lifetime.

Not Feeding.
I changed last year to not feeding. Some hives needed food combs. To much rain, no main flow, the bees genetics showed they were bred for big brood areas so they did not reduce brood amount.

Housel Positioning.
Many opinions, no long time observations, no evidences. To me it´s like the small cell story. What is not a disadvantage maybe an advantage.

Small Entrances. 
I have them all year round since 3 years. I made them even smaller in august and now in spring.
Still robbing and one let wasps in. Only screens will prevent that.
A strong hive should defend itself with small entrance. 
If they do not genetics show they are bred for gentleness.

Monitoring Mite Levels.
Mentor says the same. I did no monitoring and it costs me 4 hives. Why? The mites outbred the bees and in autumn the winter bees were infested.
I could have prevented this with splitting late or imitating swarming with splitting.
You might say it´s natural selection. But the bees need more time to adapt to natural circumstances in my eyes. They need at least some years and a new local queen IMHO. 

Replacing Queens Routinely. 
I left it to the bees.
Bad matings because of the weather led to queen failures. This could be my timing but I had some which superseded on their own and it was the same.
One decided to supersede in winter.
The decisions the bees do are not always to their advantage.

Hive Inspections.
Please don´t be offended, David. 
In a location where there are no ferals, where bees ( and the drones from open matings) have genetics which make them unable to survive and where infestation of mites and virus is high you need years until you can leave them alone.
The moment you have 2/3 survivors bred out of your managed survivors you may risk this.
The people here who do not watch what´s happening in the broodnest areas and who act when observing the first DWV bees in summer all have up to 100% losses.

2015 to 2016 I checked every week and splitted when they were the strongest and the first swarm cells seen. All survived the winter and got strong even without a brood brake.
2016 to 2017 I thought it not necessary but it was. I splitted too early because I was afraid of swarming and I let the hives become too strong. I had lost control and this cost me 3/4 of my colonies.

But this are just *my* circumstances.
Education needs a lifetime.


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## Riverderwent

SiWolKe said:


> Please don´t be offended, David.


No way I'm offended. Great post, Sibyl. It provides context and clarity for what I'm saying.


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## 1102009

Thanks, David.
And yes
I hope a time will come I will be able to do a more natural beekeeping.


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## R_V

Riverderwent said:


> We got our haggis crossed up with our boudin.


LOL, sorry for the cross up.. just making an assumption, and you you what happens when we assume


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## gww

River....
Except for the extracting of honey, your system of bee keeping would almost be mirrored by somebody keeping bees in a warre. 

Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

On the one hand, I lost another hive. This was one of the three small hive mentioned in post #1:


> Three of the twenty-five colonies are fall swarms. Two of those swarms are in a single four frame medium nuc box. The third swarm is in a six frame swarm trap.


I'm officially calling winter, the results: 22 out of 25 hives survived. 12% winter losses. 

On the other hand, my buddy and I did a cutout today, actually two hives four feet apart (on either side of a window) in an exterior wall. Piece of cake. It was about 59°F. They were interesting because the hive on the left was very aggressive. The bees chased me to the truck when we first started. They were less aggressive once they were in the bee vac. The hive was large, seven feet tall, 3 1/2" deep, about 22" wide, probably 2 or 3 years old. (No one had been living in the house for several years.) It had about ten pounds of honey. 

But the other hive had a completely different personality. The bees were docile, very docile. The second hive was fair sized but only about half to two-thirds as large as the other hive. From the look of the comb and propolis and the debris in the bottom, it was about a year old. There was very little honey in the second hive. The bees were smaller. Several of the bees in the smaller hive had noticeable physical characteristics of viral infection.


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## AR1

Riverderwent said:


> But the other hive had a completely different personality. The bees were docile, very docile. The second hive was fair sized but only about half to two-thirds as large as the other hive. From the look of the comb and propolis and the debris in the bottom, it was about a year old. There was very little honey in the second hive. The bees were smaller. Several of the bees in the smaller hive had noticeable physical characteristics of viral infection.


Do you plan to isolate the possibly infected hive? I wouldn't want to add an infected hive to a yard full of healthy bees. But it would be interesting to see how they do.


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## Riverderwent

AR1 said:


> Do you plan to isolate the possibly infected hive? I wouldn't want to add an infected hive to a yard full of healthy bees. But it would be interesting to see how they do.


Great question. In this area, like many others, there is no practical way to keep the bees outside the flying range of other honey bee colonies. I don't plan to destroy the colony. This cold snap may do it in any event. The adjacent, apparently non-diseased hive, like others nearby, likely had been exposed to and may be a latent carrier of the apparent viral infection. The adjacent hive may also be resistant to the apparent infection or its vectors or tolerant of the apparent virus. These two colonies may actually help me a little to identify and promote other resistant and tolerant colonies. If the problem appeared to be a novel disease or spore related condition like AFB, I would expect to destroy the diseased colony and the adjacent colony.


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## Riverderwent

Today we picked up three swarm clusters, "bees in a bucket", from folks calling. We also split a hive into 3 nucs plus the mother hive using three different frames from that hive that had capped queen cells on them. The first four swarm traps we checked all had bees coming in and out. Dogwood trees were already blooming. Bee season has started early this year.


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## Riverderwent

Nine days ago we had 23 hives. Today, we have 35, plus a few swarms in traps that are still hanging on trees. A colony moved into a one box hive that was empty yesterday. We have not lost any more of the 22 (out of 25) that overwintered successfully. The hives are booming at the moment.


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## AvatarDad

Good grief, that's amazing and terrific.

I still have not seen swarm #1 this year, but at the local bee club the other night we heard "there are a lot of them, and they are huge". One of the guys got a 6 pound swarm. My bees have been pulling in pollen and nectar since January, and I've been checking them every Saturday.

You've basically had a 50% increase in 9 days. That's just awesome.


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## Riverderwent

I pulled two trapped swarms off of trees this evening and took them to one of the bee yards several miles away. We will rebox them tomorrow and put the traps back up. We use foundationless frames in the swarm traps, plus one drawn comb. This will form the nucleus of the new colony's brood chamber.


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## Riverderwent

The plan today is build more traps and supers, set up a new bee yard, and do a cutout.


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## squarepeg

are you seeing any new white wax and the capping of this year's honey yet david?


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## bucksbees

I am north west of River, about 2 hours, my one TF hive, from a cutout, is making wax, and capping. It got the second brood box two days ago, and the brood pattern on the comb is top to bottom, and side to side. No resources are being stored on the same frame as brood.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> are you seeing any new white wax and the capping of this year's honey yet david?


I saw it in a cutout today. Thirty pounds or so of fresh capped "spring" honey. Little or no winter honey in that hive. Lots of brood. When I was looking at the brood, I thought that's where the winter honey went. Another cutout today fifteen miles north of there and a _little_ higher elevation had no capped spring honey to speak of. I have not noticed any new capped spring honey in my hives, but it's been a few days since I looked.


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## Riverderwent

So we're reducing the hives at a yard that has been a poor performer both in honey and in survival and setting up another beeyard in what appears to be an excellent location. I'm buzzing with excitement. (Come on, you love it; you know you do.) We built and put out six new swarm traps on the lands around the new location. It is near two areas that have been productive swarm producers.

A nice thing about trapped swarms is that they rarely abscond or not take when moved or transferred to a new hive setup. Better for me than swarm clusters and much better than cutouts. But my hiving methods for cutouts have room for improvement. Swarm clusters are tricky in terms of using queen excluders yet allowing virgin queens to mate.


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## Riverderwent

We built six of these Saturday morning and put them out Saturday afternoon. By Tuesday, all six had scouts or a new swarm.


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## squarepeg

i've had traps out for about a week or so and set near my two main yards.

my bees discovered the traps pretty quickly after they were set, but since then there is absolutely no scouting going on by mine or any of the nearby ferals.

we're not quite there yet, but very close.


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## AvatarDad

Riverderwent said:


> We built six of these Saturday morning and put them out Saturday afternoon. By Tuesday, all six had scouts or a new swarm.


Is that like a medium lang you are using as a trap? Is it mounted only from the back or is there some bottom support of some kind?


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## Riverderwent

AvatarDad said:


> Is that like a medium lang you are using as a trap? Is it mounted only from the back or is there some bottom support of some kind?


The traps are built from cedar 1x12 and fit regular Langstroth frames. The sides are 11½" deep, but we actually use medium frames in them. There is not a bottom support; they hang from the back. There is a ⅞" (actual measurement) spacer on the back and the wooden hanger that you see is attached to it. We use glue and screws to attach the spacer block and the hanger. The spacer is there so that the telescoping cover will fit on it.

If my calculations are correct, these traps are about 35 liters. Dr. Seeley espouses a 40 liter trap, but 35 seems about right for my little spatially challenged swamp bees. I tried to explain to my bees that Dr. Seeley is a well educated, experienced, and well regarded researcher and professor and has authored a number of papers and two popular books about bees. They don't listen. They're all, "What did Mr. Bush say?" Bees.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> my bees discovered the traps pretty quickly after they were set, but since then there is absolutely no scouting going on by mine or any of the nearby ferals.
> 
> we're not quite there yet, but very close.


We've put 17 traps out and have rehived about 4 swarms from them so far this year if I am recalling correctly. We don't set them out in relation to our yards specifically, but some are within a half mile to two miles of at least one of our yards.


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## bucksbees

I hope all your hives make it through these storms.

With a few days of rain, some hives might be throwing out swarms tomorrow.


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## squarepeg

understood david. i have ferals in the area that appreciate catching, but more than anything the traps serve as 'sentinels' for my yards.


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## Riverderwent

bucksbees said:


> I hope all your hives make it through these storms.
> 
> With a few days of rain, some hives might be throwing out swarms tomorrow.


Thank you for the well wishing. Good point that storms give you swarms.


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## Riverderwent

So first thing this morning I get a call about a swarm. After the severe storms we had yesterday, I'm assuming that they were living in a wall. Nope, it was a large swarm cluster. They had been through the storm. They were docile to the point of being lethargic and glad to see a box with a cover, and more glad to see a frame of honey. There was a dead virgin queen on the pavement below the swarm cluster, so I will keep an eye on the colony to make sure that it is queen right. 

On another note and just to keep tabs, we are up to 46 colonies, plus three trapped swarms that I know of that are still in their traps hanging on the tree. And this is April 3rd. In most years, April 1st is the first day of swarm season.


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## Riverderwent

Bees, Please.

Last month I made a few unremarkable observations about how I keep bees. The old three legged stool and all that jazz. Well, one of those legs is having the right bees. In an effort now to keep the stool upright, I would like to share some new and equally unremarkable thoughts about how I get those little spiral strands of nucleotides that inhabit the space between my bottom boards and outer covers. 

If I were to move to a distant land, like Kansas or Maine or Texarkana, where the wind goes whipping down the plain, or sleigh bells ring, or some such, where would I get mite resistant or tolerant bees. Where shall I go? What shall I do? Well, Rhett, the first thing I'd do is Google "bee removal" and try to find somebody that does bee friendly cutouts and has some bees that came out of some gnarly old hive in the back porch of Tara when it was being torn down. The next thing I'd do is start getting in touch with beekeepers in the area and try to find out the names of some treatment free weirdos. 

Then I'd find a creperia and a schnitzell haus, cause they're good, and if time and opportunity allowed, I'd start doing cutouts and trapouts and digouts and pryouts and sawzall outs. Then I'd try to find a remote place nearby (don't you love that oxymoronic phrase) that's a little hard to meander around in and find a Starbucks, like expanses of river bottom thickets or steep and overgrown mountainsides and deep, thick woods where the red fern grows and Sasquatch is likely to make a quartering away stroll looking back at a camera with grainy film in it. Then I'd put up some swarm traps while looking quartering back over my shoulder 'cause Sasquatch probably is real. Then I'd run as much diverse, wild genetics through my beeyards as quickly as practical and let the unfittest unsurvive in rapid succession. 

I'd also try to find out the timing of the local flows and try to figure out how that ties in with the life cycle of both bees and mites and try to find thriving untreated bees from another area with similar flows from which I could bring in successful survivors to try in the new area.

To summarize, 
1) Get bees from a bee removal service
2) Find and get bees from a treatment free beekeeper
3) Eat crepes and schnitzel
4) Do bee removals
5) Put up swarm traps in the boonies
6) Get non-local treatment free bees from someplace with similarly timed flows.


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> Bees, Please.
> 
> Last month I made a few unremarkable observations about how I keep bees. The old three legged stool and all that jazz. Well, one of those legs is having the right bees. In an effort now to keep the stool upright, I would like to share some new and equally unremarkable thoughts about how I get those little spiral strands of nucleotides that inhabit the space between my bottom boards and outer covers.
> 
> If I were to move to distant land, like Kansas or Maine or Texarkana, where the wind goes whipping down the plain, or sleigh bells ring, or some such, where would I get mite resistant or tolerant bees. Where shall I go? What shall I do? Well, Rhett, the first thing I'd do is Google "bee removal" and try to find somebody that does bee friendly cutouts and has some bees that came out of some gnarly old hive in the back porch of Tara when it was being torn down. The next thing I'd do is start getting in touch with beekeepers in the area and try to find out the names of some treatment free weirdos.
> 
> Then I'd find a creperia and a schnitzell house, cause they're good, and if time and opportunity allowed, I'd start doing cutouts and trapouts and digouts and pryouts and sawzall outs. Then I'd try to find a remote place nearby (don't you love that oxymoronic phrase) that's a little hard to meander around in and find a Starbucks, like expanses of river bottom thickets or steep and overgrown mountainsides and deep, thick woods where the red fern grows and Sasquatch is likely to make a quartering away stroll looking back at a camera with grainy film in it, and put up some some traps while looking quartering over my shoulder 'cause Sasquatch probably is real. Then I'd run as much diverse, wild genetics through my beeyards as quickly as practical and let the unfittest unsurvive in rapid succession.
> 
> I'd also try to find out the timing of the local flows and try to figure out how that ties in with the life cycle of both bees and mites and try to find thriving untreated bees from another area with similar flows from which I could bring in successful survivors to try in the new area.


:thumbsup:


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## Riverderwent

Picked up another large swarm this evening. What is it about trampolines and bees?


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## Riverderwent

Planning to pick up some swarm traps and move some hives this evening.


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## squarepeg

'tis the season...


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> 'tis the season...


Yes sir. Picked up three inhabited swarm traps. But I found out while moving some hives from one yard to another that a split I made the other day didn't take and a swarm that I had captured (not trapped) was gone. I used a queen excluder with the swarm. And I believe I also put a frame of brood in there. 

I'm hit or miss with swarms. There is a technique to getting the bees and the frames into a box without crushing the queen or getting her on the wrong side of the queen excluder. I just don't know what that technique is. _I would welcome guidance_. 

I do much better putting swarms in one of my swarm traps that are 11½" deep with medium foundationless frames and that have entrance disks with a queen excluder setting. There is room for the bees below the frames, and I can put all the frames in without crushing bees. I'm better than I used to be at keeping swarms and cutouts, but it has been a steep learning curve for me.


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## Riverderwent

We inspected our hives yesterday to add supers. We have not lost any of the 22 hives that successfully overwintered.


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## Riverderwent

We have sixteen swarm traps hanging on trees. Yesterday I "ran the traps", and eight have colonies living in them. We have previously rehived seven swarms this year.


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## Riverderwent

So I picked up four of the traps tonight and put them in a bee yard. One was so heavy the tree was leaning. (That's what some folks call a "stretcher". That's southern for an exaggeration made for the purpose of entertainment or emphasis. The explanation is not regional.)


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## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> So I picked up four of the traps tonight and put them in a bee yard.


Today, I rehived those four and tonight moved three more traps with bees into a beeyard.


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## julieandwadeshelton

"Replacing Queens Routinely. I generally let the bees decide when to supersede the queen. If the bees are particularly aggressive and the queen fails the hive tool test, they usually decide to replace her."

What is the "hive tool test?"


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## AvatarDad

David, when you write your "Bait Hive and Swarm Trap" book let me know so I can buy a first edition, please.

I had 100 scout bees at mine in the yard Friday. I was so excited I wandered around the yard with a camera all day. Saturday about 4:30 "poof!" they all disappeared. I think they found a home they liked better. Fickle bees! I feel jilted. (Of course I probably scared them off. "This hive is great, but that big bear with the camera is weird and he won't leave!").


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## Riverderwent

julieandwadeshelton said:


> What is the "hive tool test?"


I'll try to put this delicately. The test involves a hive tool, a queen, and squishing.


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## Riverderwent

AvatarDad said:


> I had 100 scout bees at mine in the yard Friday. I was so excited I wandered around the yard with a camera all day. Saturday about 4:30 "poof!" they all disappeared.


Wait two days and see what happens when the bees' voting polls close. I try not to give in to the temptation to put more lemon grass oil in while they're scouting. No more than four drops every two weeks or so. They know it's there. Keep us posted.


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## AR1

Riverderwent said:


> I'll try to put this delicately. The test involves a hive tool, a queen, and squishing. Ordinarily, the hive tool emerges unscathed. The queen, not so much.


Sometimes known as 'The rule of thumb'.


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## Matt_inSC

David (and other contributors),

I stumbled onto this thread yesterday and am really excited about it and extremely appreciative of your taking the time to document your progress and answer the questions on the thread. I'm starting year 3 and really want to work my way towards an approach similar to yours.

One of the changes we (my dad and I each have hives and are in this together) made last year/this year was to move to all 8 frame mediums so we're already lined up in that regard. We do actually have 2 boxes of deeps still but they'll be phased out as soon as we can.
Our environment: We are in South Carolina (upstate). Southeastern Mixed Forests according to the Ecoregion map. I'm in the city so a relatively urban area and dad's apiary is rural with minimal farmed land in the area - mainly deciduous forests.
We also plan to run 3 medium 8 frame boxes for our brood area. We currently have (between us) 4 full hives, 4 healthy nucs, and one captured swarm to be moved into a nuc or 8 frame box in the next week or so (once we know the queen is laying). Most of our colonies are from the two packages I purchased in 2015 and one captured swarm. We treated late Summer 2016 and once in January 2017 using OAV.

I read the whole thread yesterday and jotted down a few questions (I'm sure the first of many). I'll put them all on one post so as not to create too many sub-threads here.

*Foundationless in brood area* - I like the idea of this to allow the bees to determine size, worker/drone, etc. Do you use a starter strip for new foundationless frames? Would the best method for me to introduce foundationless be to put foundationless frames between existing/drawn frames?

*Leaving honey on as opposed to feeding* - Do you simply leave any honey that's below the QE in place or might frames from the supers be left in place depending on needs?

*Pods of hives* - One aspect of a treatment free plan we have in mind is "pods" of hives as opposed to large quantities directly beside each other. We are thinking of limiting each pod to maybe 2 hives and 1 nuc (or thereabouts) and having the pods at least 20 yards apart. The two benefits we envision are 1) the spread of "stuff" would be limited; and 2) this will hopefully mimic the natural distribution of colonies a bit. Overall drift should be limited as well. Is that something you've considered - or even have experiences to share? We know it will make management a little more difficult but we're OK with that investment.

*Brood break* - It seems from my reading and attended lectures that a definitive brood break can benefit a colony's health. I saw mention in one of your posts of the OTS method for queen rearing - I assume the notching aspect. Are you doing definitive brood breaks in all colonies? It sounds like that's not the case but am curious of your thoughts on it.


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## Riverderwent

Matt, I may answer a couple of questions at a time.


> Do you use a starter strip for new foundationless frames?


I use mostly foundationless in the brood area and wood frames with plastic foundation in the honey supers. My foundationless frames are mostly Kelley foundationless frames which have a V-shaped piece of wood at the top as a comb guide. I do have a few frames here and there with a thin piece of wood glued in the notch in the top bar that serves as the comb guide. I don't use plastic or wax starter strips embossed with cell design.



> Would the best method for me to introduce foundationless be to put foundationless frames between existing/drawn frames?


If you put a foundationless frame between (or next to) frames of uncapped nectar, you are likely to end up with wonky comb. This is because the bees may draw out wide frames of honey which messes up the spacing. I generally either put several frames of undrawn foundationless together in the brood area (as in when starting a nuc) or work them in individually between frames of drawn comb in the brood area. Once the foundationless frames are drawn, you can use them as needed in the brood boxes.


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## Riverderwent

> Leaving honey on as opposed to feeding - Do you simply leave any honey that's below the QE in place or might frames from the supers be left in place depending on needs?


I use all eight frame medium boxes. When the weather warms up, I put a queen excluder on top of the third box, and I don't harvest from the bottom three boxes. My last harvest or "honey pull" is around All Saints Day. At that time, I pull the excluders off. With hives with particularly large bee populations, I will leave a fourth box with uncapped nectar if it's available or, if it's not, just wet supers after they are extracted, which the bees will fill if there is nectar available. I will move honey from healthy hives as needed for late starts or other hives that need it. I only harvest what the bees don't need. Other than sharing honey from healthy hives, I don't feed. No syrup.


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## gww

River
Have the bees already back filled the brood nest a little by nov 1st? When do you quit putting on supers. I have never been though this part of bee keeping. I thought most here sorta pulled thier honey in july and august and except for cleaning of the wet supers, they left them off so the bees put the fall flow into the brood nest. I may not even understand what I just said. Then they watch for weight around the end of sept and make any adjustments before oct. We are colder but I am wondering myself on how to handle the winter brood nest weight and how much honey to take. When the bees start brooding down and the population drops, do they start filling the brood nest even if they have room to put honey in supers.

I would thank you for any tid bit you can give me on what bees do and what that means to me.
Thank you.
gww


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## Riverderwent

> We are thinking of limiting each pod to maybe 2 hives and 1 nuc (or thereabouts) and having the pods at least 20 yards apart. The two benefits we envision are 1) the spread of "stuff" would be limited; and 2) this will hopefully mimic the natural distribution of colonies a bit. Overall drift should be limited as well. Is that something you've considered - or even have experiences to share?


We currently keep 3 yards with 10 to 20 hives each. The hives are placed within a couple of feet of each other. We have a fourth yard with two hives in a less productive area. What you are proposing makes sense from the standpoint of avoiding drifting of bees and horizontal transfer of varroa.

By the way, Matt, I'm flattered that you have asked me these questions. Beekeeping involves a lot of moving parts that need to fit together to make a productive system. There are a lot of variables that are location and beekeeper driven. Different folks' situations will lead to different solutions. Take what works for you from different people.


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## Matt_inSC

Thanks for the answers (and words of encouragement), David.

I'm keen to hear your thoughts on the brood break. Mel D. has some math and charts to support his theory that the brood break (properly timed) is essential for combating mites. But it doesn't see, you adhere Tom such a stringent schedule on it - or I missed that in the thread.


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## lharder

I would like to hear more about the successes/failures of those who use Mel's methods. 

One aspect of TF beekeeping is that we would like the bees to do most of the work re brood breaks. For instance SP believes he has bees that brood break naturally during his dearth, no manipulation required. There are probably other mechanisms at play as to why some bees are successful without treatment while others fail. So the hard core TF crowd don't do any manipulation re pest control because they want to unearth the genetics and various mechanisms that can do this on its own. We don't actually know with certainty what makes for a successful TF bee, we have some ideas, so we let nature take it course and see what comes up. I'm currently in the hard bond group, with an expanding apiary so far. It can be a bit brutal, but is probably the shortest path to tough bees. However, it seems like TF success is highly regional. Some areas have massive amounts of bee movement that probably make the disease environment chaotic, making it difficult for bees to adapt. So in these areas, it may be necessary to step away from the hard bond methodology. 

My path has been to start off hard bond, make as many nucs as possible, and see if I have successful, productive hives that can make it 2 plus winters. If I didn't have success, I would gradually step away from hard bond methodology. I have had quite a bit of death in my second year hives, but I believe some cream has risen to the top and I may have identified some promising genetics. Since I have more hives every year, I am sticking to the hard bond process. Meanwhile I am learning to bee keep as well. How much death is due to my own incompetence?

I am making one major change this year. I will be putting robbing screens on during the dearth. This is about the time when some colonies begin to fail. I want to reduce mite/virus transference and not put decent colonies under any more stress than they have, and it may be useful to reduce local viral virulence.


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## 1102009

Great post, Iharder. :thumbsup:


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## Nordak

Very refreshing thread full of great info. Thanks David for creating it and to everyone else who has contributed. I'd like nominate this thread for sticky status if any mods are listenining.


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## Nordak

Ask and you shall receive. Thanks SP I'm guessing.


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## mike bispham

Riverderwent said:


> There is a technique to getting the bees and the frames into a box without crushing the queen or getting her on the wrong side of the queen excluder. I just don't know what that technique is. _I would welcome guidance_.


Great thread David, thank you. 

I drop swarms (or tempt/drive them if they are on walls) into 6 frame nucs, then quickly put them on the ground and drop in mostly starter strip frames or sometimes shallow frames. (I'm not fussed about having them build on the bottom of shallow frames - they seem to make it all work just as well.) If any frames are riding on the bees I let them settle in of their own accord. This might mean only having 5 frames instead of the full 6. I pop a cover on, brushing away any bees that are sitting where they'd be squashed, pop a strap round, and try to put the nuc near the spot they came from - often on a stool or ladder. If I'm a way from home I'll wait around till most are in then snap the door shut and I'm away. Nearer home I might leave them till after nightfall or ask the homeowner to close the door after dark and fetch them in the morning.

One more thing: I slip a coin under each corner for ventilation, or, if its a big swarm, fetch a vented cover (which I try to carry)

Back at the yard they go straight on a stand; I open the door and its nearly job done. If they had only five frames I leave a brick upright on top, meaning 'do something' and next time I see it I remember to pop that last frame in and maybe add an eke and feed. If they are a large swarm I might add a (nuc) deep. I don't use queen excluders.

I caught my first swarm of the year in a bait hive last Wednesday. Or rather my friend did - he let me put a bait hive in his garden to try to catch bees, then his missus thought bees in the garden would be nice - and now they're their bees!

Mike (UK)


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## Riverderwent

Matt_inSC said:


> Brood break - It seems from my reading and attended lectures that a definitive brood break can benefit a colony's health. I saw mention in one of your posts of the OTS method for queen rearing - I assume the notching aspect. Are you doing definitive brood breaks in all colonies? It sounds like that's not the case but am curious of your thoughts on it.





Matt_inSC said:


> I'm keen to hear your thoughts on the brood break. Mel D. has some math and charts to support his theory that the brood break (properly timed) is essential for combating mites. But it doesn't see, you adhere Tom such a stringent schedule on it - or I missed that in the thread.





lharder said:


> One aspect of TF beekeeping is that we would like the bees to do most of the work re brood breaks. For instance SP believes he has bees that brood break naturally during his dearth, no manipulation required.


I am going to ramble about this. So if you don't want to see rambling, don't read this. Vitellogenin is a compound with a lot of protein, some fat, and a little sugar. It is a precursor of the protein in egg yolk. Worker bees produce vitellogenin but, since they are (mostly) sterile, they don't use it for egg production. Instead, they use it to feed larvae. If there are no larvae to feed, the bees get high levels of vitellogenin. They feed it to other adult bees and store it in fat bodies in their abdomen and head. These high levels of vitellogenin cause the bees to live longer and help with disease resistance at the cell level. That's what the folks with the microscope say, anyway.

Varroa largely feed on, guess what, vitellogenin. So, not only do they vector viruses to bees, they take the very stuff that helps the bees, particularly winter bees, live longer and fight disease. 

Varroa can only breed in capped brood cells. So if there is a brood break, two things happen simultaneously. First, varroa stop breeding so their population begins decreasing. Second, the bees' vitellogenin levels begin to increase which causes the existing bees to live longer and have more immunity.

What's all this got to do with Mel Disselkoen? The toughest thing about Mel, as we all know, is spelling his last name. He is a rock star on queen breeding curves, summer solstices, and how (and why) to notch the bottom wall of 24 hour old larvae. He wrote the book on OTS, and I haven't read it. Literally.

Mel lives in the north, meaning, of course, north of Jackson, Mississippi. Way up yonder, y’all have nectar flows like a big sparkler. They go on and on. Down heah, our flows are like bottle rockets. There’s a fizz, a flash, and a pop, and they are gone. We have a summer dearth that starts July 4th and ends September somethingth. 

If you raise your fancy, high born, bona fide, Italian bees down here, they don’t care about summer dearths. They’ll raise brood with abandon, particularly if there’s a can of corn syrup dripping on their head. Unless someone does a little On The Spot queennapping, they will raise brood till the cows, and the varroa, come home. Or till they run out of honey, pollen, and vitellogenin. Lots of bees and lots of brood. However, if you raise frugal, locally adapted, backwoods, feral, cur _Apis muttus_ bees, they will breed up for flows and, unless you feed them, they will tend to shut the brood spigot off at the street during the dearth. Even with honey in the hive. Lots of bees, but un-lots of brood. 

If you have a summer dearth, and if you have locally adapted, frugal bees, and if you don’t feed them during the summer dearth, they will breed down and hang on to their vitellogenin. But that’s a lot of if’s. With Mel’s OTS system, you are manufacturing a brood break while a flow is still going if you are in an area with more or less continuous summer flows. The timing of that brood break may need to be varied depending on location, flows, weather, and bee breed. (But I’d listen to Mr. Dissellkoen about that; like I said, he’s a rock star.) My caution would be that if the brood break is timed to be most advantageous in connection with nectar gathering, you may not have the best timing for varroa. 

Some areas may be fortunate in that the local dearths may be naturally timed well in connection with brood breaks and mites. And, let me get my foil hat adjusted, feral and untreated, managed bees may also be naturally selecting for bees that tweak their their brood rearing reaction to flow breaks to the best advantage in connection with varroa.

There is a rather obvious downside to bees not breeding. The bee population begins decreasing. This is where understanding the overlay of varroa mites' life cycle with bees' life cycle is important to understanding how brood breaks actually affect the ratio of the populations of bees and mites in the hive. And guess what. I can't explain it because I don't understand it. Big letdown, right? Give me a break. I'm just one little beekeeper in one little corner of one little state. But I "believe" (there, I said it) that in a head to head contest a big fat, long lived, disease resistant, vitellogenin rich worker bee with no brood to feed will outlive a little pinhead mite. Particularly if the bees are offering free, but overly aggressive pedicures to their phoretic cohabitants. Otherwise, the charts of mite infestation rates wouldn't always start at low levels on January 1st, now would they. See there.

On notching, I don't routinely requeen hives so I don't need a lot of queens. Notching lets me get queen cells going on a couple of different frames in a single hive. I can pull each frame, put it in its own new nuc; no muss, no fuss. It’s just a handy way to make a handful of nucs from each of a handful of good queens.


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## squarepeg

yep. dern good synopsis there david.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> Have the bees already back filled the brood nest a little by nov 1st? When do you quit putting on supers. I have never been though this part of bee keeping. I thought most here sorta pulled thier honey in july and august and except for cleaning of the wet supers, they left them off so the bees put the fall flow into the brood nest. I may not even understand what I just said. Then they watch for weight around the end of sept and make any adjustments before oct. We are colder but I am wondering myself on how to handle the winter brood nest weight and how much honey to take. When the bees start brooding down and the population drops, do they start filling the brood nest even if they have room to put honey in supers.


In simple terms, your bees are either frugal like Carniolans or relentless brooders like Italians, or somewhere in between. Try to find an experienced beekeeper in your general area who will give you a general idea about how much stores honey bees ought to have to overwinter where you live and what size or configuration of boxes to use. When you get to know your bees and your nectar flows, you'll be able to adjust that number. What you actually will need will vary from year to year. 

Depending on the year, my hives may lose more weight in August than they do in January. I dont harvest below the top of the third box. (I use eight frame medium boxes.) Everything below that is theirs, whether it's May or October. Most of my hives go into winter with three full, backfilled boxes. Some boomers will have a fourth box. That's about the same as 1½ to 2 ten frame deeps. If there are enough bees in the hive to control the space of three boxes, then I will make sure that they end up with three boxes. Where you are, with my local, feral bees, I'd feel good about two full ten frame deep boxes or four of my eight frame mediums. I wouldn't take any honey from below that till I got to know my bees and the local flows, and anything capped above that would be in a bottle in the cabinet.

They are just bugs. You're going to be okay. You will make some mistakes. There are no short cuts. Use feral survivors or treat for varroa till you can get feral survivors. If the back of your hive feels heavy when you lift it, you're good. If it doesn't, fix it. Figure out how much you want your bees to have on December 1st, and don't take honey below that line except in odd numbered leap years.


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## dtrooster

> I am going to ramble about this


:thumbsup:
Quite the impressive ramble, thanks


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## Riverderwent

Nordak said:


> I'd like nominate this thread for sticky status if any mods are listenining.





Nordak said:


> Ask and you shall receive. Thanks SP I'm guessing.


I'd like to thank the Academy. You like me; you really like me. Obviously, the standard for stickies has sunk too low. Something must be done.


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## Riverderwent

Mike, thank you for the guidance.


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## 1102009

> Apis muttus


:thumbsup:


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## gww

River
Thanks for taking on my question, I use 10 frame mediums for the brood boxes and go for three. You mentioned harvest in nov and so I was just trying to figure if I still had supers on by then if all thier stores would be in the supers or if the super was capped, this would mean the brood nest was full when I pulled that super. I actually started another thread on just that question.

I have no ideal what my bees are but I would say they are mutts from the local area. I got two of them from three swarms. I have not treated yet and nothing has died yet though I have had one swarm and had to split due to queen cups in another one. Nothing is dieing yet "knock on wood". Of course swarms could come from somebody elses bought hives.

I guess I will keep doing as I am and ask a lot of questions and then play it by ear.

Thanks
gww


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> You mentioned harvest in nov and so I was just trying to figure if I still had supers on by then if all thier stores would be in the supers or if the super was capped, this would mean the brood nest was full when I pulled that super.


That is a great question, undeserving of this pale response. If a beekeeper harvested all the supers after the flow was over but before the brood nest had contracted for winter and the brood space had been backfilled, that would leave all concerned in a pickle. 

_We interrupt this post for a public service announcement about hive tipping_. I'm pretty good about lifting the back of my hives a couple of inches when I’m in the beeyard. I tip (or pick up) starter nucs and full hives. I tip in the spring, fall, and winter. I’ve tipped sometimes even when I'm about to go through a hive or have just gone through it. When I first started tipping hives, I didn’t know what was normal and what was off, but I’ve slowly come to recognize when something’s up, or down, as it were. _Now back to your regular programming_.

I’m not the best authority on fall brood population curves. In fact, I’m leery of pawing around in the brood chamber even when I have a good reason and when there are plenty of drones around to fix my mistakes, let alone in the fall when I’m not concerned about swarming and there are few drones around to help replace the matron. Also, I don’t really know whether the reduction in egg laying causes backfilling or backfilling causes the reduction in egg laying or even whether that matters for these purposes. 

But within the limits of my limited skills, by November 1st, the frugal, hometown girls who keep me have pretty well corralled her highness and backfilled the bottom three boxes with winter stores. With the approach I use, and particularly with not feeding, the danger is not harvesting too late, when the bees have already backfilled the area that I’m not going into anyway. But rather, the danger is harvesting too early, when their winter pantry would still be full of brood, not honey, and they would be left to the whims of an alliterative but fickle fall flow for their backfilling. Having said that, being a highly skilled hive tipper and looker down in between the frames’er, when I pull off the supers around November 1st, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I’m leaving the ladies. Now, what was it you asked?


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## gww

River
I get the gist of it well enough to move forward. I think our fall flow was closer to the month of september and first frost early october and so in the end there is no cookie cutter method untill I watch a few years and put what you said to my area.
Thanks for taking the time and effort to respond to my question. It all helps. My friend is a tipper also but can not tip my hives because they are made out of every kind of wood known to man and so the wares do not all weigh the same. Last year I just picked a date and lifted each box guessed what I was missing, added three gal and a sugar block and called it a day. My hives were sub standard size wise and so now I am wanting to graduate to the big boy hives and judge well enough to not feed also. I will get there.
Thanks
gww


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## JWChesnut

lharder said:


> I have had quite a bit of death in my second year hives, but I believe some cream has risen to the top and I may have identified some promising genetics.


This sort of self-delusion is not credible. Just to give sense of scale, the avocado variety breeding trials (for Mexican mite resistance) I was involved in had 64,000 initial crosses from selected stock, to be followed by 64,000 F2 and F3 crosses from the promising candidates of the initial cohort. Avocados, of course, can be backcrossed, selfed (with pollen storage), and the selections can be cloned indefinitely. Contributing varieties are typed and trialed, and crosses are known. Candidate size is calculated from Fst ratios and heritability of observed traits.

Harder started with 8 or so queens from 3 sources (Hawaiian, Saskatraz, and what not) if I remember correctly. Open-mated, that initial stock will submerge in the "mutt" pool. Colony death by mischance will ensure that the remaining stock is essentially random in nature. 

Harder has generated random mutts, which he claims is cream. That is his perogative, and every year yet more amateurs market so-called survivors for king's ransom to the guillible. 

The credible breeding programs have selection n= 5000 to >10,000. Backyard breeding generates mutts of the landrace local to the area.


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## AR1

JWChesnut said:


> This sort of self-delusion is not credible.
> 
> The credible breeding programs have selection n= 5000 to >10,000. Backyard breeding generates mutts of the landrace local to the area.


Mutts of the local landraces have been under fierce selection pressure by mites since the 1990s, across the entire northern hemisphere. The backyard breeder with a half-dozen hives isn't going to make much progress, but he is starting with stock descended from an order of magnitude greater numbers than your 64,000.


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## JWChesnut

AR1 said:


> Mutts of the local landraces have been under fierce selection pressure by mites since the 1990s, across the entire northern hemisphere. The backyard breeder with a half-dozen hives isn't going to make much progress, but he is starting with stock descended from an order of magnitude greater numbers than your 64,000.


In trial after trial, those local mutts are vulnerable to Varroa. Only in the fevered dreams of the descendants of Dr. Pangloss do they show mite resistance.


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## Nordak

JWChesnut said:


> In trial after trial, those local mutts are vulnerable to Varroa.


Local is a lot of different places. Do you have literature on trial studies on local areas around Hamilton, AL or Shreveport, LA? Are all varroa and related viruses created equal in all locale?


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## Fusion_power

> In trial after trial, those local mutts are vulnerable to Varroa.


 For perspective, how many colonies did you dedicate to breeding for mite resistance? Were you within a couple of orders of magnitude of the "credible breeding program" suggested above?

How do you explain the ability of bees to manage mites at least in some locations?


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## AR1

JWChesnut said:


> In trial after trial, those local mutts are vulnerable to Varroa. Only in the fevered dreams of the descendants of Dr. Pangloss do they show mite resistance.


Mites are a parasite adapted to attack honey bees. Of course the bees still remain vulnerable. It's a situation roughly similar to the American Indian when first exposed to European diseases. 90% of the population died in the first generation, and large numbers for generations after. And, significantly, lots of Europeans died then and continue to die from those same diseases, but not in the same order of numbers.

What I hope for is a population that is in a stable equilibrium with the mites and their load of viruses. Hives will continue to die, probably forever, as the mites and viruses evolve in tandem with the bees. Some races of bees already show considerable resistance, Africans for example seem to have no trouble maintaining high wild populations. You seem to be saying that it is flat out impossible for bees in North America to survive without constant interventions. That doesn't appear to be true. They may not be the happy, humble, gentle Italians from the pre-mite era, but beekeepers kept bees before Italians became popular too.


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## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> This is where understanding the overlay of varroa mites' life cycle with bees' life cycle is important to understanding how brood breaks actually affect the ratio of the populations of bees and mites in the hive.


This study may be of some help: https://eurekamag.com/pdf.php?pdf=002705986. If I understand the study, it shows that, if a cohort of phoretic mites is removed from brood and placed with adult bees, the average _additional_ life expectancy of the mites is thirty-one days and the maximum additional life span of individual mites in the cohort is "around ninety" days. (By the way, this maximum "additional" lifespan is likely close to the actual "total" maximum life expectancy of an adult female varroa mite because of the likelihood that some of the mites in the cohorts studied had only recently emerged from the cell in which they were born.) The study apparently shows that between 20% and 60% of the mites die within the first twenty days after the brood is removed. If this study accurately reflects the longevity of varroa mites in the absence of bee brood, it helps explain why those varroa infestation charts show low rates of infestation on January 1. And, likewise, those charts corroborate the study's findings.


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## lharder

JWChesnut said:


> This sort of self-delusion is not credible. Just to give sense of scale, the avocado variety breeding trials (for Mexican mite resistance) I was involved in had 64,000 initial crosses from selected stock, to be followed by 64,000 F2 and F3 crosses from the promising candidates of the initial cohort. Avocados, of course, can be backcrossed, selfed (with pollen storage), and the selections can be cloned indefinitely. Contributing varieties are typed and trialed, and crosses are known. Candidate size is calculated from Fst ratios and heritability of observed traits.
> 
> Harder started with 8 or so queens from 3 sources (Hawaiian, Saskatraz, and what not) if I remember correctly. Open-mated, that initial stock will submerge in the "mutt" pool. Colony death by mischance will ensure that the remaining stock is essentially random in nature.
> 
> Harder has generated random mutts, which he claims is cream. That is his perogative, and every year yet more amateurs market so-called survivors for king's ransom to the guillible.
> 
> The credible breeding programs have selection n= 5000 to >10,000. Backyard breeding generates mutts of the landrace local to the area.


My star queen was a local mutt and not a product of my lack of brilliance and she is still doing great. But it may mean I have some background genetics to work with. Her daughters are pretty good too...so far. Time will tell. I'm actually selling bees into the local community so far, so my genetic reach is starting to extend. I had a customer come visit me and she thought the bees looked awesome. How is your tf yard JW?

Meanwhile, it an exciting time in the apiary. My main concern is not dying but swarming. I have some strong hives coming out of winter and I'm adding boxes. The whole apiary is gathering momentum, even the weak colonies coming out of winter. Some overwintered nucs are in 5 medium boxes already and the daytime highs haven't reached 70 yet. I'm finding it hard to find days to do pleasant bee work in. Pop the lid, lift some boxes, find lots of bees in all the boxes, add boxes. My warmest site is just beginning to bring in excess nectar. The others are a week or so behind it. 

Just as a note, my official hive count coming out of spring is 35. That is queen right hives with brood. Went into winter with about 60. Slightly more than 50%. Last year at this time, I was at 16 hives.


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## Oldtimer

Riverderwent said:


> This study may be of some help: https://eurekamag.com/pdf.php?pdf=002705986.


There is a possible flaw in that study.

Their results differ from other studies done on varroa longevity, and also with a trial I did myself. However they do mention the other studies including one finding mites living up to a year, so at least they are not hiding anything.

To the flaw. There are some bees that treatment free folks like to refer to as "mite biters", and some bees that have none of this trait. The study used bees they described as _Apis mellifera iberica_, but no mention was made about any mite resistant traits these bees had or didn't have. If they were "mite biters", and there was no brood, the short lifespan of the mites could have been due to that. This could explain the difference in findings between this study and other studies.

My own experiment, I kept bees broodless for 48 days, and at the end there were nearly as many mites as there had been at the beginning, which led me to conclude if the mites are not breeding they live longer. That was using gentle, non mite resistant italians, which obviously did not do any damage to phoretic mites.


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## 1102009

JWChesnut said:


> In trial after trial, those local mutts are vulnerable to Varroa.


Trial after trial, those bred " mite resistant queens" are vulnerable to local virus.




> . If they were "mite biters", and there was no brood, the short lifespan of the mites could have been due to that. This could explain the difference in findings between this study and other studies.
> 
> My own experiment, I kept bees broodless for 48 days, and at the end there were nearly as many mites as there had been at the beginning, which led me to conclude if the mites are not breeding they live longer. That was using gentle, non mite resistant italians, which obviously did not do any damage to phoretic mites.


OT, there are many who say a brood brake will not help. Could be, after a long winter brood brake there should be no mites left, but there are. How prolific are they?

If the mite biting trait is a learned behavior and not a genetic trait a brood brake could eliminate this behavior. Is there evidence it is genetically determined? I´m not informed about this.
Alois Wallner breeds mite biters but they do VSH also and he still treats a part of his stock.


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## mike bispham

AR1 said:


> Mutts of the local landraces have been under fierce selection pressure by mites since the 1990s, across the entire northern hemisphere. The backyard breeder with a half-dozen hives isn't going to make much progress, but he is starting with stock descended from an order of magnitude greater numbers than your 64,000.


Adding to that we can note Manley's wisdom:

"In most farm stock stress is laid particularly on the male because he may
sire a large number of offspring, whereas the direct progeny of the
female are very limited in number. Now we breeders of hive-bees
have the great advantage over those who have to do with most
domestic animals in that from one desirable breeding queen we can
readily produce a virtually unlimited number of young queens.
Though in a state of nature a honey-bee queen would only produce
half a dozen or so daughter queens, and maybe a couple of thousand
drones, in the hands of a competent breeder she can be made to give
an almost unlimited number of both.

It is usually considered that too much in-breeding may lead to
deterioration in the stamina and fecundity of animals, though about
this there is some disagreement. When there is no trace of any bad or
degenerate strain in the stock, in-breeding does no harm, I think; but
unless one is quite sure that this is the case, it is probably better to
arrange, as far as possible, in our breeding apiaries, that the drones
flying there shall be produced by queens of the very highest
character, while the young queens with which they are expected to
mate shall be derived from breeder queens of a different strain, but
equally outstanding qualities. In this way, although it is impossible to
be certain that all matings will be as desired, yet it can be managed
that a very large proportion of our young queens will be the product
of the male and female parents from which we wish them to be
derived."

R.O.B. Manley, Honey Farming, page 62 of the pdf, 83 of the book
http://www.biobees.com/library/gener...gROBManley.pdf 

In the beneficial ambient environment of a thriving feral population effective selective reproduction can progressively raise desirable traits like productivity in the immediate location. The more productive stocks will have an influence on the immediate feral population, in an effect extending outward in vaguely concentric circles, meeting opposing traits pressing inward. The larger the apiary (and the more effective the selection, and, up to a point, the longer it goes on for), the more pronounced this effect will be.

If at any time the pressure toward productivity ceases, yes, the apiary genetics will 'submerge in the mutt-pool'.

An analogy: 'a shark must keep swimming or it will sink.' Likewise selective genetic husbandry must keep selecting (effectively) or it will cease to have any effect.

While the apiary is being kept in good condition by ambient natural selection and (effective) beekeeper selection, offspring can fairly be described and sold as 'treatment free and productive.'

Mike


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## Oldtimer

SiWolKe said:


> If the mite biting trait is a learned behavior and not a genetic trait a brood brake could eliminate this behavior. Is there evidence it is genetically determined? I´m not informed about this.


No idea, nobody here claims to have any mite biters so I've never seen one. However about the debate if the behavior is learned, best I've been able to follow it, the idea bees teach it to each other was first proposed as a hypothesis, gained popular acceptance, but has not been demonstrated in a properly done study.

To me anyway, most bee behavior is genetic, however they can learn, and an experiment showed bumblebees learning by watching other bumblebees. So to me the jury is out. But one of the first things I noticed about beekeepers when I first started is the amount of whacky ideas people come up with so I never jump on any theory till it has some real life evidence.


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## Fusion_power

The funny thing with bees is how many of those "wacky" ideas turn out to be valid.


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## Oldtimer

Like I say FP, once there is real life evidence, I'll climb aboard.

As a young kid with my first few bees, long before either varroa or the internet, I joined the local bee club. Most others there were old guys who had bees for years and I took everything they said as gospel. Later I got a job with a commercial beekeeper and end of that season returned to my hometown for the holidays and again visited the bee club. Only then, I realised what a load of trollop some of those guys had been telling me, which I now was able to discern by real world experience.

I know what it is to be new, gullible, and easily led, I have been there.


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## 1102009

Oldtimer said:


> till it has some real life evidence.


Beekeepers don´t want this evidence.

They regard bees as they treat little kids, thinking they have to show them how to behave.
But bees are not to be mentored.

Bees which have traits to survive are regarded as bad because those traits don´t correlate with what beekeepers want.


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## Riverderwent

Oldtimer said:


> My own experiment, I kept bees broodless for 48 days, and at the end there were nearly as many mites as there had been at the beginning, which led me to conclude if the mites are not breeding they live longer. That was using gentle, non mite resistant italians, which obviously did not do any damage to phoretic mites.


What time of year was this? Could there have been horizontal transfer?


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## Oldtimer

It was maybe 10 years ago and straight up, beyond it was summer, I cannot remember just what month/s it was done. Cannot rule horizontal transfer out anything is possible I guess, but my feeling is they were just bees with no varroa fighting ability at all. No robbing going on and they were just some hives in the yard of our house. The queens were in the hives but caged.

This is not to debunk any findings by anyone else, just, my take is that some bees will get rid of mites, and some won't. The linked study did not factor that in.


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## Riverderwent

Thank you for the response. Given how little research I can dig up on the longevity of varroa in a broodless hive, your homemade test makes you a leading expert in the field. I'm trying to reconcile your findings with the 1994 study. If the difference were mite biting by Iberian bees in 1994, that in itself would be significant.


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## Oldtimer

They reference some other studies on page 611 of the linked study.


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## Riverderwent

Oldtimer said:


> They reference some other studies on page 611 of the linked study.


"Mite Pests of Honey Bees", by David De Jong, Roger A. Morse, and George C.Eickwort (1982), is a survey article rather than a primary account of an experiment. This article simply states "The life span on adult bees in summer is two months and at least five months in winter" and cites two sources for the statement. These are (1) "The mite varroa and the methods of controlling it", by Langhe, A. B., and Natskii, K. V. (1976), Pchelovodstvo (3):16-20 (In Russian); and (2) "Varroatosis a dangerous parasitic disease of bees", by Shabanov, M., Nedealkov, S., Toshkov, A., 1978. Am. Bee J. 118:402-3, 407. I don't have ready access to these two works, but from the manner in which they are referenced, they may surmise maximum lifespan, and they don't give me grounds to discount the findings reported in the linked 1994 paper regarding longevity curves and average lifespans. (The paucity of colonies studied in the linked 1994 paper does give me pause.) Now here I stand awaiting correction by abler parties.

In the mean time, Oldtimer, you may have to resign yourself to being one of the foremost researchers on the average lifespan of varroa in the absence of brood.


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## Oldtimer

Ha, nobody need take account of my "research" because I do not understand scientific method enough, and all that other hoopla that properly done studies have to do. Which may have distorted my results such as, as you pointed out, the possibility of horizontal transmission. I had no means in place to negate that possibility. It was just an old beekeeper messing with some bees in his back yard.


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## Riverderwent

Yesterday, we inspected our hives. The overwintered hives are all still doing well. My concern for them will be the effect in late summer this year particularly when the mite populations are high. I still don't see crawlers or otherwise diseased bees. Like "Dean" Randy Oliver, I don't have anything to prove here, and just hope, working with nature and not against it, to bend the information curve a tiny bit, and the survival curve perhaps a tiny bit less.

The spring flow is tapering a little. Tallow tassels are just beginning to form and look about two weeks early. We've lost our typical percentage of new, captured swarm clusters ("bees in a bucket") and cutouts, but the trapped swarms are, as typical, all doing very well. We also did a couple of cutouts at one house yesterday, one of which cutouts was "huge", the other was just large.


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## gww

I have a couple of dead bees on some concreet board that is laying in front of one of my most active hives. They have pulled some junk out of the hive also. I don't think there has been any robbing. I was very rough inspecting cause I use squeezing and such for getting the bees to fix bad looking or fat comb. I look at the dead and the wings seem fine and the abdomen seems to be the correct lenght. The wether is bad bad bad and has been for two days and will be for three more. My guess is it is just old bees that couldn't make it too far from the hive. I am guessing it is normal even though with this hive it is more pronounced. If it ever clears up around here, I will look harder. I have about four queen cells that should have hatched somewhere in all this bad wether.

I am parinoid that mite build up could cause some issues but so far am just trucking along and trying to watch what is going on.

I guess now I can see what happens to food stores also during long bad wether spells.

David, I figured I would read what you wrote on your obsevations and compare it to what I see and maby I can learn some signs of good or bad.
Cheers
gww

PS in my part of MO, the white clover is just now starting to pop and so I am not sure of my flow compared to yours but figure we may be moving into a hot part of ours.


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## lharder

Oldtimer said:


> Ha, nobody need take account of my "research" because I do not understand scientific method enough, and all that other hoopla that properly done studies have to do. Which may have distorted my results such as, as you pointed out, the possibility of horizontal transmission. I had no means in place to negate that possibility. It was just an old beekeeper messing with some bees in his back yard.


In another life you would have been a fine scientist in my opinion. Your experiment would be a good first step. Then others comment, you think of a better way to do it, and try again.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> My guess is it is just old bees that couldn't make it too far from the hive. I am guessing it is normal even though with this hive it is more pronounced.


This time of year, the bees may be dying at roughly the rate they were being born five or six weeks ago. Which could be scores or hundreds depending on the type of bees, size of the hive, and weather. 



> I am parinoid that mite build up could cause some issues but so far am just trucking along and trying to watch what is going on.


Hope for the best, and plan for the worst.



> I guess now I can see what happens to food stores also during long bad wether spells.


It will help that its not cold and the bees can't fly, but brood rearing will use up stores pretty quickly.


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## gww

river
Thanks
gww


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## Riverderwent

My wife said tonight, "It's really amazing that y'all catch swarms of bees in traps." It is. It's fascinating. Bees exploring all their options for places to live pick a box we've hung on a tree. I pulled seven traps with colonies in them off of trees last night and moved the traps to bee yards. I still have one more to pick up. We'll hive them in a few days and hang the boxes back up. There's a lot of good brain chemistry that goes along with seeing a colony of bees that moved into an empty box that you hung on a tree.


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## squarepeg

way to go david. are those swarms originating from your hives, feral hives, other beekeepers hives, unknown, all of the above, ect.?


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## Matt_inSC

Riverderwent said:


> My wife said tonight, "It's really amazing that y'all catch swarms of bees in traps." It is. It's fascinating. Bees exploring all their options for places to live pick a box we've hung on a tree. I pulled seven traps with colonies in them off of trees last night and moved the traps to bee yards. I still have one more to pick up. We'll hive them in a few days and hang the boxes back up. There's a lot of good brain chemistry that goes along with seeing a colony of bees that moved into an empty box that you hung on a tree.


It truly is amazing. As is your run rate. Do you tend to have much variation year to year on swarms captured in your bait hives? Seems like your location is golden but is every year this good for you?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> way to go david. are those swarms originating from your hives, feral hives, other beekeepers hives, unknown, all of the above, ect.?





Matt_inSC said:


> It truly is amazing. As is your run rate. Do you tend to have much variation year to year on swarms captured in your bait hives? Seems like your location is golden but is every year this good for you?


Mr. Peg and Matt, when we first started we hung a couple of traps near our bee yards; others were near where we had done cutouts (or trapouts), and some were in random locations where we happened to get permission to hang them. When we found that we were doing multiple cutouts or swarm calls in a particular area, we started scouting for places to put traps.

We started noticing certain running features or lines where we could string traps out, so to speak. We began to see patterns or common features that we could look for for successful locations. It was an organic process where we gradually added new traps, removed boxes from unsuccessful or inconvenient locations, and located new hot spots or "money trees".

When we found a particularly interesting cutout due to its longevity, productiveness, health, or docility, we looked for spots for traps. We avoided places with aggressive bees. We noticed that certain specific locations were particularly successful. A lot of it was and, even more so now, is, convenience driven. It is part of our little effort to gather good genetics and concentrate them in and around our yards.

Our bee yards have grown in size and a little in number and for a number of reasons the locations of our yards and our trap lines have converged some. Now some of our traps are within a few hundred yards of a new bee yard, others are further from a yard but within what I would consider swarming distance of some of our hives, and some are beyond swarming range.


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## squarepeg

very cool david, sounds like you are collecting a nice smattering of the genetics from your area to work with, congrats on your trapping successes.


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## mike bispham

squarepeg said:


> very cool david, sounds like you are collecting a nice smattering of the genetics from your area to work with, congrats on your trapping successes.


It sounds great. I'm currently working an area with a longstanding chimney colony that threw out a good prime swarm and 2 secondary swarms last year, and a tree colony. Its a town location where I've picked up increasing numbers of swarms over the past few years and taken a couple of cutouts. A couple of years ago I drove into the back end of a passing swarm, found them and boxed them. 

If I can locate a spot I may start mating some in this area.

In other places I catch swarms very likely to be from commercial hives. This year I'm going to grow these fast and use them to build comb then take nucs from them as selected queens become available. So the known ferals will go into the live and let die mill, and the others will support apiary growth and replacements/sales. 

Mike UK


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## Riverderwent

Have you ever noticed in an area with multiple swarm traps fairly close together, that traps placed in one particular location are repeatedly preferred by swarms for no apparent reason?


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## mike bispham

No, I haven't gone in for bait hives enough to notice that. I think what makes a difference for me is brood box size rather than nuc (nuc on nuc or lift on nuc minimum), and tucked into undergrowth such that sunny in winter, shaded in summer. Would it be those sorts of things do you think that are showing up for you?

Mike UK


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## Riverderwent

This evening, we pulled five more swarm traps with bees off of trees.


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## dtrooster

**** son, you using flip over 5 gallon buckets as skeps? Lol


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## Riverderwent

dtrooster said:


> you using flip over 5 gallon buckets as skeps? Lol


Now there's an idea.


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## dtrooster

I've thought about it, a lot.


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## mike bispham

Riverderwent said:


> We began to see patterns or common features that we could look for for successful locations. It was an organic process where we gradually added new traps, removed boxes from unsuccessful or inconvenient locations, and located new hot spots or "money trees".


I've been thinking about this more, and watching my bait hives, and realising that.... all colonies keep tabs on each other. they are looking out for robbing opportunities, but also potential future homes. My bait hives sometimes get attention, then tussling, which can only be competing colonies, then an, 'advance guard', sometimes cleaners, then the new bees arrive. 

Sometimes they seem to arrive not all at once - a hive will be clearly occupied, but lightly, and over the course of a few days will get stronger. Other times its the big move-in day job.

My point is: bait hives that have filled successfully will likely have been cased by more hopeful colonies, and if you put a new empty one back there there's a good change one of them will seize the opportunity... repeat...

Mike UK


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## gww

river


> Have you ever noticed in an area with multiple swarm traps fairly close together, that traps placed in one particular location are repeatedly preferred by swarms for no apparent reason?


I have two traps that are almost identical on two trees at the same highth, facing the same way. These are right out side my garage door and I have a saw mill in front of them and so spend a lot of time in that area. The traps have been there for three years. I have only caught one swarm in the trap but this year my own hives were doing some swarming and I found the swarm because I saw one bee checking out the favorite trap and so walked down to my hives.

Though I have only caught one swarm, I have seen interrest several times in the trap. Almost everytime the interest is in the same trap out of the two. The one swarm that actually moved in had bees checking both traps but you could see a very clear preferance for the one they eventually moved into.

The traps are almost identical in every way.

I of cours do not have much experiance compared to you and have only caught three swarms in all my traps (about 16 spread all over a 30 mile radious).

Still it was very noticable.
Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> I of cours do not have much experiance compared to you and have only caught three swarms in all my traps (about 16 spread all over a 30 mile radious).


Four drops (no more) LGO every 3 weeks. Shade. Entrance facing generally south. No foundation. One drawn comb near the back. 35 liters capacity. 1¼" round entrance. Solid bottom. You should be catching more.


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## gww

river
You described my traps almost to a tee. I only have about a third of a comb of old black and don't refreash my bait as often. I put a qtip in a sandwich baggie and some times every couple of weeks or month, I will put some lemon grass oil on my finger and reach in the entrance and dab a very small amount near the entrance. I had 12 traps out the first year and did not catch any but they were not quite as spread out. I might should be catching more but I don't know the bee density in my area. I was glad I caught three. I am zero for this year except for my hives and I got them off of the tree they landed on. I don't like that the hives swarmed but I do like the tree and the fact that they so far land pretty low on it.

Cheers
gww

Ps, I did just see a bee checking the favorite trap and walked down to my hives to make sure I did not have another swarm. I have relitives checking most of the others and am going out to day to check about six that are not watched well. Wish me luck.

Ps ps I do only put my traps as high as I can reach with out a ladder.


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## Riverderwent

GWW, we're missing something. Do you have a picture of one of your traps? Does the lid or cover close well? Would you describe them.


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## clong

Riverderwent,

I put out 5 traps last year, and 8 traps this year with no captures until last Friday. All of the other traps are mostly in shade, but aimed in many different directions. 

The first capture occurred along the driveway to my house. The trap was in 90% shade, had one drawn comb 2nd frame from the rear, in a trap about 40 liters. The entrance was facing South. The only difference is the entrance is 4"x3/8". 

The interesting thing is after seeing scouts for 5 days, they moved in right after a very hard rain. The trap is located right next to a gully that runs for the first 48 hours it rains. Do you find that traps located near water helps?


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## gww

river

These are the two by the shed. Last year I got one swarm in the one closest to the shed and that is the one that gets checked most. It was up for two years before it got a swarm.










These are baited in front of those trees and being used to hive stuff as needed, there used to be four of them sitting there.












All my hive are hung about the same hight. Some are configured differrent. I have some that are double stack mediums like in the picture with a normal top and bottom but hung Some are like what is on the tree, some are deeps with a hole drilled in to be cut down later for medium hive bodies. One is a three tier 5 frame medium hive. Two are probly just medium hive bodies. Some are made the same as the picture. I am thinking of trying to make a few out of some one or two inch styrofoam just for grins cause I keep thinking how lite they would be to move. All except maby two are full of medium fondationless frames with at least a third of a comb of black comb (maby brood maby honey) rubberbanded in one frame. 

I checked six traps today and one that I have never caught anything in had a lot of scout action today at about 2:30 pm but had dried up by 5:30. The bees were onsies and twosies, checking the one in the picture today. I may be because we are in a small type derth cause I have seen bees checking me out away from the hives latily. Black berry is bloming and white clover is starting and I did mess with the hives pretty hard recently and that might have something to do with it. I find that the bees never look at my traps normaly and so always get excited when I see even one bee looking at them. I have never seen a scout at the trap I saw them at today. I thought it was going to be a catch but did not like it being so late in the day. Maby tommorrow.

I would like to have better luck but was glad to finaly catch a few last year just to show me it was possible. The first year I had quite a few high and some in deer stands but have decided the heck with that and they didn't catch anyway it was the ones like this that did. I have lowered all my traps to about this hight.

I do not refreash the bait as much on the ones at relitives houses cause of the driving. I did run a bit of a test last year and refreshed bait on one of the trees in the picture and did not refresh bait the on the other one and it was the nonrefreshed trap that caught.

Some not the traps are getting some rot and warping. The trap closest in the picture does have light along the floor on the back edge and the medium that had scouts today had a gap at the top and the scouts were using that much more then the actual entrance.

I leave my stuff out all year and just dump mice and such and bait in spring. I do this cause they trap that had finaly caught my first swarm was on its second year. I just keep trying to add new spots and let the old spots ride except for baiting and adding comb and such in spring.

Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

clong said:


> Do you find that traps located near water helps?


Yes. Near or somewhat near.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> it was the nonrefreshed trap that caught.


Sounds about right. I would err on the side of not refreshing. I do keep most traps fairly close to all weather water sources. The gaps could be a bit of an issue. I would say keep at it and sweat the details until you see some patterns and find some good locations. Are the covers and bottom made of wood?


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## gww

River
Made of wood?

Most of them are made of wood, I was however doing a lot of scagvaging before I built the sawmill and so some of the roofs and floors are made of paneling and some are half inch plywood and chip board and anything else I could get my hands on and some were all the hive parts of a hive but made deep. I would say the thinness of the paneling might cause question to the bees and eventually I will be making and upgrading. I was really pleased with the 1/2 inch chip board for handling but only used left over stuff from other projects and did not buy anything and now have my lumber. I figure I would scatter gun them a bit and like you said, look for some kind of pattern. I caught two in traps like the chip board and one in a one by trap. I don't put nails or screws below the 6 and 5/8 inch mark so I can cut them down later to mediums and use them as hive bodies (the one by ones). On one that caught, one of the lower finger joints had warped and made an entrance besides the main entrance and the one today had the frame rest thin part warped out making a small entrance and in both cases the bees seem to really like it. I am thinking of trying two entrances on a few. 

I was also surprized by the traps that did catch compared to the ones that did not. I only put those traps by the shed as a sorta storage system with plans to move them to a good spot and they caught first. The next one was on a tree over a junk car. I did catch one on a high line which I thought would be good but I had two on that high line and one had a pond pretty close. I caught the one on the high line at about the same higth on a tree with a deer stand in it and had the trap high in the deerstand the year before and had just lowered it.

I had traps along creeks, edge of woods and out laying trees and all kinds of places and except for the high line, the bees I caught were in pretty high trafic areas comparitivly. Just like the one with the scouts today, it is close to a gravel road. Go figure.
Cheers
gww

Ps I have a building in town and I had one on the back of it but people must have thought it had somthing good in it cause it was tore apart with no tools and just laying there. Bet they were dissapointed. The building has a flat roof but I don't want to carry a ladder with me and like to be able to just drive close and see well. I no longer put one there though I bet it is a good place.


----------



## gww

river
I will quit taking up your thread but hope you like pictures. This one had lots of scout activity today but no move in and the bees on the medium found another home after two days. I just thought I would post so you could see how all over the board I am in what I use for traps.










I refreshed the lemon grass oil maby two days ago by wetting the end of a qtip a and sticking it in the entrance and rubbing it a little. Lots of activity out side of the 9 to 2pm window. It is supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. I watched it till dark cause I have the time and find it interesting. No deal yet.

Cheers
gww


----------



## Riverderwent

GWW, the entrance. What size is your entrance? I would block it off so that it is about 1 1/2 square inches total. If it is 3/4" tall, I would block it so it is about 2" wide.


----------



## gww

River on this one I have it about not quite half open. I have a sliding block in front of it that if I catch something, I can just slide it shut. I put window screen on the half that is closed while the block is opening the half of the entrance. That way when I close the entrance to transfer the swarm, I have a very small amount of air that can get in the trap. I have several set up that way and some just have an inch and a quarter to inch and a half hole drilled in them. They are not all the same but I have several of all methods out.
Cheers
gww

Ps all my bottom board ones are a three eighths inch gap unless I accidently put them on up side down. This one is 3/8th inch.


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## bucksbees

Got a neighbor that been a beekeeper for years(I had no idea). He put them in a box a decade ago, and just puts on suppers and takes them off. He runs a dozen hives. Might catch swarm to stay at 12 but not more then that. With his hives making drones all these years my grafted queens and split queens have a higher chance for more TF genes in them. I do think I can jump start my program faster then I thought.


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## gww

River
I did get a swarm in that last trap, it has been there for two years and I won't know how big the swarm is untill tomorrow when I move it to a medium hive body.
Since I took so much of your thread, I thought you should know. 

Bucks...
I was amazed to find out about how many people knew of bee keepers around me that I had never know exsisted and I have mostly lived here all my life and in this house for 20 years. I must not pay attention.
gww


----------



## Riverderwent

bucksbees said:


> Got a neighbor ...


That is seriously important and good.



> I did get a swarm in that last trap


Nice.


----------



## Riverderwent

Some pictures of "The Bee Vac 5000"




























We have three "drawers" or cages to use for multiple cutouts. This is the fourth bee vac I have built and is hands down my favorite.


----------



## Riverderwent

Some modest notes about cutouts -- When someone calls about a bee removal, I ask whether they are clustered up in a large ball (like a cantaloupe) or going in and out of a small opening. How high up are they? How long have you noticed them? Where is the nearest electric outlet? Where are you located? A few questions like that.

I ask them to text a picture. After looking at the picture, I generally can bid the job over the phone. We charge a flat rate. Estimates are free. When we arrive, we often take pictures with a small infrared camera attachment for our cellphone to locate the bees. We don't charge if we are unable to remove the bees. It is unusual for us not to be able to remove them once we have taken on the job, and usually results from hidden structural issues that would require unreasonable damage to the structure to remove the bees.

The basic equipment is a four or so foot step ladder, a "Wonder Bar" style flat pry bar, a three pound sledge hammer, a Sawzall style reciprocating saw, a small, very bright led flashlight, a heavy duty saltwater filet knife, a large tub for comb and debris, a standard size ice chest for honey, the "Bee Vac 5000" with vacuum hose, hose extenders, and a crevice tool, extension cords, several stainless steel queen clips within easy reach, and BeeQuick. Additional equipment includes an electric driver, a drill, a borescope, two different styles and sizes of hoe (soon to include a small, blacksmith made, colinear hoe with a 3 1/2 foot long wooden handle), and duct tape. 

Our clothing consists of a jacket and veil, thick pants (or an extra pair of pullover bee pants), Velcro cuff guards, and pull on boots. 

When the hive is first exposed, we take photographs to show the owner. We begin vacuuming bees and removing comb being careful to not drive them into difficult to reach areas. The vacuum is set on the lowest speed that will pull bees. We don't spend time looking for the queen. 

We don't use a smoker because of fire risk and because it causes bees to gorge on honey which causes them to do poorly in the bee vac. We are careful not to use BeeQuick until we are through vacuuming the area where it is being used. Otherwise, the smell may cause the bees to abscond from their soon to be new hive.

We usually text or show the owner the pictures of the exposed hive and get the payment when we are done. We also have a brief talk with the owner concerning what they should expect to see for the next few days. When we reach the beeyard, we transfer the bees from the bee vac "drawer" or cage into a deep swarm trap with some empty medium foundationless frames and some frames of drawn comb. The swarm trap has an entrance disk with a queen excluder setting. We use that setting for the first few days. Once there is brood, we transfer the bees to a nuc or small hive.


----------



## mike bispham

Thanks David, very useful. I haven't tried beequick, and I gave up using my vac box because it seemed to damage the bees too much. can you talk more about the comb-by-comb removal and beequick. Are you cutting and strapping comb into frames as you go?

I'm less inclined to go after removals now that I think I have the genes I need, and am still collecting them easily from traps and swarms. I'm wanting to grow honey production, and spend time expanding outlets and busy with all sorts other things. I do price them but at a level that makes it properly worthwhile and allows me to do the job well. For that reason people are letting them stay more often, and letting me park a bait hive nearby - and I suspect this is more profitable in the long run!

Mike


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## Riverderwent

mike bispham said:


> Are you cutting and strapping comb into frames as you go?


Not anymore. We found that the bees were having difficulty saving the brood, and we have fewer abscond when we don't try to save the brood. We will sometimes put in a frame of brood from another hive. There is probably a middle ground.


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## Riverderwent

I left out the most important thing to have when doing a cutout, a colleague who says things like, "Your veil's not zipped", or "That's a live wire you're about to cut", or "Let's see what this lever does" when you're on a boom lift.


----------



## Riverderwent

We installed bee escape boards today for our spring honey pull tomorrow. We also did three cutouts today. All three were this year's bees.


----------



## Riverderwent

We harvested 357 pounds of honey last Friday. We harvest three times a year, and this spring harvest is generally the smallest of the three honey pulls. This year may be an exception to that. 

I found a deadout today. It was a hive with three medium eight frame boxes, and I assume it was one of the twenty-two overwintered hives. (Although it could well be a split or new colony from early this spring.) This brings our annual loss to four out of the twenty-five hives that went into winter. We have sold a number of nucs. With splits, cutouts, and trapped or captured swarms, we currently still have about forty-four colonies.


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## Riverderwent

Twenty-one of the twenty-five hives that we had on November 1st are stacked tall and appear to be doing well. We have added two new production hives for a total of twenty-three. We are about to sell out of nucs. We will likely do our second harvest in a couple of weeks.


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## gww

River
Do the excape boards work well for you? How long do you leave them on and do you leave the supers to the side on an excape board or on the hive. I put mine on a differrent bottom board about 2/3 hours before dark and then stacked two supers on it from two hives. I picked it up about 7 am the next morning. It did not seem like many bees had left.
Thanks
gww


----------



## Riverderwent

gww said:


> Do the excape boards work well for you? How long do you leave them on and do you leave the supers to the side on an excape board or on the hive. I put mine on a differrent bottom board about 2/3 hours before dark and then stacked two supers on it from two hives. I picked it up about 7 am the next morning. It did not seem like many bees had left.


Escape boards do work well for us. They tend to work better when it is cool at night and the bees want to cluster a little.

We go through the hives the day before we harvest. We put all the supers that we intend to pull above the escape board. Everything else, including empty frames and uncapped nectar, goes below the boards. We smoke the bees down right before we add the escape board, particularly when it's warm. We pull the supers the next morning around 9:30.


----------



## gww

River
I will probly give it one more try and this time smoke the heck out of the supers before putting them on the excape board. Thanks for the reponce.
gww


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## Fusion_power

Be careful using a lot of smoke in the supers, you can wind up with honey that tastes like smoke. Ask me how I know this. This is one reason I have a bee blower.

If a queen is in a super, the bees will never go through an escape. They will stay where she is. This is one reason excluders work very well when escape boards are used to remove the honey.

The design of the escape board is also important. If there is a screened area where the bees in the super can hear and smell the bees below, they will go through the escape much faster. This is especially effective with the Quebec design escape boards with a screened triangle.


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## Riverderwent

Do go gently with the smoke. You shouldn't need smoke when it's cool. Do a test run on a hive sometime to see how it will work for you. I just wouldn't pull without an escape board if I could help it.


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## gww

fussion and river
The excape board was built off of the dave cushman site. I had the supers on thier own bottom board away from the hive and so there were no bees to smell. I could not get my leaf blower started and so I used a compressor. 

I tried the blowing by super but the comb was just wonky enough or the bees were intent on robbing cause in the end I used the compressor one frame at a time. It was ok but I was pretty scared due to being foundationless and some of the combs being pretty wide and heavy in places and the comb being new. 

Two days before, I had took a comb that was built over two frames and that thick and I brushed its bees with grass and the comb was so heavy that it ended up breaking and I had to carry it in a coffee can. 

If the frames are about normal, the giving a shake and then brushing with grass was ok. I only had 15/16 frames and so the blowing is ok but I need a better way for when I actually get more then one or two supers to do.
Thanks for the advice.
gww

Ps, If I take more this year, I might be able to wait untill it gets colder and the bees want to cluster and maby they will leave the supers on thier own. I was thinking next year if the bees don't all die that I will have more and need a better way.


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## squarepeg

hi david, hoping this finds all well with you and yours.

we're interested in hearing about your 2017 season, please update us when you get a chance.


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## Riverderwent

I don’t think that I’m grateful enough for the number of feral beehives that are close to where we keep our bees and for the effect that they have on our gene pool.


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## squarepeg

welcome back david, how goes it with your bees?


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## Riverderwent

Thank you, Square. They have survived my feeble efforts. We have temporarily scaled our bee work way back, but our honey production has increased a little due to good conditions. Glad you asked.


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## squarepeg

you bet!  

there aren't that many of us reporting treatment free successes and failures so your input here is greatly valued david.

how many colonies are you keeping these days?


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## gww

I am interested also.
gww


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> how many colonies are you keeping these days?





gww said:


> I am interested also.
> gww


Hey! Thank y’all for asking. We have 14 or so production hives at the moment. We have done little bee work in the last fourteen months due to some (generally favorable) distractions. We had a serious die off at one of our three yards last fall. One longstanding colony and two smaller hives survived there, and I intend to husband those genetics carefully as I am able. 

We normally can harvest three times a year, the third being around All Saints Day. Keep in mind that we don’t feed. But we simply don’t harvest from the bottom three (8 frame medium) boxes. Here they need that honey as much or more during the summer dearth as they do in winter. Most of our hives winter in those three small boxes. In our first two harvests this year we have already pulled more honey than the total harvest of any other year. We don’t plan to do a fall pull this year because of other activities.


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## squarepeg

nice. 

many thanks for the update david!

glad to hear that the distractions have been 'generally favorable'.


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## gww

river
What squarepeg said.
gww


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## Riverderwent

Thank you both. We've sold a fair number of nucs almost as "by-catch", but have done little (and I mean very little) bee work outside of the the two honey pulls. I'll give a little more update as I'm able.


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> I don’t think that I’m grateful enough for the number of feral beehives that are close to where we keep our bees and for the effect that they have on our gene pool.



i too sometimes think about how fortunate it is to have bees that don't require much maintenance.

my time is also eaten up by other commitments david, and if it were necessary to sample for mites on a regular basis, worry about having to get supers off for treating purposes, and doing regular treatments...

there is no doubt i would have to scale way back on the number of colonies i could manage. 

we are looking forward to your updates, details please!


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## 1102009

Hey David!
Thanks for the update! I´m still following and happy to have you back.


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## Riverderwent

My wife hosted a baby shower at our house, so I went to the local bookstore and looked at The American Bee Journal. Interesting contrast between Jerry Hayes' column and Kirk Webster's article. Makes you think. Afterward, I decided to drive by the hives. I would have pulled the queen excluders, but I didn't have my bee suit, and I was not going back in the house once the baby shower started. The bees were active and bringing in yellow and white pollen. Goldenrod is in full bloom, and there are a lot of aster and weeds blooming. 

We sold our last nuc of the year recently, and we're back up to fifteen production size hives from fourteen a month ago. We try to come out of winter with a dozen production size colonies. We don't feed or treat. The bees keep rolling.


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## squarepeg

nice.

can you share about how many nucs sold and lbs. of honey harvested for the year david?

and are you still doing the cut-outs?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> nice.
> 
> can you share about how many nucs sold and lbs. of honey harvested for the year david?
> 
> and are you still doing the cut-outs?


We produced 1,000 lbs. of honey this year, due to good conditions, not expert beekeeping. Offhand, I think that we sold or gave around a dozen nucs. I think we did one or two cutouts. We did have a fair number of trapped swarms. We could have done twenty-five or more cutouts had we had the time and inclination. Grandchildren, hobbies, work, NCIS episodes; so many things tugging on your time. Actually, I've spent a good deal of time in the last year or so on a special effort related to my work, and my partner in the bee business is in the midst of a multi-year national responsibility related to his vocation. This too will pass. Thanks for asking.


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## squarepeg

way to go!

one nuc and 100 lbs. of honey per overwintered hive is pretty darn good david.

that's more or less what i shoot for but like with you time constraints are my biggest limiting factor.


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## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> My wife hosted a baby shower


What is a baby shower?


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## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> What is a baby shower?


From my experience, it’s a time when I can’t track mud in the house and there are leftover desserts and finger sandwiches when I return home. Others claim that it’s a party where ladies come and give baby related gifts to a new or expectant mother.


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## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> From my experience, it’s a time when I can’t track mud in the house and there are leftover desserts and finger sandwiches when I return home. Others claim that it’s a party where ladies come and give baby related gifts to a new or expectant mother.


  New phrase to me, thanks!


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## JWPalmer

And here I was, thinking a baby shower was what you got while changing the diaper of a boy baby. 

Glad those days are long behind me.


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## Juhani Lunden

JWPalmer said:


> And here I was, thinking a baby shower was what you got while changing the diaper of a boy baby.
> 
> Glad those days are long behind me.


So am I.


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## Riverderwent

Just some random thoughts. Feral hives should have a reproductive advantage over managed hives because they are free to build as much drone comb as they want. Managed bees with embossed foundation have much less available space for building drone size cells. This ought to skew the gene pool toward feral alleles. Speaking of which, with untreated colonies, whether feral or managed, the gene pool for all the bugs in the hive, including bees, varroa, viruses, bacteria, and others, are being pushed toward those that result in traits that promote survival. So I can let the bugs work it out among their own gene pools one allele at a time. There's a lot of old and new alleles roaming around the untilled lowland woods, unused structures, and older neighborhoods around here.


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## Riverderwent

They’re not mongrels; they’re sport utility bees.


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## Riverderwent

This was an interesting bee removal I did in May.


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## Riverderwent

The high today was 84 degrees, and the relative humidity is 89%. Still see lots of goldenrod and white flowers that look like a privet. I’m anxious to look in the hives to see what’s going on. I may harvest again this year just to keep the dark fall honey separate from the spring clover and other wildflower honey.


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## Riverderwent

So, think about it. The lower three boxes (8 frame mediums) have a queen excluder over them (except during winter) so I can use foundationless in those boxes and not worry about what will happen to foundationless in the extractor. So the bees can build whatever size brood comb they want. No artificially sized cells in the brood area. Since I don’t treat, the bees that build the right size cells for Varroa resistance (if there is such a thing) are the bees that survive, and the drones and queens of those colonies with the “right sized” cells (whatever that size is) pass on their genes to the next generation of colonies. And the genes for the bees with wrong sized cells quietly leave the gene pool. Assuming that the high relative humidity where I am makes it tough for Varroa to begin with, then having the worker bee cells capped even a few hours less time may mean one less fecund female Varroa mite in some cells and may make just enough difference to knock down the mites to sustainable levels. That sure was a long sentence — and paragraph for that matter — but you get my point.


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## clong

David,

So I thought about it. And I agree. If higher humidity in the broodnest hinders the mite and helps the brood, how could one create a hive environment that would encourage this? Some live in areas of very low humidity. I think I read somewhere that higher heat and CO2 hinders Varroa mites as well. (I'm not sure how heat and CO2 impact the bees). What would be the best way to create this sort of environment for the colony, or at least one that the bees could manage to their preferences?

Another thought: if Samuel Ramsey is right that the mites spend much of their time feeding on mature bees lodged under their sternites, could natural/small cell bees smaller size hinder some mites from being able to feed on the adult bees? Perhaps foundationless frames are another good way to help the bees help themselves.

Keep the long paragraphs coming.


----------



## Riverderwent

Checked on the hives today. It was 71°F. I was listening to Christmas songs and pulling off queen excluders. We still have fifteen colonies. One of those is increase; the other fourteen are carryovers. We sold or gave away about a dozen colonies. Our colonies are treatment free, feed free, and sustainable. We should have harvested another 200 lbs. or so of fall honey that we will have to deal with before the spring flow to keep the dark fall honey separate from the light spring honey.


----------



## squarepeg

:thumbsup:


----------



## Litsinger

River:

I recently finished reading this thread from start-to-finish and I must say I only wish I had read both your and SP's posts all the way through BEFORE starting back into beekeeping- I would have saved myself the cost of a lot of expensive lessons learned the hard way this year.

Your writing style is quite incisive and engaging- you should seriously consider writing a book outlining your TF apiary experience.

I look forward to your future posts.

Sincerely.

Russ


----------



## GregB

clong said:


> Another thought: if Samuel Ramsey is right that the mites spend much of their time feeding on mature bees lodged under their sternites, *could natural/small cell bees smaller size hinder some mites from being able to feed on the adult bees*? Perhaps foundationless frames are another good way to help the bees help themselves.


I meant to say this and forgot until now...

Unsure if anyone thought of the bee ergonomics.
My deal is this - I backpack a lot and so the ergonomy of the weight on my own back is totally relevant.

So here goes:
1)assume the mites are all the same average size and weight (unless some one has a demo to show otherwise)
2)bees of larger size/weight are proportionally less affected by a mite riding on their backs 
3)bees if smaller size/weight are proportionally more affected the mite on the back
4)notice, that size differences between large and small bees are very significant (up to 50% in weight)
5)smaller bees should be bothered more by the presence of the phoretic mites riding on them (how I know? well, because I AM a small and light guy - I run long distances and carry a backpack to work)

So, 5-10lb backpack for me (110-120 lbs) feels much more significant than the same for a 200-250lb football player.
That about the difference between a small bee and a large bee.

So, a small bee should be more motivated to get rid of the rider on the back just by the physics of it.


----------



## msl

> So, 5-10lb backpack for me (110-120 lbs) feels much more significant than the same for a 200-250lb football player.
> That about the difference between a small bee and a large bee.


 I think your looking at a much smaller difference not a 52% one as in your example
going from 5.48 to 5.08 results in a 1% reduction in body size and between 8-11% in body mass, McMullan & Brown, 2006

see also Spivak and Erickson (1992), Jagannadham and Goyal (1980), Grout (1937) 
even with Baudoux (1933) , the one who gets all the internet hype for artificially making bees bigger... going form "normal" 4.95 to large 5.55 the 4.95 bees were only 13.5% smaller 
it is also interesting to note that Baudoux (1933) 4.95 cell bees were 18.87% bigger then Spivak and Erickson (1992) 5.37 cell bees.

genetics plays a large role


----------



## GregB

msl said:


> I think your looking at a much smaller difference not a 52% one as in your example
> going from 5.48 to 5.08 results in a 1% reduction in body size and between 8-11% in body mass, McMullan & Brown, 2006
> 
> see also Spivak and Erickson (1992), Jagannadham and Goyal (1980), Grout (1937)
> even with Baudoux (1933) , the one who gets all the internet hype for artificially making bees bigger... going form "normal" 4.95 to large 5.55 the 4.95 bees were only 13.5% smaller
> it is also interesting to note that Baudoux (1933) 4.95 cell bees were 18.87% bigger then Spivak and Erickson (1992) 5.37 cell bees.
> 
> genetics plays a large role


While the genetics likely the ~50-90% of the general picture, here are the cell volume comparisons (taken from the MB's site) where at the max between large and small you can see just about 50% difference by volume.

This should correspond to about the same size differentials in the resulting bees.
Bee size differences in 30% range should be very common in the same colony even (assuming non-standard natural comb like I have).

Bee size differences between the colonies can be very significant.
When I capture a commercial swarm off the LC foundation, I can see that right away (my bees are smallish off 5.1-5.2 NC; obvious just by eye).
One Italian swarm last year - them bees scared me - those bees were football player monsters - huge.



> Volume of cells according to Baudoux:
> 
> Cell Width Cell Volume
> *5.555 mm 301 mm³*
> 5.375 mm 277 mm³
> 5.210 mm 256 mm³
> 5.060 mm 237 mm³
> 4.925 mm 222 mm³
> 4.805 mm 206 mm³
> *4.700 mm 192 mm³*


http://www.bushfarms.com/beesnaturalcell.htm


This part is hard to beleive:


> going from 5.48 to 5.08 results in a* 1% reduction in body size* and between 8-11% in body mass, McMullan & Brown, 2006


0.40 different is about 8% difference in diameter and corresponding difference in cell volume.
Keep in mind that smaller diameter means proportionally smaller cell depth too.

1% reduction in body size? 
I do not believe it.


----------



## Riverderwent

Drove by one of my yards Wednesday. Seven of seven hives alive and flying. No pollen coming in. No crawlers.


Litsinger said:


> River aI recently finished reading this thread from start-to-finish and I must say I only wish I had read both your and SP's posts all the way through BEFORE starting back into beekeeping- I would have saved myself the cost of a lot of expensive lessons learned the hard way this year.
> 
> Your writing style is quite incisive and engaging- you should seriously consider writing a book outlining your TF apiary experience.
> 
> I look forward to your future posts.


Russ, you clearly have very refined and discriminating taste in literature and a refreshingly keen ability to recognize great prose. That’s the real story here. David


----------



## Oldtimer

LOL


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Russ, you clearly have very refined and discriminating taste in literature and a refreshingly keen ability to recognize great prose. That’s the real story here. David


David: I'm laughing out loud at this- I've been called many things (and most can't be repeated on this forum) but never refined. 😉

Your post has a big help to me- I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to share your experience here.

Merry Christmas.

Russ


----------



## Riverderwent

“The discovery that invertebrates, equipped only with innate immune responses, are also able to prime their offspring against infections has changed the understanding of innate immunity.” Salmela H, Amdam GV, Freitak D (2015) Transfer of Immunity from Mother to Offspring Is Mediated via Egg-Yolk Protein Vitellogenin (https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005015#ppat.1005015.ref002). There is a thread that contains some interesting discussion of this by Sui Generis. https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?350971-Foulbrood-Cure. 

“We can conclude that the newly identified probiotic Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium phylotypes exhibit strong inhibitory effects on P. larvae growth, and can to some extent prevent symptom development of AFB in honey bee larvae infected by P. larvae.” Forsgren E, Olofsson TC, Va ́squez A, Fries I (2010) Novel lactic acid bacteria inhibiting Paenibacillus larvae in honey bee larvae. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00892058/document. 

“We are developing the first ever vaccine against microbial infections in honey bees.” https://primebee.org. The sun will survive because it can and it only matters if it does. 

Merry Christmas.

David


----------



## Riverderwent

And for the ribbon:


squarepeg said:


> and then there's this one:
> 
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10849275
> 
> 
> "Under in vitro conditions, the number of Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus plantarum counts increased 10-100 fold in the presence of honey compared with sucrose."
> 
> (suggests a mechanism by which a honey only diet promotes disease resistance)


Hmm.


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## Riverderwent

Hung swarm traps and checked hives yesterday. Fourteen colonies. Lost one over winter. Happy.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Hung swarm traps and checked hives yesterday. Fourteen colonies. Lost one over winter. Happy.


Good update, River. That's quite an impressive overwintering percentage.

Best of success to you this year.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Good update, River. That's quite an impressive overwintering percentage.
> 
> Best of success to you this year.
> 
> Russ


Thank you, Russ. Some small credit must go to the bees. Best of success to you also this year.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Some small credit must go to the bees.


Good point- I am currently trying to learn how to, 'do no harm' and then I can work on 'help' (maybe).


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## AR1

Riverderwent said:


> Hung swarm traps and checked hives yesterday. Fourteen colonies. Lost one over winter. Happy.


I envy you southerners. We just got the last snow off the ground this week. Course, it's still March so we can easily get another foot any time.


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## Riverderwent

AR1 said:


> I envy you southerners. We just got the last snow off the ground this week. Course, it's still March so we can easily get another foot any time.


Winter was tough this year because it fell on a weekend. Come visit on a humid day in August, and your envy will diminish.


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## AR1

Riverderwent said:


> Winter was tough this year because it fell on a weekend. Come visit on a humid day in August, and your envy will diminish.


No doubt! I lived in Florida for a while, and the humidity was quite a wonder. Still, the wife and I are looking to move south in the next few years. Her for the warmth, me for other reasons. I expect to bring my traps and bee gear with me and try out those bees.


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## Riverderwent

Today, I put on queen excluders and supered hives that needed it. Our swarm traps have been up a week and we have three swarms. Things are starting to buzz.


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## squarepeg

:thumbsup:

nice. thanks for the update.


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## Riverderwent

Bees don't understand math. We had fourteen colonies coming out of winter. We've recovered a colony from a cutout. That makes fifteen. We gathered a swarm at a local business. That's sixteen. We've moved two colonies from swarm traps into an apiary. That's eighteen. (We have at least one swarm in a trap still on a tree, but I'm ignoring that.) So here's the prob, Bob. We've got nineteen colonies in the apiaries. So apparently the varroa returned one colony for a full refund. Bees are not very mathematical.

And another thing, we checked hives to add supers yesterday, and we only added two boxes. Two weeks of cool temperatures and rain (or at least the interruption of a little warm spell) has brought nectar gathering to a halt. Or feeding the nursery has made production net even. Either way, the time table for production is rolled back. Little darling, it's been (pronounced "bean") a long, cold, lonely winter. Only it really wasn't.


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## squarepeg




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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


>


and, Friday afternoon, another colony moved into a swarm trap that was stored by the side of my house 'cause it needed a little work. I must be some beekeeper. When I started beekeeping I was told by experts that there weren't any feral bees because the tracheal mites  and varroa got 'em. I'd say they made a "comeback", but (graciously he said) I really think that they made a "never went". And just now, while I was typing this, my wife and daughter said that there is a colony in a cabana in my backyard. Gonna go check.


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## squarepeg

very cool david. i've already rebounded from my winter losses from splitting a few colonies that were somewhat overzealous with their build up this year.

i've got a few swarm traps out but so far no scouts seen, i don't think it will be too much longer however...

after going a couple of years without grafting i think i'll do some this year as there are a couple of exceptional colonies with impressive 3 - 5 year track records.

would like to have all 24 full sized hives plus 18 nucs full of bees by fall...


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## Nordak

Riverderwent said:


> And another thing, we checked hives to add supers yesterday, and we only added two boxes. Two weeks of cool temperatures and rain (or at least the interruption of a little warm spell) has brought nectar gathering to a halt.


I was chatting to a local beek yesterday about this very thing. I've personally never seen such low nectar production in my hives for this time of year. Despite that fact, the bees are doing great by all accounts. I'm up two nucs from a split yesterday and had a swarm move into a bait hive I had in the backyard. Once the weather settles in a bit, this season is looking promising barring some form of catastrophe.


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## squarepeg

great to hear from you nordak. in his manuscript walt wright describes regularly observing a 'lull' in nectar storage just before the main flow hits.


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## Nordak

Hey SP, good to see you, and thanks for the response. I imagine that's the case. In some ways, I feel a bit like I'm starting over this year as I was absent from the hives for so long. I'm not exactly re-learning, but I've got to get back in touch with the ebbs and flows.


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## Riverderwent

Elm, maple, redbud, "clover", tallow, dearth, goldenrod/aster. I would think that the lull before the flow is more about the amount of honey being consumed than it is about the amount of nectar coming in. Walt explained the lull; I just need someone to explain Walt's explanation.


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## squarepeg

i'll have to go back and reread what walt said about it. my recollection is that he wasn't sure why the lull. i remember suggesting to him it made sense that most of what was coming in was getting turned into brood food.


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## lharder

Nice to hear some good stories. All doom and gloom around here in certain places in BC. Treating beekeepers starting to blame tf beekeeping for their losses. Hoisted by their own petard I would say. Meanwhile they are determined to import the next problem from chile and new Zealand to make up for their losses. Doubling down on stupid. I have way more bees this year than last with bees not so near adapted as yours.


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## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> i'll have to go back and reread what walt said about it. my recollection is that he wasn't sure why the lull. i remember suggesting to him it made sense that most of what was coming in was getting turned into brood food.


Squarepeg:

You are right concerning one of Walt's two published hypotheses concerning the lull- the other is that the foragers are 'biding their time' until the house bees are ready to store and ripen nectar. 

_*NECTAR MANAGEMENT - Principles and Practices*_ (copyright 2005) Mr. Walt Wright

pp. 24 - 25 _"To continue with the lull in nectar storage during the three week period prior to the appearance of new wax: In some literature descriptions of the swarming process, the lull is attributed to scout bees turning their attention to looking for nest sites. 

On the timeline continuation sketch, note that the swarm issue season is parallel with the early part of the house-bee-rearing phase. The storing slow-down has nothing to do with scout bees not locating nectar sources. Although that’s not a bad guess, it shouldn’t be presented as fact.

All colonies, whether they have any intent to swarm or not, have this slow-down in nectar storage. It’s the period between the “early flow” and the “main flow”. It’s very conspicuous in a colony that has been induced to store overhead nectar by beekeeper manipulation. The colony that was reversed early and given empty comb above stores nectar overhead immediately. The three-week break in storage prior to the “main flow” is more obvious.

Locally, in Middle Tennessee, black locust blooms during this period. In seasons that black locust is very showy the bees work it to support brood rearing, but put no nectar in the supers. This would seem to indicate that the period of rearing a full brood cycle of house bees is a strain on resources. It’s all the foragers can do to support brood rearing through this period.

One other possibility comes to mind. The existing foragers are deliberately only supporting brood rearing during this period. The bulk of the foragers are marking time. 

They are waiting for the corps of house bees to be ready to store honey. When the support troops are in place, they go after nectar in a big way.

If you don’t like either of the above scenarios, generate one of your own. 

Your guess is as good as mine. But the lull in storage is real and predictable. We are convinced that it is associated with the internal operations of the colony in preparing to store honey. 

Note that the lull in nectar gain occurs at the peak of native nectar availability. Here, we consider the peak of nectar in the field to be the period of black locust 
and the overlapping tulip poplar. It’s also the period of no gain in the supers. The peak of nectar availability is a boon to the swarm in a new location, but the parent colony or non-swarming colony is busy with preparation to store honey."_


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## squarepeg

from walt's manuscript: https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?348163-pdf-version-of-walt-wright-s-manuscript pp. 22-24 (bold mine)

"When we first came to the conclusion that early season worker population was primarily comprised of foragers and nurse bees, the obvious question was raised. When do they change internal operations to the familiar literature rendition of serving as house bees before becoming foragers? Looking for some clue to the answer to that question, it was observed that there was a consistent three week period prior to new wax “main flow” when nectar storage made no gain. Suspecting that period might be the transition between internal operations, we went on record with that conclusion. Nectar Management by Walt Wright Copywrite  2000 - 2005


Supporting observations came as we experimented with nectar management for swarm prevention.
To continue with the lull in nectar storage during the three week period prior to the appearance of new wax: In some literature descriptions of the swarming process, the lull is attributed to scout bees turning their attention to looking for nest sites. On the timeline continuation sketch, note that the swarm issue season is parallel with the early part of the house-bee-rearing phase. The storing slow-down has nothing to do with scout bees not locating nectar sources. Although that’s not a bad guess, it shouldn’t be presented as fact.

All colonies, whether they have any intent to swarm or not, have this slow-down in nectar storage. It’s the period between the “early flow” and the “main flow”. It’s very conspicuous in a colony that has been induced to store overhead nectar by beekeeper manipulation. The colony that was reversed early and given empty comb above stores nectar overhead immediately. The three-week break in storage prior to the “main flow” is more obvious.

Locally, in Middle Tennessee, black locust blooms during this period. In seasons that black locust is very showy the bees work it to support brood rearing, but put no nectar in the supers. This would seem to indicate that the period of rearing a full brood cycle of house bees is a strain on resources. It’s all the foragers can do to support brood rearing through this period.

One other possibility comes to mind. *The existing foragers are deliberately only supporting brood rearing during this period. The bulk of the foragers are marking time. They are waiting for the corps of house bees to be ready to store honey. When the support troops are in place, they go after nectar in a big way.*

*If you don’t like either of the above scenarios, generate one of your own. Your guess is as good as mine.* But the lull in storage is real and predictable. We are convinced that it is associated with the internal operations of the colony in preparing to store honey. Note that the lull in nectar gain occurs at the peak of native nectar availability. Here, we consider the peak of nectar in the field to be the period of black locust and the overlapping tulip poplar. It’s also the period of no gain in the supers. The peak of nectar availability is a boon to the swarm in a new location, but the parent colony or non-swarming colony is busy with preparation to store honey."


i believe what walt is suggesting is that colony operations are 'focused' on brooding during the build up in preparation for swarm issue and not on honey processing and storage until the colony either swarms or 'shifts gears'. the contingency of young bees in the colony that decides not to swarm become wax makers and honey processors and the focus is shifted to putting up stores for the upcoming winter.

now is the point on walt's timeline where he observed this lull in nectar storage. my colonies are still keeping only minimal honey around the broodnest area and not putting anything up in the empty supers overhead, but that should be changing very soon...


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## squarepeg

looks like you beat me to it russ.


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## Nordak

Reassuring to hear the theories as to what is seemingly a very hand-to-mouth scenario regarding the brood rearing. I was worried that it might be some unseen environmental cause such as an overall lack of forage, or perhaps too much competition for what is there. Thanks for elaborating Litsinger and SP.


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## squarepeg

Litsinger said:


> You are right concerning one of Walt's two published hypotheses concerning the lull- the other is that the foragers are 'biding their time' until the house bees are ready to store and ripen nectar.


i'm not sure the foragers are biding their time as much as bringing in a whole lot of pollen in lieu of nectar. after 'shifting gears', there is no more expansion of the broodnest but rather some contraction instead. less pollen is needed and the focus is more on nectar and making sure we put up enough honey to make it through the next winter.


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## Riverderwent

Thank you, Russ and Square. That helps me follow what Walt was saying. I don’t buy that foragers are biding their time or pre-scouting new locations. (Now I’ve got to remember my Seeley and my Wright.) From watching the foragers, a good number are bringing in water and, presumably, nectar in addition to pollen. But I’m thinking that if we plotted a graph showing the total number of (1) foragers, (2) nurse bees, and (3) larvae over time, we’d see that the ratio of foragers to nurse bees and larvae is low during the lull. 

It make sense that resources would be poured into increasing their ranks at the beginning of the season and poured into stored food later. That would explain why the lull seems to exist in a wide variety of locations and with various breeds, and not so much based on the immediate availability of nectar sources. But that leaves the question of why is there a mini flow prior to the lull. If we had our graph, that might tell us that, although total numbers are low, the ratio of foragers to nurse bees and larvae is higher during that early flow. But I just don’t know. 

Anyway, thank you for the explanations.


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## Riverderwent

River’s rules:
15) Light your smoker first.
...
21) Your best resource is a few hives well observed.
...
26) Paint your hive tool.


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## squarepeg

good rules river. is the complete list available?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> good rules river. is the complete list available?


There’s only one other rule so far, I’m just not good a numbering. The other rule is 14) Varroa don’t do well in places with high humidity.


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## Nordak

> 21) Your best resource is a few hives well observed.


This one is gold, and true on so many levels.


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## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> looks like you beat me to it russ.


Only because I did not properly reference it like you did- thank you for including the proper quotation.

I sincerely hope all is well in your apiary- it sounds like it is?


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## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> i'm not sure the foragers are biding their time as much as bringing in a whole lot of pollen in lieu of nectar. after 'shifting gears', there is no more expansion of the broodnest but rather some contraction instead. less pollen is needed and the focus is more on nectar and making sure we put up enough honey to make it through the next winter.


Good observation, SP. Regardless, it seems it might be safe to infer that, _"...it is associated with the internal operations of the colony in preparing to store honey..."_ as opposed to a lack of availability.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> But that leaves the question of why is there a mini flow prior to the lull. If we had our graph, that might tell us that, although total numbers are low, the ratio of foragers to nurse bees and larvae is higher during that early flow. But I just don’t know.


Great question, River. Your hypothesis seems reasonable to me- could it possibly be tied to:

1. Topping off their reserve?

2. Nectar being easier to work with in making bee food instead of cured honey?


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## Riverderwent

13) Don’t put up with mean hives.


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## squarepeg

Litsinger said:


> ...it seems it might be safe to infer that, _"...it is associated with the internal operations of the colony in preparing to store honey..."_ as opposed to a lack of availability.


definitely safer to infer that russ. availability is not the issue, although a few straight days of non-flying weather could be. saw the first new white wax in a couple of the stronger hives this past weekend...

i'm feeling like we are close to what walt referred to as 'reproductive cutoff' here. this may be the first year i don't have any swarms issue from my hives. we'll see.


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## Riverderwent

What is the prime directive of a colony?


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> What is the prime directive of a colony?


with most if not all biological entities that would be reproduction, propagation of dna, yes?

with the superorganism we fondly refer to as a honey bee colony, reproduction at the superorganism level would be swarming, no?

to achieve that prime directive entails that the superorganism be focused on specific priorities at various times throughout the year, observations concur?


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> with most if not all biological entities that would be reproduction, propagation of dna, yes?


Yes. Thank you for playing.



> with the superorganism we fondly refer to as a honey bee colony, reproduction at the superorganism level would be swarming, no?


That's one. What's the other?



> to achieve that prime directive entails that the superorganism be focused on specific priorities at various times throughout the year, observations concur?


Yes.


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> That's one. What's the other?


hmm, i thought prime by definition is just one. i give up.


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## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> i'm feeling like we are close to what walt referred to as 'reproductive cutoff' here. this may be the first year i don't have any swarms issue from my hives. we'll see.


This fact is quite impressive, Squarepeg and I believe it speaks to your skill as a beekeeper. I have always been impressed with your ability to 'read' your hives and make appropriate management decisions based on those observations- and I think your consistent results year-over-year reflect that reality.


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## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> hmm, i thought prime by definition is just one. i give up.


Well (and I am not saying anything you both don't know), wouldn't Walt say that the most immediate objective of a colony is survival? Once colony level survival is met, they would then turn their attention to reproduction?


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## clong

squarepeg said:


> hmm, i thought prime by definition is just one. i give up.


Is this Riverderwent math again? 

I'm thinking Russ has the "other" prime directive, ie survival.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> hmm, i thought prime by definition is just one. i give up.


 Hoisted upon my own ambiguity. One prime directive, reproduction. Two ways of reproduction, swarming and ... ? Again, thank you for playing.


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## clong

Riverderwent said:


> Hoisted upon my own ambiguity. One prime directive, reproduction. Two ways of reproduction, swarming and ... ? Again, thank you for playing.


? = sending out drones ?


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## Riverderwent

clong said:


> ? = sending out drones ?


You have chosen well. (And thank you.) They “must” be fruitful and multiply or land in the genetic ashcan. They can do that by producing fertile females (resulting in swarming) or virile males (resulting in those haploid go lucky layabouts we call drones), or both. How do bees decide whether to reproduce through swarming or drone production or both?


----------



## clong

Riverderwent said:


> They “must” be fruitful and multiply or land in the genetic ashcan. They can do that by producing fertile females (resulting in swarming) or virile males (resulting in those haploid go lucky layabouts we call drones), or both. How do bees decide whether to reproduce through swarming or drone production or both?


This is a fun quiz, but it keeps getting harder. This last question requires more thought.

How many questions are there?


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## Riverderwent

clong said:


> How many questions are there?


 I don’t know. I suppose it depends on the answers. It’s about the journey?


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> How do bees decide whether to reproduce through swarming or drone production or both?


Well CLong beat me to the punch in replying to the drone question, so I'll take a swing at the decision matrix question.

Dr. Smith with Cornell recently enlightened me that a colony when left to it's own devices will invest approximately equal resources in queens and drones in a given year. If we accept this as fact, then it would stand to reason that a colony will decide what to invest in based on what resources it has to make a calculated risk with. In other words, no resource (i.e. drone comb) no investment (drones).

Further, if colony survival is in question I have read that a colony might generate drones as a means to disperse their genetic profile even if the colony itself may (or may not) persist.

So I would surmise that all hives left to their own development would prioritize drone investment above swarming and would only commit to developing queens when colony survival were relatively assured.


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Dr. Smith with Cornell recently enlightened me that a colony when left to it's own devices will invest approximately equal resources in queens and drones in a given year. If we accept this as fact, then it would stand to reason that a colony will decide what to invest in based on what resources it has to make a calculated risk with. In other words, no resource (i.e. drone comb) no investment (drones).


Would then, all other things being equal, a colony with plenty of room for drone comb (from using foundationless frames or unimpressed foundation in the brood chamber) be less likely to swarm than a colony with no room for drone comb? Or stated conversely, would a colony with no room for drone comb be more likely to swarm than one with plenty of room for drone comb?


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Would then, all other things being equal, a colony with plenty of room for drone comb (from using foundationless frames or unimpressed foundation in the brood chamber) be less likely to swarm than a colony with no room for drone comb? Or stated conversely, would a colony with no room for drone comb be more likely to swarm than one with plenty of room for drone comb?


River: Intriguing thought experiment. I freely acknowledge that the question is beyond my depth as a beekeeper, so my reply will represent what I have read rather than what I have observed. That said:

My assumption (largely based on reading Mr. Walt Wright's observations) is that a colony's Spring priorities are thus:

1. Assure immediate survival- this means the first priority is replenishing any of the capped honey reserve that was utilized to successfully overwinter.

2. Produce reproductive swarm- this means that as the broodnest is successfully contracted following completion of priority #1, the colony recognizes they have the internal resources available to cast a swarm.

3. Prepare to overwinter- this means the remaining Spring/Summer activities are prioritized around being prepared to: raise winter bees; and collect sufficient stores.

That in view, and considering your question:

We know that hives which haven't the resources to swarm will still make drones when allowed to do so. 

Based on this fact, I assume that drone production (even on a limited basis) is a very high priority for all colonies, and that it is somehow related (though not directly correlated to) their efforts to prepare for swarming.

Because it does not appear there is a clearly delineated cause/effect relationship between reproductive swarms and drone production, my assumption is that preventing a hive from producing drones does not significantly impact their proclivity to cast a swarm- but I could be very wrong.

It would almost seem that there are two different sets of rules which guide the colony in making decisions about rearing queens versus drones, but again these are the personal thoughts of a rank amateur, so they should be discounted accordingly.


----------



## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> Would then, all other things being equal, a colony with plenty of room for drone comb (from using foundationless frames or unimpressed foundation in the brood chamber) be less likely to swarm than a colony with no room for drone comb? Or stated conversely, would a colony with no room for drone comb be more likely to swarm than one with plenty of room for drone comb?


I would study resources about primitive beekeeping to get somewhat correct idea of the actual dynamics.
Per my readings, I don't feel it is either/or situation. It is both.

When living in natural/pseudo-natural dwelling of average 60 liter volumes, with minimal human management - wild AMM bees raise the drones as they see fit (taking up to 20% of the total combs; subsequently back-filled with honey) and swarm as they see fit (2-3 swarms per a colony is normal).


----------



## Nordak

> When living in natural/pseudo-natural dwelling of average 60 liter volumes, with minimal human management - wild AMM bees raise the drones as they see fit (taking up to 20% of the total combs; subsequently back-filled with honey) and swarm as they see fit (2-3 swarms per a colony is normal).


Based on what I observed (admittedly, I did little true observation) I would say your numbers are pretty on point in regard to swarming. I had some large TBHs last year going into spring. Split most early and practically quit beekeeping for the year. I'm fairly certain every hive swarmed. Many 2 or 3 times. I learned a very valuable lesson in this region. Without post-swarm management, hives are extremely susceptible to SHB. I really beat myself up over this as I lost many good queens, several that were a few years old. I'm refocused this year and have decided that perhaps in my case, for now, less is more when it comes to hive numbers.


----------



## jim lyon

Riverderwent said:


> You have chosen well. (And thank you.) They “must” be fruitful and multiply or land in the genetic ashcan. They can do that by producing fertile females (resulting in swarming) or virile males (resulting in those haploid go lucky layabouts we call drones), or both. How do bees decide whether to reproduce through swarming or drone production or both?


I've seen enough inexplicable things in beekeeping to believe there is a swarming trigger beyond the obvious seasonal impulses. Certainly a heavy spring flow and restricted room are paramount but I also believe there is something else at play that no one has really been able to pin down. There are certain years (or more accurately springs) when it just seems that, regardless of what your management techniques, its just going to happen.


----------



## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> I've seen enough inexplicable things in beekeeping to believe there is a swarming trigger beyond the obvious seasonal impulses. Certainly a heavy spring flow and restricted room are paramount but I also believe there is something else at play that no one has really been able to pin down.


I’m curious if (other things being equal) bees with unfettered room for drone comb issue fewer swarms than bees with little or no room for drone comb comb. Knowing whether that is the case could shed a little light on the swarm impulse.


----------



## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> I’m curious if (other things being equal) bees with unfettered room for drone comb issue fewer swarms than bees with little or no room for drone comb comb. Knowing whether that is the case could shed a little light on the swarm impulse.


Experiment and see?

I made one observation last year.
My two overwintered survivors last year both had unlimited space and unlimited freedom to build whatever the heck they wanted and however they wanted to do it.
Queens were of the same age.

One unit (#1) had near-zero impulse to swarm and just kept expanding within the cavity (and building significant amount of drone cells too).
So this colony wanted to grow big if space allowed.
If I recall, I did a fly-back split on them when they were about 15-16 Dadant frames and going.

The other unit (#2) stopped expanding after reaching about 12 Dadant frames (there was plenty of cavity space left still).
They did some drone cells.
But more importantly, they did lots of swarm cells - it was so very obviously different from the #1.
My efforts to open the nest did nothing - they just wanted to swarm (so I ended up doing preventive splits).
So - this colony #2 did NOT want to grow big.
They wanted to stay on a small side and wanted to propagate by swarming.

So - genetic predisposition to behave in certain ways is very strong and it shows (if given all the choices and no artificial limits).

PS: just giving actual faces to the faceless numbers
#1







#2


----------



## Litsinger

GregV said:


> So - genetic predisposition to behave in certain ways is very strong and it shows (if given all the choices and no artificial limits).


This is an interesting observation, GregV. Makes sense conceptually that different genetic backgrounds (from different climates) would have different propensities to swarm regardless of cavity volume- glad you've been able to attach some observational science to this hypothesis.


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## Gray Goose

Interesting thread,
GregV were both queens in #1 And #2 the same "age" I have found the new queen will try to grow in year 1 and swarm in year 2. So IMO there is also some trends that are multi year. Consider a swarm, its goal is to survive the first winter, IE make enough comb to store enough store to survive the first winter. The next year from my experience the Queen will expand the nest to the size of the cavity and maybe be superceded maybe not. the following year the nest is already made they would still have some stores left so , send swarms... If your #1 queen was 2nd summer and the #2 queen 3rd summer, I would expect exactually what you observed. I have a very hard time stopping this 2nd summer swarm impulse. First year Queen can be fairly easily OTBS and/or expanded to stay ahead of the impulse. I am convinced queen age is as a reliable predictor of swarming as any other thing. Assuming the obvious, space , back fill, etc.

GG


----------



## jim lyon

Riverderwent said:


> I’m curious if (other things being equal) bees with unfettered room for drone comb issue fewer swarms than bees with little or no room for drone comb comb. Knowing whether that is the case could shed a little light on the swarm impulse.


One would need isolated hives of similar stock (no trace of Carni or AHB) for a fair test of this hypothesis as I think the swarming impulse is something that can spread to neighboring hives. My guess (and its only a guess) is drone comb if it has any effect at all would be a minor trigger.


----------



## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> One would need isolated hives of similar stock (no trace of Carni or AHB) for a fair test of this hypothesis as I think the swarming impulse is something that can spread to neighboring hives. My guess (and its only a guess) is drone comb if it has any effect at all would be a minor trigger.


There is what amounts to an algorithm by which a given colony takes its best shot to propel and disperse its cellular code as broadly as possible into the milieu of future nature. The algorithm determines the allocation of resources between short term survival (genetic placeholding) and reproduction. It likewise determines the balance between reproduction by producing drones versus reproduction by producing virgin queens (which necessitates swarming). 

If the colony is prevented from building drone comb, it is, in effect, prevented from expending resources by reproducing by producing drones. Those unused resources could be used to increase the likelihood of the immediate colony’s survival. This could be done by simply saving the resources for a rainy day or by leveraging them by producing more workers to gather even more honey. Alternatively, the unused resources (saved by not being able to produce drones) could be spent on producing more virgin queens (and thus more swarms) than would otherwise have been produced. Stated otherwise, will the survival algorithm cause the bees to expend those unused resources on short term survival of the existing colony or on immediate additional reproduction by producing more swarms than would otherwise have been produced.

I’m hesitant to even mention this, but ... one colony’s decision in these circumstances to produce additional virgin queens would increase the reproductive value to other colonies of producing more drones. Thus maintaining an optimum reproductive balance between males and females.

Anyway, all this deductive effort could be saved by a little inductive reasoning by comparing the number of swarms issued by colonies with foundationless frames versus colonies allowed little or no room for drone comb.


----------



## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> Anyway, all this deductive effort could be saved by a little inductive reasoning by comparing the number of swarms issued by colonies with foundationless frames versus colonies allowed little or no room for drone comb.


to be honest i had not considered the role played if any by the amount of drone production and swarm ambition. thanks for putting it out there david.

as you and jim suggest, the testing of the hypothesis would a relatively straightforward proposition.

i've been experiencing reasonably decent success at swarm prevention since i began shaking the queen down to an empty deep below an excluder during the weeks just prior to our main nectar flow. i assumed it had mostly to do with making the queen start a whole new broodnest, but interestingly those deeps each have a couple of foundationless frames that were drawn 100% drone comb.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> If the colony is prevented from building drone comb, it is, in effect, prevented from expending resources by reproducing by producing drones. Those unused resources could be used to increase the likelihood of the immediate colony’s survival. This could be done by simply saving the resources for a rainy day or by leveraging them by producing more workers to gather even more honey. Alternatively, the unused resources (saved by not being able to produce drones) could be spent on producing more virgin queens (and thus more swarms) than would otherwise have been produced. Stated otherwise, will the survival algorithm cause the bees to expend those unused resources on short term survival of the existing colony or on immediate additional reproduction by producing more swarms than would otherwise have been produced.


Very interesting concept, River. I have not thought through this concept as deeply as you have, but your hypothesis makes sense to me. I appreciate you posting your musings here- very thought provoking!


----------



## tpope

Riverderwent said:


> There is what amounts to an algorithm by which a given colony takes its best shot to propel and disperse its cellular code as broadly as possible into the milieu of future nature. The algorithm determines the allocation of resources between short term survival (genetic placeholding) and reproduction. It likewise determines the balance between reproduction by producing drones versus reproduction by producing virgin queens (which necessitates swarming).
> 
> If the colony is prevented from building drone comb, it is, in effect, prevented from expending resources by reproducing by producing drones. Those unused resources could be used to increase the likelihood of the immediate colony’s survival. This could be done by simply saving the resources for a rainy day or by leveraging them by producing more workers to gather even more honey. Alternatively, the unused resources (saved by not being able to produce drones) could be spent on producing more virgin queens (and thus more swarms) than would otherwise have been produced. Stated otherwise, will the survival algorithm cause the bees to expend those unused resources on short term survival of the existing colony or on immediate additional reproduction by producing more swarms than would otherwise have been produced.
> 
> I’m hesitant to even mention this, but ... one colony’s decision in these circumstances to produce additional virgin queens would increase the reproductive value to other colonies of producing more drones. Thus maintaining an optimum reproductive balance between males and females.
> 
> Anyway, all this deductive effort could be saved by a little inductive reasoning by comparing the number of swarms issued by colonies with foundationless frames versus colonies allowed little or no room for drone comb.


Yep, this thought all seems like playing chess with yourself...


----------



## squarepeg

tpope said:


> ...like playing chess with yourself...


i tried that once and won, but i cheated.


----------



## Gray Goose

Anyway, all this deductive effort could be saved by a little inductive reasoning by comparing the number of swarms issued by colonies with foundationless frames versus colonies allowed little or no room for drone comb.

So I still think we are thinking in too few de-mentions.

So I wonder if either virgin queens or drone brood has "smell"/ pheromones? Could be different colonies spy on each other and know. "hey they are making drones, lets make queens" now, or verse visa. If a coloney is an organism, then why would we not expect a group or sub group of colonies be a Macro organism. I really doubt at the end of the summer the Bee gods, say Crap we made all drones or all Virgins this year. I would think they sync up just like the females at the office do. And they know who is swarming and who is drone rearing, and how to time it.
As the Virgin queen needs and relys on drones from different/other hives to prevent inbreeding, I really doubt it all lands in the chance bucket, mother nature doesn't cross her fingers and hope the right drones happen at the right time.. could be the moon triggers parts of it or certain pollen or nectar is the trigger, length of the day, but the bees I would think have mechanisms to get on the same page to swarm get the new queen mated and succeed. I think we humans try to over simplify it, to satisfy our need to feel in control. Seems some days the more I learn about bees the less I know..
GG


----------



## gww

gray goose
Or it could be simpler then we are thinking. It could be all hives facing the same conditions and things happening naturally with out communication. Sorta, if I have this than I can rely on that type of thing. 

I know bees sacrifice their young when stressed and so survival of the original must come first.

Cheers
gww


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## tpope

squarepeg said:


> i tried that once and won, but i cheated.


And you felt good because you cheated??? How does that work?


----------



## squarepeg

tpope said:


> And you felt good because you cheated??? How does that work?


guilt set in upon reflection, i apologized, and thankfully was forgiven. the rematch never took place however. (my attempt at humor, should probably stick to killing bees)


----------



## Litsinger

gww said:


> gray goose
> Or it could be simpler then we are thinking. It could be all hives facing the same conditions and things happening naturally with out communication. Sorta, if I have this than I can rely on that type of thing.
> 
> I know bees sacrifice their young when stressed and so survival of the original must come first.
> 
> Cheers
> gww


GWW:

I was just thinking today that I hadn't heard anything out of you for awhile, and I am glad you chimed-in here.

I also appreciate how you are always helping to keep us grounded in reality- though it is interesting to think about this stuff...

I hope that Spring is shaping-up for you nicely in your bee yard.


----------



## Litsinger

squarepeg said:


> guilt set in upon reflection, i apologized, and thankfully was forgiven. the rematch never took place however. (my attempt at humor, should probably stick to killing bees)


This is funny in a cerebral sort of way...


----------



## tpope

squarepeg said:


> guilt set in upon reflection, i apologized, and thankfully was forgiven. the rematch never took place however. (my attempt at humor, should probably stick to killing bees)


I get it! and the fact is that I am a bit like Gray Goose and find that as I know more about bees that it seems to be less.


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## lharder

Have lots of foundationless, lots of drones, don't seem to have much swarming, but I thought it was mostly a result of my lack of observation. Speaking of drones, saw some capped drone brood for the first time yesterday. Queen rearing is around the corner.


----------



## Riverderwent

We transferred five colonies from swarm traps into hives today, put those traps back up, and rebaited our other traps. We’ve just come out of a cool spell and a few rainy days; the bees were abuzz, and the wildflowers are starting to go wild. 

We have one fairly aggressive hive, but, of course, it’s going gangbusters. Smoke ‘em first, then fiddle with the hives. You’d think I’d remember that. I only took one sting through the pants, but that’s probably because they were trying to hotwire the truck. I don’t look forward to busting down eight boxes full of bees to find the queen. Seems like the meaner they are the better they are at staying hidden.


----------



## Gray Goose

Riverderwent said:


> We have one fairly aggressive hive, but, of course, it’s going gangbusters. Smoke ‘em first, then fiddle with the hives. You’d think I’d remember that. I only took one sting through the pants, but that’s probably because they were trying to hotwire the truck. I don’t look forward to busting down eight boxes full of bees to find the queen. Seems like the meaner they are the better they are at staying hidden.


Riverderwent, When I get a "too big or aggressive" Hive ,Sometimes what I do Is take a new Queen from a split that I feel is "milder" And do similar to a fly back split. Move the 8 box stack, to a different place and place the new milder queen in that location. That does a few things it bleeds off some field bees from the big aggressive hive, and boosts the mild queen. I have done this up to 3 times to a aggressive hive like you describe. once every week to 10 days.
Then the aggressive hive was more manageable. Give a super to each iteration, 3 moves later the big 8 box hive is 5. If you have concerns about the new queen and her small hive being "mobbed" by the bigger hive, I place an excluder the top of the 8 box stack , newspaper combine the new queen on top, let her coast for 5 or so days then the smells and bees mix, then drop the new queen to the bottom board, add sufficient comb, leave the top super on top of the new queen and slide the 7 remaining boxes over. It is a great way to take a big aggressive hive and boost 3 or 4 new queens from start up to 10 deep frames over night. the supers can still be harvested they just are on several hives as apposed to 1. When the field bees get 6-8 weeks old they perish and the new queens genetics are present. Helps with the tip over issue at the 8 to 10 box height as well. Be careful with the first shift as getting 1/3 to 1/2 of the bees to shift is possible. Depending on the percentage of field VRS nurse bees. You may need to add an additional supper or 2 to be sure the bees all fit.
GG


----------



## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> .... Seems like the meaner they are the better they are at staying hidden.


My concern too.
So far the strongest survivor I got is basically covering 12 Dadant frames (very good for my location for mid-April).

Well, based on yesterdays check - I started wondering - how will I find the queen and split these guys when they will be 2-3 times the size?
I can kinda control them with smoke so far - but these guys are mean and given a chance will try to kill you. 
One really has to stay focused and on task, and just tune out the harassing bees.

I feel I need to split these guys preventively now (while they are relatively small still) just so that I have a hand on that queen.
She better be moved into a nuc ASAP, now that I think of it.
This is the only way I can do July starts with her; no way I can find her there in a months... 
Hate even thinking to look for a queen in that mess.. 

Such great bees though - keepers for sure. 
I need to make 4-5 splits out of these meanies.


----------



## BigBlackBirds

GregV said:


> My concern too.
> So far the strongest survivor I got is basically covering 12 Dadant frames (very good for my location for mid-April).
> 
> Well, based on yesterdays check - I started wondering - how will I find the queen and split these guys when they will be 2-3 times the size?
> I can kinda control them with smoke so far - but these guys are mean and given a chance will try to kill you.
> One really has to stay focused and on task, and just tune out the harassing bees.
> 
> I feel I need to split these guys preventively now (while they are relatively small still) just so that I have a hand on that queen.
> She better be moved into a nuc ASAP, now that I think of it.
> This is the only way I can do July starts with her; no way I can find her there in a months...
> Hate even thinking to look for a queen in that mess..
> 
> Such great bees though - keepers for sure.
> I need to make 4-5 splits out of these meanies.


they often actually calm later into summer we get. or that's my experience. my big mean early ones get bigger but not as unruly.


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## GregB

BigBlackBirds said:


> they often actually calm later into summer we get. or that's my experience. my big mean early ones get bigger but not as unruly.


The bees in this particular line are known to have killed home pets.
So - these are out-yard only bees.
Don't have particular trust in them to let them grow too big before digging into them.

The mother queen of the current queen would no want to grow beyond 12 frames though (as I reported someplace here).
Unsure what the current queen has in mind. 
They just as well could try jumping the gun on me.
(this is me talking to myself anymore - trying to decide my next move).

(PS: to be sure - these are keeper bees, as for me, and I want more of these;
just not the typical pop-culture type where people think they can work bees while nearly naked, use no smoke, and all that circus - e.g. Sam Comfort style videos)


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## Litsinger

Gray Goose said:


> I have done this up to 3 times to a aggressive hive like you describe. once every week to 10 days.


Gray Goose:

This is a good idea- my only concern (and given my track record) would be finding the queen each time you manipulate. Got any trade secrets concerning how you efficiently find her in the midst of a boomer colony?


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## clong

Litsinger said:


> Gray Goose:
> 
> This is a good idea- my only concern (and given my track record) would be finding the queen each time you manipulate. Got any trade secrets concerning how you efficiently find her in the midst of a boomer colony?


Russ,

This post/thread has some good tips:

https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?346631-tips-for-finding-the-queen&p=1642043#post1642043


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## Litsinger

clong said:


> Russ,
> 
> This post/thread has some good tips:
> 
> https://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?346631-tips-for-finding-the-queen&p=1642043#post1642043


Thanks, CLong! There are some good tips in there. While I hadn't really considered it when deciding to standardize around 8-frame mediums, it certainly does make in depth hive inspections a bit more cumbersome (particularly when trying to isolate the queen).

Thanks again for the feedback. I do appreciate it.

Russ


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## Gray Goose

Litsinger said:


> Gray Goose:
> 
> This is a good idea- my only concern (and given my track record) would be finding the queen each time you manipulate. Got any trade secrets concerning how you efficiently find her in the midst of a boomer colony?


Litsinger, You do not need to find the queen. You are stealing the field bees. So you place a new queen of small hive in the location of the big one.
Very much Like a fly back split. Many if not most of the field bees go back to the old location and join the new Queen. the moved big hive has enough stores to make it for a few days and soon "promotes" new field bees. then you place a new 2nd queen in that spot and move it again. 
Also similar to a strong for weak swap. 1st time you may get 1/3 of the bees away from the parent hive, second time 1/3 of what is left , etc. At some point the hive is smaller and workable. also the field bees are the ones coming back into you working the hive and in general the protectors. The new house bees are generally less aggressive. So the first time is the worst time, as it gets smaller each time. I take the lid off set it down 8 feet from the hive and 1 at a time pile the strong hive off onto the lid. Place the weak hive in the same spot the strong one was in, Ideally the same color but not necessary. If you have an excluder I make 2 piles, below the excluder and above. If I had an excluder I would give 1 or 2 supers to the old location (split them down faster)as they are going to get a load of bees. Pile the hive back up in another location, 12 feet away is far enough. with out the excluder in open brood nest fashion, I would pile the old hive up except for the last 2 supers, place an empty box on top the newly stacked old hive and shake at lease 2 supers into the old hive, primary objective is to "NOT Move the queen back to the old location" so if you shake 80% of the bees off the frame, look the frame over for the queen, and give it to the new queen. you are basically peeling off some bees and boxes each time, to get the big unmanageable hive smaller, and to give some bees to smaller hives. If you do nothing and they swarm you could loose 20 pounds of bees. this way you are peeling off field bees , 5 pounds for you and 5 pounds for you until you have things back in control. there is danger, if they have already swarmed and the virgin queen oriented, she may go into the new hive and take over so when you "unpile" you need to ascertain if they have swarmed and if there are queen cells in the big hive, as a side task (look at the bottoms of the 8 boxes).
Often you can nip this in the bud with a single strong for weak swap. If it gets out of hand this is a way to whittle it down a bit at a time. Lets say it is so big or in such bad shape you cannot move it. Same idea, I would open the top box of say 8 boxes in this example. shake the bees out and clean it up. Place an excluder on put the top box back on, again make sure you do not have the queen, come back in 2 days and take the top box off , I would in this case drive it to a different place, add a ripe queen cell. Go back take the next box shake it down put the excluder on and in 2 days take the next box away and give it a cell. Some what the same idea but you only need to work in 1 box at a time. Mostly variations on splitting. Big hives like 8 or more boxes can get scary to work on. When you look off to one side and you cannot see the ground, do to so many bees in the air, then its too big for me and time to whittle down.
GG


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## Litsinger

Gray Goose said:


> So you place a new queen of small hive in the location of the big one.
> Very much Like a fly back split. Many if not most of the field bees go back to the old location and join the new Queen. the moved big hive has enough stores to make it for a few days and soon "promotes" new field bees. then you place a new 2nd queen in that spot and move it again.


Gray Goose:

Thank you for the detailed and helpful reply- this makes perfect sense now, and I realize I was over-thinking it.

I have copied your response into a Word document for future reference. While I do not have any hives approaching the size you are talking about, what little I have observed from CB'ing this year leaves me convinced that such is certainly possible when they are caught early enough.

I can only imagine what, _"When you look off to one side and you cannot see the ground, do to so many bees in the air..."_ looks like, but have no doubt that would be an intimidating hive to consider digging through.

Thanks again for the detailed response- it has certainly helped a neophyte like me.

Russ


----------



## Gray Goose

Litsinger said:


> Gray Goose:
> 
> Thank you for the detailed and helpful reply- this makes perfect sense now, and I realize I was over-thinking it.
> 
> I have copied your response into a Word document for future reference. While I do not have any hives approaching the size you are talking about, what little I have observed from CB'ing this year leaves me convinced that such is certainly possible when they are caught early enough.
> 
> I can only imagine what, _"When you look off to one side and you cannot see the ground, do to so many bees in the air..."_ looks like, but have no doubt that would be an intimidating hive to consider digging through.
> 
> Thanks again for the detailed response- it has certainly helped a neophyte like me.
> 
> Russ


Russ, just be careful if the sizes are crazy different, like 2 frames in the little hive and 80 in the big hive. you could be adding 20 -30 frames of bees to the little hive. In that case I would newspaper add the queen on top the big hive on an excluder for 4-6 days then do the process. Bees with a laying queen will generally accept a laying queen. Better to start thinking of size adjustments when your at 5 boxes not 8 
GG


----------



## mischief

If you really want to find the Queen would a Taranov split work for you?


----------



## Gray Goose

mischief said:


> If you really want to find the Queen would a Taranov split work for you?


Yes it would work, BUT..... by the time you shook 80 frames of bees or feathered them off it would be lots of time and if they get riled up you have a lot of bees in the air.. i'd rather chip away at it a little at a time. However in theory you could do the Taranov split. Has any one on Beesource performed a Taranov split on a 80 frame Hive? care to let us know how it went. So a 2 lb package covers like 4.5 frames, so a packed deep could have 5 lb of bees, so 80 frames is like 40lbs 20 packages all dumped on a pile..


----------



## Riverderwent

Great reminder on the ol’ switcheroo. I haven’t done that in awhile because I haven’t needed to, but it does work like a charm. My bees that are mean in April usually just get meaner by August when the bloom is off the clover and the thoughts of bees turn once again to larceny. I just don’t put up with mean bees anymore. We will likely do something fairly soon to humble this hive.


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## Litsinger

Gray Goose said:


> Better to start thinking of size adjustments when your at 5 boxes not 8


Great point, GG. Thanks again for the detailed description of the process- it helped alot!


----------



## Riverderwent

I am amused and a little intrigued by all the “monkey motions” that folks do. I used to inspect every week or two during spring and summer, and one day I realized that the only problems I was seeing were problems I was causing. I don’t remember the last time that I looked in the brood and food chamber (bottom three boxes) of one of my production hives. I thought that I lost a colony over winter, but by the time I got back to it to break it down, it had a thriving colony in it. Did it not really die out or did a prime swarm move in? I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters. 

I leave the bees plenty of honey all year round, particularly during the summer dearth. I don’t ever harvest below what the bees will need for winter. I don’t feed. I barely inspect. I don’t requeen. I don’t treat. I use mostly foundationless frames below the excluder (the bottom three boxes), and plastic foundation above the excluder. I use all eight frame medium boxes. 

Around April Fools day, I put on queen excluders and supers. I add supers a couple of more times before the first harvest. At the end of May, I put on bee escapes, harvest the next day adding back the wet supers that evening. In early July, I put the escapes on and harvest the next day, adding back a few wet supers. Around Halloween, I put on the escapes, pull the queen excluders and harvest the next day without adding back the wet supers. And wait for spring. 

Meanwhile, I put out swarm traps and do a couple of cutouts. For cutouts I use a three pound sledge, a sawzall, a pry bar, a bee vac, and a step ladder. I sell any new hives that I don’t want to keep. I guess I just don’t get all the fuss. But it is intriguing.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> I leave the bees plenty of honey all year round, particularly during the summer dearth. I don’t ever harvest below what the bees will need for winter. I don’t feed. I barely inspect. I don’t requeen. I don’t treat.


River:

I appreciate your approach to beekeeping, and I've learned a lot by reading your posts. If I lived closer to you, I'd love to have the opportunity to come over and 'talk shop' with you over an afternoon.

Best of luck with your efforts this Summer.

Russ


----------



## Gray Goose

Riverderwent said:


> I am amused and a little intrigued by all the “monkey motions” that folks do. I used to inspect every week or two during spring and summer, and one day I realized that the only problems I was seeing were problems I was causing. I don’t remember the last time that I looked in the brood and food chamber (bottom three boxes) of one of my production hives. I thought that I lost a colony over winter, but by the time I got back to it to break it down, it had a thriving colony in it. Did it not really die out or did a prime swarm move in? I don’t know, and I’m not sure it matters.
> 
> I leave the bees plenty of honey all year round, particularly during the summer dearth. I don’t ever harvest below what the bees will need for winter. I don’t feed. I barely inspect. I don’t requeen. I don’t treat. I use mostly foundationless frames below the excluder (the bottom three boxes), and plastic foundation above the excluder. I use all eight frame medium boxes.
> 
> Around April Fools day, I put on queen excluders and supers. I add supers a couple of more times before the first harvest. At the end of May, I put on bee escapes, harvest the next day adding back the wet supers that evening. In early July, I put the escapes on and harvest the next day, adding back a few wet supers. Around Halloween, I put on the escapes, pull the queen excluders and harvest the next day without adding back the wet supers. And wait for spring.
> 
> Meanwhile, I put out swarm traps and do a couple of cutouts. For cutouts I use a three pound sledge, a sawzall, a pry bar, a bee vac, and a step ladder. I sell any new hives that I don’t want to keep. I guess I just don’t get all the fuss. But it is intriguing.


Riverderwent, the fuss is the people who are not lucky like you to have the LOCATION, where the bees are healthy, the drone pool is from healthy bees, the forage is good, minerals in the soil feeding the forage are good, chemical spray use is low, the weather is good. Ergo the dearths, the winters , the poor genetics not handling the problems the bees have and the migratory pools of bees dropped off for the summer are things you do not apparently have to deal with. I wish your finding a good spot on others, I am thinking there are Many spots like that. Seek and ye shall find. Move to New York or Vermont if you want to have a close up of the "monkey motions" Bees do a lot better in Mediterranean type weather than the Alaska type weather. Maybe when I retire I'll come to Shreveport and set up down there, sounds like a perfect place to keep bees.
GG


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## GregB

Gray Goose said:


> Riverderwent, the fuss is the people who are not lucky like you to have the LOCATION, ...........GG


+1
People must realize when they are lucky have "that LOCATION" or they don't have "that LOCATION" and not so lucky.
Then act accordingly.
But also judge the situations accordingly.
There is a difference between sub-tropics and sub-tundra, for one example.


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## AHudd

Riverderwent has his apiary sitting on one of those worm holes that transported them back to the 1970's. 

Alex


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> River:
> 
> I appreciate your approach to beekeeping, and I've learned a lot by reading your posts. If I lived closer to you, I'd love to have the opportunity to come over and 'talk shop' with you over an afternoon.
> 
> Best of luck with your efforts this Summer.
> 
> Russ


Thank you. You’d be welcome.


----------



## Riverderwent

I “ran the traps” this evening. Ten of eleven swarm traps that I checked had a colony. I moved those ten to a bee yard about six miles away, and I plan to transfer some of them tomorrow after doing a “double” cutout, two colonies at one house. The one trap that didn’t have a swarm has a big knothole in the top cover. 

My swarm traps are 11½” deep and about 6½ frames wide. I fill the boxes with undrawn, foundationless frames and put one drawn frame as the second frame from the back. Lemongrass oil once or twice a season. I drill a 1¼” entrance in the front of the trap about 3” from the bottom and use a rotating disk to close the entrance for transport. The traps are made from 1” x 12” lumber and, like my hives, are made from unpainted western cedar. I generally average a little more than one colony per trap per season when I run them diligently and about the same when I don’t.


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## Riverderwent

AHudd said:


> Riverderwent has his apiary sitting on one of those worm holes that transported them back to the 1970's.
> 
> Alex


So I wear bell bottoms, a shirt with puffy sleeves, and blue, two tone suede saddle shoes when I work the bees. Staying Alive. :banana: Though the shoes weren’t even cool in the seventies.


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## Riverderwent

Gray Goose said:


> Riverderwent, the fuss is the people who are not lucky like you to have the LOCATION, where the bees are healthy, the drone pool is from healthy bees, the forage is good, minerals in the soil feeding the forage are good, chemical spray use is low, the weather is good. Ergo the dearths, the winters , the poor genetics not handling the problems the bees have and the migratory pools of bees dropped off for the summer are things you do not apparently have to deal with.


What  It’s not the beekeeper. I’m shocked.


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## Riverderwent

GregV said:


> There is a difference between sub-tropics and sub-tundra, for one example.


Winter fell on a weekend this year.


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## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> Winter fell on a weekend this year.


When one needs not care much for bee winter-hardiness (and winter-hardy equipment), that takes out a huge variable out of the equation.

What is also helpful - ability of the ferals to survive virtually on an open tree branch (which in turn contributes into higher feral bee survival and higher populations).
Something like this does not work in my location - these bees would die over the winter, if not found in time (mite resistance is totally irrelevant):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUJtFgweNDw


----------



## Riverderwent

GregV said:


> When one needs not care much for bee winter-hardiness (and winter-hardy equipment), that takes out a huge variable out of the equation.


High populations of untreated feral bees and the resulting concentration of identified and probably yet to be identified recombinations of varroa resistant traits in the gene pool definitely helps. I also believe that research will eventually uncover that our high relative humidity plays a larger role in keeping down varroa populations than is generally recognized. On the other hand, come put on your easy breezy bee suit and do a cutout with me on the west side of a building in August, and we'll talk.

Using techniques that don't unnessarily stress the bees does make a difference (he said unmodestly), and a lot of folks here do have issues. It's kinda like my golf swing; the harder I tried to hit the ball, the more my towardness and my furtherance suffered. Although, I do sense that there are fewer issues today than just a few years ago (for the bees; I've given up golf).


----------



## Riverderwent

This is kind of a diversion, but I would bet that the sun will rise tomorrow. Not because it will, but because it must, and it's a hard bet to have to pay out on. I predict that if my bees are still surviving a year from now, they will have survived without me treating them. Not because they will survive untreated, but because they must if they are to survive and contribute their genes to the long parade. Some would judge that to be unwarranted optimism; I like to think of it as prudent husbandry.


----------



## AHudd

Riverderwent said:


> Winter fell on a weekend this year.


 LOL


----------



## Riverderwent

Riverderwent said:


> I “ran the traps” this evening. Ten of eleven swarm traps that I checked had a colony. I moved those ten to a bee yard about six miles away, and I plan to transfer some of them tomorrow after doing a “double” cutout, two colonies at one house. The one trap that I checked that didn’t have a swarm has a big knothole in the top cover.


When I replaced the swarm traps, bees had moved into the one trap that had not had a colony two days ago. So eleven for eleven. We had already recovered some earlier so our batting average this season is over a thousand.


----------



## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> ...... I would bet that the sun will rise tomorrow....


100% so.

The real issue is - will YOU be still around to observe another sunrise.
Things take time (sometimes a lot of time).
Life is short and time is limited (sometimes very limited).
These are the real constraints.


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## Litsinger

GregV said:


> 100% so.
> 
> The real issue is - will YOU be still around to observe another sunrise.
> Things take time (sometimes a lot of time).
> Life is short and time is limited (sometimes very limited).
> These are the real constraints.


Good point, GregV. As Horace reminds us, _'... carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.'_


----------



## Riverderwent

We harvested a little over 400 lbs. yesterday. Our harvests are settling in on Memorial Day and Labor Day. There were a few more supers that could have been harvested but I fractured my hip in a bicycle wreck about a month ago. Our hives are doing very well. It looks like we’ve lost one during the late summer mite breeding cycle die off. I think that the high relative humidity here is too much for the varroa and gives our hygienic little feral mutts the edge they need. We keep bees with relatively small hive configurations. We do very little other than add empty supers and remove full ones. We catch more swarms in traps than we want to sell or keep. If we wanted more bees and more honey (and the work that goes along with that), we’d add more small hives, rather than try to keep larger hives treatment free.


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## little_john

Riverderwent said:


> This is kind of a diversion, but *I would bet that the sun will rise tomorrow. Not because it will, but because it must,* and it's a hard bet to have to pay out on. I predict that if my bees are still surviving a year from now, they will have survived without me treating them. Not because they will survive untreated, but because they must if they are to survive and contribute their genes to the long parade. Some would judge that to be unwarranted optimism; I like to think of it as prudent husbandry.


But it's an illusion - the sun doesn't move relative to the Earth, it's the other way around. Whether or not such illusions of relativity and/or relationship apply to 'other matters' - couldn't say - but I'd suggest it's always handy to know that such illusions *do* exist and that it's always prudent to bear this in mind when dealing with complex issues, especially those involving 'cause and effect'. 
LJ


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## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> We harvested a little over 400 lbs. yesterday.


How many hives do you have?


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> We harvested a little over 400 lbs. yesterday. Our harvests are settling in on Memorial Day and Labor Day. There were a few more supers that could have been harvested but I fractured my hip in a bicycle wreck about a month ago. Our hives are doing very well.


River:

Thank you for the update, and I am sorry to hear about your accident. I hope your recovery is progressing well?

I always appreciate your posts, and godspeed in your rehabilitation. 

Russ


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## squarepeg

many thanks for the update david, and i'll echo russ's well wishes for a quick healing and recovery.

i moved mike's and john's posts debating selection over to the 'natural selection management' thread.

let's try to keep the focus of this thread on david's treatment free experience.


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## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> How many hives do you have?


We harvested from eleven because that's how many bee escapes we have and because of my fracture. We have three or four more production hives and several nucs or first year hives. We generally produce around 65 lbs. per production hive per year.


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## Riverderwent

little_john said:


> But it's an illusion - the sun doesn't move relative to the Earth, it's the other way around.


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> I hope your recovery is progressing well?
> 
> I always appreciate your posts, and godspeed in your rehabilitation.
> 
> Russ


Russ, it is progressing well. Thank you! I told my partners in the bee business that I haven't planned my injury yet for next year's honey pull. My main contribution this time was providing weight on the extractor base to keep it from vibrating and putting a few labels on bottles.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> many thanks for the update david, and i'll echo russ's well wishes for a quick healing and recovery.


Thank you Square. I was very pleasantly surprised by only losing one hive (so far) to the effects of the increased mite to bee ratio due to the late summer bee brood reduction. I really do think that our high relative humidity plays a role. I ought to get an eager zoology major to come do mite counts and write a paper, but I'm a little scared of what they'd find. Like looking at a 'yote's fur up close.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> My main contribution this time was providing weight on the extractor base to keep it from vibrating and putting a few labels on bottles.


It sounds like you've got good friends. Besides, I have no doubt that you are the brains of the operation so they need you around.

Glad to hear you are on the road to recovery- you'll have to be more creative in designing your injury next year or they might become suspicious.


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Besides, I have no doubt that you are the brains of the operation so they need you around.


Once again, you’ve shown remarkable insight into the situation.


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## Riverderwent

We have a stack of little wooden four frame medium nuc boxes in one or our bee yards. Can you guess what happened?


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> We have a stack of little wooden four frame medium nuc boxes in one or our bee yards. Can you guess what happened?


A whole nest of Cottonmouths took up residence inside? 😉


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## JWPalmer

And to think, I was going to say somethimg stupid like, "you caught a swarm". I like Russ' answer way better.

But just in case stupid is as stupid does, I have been out collecting my swarm traps and stacking them in the apiary. Even giving them a Qtip of LGO. Late swarms here are not uncommon and last year's softball sized ball of bees made it through winter.


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## Riverderwent

JWPalmer said:


> "you caught a swarm".


Yep.


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## Litsinger

JWPalmer said:


> Even giving them a Qtip of LGO.


Great reminder, JW. Based on your reply, I went ahead and re-addressed the two remaining bait hives I have out just in case.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Yep.


Good on you, BTW. River. Was it a good sized swarm? Do you surmise it was from one of your colonies?


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Good on you, BTW. River. Was it a good sized swarm? Do you surmise it was from one of your colonies?


I don’t know the size of it because I’m waiting a couple of weeks until my fracture is a little more healed. But it’s most likely small. I don’t think that I left frames in it, so it will be a mess. It’s likely from one of my hives, but I was catching wild swarms where it is before it was a beeyard, so it may be truly feral. Although, I don’t think that you could slide a piece of paper between the feral genes in that area and the genes of my bees. 

I’ll likely just add two little four frame supers with some drawn frames and let ‘em fill it with goldenrod and aster. Hope they move up. But the comb is probably attached to the bottom of the box that’s on top of it, so, like I said, it’ll be a mess. There’s something about me that wants to see little swarms make it. I’ll probably put a lot of thought and effort into saving a softball size colony. But something in me acts like they just might be the hygienic, allogrooming, mite chompin’, virus resistant bees I’m lookin’ for. 

It’s not the only deferred maintenance in the beeyard right now. I’ve got a couple of swarm traps and/or nucs that need to be hived and at least one colony in a swarm trap that’s still on a tree. Those all have frames and will likely get hived before winter.


----------



## jim lyon

Sorry to hear about your misfortune and hoping you have a full recovery. Sounds like its been an interesting summer down there David. I'm starting to look forward to a little dose of Air-la-tex myself. Btw, what type of honey do you feel you extracted in your Labor Day harvest? Didn't think much went on down there after early June tallow.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Although, I don’t think that you could slide a piece of paper between the feral genes in that area and the genes of my bees.
> 
> But something in me acts like they just might be the hygienic, allogrooming, mite chompin’, virus resistant bees I’m lookin’ for.


Good for you, David. I imagine this is what we are all looking for- glad they are coming to you.


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## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> Btw, what type of honey do you feel you extracted in your Labor Day harvest? Didn't think much went on down there after early June tallow.


You’re spot on. It is tallow honey that had been in the hives since the end of June. And thank you for the well wishes. I’m grateful it wasn’t worse. My bicycle helmet was cracked (I’m glad I wear one), and I was very briefly out of it. The life of a sportsman/adventurer is tough.


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## Riverderwent

Fairly frequently I read, from experts as well grounded as Randy Oliver and drones in their comets, that the solution to the varroa problem will not come from small time folks, but may by necessity only come from the hands of large commercial queen breeders. The discovery of the recombination of traits that macerates varroa is more likely to come from the corner of one of the non-treaters, and the hoards comprising their secret army, feral bees, than from the well and goodly treated, if partially fertilized ladies of the scions of large scale queen production. Ah, but distribution, that’s the issue some might think, or say, or blog. But distribution is never the issue. The amazing power of multiplication makes distribution foregone once word of the solution is out there. Most likely it will happen so quickly, that the whence will be lost in the whither, and it will seem to have come from a hundred places at once, seemingly simultaneously. And the news will flatten “the Earth and the Cassinis.”


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## jim lyon

Riverderwent said:


> Fairly frequently I read, from experts as well grounded as Randy Oliver and drones in their comets, that the solution to the varroa problem will not come from small time folks, but may by necessity only come from the hands of large commercial queen breeders. The discovery of the recombination of traits that macerates varroa is more likely to come from the corner of one of the non-treaters, and the hoards comprising their secret army, feral bees, than from the well and goodly treated, if partially fertilized ladies of the scions of large scale queen production. Ah, but distribution, that’s the issue some might think, or say, or blog. But distribution is never the issue. The amazing power of multiplication makes distribution foregone once word of the solution is out there. Most likely it will happen so quickly, that the whence will be lost in the whither, and it will seem to have come from a hundred places at once, seemingly simultaneously. And the news will flatten “the Earth and the Cassinis.”


Interesting perspective. I wish I could share this optimism but the fact that bee matings are polyamorous make me less optimistic. To duplicate the traits that happen rarely and by chance seems to me to be almost unattainable. Add in the fact that we are also fighting a battle against a constantly evolving foe that is vectoring new viruses makes it all the harder. Select, select, select and we have years where it seems like no progress is being made at all. Sigh....


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## gww

riverderwent


> Most likely it will happen so quickly, that the whence will be lost in the whither, and it will seem to have come from a hundred places at once, seemingly simultaneously.


How did it happen with tracheal mite? Was it through the breeders or through the bees that it came about?
Cheers
gww


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## jim lyon

gww said:


> riverderwent
> 
> How did it happen with tracheal mite? Was it through the breeders or through the bees that it came about?
> Cheers
> gww


Trachael was (is) kind of stealthy. Not easy to diagnose and not much in the way of treating options. . We never did anything and before we knew it varroa showed up and rightly or wrongly people just quit worrying about trachael.


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## Oldtimer

gww said:


> riverderwent
> 
> How did it happen with tracheal mite? Was it through the breeders or through the bees that it came about?
> Cheers
> gww


Both. Breeders such as Brother Adam and others produced tracheal mite resistant bees, these were passed around, and the disease just seemed to vanish from the rest of the population. Bees such as British AMM's that were highly susceptable became virtually extinct, and other breeds with natural immunity took their place. At that time for example, British bees were dying in droves, and a whole industry of sending packaged swarms of resistant AMM's from France, to Britain sprung up, to replace them.


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## gww

jim and oldtimer
Thanks for the history lesson.
Cheers
gww


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## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> Interesting perspective. I wish I could share this optimism but the fact that bee matings are polyamorous make me less optimistic. To duplicate the traits that happen rarely and by chance seems to me to be almost unattainable. Add in the fact that we are also fighting a battle against a constantly evolving foe that is vectoring new viruses makes it all the harder. Select, select, select and we have years where it seems like no progress is being made at all. Sigh....


Jim, you’ve forgotten more than I’ll likely ever know about bees. This is just my perspective from the vantage of being tucked away on the edge of one of, if not the, largest inland wetlands in the U.S. Here, feral bees (and only feral bees) seem to have the numbers and the ubiquity needed to overcome the obstacles you’ve mentioned within a timeframe that I will see. I am optimistic, I concede, but optimism (mixed with gratitude) is the reasonable reaction to what I’ve experienced in life.


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## Riverderwent

I figure out how much honey the bees that live in my hives need for winter and how much space they need for that amount of honey, plus pollen and brood. In my location, for my frugal bees, that is three eight frame medium boxes for most of my colonies. Except in winter, I leave a queen excluder above that third box. Everything below the excluder is theirs and it stays theirs all year round. Everything above the excluder is for me. 

Since I always leave the bees enough honey, I don’t feed them sugar water. On the rare occasions when a cutout or startup colony needs supplemental food, they get frames of honey from above the third box from another healthy hive. Others will disagree, of course, but I believe that keeping sugar water out of the hives causes the honey to be more flavorful. Others will also disagree, of course, but I believe that my not feeding sugar water has contributed to my bees being able to survive without my using miticides in the hive.


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## Riverderwent

For me, genetic vitality, including varroa resistance and tolerance, is a matter of geography rather than individual colonies. Success comes from the trajectory of the combined genetic outcome from feral and managed bees across a swath of real estate. If I have contributed positively to that trajectory, it is from pushing positive genetic material into the territorial milieu, not from propagating and hanging onto a few resistant colonies. Broader success can come from a gradual expansion of the territory encompassed by that vigorous pool.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Others will also disagree, of course, but I believe that my not feeding sugar water has contributed to my bees being able to survive without my using miticides in the hive.





Riverderwent said:


> If I have contributed positively to that trajectory, it is from pushing positive genetic material into the territorial milieu, not from propagating and hanging onto a few resistant colonies. Broader success can come from a gradual expansion of the territory encompassed by that vigorous pool.


David:

Good posts. I always enjoy reading your evaluations of the mechanisms at work in your successful efforts to keep bees without treatments because you are always looking beyond just the individual colonies or yards and attempting to discern the larger forces at work contributing to the success.

Beyond this, I can also appreciate how your efforts to align your beekeeping with natural bee dynamics (i.e. no sugar water) help to promote survival.

If nothing else, it might be considered good stewardship that you are practicing to help promote the health and vitality of the greater bee population at-large in your area.

Thanks again for your posts.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Thank you, Russ.


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## Riverderwent

My preferred smoker is a Dadant 4x7 with a heat guard. I was working on a Kelley and a Dadant side by side today. The Dadant has better fit and finish. I have a Dadant 4x7 and a 4x10. The 4x7 is a little more stable and handy than the 4x10. Heat guards reduce mishaps. I carry the smoker in the back of my truck in a stainless pot salvaged from a scrapyard with a 2" section of heavy gauge 4" iron pipe in the bottom of the pot so it won't tip over. I use a propane torch with a push button igniter to start the smoker. I mostly burn scrap wood shavings and dry punk wood for fuel.


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## Riverderwent

The reason that the bees of the Arnot Forest are famous is not because they are unusual, but because of their proximity to Dr. Tom Seeley. Nature selects for survival. That includes productivity, but, unfortunately, not docility. If the bees in one of my colonies are overly “twitchy” they experience Sudden Emergency Queen Cell Syndrome. Fortunately, that has not had to happen very often.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> If the bees in one of my colonies are overly “twitchy” they experience Sudden Emergency Queen Cell Syndrome.


Funny!


----------



## Riverderwent

“First catch your rabbit.” To keep bees treatment free, consider starting with a swarm or cutout with “good form”, that is, reasonable provenance of several generations of treatment free feral pedigree. Starting with bees that already have the uncommon characteristics of varroa resistance and virus tolerance and then breeding toward commonly found desirable domestic traits, such as gentleness, is easier than starting with common desirable traits and trying to select for the uncommon trait of strong varroa resistance. 

If there is a background feral or drone rich treatment free population in your area and you allow your colonies to naturally supersede their queens, then you will be leaning into traits of survivability. By eliminating aggressive queens and making increase from good colonies, you can select for such qualities as gentleness, productivity, and non-swarming as you choose. As a bonus, the population buildup of longstanding local feral stock will be reasonably synchronized with local nectar flows.


----------



## Riverderwent

If you’re not confident about what is going on, then do nothing right now or wait awhile and then do nothing. Whatever the bees are doing, most of the time there is a good reason for it. They know a good bit about being a bee. Show them some respect. They have good instincts for things like arranging their winter stores and superseding queens. Most of the problems of relatively new beekeepers are either (1) imagined or (2) self-inflicted. If you do something with the hive, then do it. Don’t do it half way because you’re not sure whether you should do it. If you’re not sure, then you probably shouldn’t do it or you should at least check with an experienced beekeeper before you do something. Not after, and certainly not after you’ve done it half-way. Or do what you want. You probably know more about it than I do anyway.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> If you’re not sure, then you probably shouldn’t do it or you should at least check with an experienced beekeeper before you do something. Not after, and certainly not after you’ve done it half-way.


GREAT advice, David. This is a lesson I have (unfortunately) had to learn more than once already. Somehow I fear I might stumble into this issue a few more times...

Have a great week.

Russ


----------



## Riverderwent

Having some treated commercial hives in the area is fine as long as they don’t crowd out feral bees by over foraging. Typically, because of commercial practices, there are relatively few drones in a commercial colony compared to a feral colony of comparable size. So feral hives have a disproportionately large influence on the genetics of colonies that have naturally superseded, locally raised and mated queens. This, along with the commercial practice of frequent requeening, is likely why some studies show disparity between the gene pools of feral and commercial colonies in the same geographic area. 

If you allow natural drone rearing by using foundationless frames in the brood area, over time your treatment free hives will also have a disproportionately large influence on local genetics. And anyway having drone congregation areas with some commercial influence combined with some sound and simple husbandry helps bend the curve toward positive traits such as gentleness and productivity. Depending on local conditions, the beekeeper can nurture the positive influence of both feral and commercial colonies by eliminating queens in aggressive colonies and allowing them to naturally replace the queen and by making any increase and replacement stock from healthy, productive, and gentle colonies.


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## Litsinger

Good post, David. As always, I enjoy reading about the thoughts you have about the genetic environment you are working in- it provides good insight for us mere mortals.


----------



## Riverderwent

I noticed this weekend that there is a remarkable amount of goldenrod blooming in central and southwest Arkansas right now.

This afternoon, having more or less recovered from my fractured hip, I decided to inspect some hives and pull queen excluders and any unused supers. The weather was cool (60 degrees) and cloudy. When I pulled up to the first bee yard I expected to see some bees flying, but there was almost no activity. As I worked through the hives, despite my smokescreen and judicious and efficient (almost ninja like) movements, the bees decided that foul play was afoot and became more and more disturbed and defensive. They really don’t like being meddled with when their larder is full and the days are getting short. By using a sophisticated technique of lifting the back of the hive I determined that their larders were, in fact, full. After nine or so hives, we came to a mutual understanding that I would leave and come back in a day or two. They also not so kindly let me know that my jacket was not completely zipped up, and they had a few score of their finest guard bees escort me off the premises to avoid any misunderstandings. 

I proceeded (or as we say around here, went) to the next yard and made about the same amount of progress. I did determine that we had lost one colony over the late summer and fall, and we have around twenty-one production hives and a couple of nuc size colonies going into winter.


----------



## jim lyon

Riverderwent said:


> I noticed this weekend that there is a remarkable amount of goldenrod blooming in central and southwest Arkansas right now.
> 
> This afternoon, having more or less recovered from my fractured hip, I decided to inspect some hives and pull queen excluders and any unused supers. The weather was cool (60 degrees) and cloudy. When I pulled up to the first bee yard I expected to see some bees flying, but there was almost no activity. As I worked through the hives, despite my smokescreen and judicious and efficient (almost ninja like) movements, the bees decided that foul play was afoot and became more and more disturbed and defensive. They really don’t like being meddled with when their larder is full and the days are getting short. By using a sophisticated technique of lifting the back of the hive I determined that their larders were, in fact, full. After nine or so hives, we came to a mutual understanding that I would leave and come back in a day or two. They also not so kindly let me know that my jacket was not completely zipped up, and they had a few score of their finest guard bees escort me off the premises to avoid any misunderstandings.
> 
> I proceeded (or as we say around here, went) to the next yard and made about the same amount of progress. I did determine that we had lost one colony over the late summer and fall, and we have around twenty-one production hives and a couple of nuc size colonies going into winter.


Strange that you would post this David. Been back down in the "Ark-La-Tex" for about a week now and noticed this years Goldenrod phenomena as well. I'm usually here a week or so later when its mostly bloomed out and was thinking about posing the question to you about its late season flow potential. I've seen aggressive behavior when bees are on a flow but the conditions aren't quite right for flight so I'll take the flow potential as a definite maybe. Forecast for good flying weather dosent look particularly optimistic so, perhaps, its a moot point anyway.
Btw, glad to hear your recovery is going well.


----------



## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> Strange that you would post this David. Been back down in the "Ark-La-Tex" for about a week now and noticed this years Goldenrod phenomena as well. I'm usually here a week or so later when its mostly bloomed out and was thinking about posing the question to you about its late season flow potential. I've seen aggressive behavior when bees are on a flow but the conditions aren't quite right for flight so I'll take the flow potential as a definite maybe. Forecast for good flying weather dosent look particularly optimistic so, perhaps, its a moot point anyway.
> Btw, glad to hear your recovery is going well.


The goldenrod bloom this year seems late to me, and the amount north of the Louisiana line is like nothing I've seen in recent years.


----------



## Riverderwent

For me, a beehive consists of a bottom board, eight-frame medium hive boxes, twenty-four foundationless frames (placed in the bottom three hive boxes), frames with plastic foundation with standard size cells (placed in the fourth and higher hive boxes which function as honey supers), a metal queen excluder placed above the third hive box, an inner cover with an approximately 2" hole in the center and a ⅜" by 1" notch in the upper front rim for ventilation, and a telescoping outer cover. The bottom board has a ⅜” rim on top (which makes the entrance ⅜” high by about 13½” wide). In my location with my bees, this prevents rodents from entering the hives in winter, is defensible, and is not overly crowded during flows. The bottom rim of the bottom board is roughly 1½” high. I purchase frames, but the other equipment is handmade from cedar and unpainted. The decking of the bottom boards and outer covers is cedar. The decking of the inner covers is thin scrap luann or interior plywood. The outer covers are covered with aluminum flashing. Construction is with Titebond II and staples, with screws for any repairs to honey supers. I use welded metal hive stands about fourteen inches high and about ten feet long.

I place the queen excluders above the third box and remove them or place them above the top hive box in winter to avoid isolating the queen from the warmth of the cluster. My bees are derived from local, generally frugal, feral stock, and they winter in three or sometimes four eight frame medium boxes with no supplemental feeding.


----------



## Litsinger

Good report, David. I think you are where many of us hope to be someday.

Thank you for outlining what is working for you.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

When I walk from the truck to the hives, two of the things I carry are a cast aluminum frame grabber like this: www.amazon.com/Frame-Grip-Holder-Be...4905&sr=8-9#HLCXComparisonWidget_feature_div; 

and a stainless steel hive tool like this: www.amazon.com/KINGLAKE-Beekeepers-...G5FZFH2W137&psc=1&refRID=DPR39QY8MG5FZFH2W137. 

I spray paint them with hi-vis fluorescent yellow paint. 

Right now they’re both sitting on top of a hive at one of my bee yards because they’ll stay but they don’t heel.


----------



## Riverderwent




----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> View attachment 52163


Fall swarm?


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Fall swarm?


Just a box on a tree. This is what my swarm traps look like.


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## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> Right now they’re both sitting on top of a hive at one of my bee yards because they’ll stay but they don’t heel.


Sorry to hear, hope you get better soon.

Your messages are like a crossword puzzle for a person not speaking english as mother language. 
I can imagine the blink in your eyes. Laughter and humor makes one live longer.


----------



## JWPalmer

Riverderwent said:


> Right now they’re both sitting on top of a hive at one of my bee yards because they’ll stay but they don’t heel.


Too funny. Maybe you can teach them to come when you whistle?


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Juhani Lunden said:


> Sorry to hear, hope you get better soon.
> 
> Your messages are like a crossword puzzle for a person not speaking english as mother language.
> I can imagine the blink in your eyes. Laughter and humor makes one live longer.


Yes yes, heel not heal ! My bad.

Whistle, that is what you need to learn.


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## Riverderwent

Where I am, with high capacity and high quality honey harvesting and bottling equipment and supplies, keeping twenty hives is easier, takes less time, and is more lucrative than keeping four hives with low capacity and low quality equipment and supplies. Buy once, buy right.


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## Riverderwent

Fundamentally, pulling honey is identifying the supers that have cured honey, getting bees out of those supers, moving those supers to the extracting area, and decapping, extracting, and bottling the honey. Making each of those steps as amusing and painless as practical is important. 

Identifying the supers that have cured honey is, for me, mostly about identifying the supers that don’t have cured honey. The afternoon before the pull, smoke each hive to be checked and any nearby hives, pop the cover, smoke ‘em a little from the top and wait a few moments. Loosen the top box; feel its weight; if it’s heavy enough, pull a frame from the middle and one or two nearer a side; glance down into the super at the comb on the frames still in the super on either side of the pulled frames. 

In my hives, if the top boxes are full and capped, the lower supers above the queen excluder are ready. Smoke the bees down, put any supers from the top that aren’t ready to extract above queen excluder (that is, above the brood and food chamber), put a bee escape board on, put the boxes with cured honey above the escape board, put the inner and outer covers back on, proceed to the next hive till done, and leave ‘em overnight. As you pull away, glance back to see the outer cover that you left off and the frame grabber and hive tool that you forgot. Hopefully, we stop by the gas station and top off the truck’s tank so we don’t have to do it with the honey supers and associated bee stragglers the next day.


----------



## Riverderwent

Ideally, the next morning we wear double pants. (Bees like it when you are in their hive two days in a row and take boxes full of their preciously gathered honey.) We grab commercial aluminum bun/baking pans just larger than our medium bee boxes. We use five of these as bases on which to stack the supers in the back of the truck and a couple as temporary covers to keep bees out of the supers as we stack them. We take five outer covers to cover the stacks once they’re topped out. We take a (hopefully) well tuned Husqvarna leaf blower with a full tank of fresh pre-mixed, “canned” gas. We bring a smoker, smoker fuel, a propane torch with an automatic igniter, hive tools, bee brushes, BeeQuick and fume board (just in case), a couple of sodas, and ibuprofen. The smoker and the blower are kept away from each other in the back of the truck, even when the smoker’s not lit. Ideally, we dress out with cuff straps, jacket and veil, and have our gloves at hand before we head to the bee yard so we know we didn’t forget them and so we can park the truck close to the hives and shorten the distance we have to haul the supers. We try not to bring things that we don’t need.

At the bee yard, we leave the keys in the truck ignition, light the smoker, and smoke all the hives before cranking up the leaf blower. We pull the supers quickly, blow off stragglers and cover the stacked supers with bun pans as we go. When stacks are topped off, we replace the top pans with outer covers, grab the bee escapes, double check that the covers are back on the hives and the tools are in the truck, and roll to the next yard. 

On the way back to the shop/Honey House, we text the ladies who comprise the bottling, marketing, and canteen departments of this vast enterprise. We back up close to the shop, fire up the blower to remove stragglers from the supers, stack the boxes inside, shut the doors, spray around the outside of the door with BeeQuick, move the decapping, extracting, and bottling equipment into place, change out of protective garb, and eat lunch.


----------



## gww

I also use the commercial food pans, they are great.
Cheers
gww


----------



## Riverderwent

I want frugal bees that winter well with small clusters. I don’t want to feed them in the fall to artificially cause them to produce more brood going in to winter. In order for Varroa to reproduce, they need their host bees to reproduce. If there is little or no bee brood going in to winter, then there is little or no opportunity for Varroa mites to breed. (There may also be a detrimental effect on the phoretic female mites caused by overcrowding in the few cells available for breeding.) This causes the mite population to decline as the older mites die off, hopefully (and over time due to natural selection, necessarily), at rates exceeding the rates at which the bees die off. Natural selection rewards colonies with frugal winter bees that outlive the phoretic winter mites.


----------



## Riverderwent

If you are getting ready to go do a cutout, what is something that is helpful that you are likely to forget? One for me is paper towels.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Natural selection rewards colonies with frugal winter bees that outlive the phoretic winter mites.


Good point, David. I suppose the paradox is finding bees that are not only frugal but also productive- sounds like you have found this combination within your area.


----------



## Litsinger

David:

My apologies if you have already addressed this, but do you mind to outline what (if anything) you do for swarm control with your overwintered colonies?


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> David:
> 
> My apologies if you have already addressed this, but do you mind to outline what (if anything) you do for swarm control with your overwintered colonies?


Short answer, nothing. Long answer, in the past I would try to prevent the formation of a solid honey dome directly above the brood by checkerboarding or by undersupering/nadiring or placing a box of empty drawn comb directly above the brood over a queen excluder. I no longer do that. As for checkerboarding in the brood area itself (as opposed to the honey dome directly over the brood area), I don’t believe that has any swarm reducing effect, at least for my bees. 

I do sometimes make early spring splits, but that tends to be for husbandry purposes or “herd improvement” rather than swarm control. My funny little mutts are, surprisingly, not particularly swarmy, probably due at least in part to the effect of mites on their population. 

I have two principal beeyards these days. (I do keep a couple of hives each at a couple of other places.) At one of those principal yards, I have placed swarm traps from 200 to 400 yards away, and very rarely have I captured swarms. Those colonies do cast swarms, but not at the rate that you would expect. At the other principal yard I have a number of traps from ¼ to ¾ of a mile away, and I do catch a number of swarms, but no more than I was catching there before I began keeping bees at that yard. 

By taking an occasional early spring split, and by not treating bees and thus causing them to have to divert resources to hygienic behavior and other mite fighting efforts and considering the downward pressure that mites exert on the population in an untreated colony, I just haven’t felt the need lately to try to reduce swarming by manipulating the honey dome. You do ask perceptive questions. You should be a journalist or a panelist on _What’s My Line_.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> You should be a journalist or a panelist on _What’s My Line_.


Great feedback. David. Thank you for your reply.

If you don't mind me asking a few more questions:

1. If your colonies are not casting reproductive swarms as a rule, have you seen any patterns as to how often they supercede?

2. Related to (1), is it your older queens that are more apt to swarm?

3. As you observe this competing tension between mite load and queen fecundity, do you see hives led by older queens more likely to fail?

4. What would you estimate your average annual surplus honey yield is when you divide total honey crop by all the colonies in your yard?

What I am trying to understand is what does an 'average' year in a successful TF apiary look like? 

You certainly do not have to address all this now, maybe this just might serve as fodder for a 'pearl of wisdom' or two every week? 

Thank you for your willingness to share your experiences.

Russ

p.s. 'What's My Line' went off the air in 1975 - 5 years before I was born!


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Great feedback. David. Thank you for your reply.
> 
> If you don't mind me asking a few more questions:


1. If your colonies are not casting reproductive swarms as a rule, have you seen any patterns as to how often they supercede? -- Not really. I use to be in every hive every week or two during the spring and early summer. These days I assiduously avoid hive inspections because, for me, they cause at least as many problems as they solve. So, if the patterns are there, I'm not seeing them because I'm no longer in the hives except to harvest. I am confidant that my fecund little homegrown queens are well mated and able to last some years. I am not losing colonies due to queen failures or problems requeening. I'm confidant that the bees are casting some swarms that I don't know about, but they are recovering quickly, and the mites are reducing some swarming by diverting resources and keeping the population down due to hygienic behavior or shortened worker average life span. 

I would add that there was a time when we caught scores of swarms, did scores of cutouts and trapouts, and made a number of nucleus hives from good colonies. I've done 200 or more cutouts. We gathered in a lot of good genetics and, I'm sure, a lot of bad genetics as well. We pushed a lot of genes into the woods as Fusion Power would say. What we have now, both in our boxes and in the surrounding river bottoms, are the survivors, some of whom were there when we started.

2. Related to (1), is it your older queens that are more apt to swarm? -- I don't know. I do doubt that a queen that emerged after the summer solstice of the preceding summer is likely to swarm.

3. As you observe this competing tension between mite load and queen fecundity, do you see hives led by older queens more likely to fail? -- I seldom see queen failures since I stopped doing frequent inspections and accidentally rolling or injuring queens. I do lose hives due, I'm sure, to mite problems, but typically not due to queen failure or mating flight problems. I don't see crawlers or bees with dwarf wings, but I'm not looking for them.

4. What would you estimate your average annual surplus honey yield is when you divide total honey crop by all the colonies in your yard? -- In bad years we harvest about 65 pounds per production (established) hive. In good years we also harvest about 65 pounds per hive. I will let you guess what we harvest in average years. Our limiting factor is the amount of honey that we are willing to pull and bottle. If we wanted more honey, we would keep more production colonies. We sell bees, do our day jobs, spend time with our families, and piddle around with other hobbies. Pulling honey is for young folks and forklifts.

What I am trying to understand is what does an 'average' year in a successful TF apiary look like? -- Fun and practicing good husbandry to improve the herd by breeding reasonably productive, mite resistant bees. Making a living, not so much. 

'What's My Line' went off the air in 1975 - 5 years before I was born! -- You kids.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> What I am trying to understand is what does an 'average' year in a successful TF apiary look like? -- Fun and practicing good husbandry to improve the herd by breeding reasonably productive, mite resistant bees. Making a living, not so much.


David:

Thank you again for your detailed and helpful reply. You are an excellent writer, and I do hope you will publish a book someday.

I do sincerely appreciate your being willing to share your results and approach and I hope you don't feel like I am trying to extract trade secrets from you .

Ultimately, my overall goals largely mirror yours and I am trying to anticipate the challenges ahead and to hopefully glean the lessons that others who are quite a bit further down this road have already learned.

If you don't mind, I may toss a few more questions your way from time-to-time, and do please keep posting insights from your beekeeping journey.

Thank you again, 

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> I hope you don't feel like I am trying to extract trade secrets from you .


If someone needs my trade secrets they probably should be raising tomatoes instead of honeybees.


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## Riverderwent

What line from a song captures the essence of TF beekeeping?


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> What line from a song captures the essence of TF beekeeping?


"I can't get no satisfaction"?


----------



## Juhani Lunden

Riverderwent said:


> What line from a song captures the essence of TF beekeeping?


"Imagine all the people"
"You may say I´m a dreamer"
"Something to live or die for"
"But I`m not the only one"
"I hope some day you will join us"


----------



## Riverderwent

Juhani Lunden said:


> ”I hope some day you will join us"


 “We’re gonna do what they say can’t be done.”


----------



## Riverderwent

“Oops there goes another rubber tree.”


----------



## William Bagwell

"If not for the courage of the fearless crew."
"And a fist full of hope - BONANZA!"
And on a more pessimistic note,
"Another day older and deeper in debt."
Though this one applies to most hobby beekeeping not just TF.


----------



## Riverderwent

“To dream the impossible dream”


----------



## Riverderwent

Yesterday, I removed the last of the queen excluders from my hives. The temperature was 78 degrees.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Yesterday, I removed the last of the queen excluders from my hives. The temperature was 78 degrees.


Sounds like it is really getting cold down there, David...

Feliz Navidad


----------



## Riverderwent

I didn’t go very deep into the hives when I was removing the excluders, but the temperature was warm, and the bees’ activity levels were nevertheless low. That reminded me how small (and frugal) the winter populations of these colonies are. That got me thinking that the Varroa infestation rate should be high — unless the dying bees are altruistically leaving the hive and forcing their parasitic cargo to either take a one way trip or debark and risk being mauled by the likes of Perdue bees.


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Felix Navidad


Nollaig Chridheil, mi amigo.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> ...unless the dying bees are altruistically leaving the hive and forcing their parasitic cargo to either take a one way trip or debark and risk being mauled by the likes of Perdue bees.


From the perspective of the mite, neither option sounds very appealing. Best of success to your overwintering efforts this year.


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> From the perspective of the mite, neither option sounds very appealing. Best of success to your overwintering efforts this year.


Same to you. I generally expect the worst, and I have continued to be pleasantly surprised come March. There is a lot of honey in the hives by my standards (particularly relative to the small clusters). Almost no flowers blooming except for the occasional sparse stand of tired little asters. Some years we have random dandelions blooming at this time. Not enough to make much difference of course, but interesting to see.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Same to you. I generally expect the worst...


Thank you, David. I sincerely appreciate it. I subscribe Benjamin Disraeli's ubiquitous quip that, _“I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.”_


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## Riverderwent

So talk of introducing laying queens got me thinking. I introduce laying queens by the most gradual method I know which is to stay out of the hive as much as reasonably practical and allow the bees to supersede themselves as they see fit. Of course, bees don’t “see fit”; the do what they do based on “an instinct akin to reason.”

Anyway, that got me thinking about why other folks requeen as they do which, and here I’m speculating because I’m not, by definition, other folks, is because they want to maximize their per hive production. But I don’t think about it “per hive”. I look at a beeyard and my time and resources in that beeyard as a production unit, not at an individual hive or the colony in that hive. It’s like the cattleman who says, “I don’t raise cows; I raise grass. The cows eat it, and I sell ‘em.” They’re looking at the maximum production per acre (or, more accurately, per their available time and resources), so to speak, not per steer or cow.

So what that means is that a cattleman might be better off (and perhaps happier) investing the same time and resources and selling five grass fed one thousand pound Dexter steers to make a $20,000 profit than selling one 2,000 pound, corn fed whiteface steer for a $10,000 profit. Of course, that depends on the individual and their model. So you be you, and I’ll be me, and I’ll see you in church on Sunday. 

Now how does that translate to a beeyard. Well, if I’ve got a beeyard that’ll support $3,000 worth of profit, and I can get that by keeping a dozen modest hives with relatively little work, losing and adding a couple of colonies each year, while increasing the genetic quality of the herd, or by keeping six big colonies with more medication and manipulation, that seldom fail, I’m gonna choose the former, if it makes me happier. Others won’t. Anyway, that’s about why I let the bees introduce their own new laying queens.


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## Gray Goose

Riverderwent said:


> So talk of introducing laying queens got me thinking. I introduce laying queens by the most gradual method I know which is to stay out of the hive as much as reasonably practical and allow the bees to supersede themselves as they see fit.
> 
> Now how does that translate to a beeyard. Well, if I’ve got a beeyard that’ll support $3,000 worth of profit, and I can get that by keeping a dozen modest hives with relatively little work, losing and adding a couple of colonies each year, while increasing the genetic quality of the herd, or by keeping six big colonies with more medication and manipulation, that seldom fail, I’m gonna choose the former, if it makes me happier. Others won’t. Anyway, that’s about why I let the bees introduce their own new laying queens.


David, I would agree. If a certain strain or Hive "cannot" supersede then I am concerned. If I were to re queen every year for some per hive production model this is a non issue. I however tend to let the bees be bees. I want the ability for bees to fix a queen issue on their own. We all have opened a hive to find them hopelessly queen less. I prefer to not find very many. IMO the grafting and queen rearing in "some" comercial queen operations "Can" render this trait out of the gene pool. if 8 or 10 generations of bees were grafted then the "attempt" at raising their own queen has not been tested in a long while. I do at times order Queens to bring in some fresh material, but would way rather the locally adapted stock be used to create increase and re queen themselves. It is a balance to maintain Vigor, survivability, and profitability.
GG


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## Riverderwent

Gray Goose said:


> We all have opened a hive to find them hopelessly queen less. I prefer to not find very many.


I really haven’t in several years since I stopped opening hives and rolling queens. Of course, if I’m not in it, I’m not seeing them when they’re queenless; I’m just seeing a deadout. But any deadouts I see are most likely from mites not from dragonflies or birds eating a queen on a mating flight. Anyway, queenlessness is not something I’ve seen much except when I’m pretty sure I caused it.


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## Litsinger

Gray Goose said:


> I want the ability for bees to fix a queen issue on their own.





Riverderwent said:


> Anyway, queenlessness is not something I’ve seen much except when I’m pretty sure I caused it.


Gents:

Good discussion. Reminded me of a talk I heard Roger Patterson give at the National Honey Show and accompanying article:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wrW_04iJ_c

http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/rogerpatterson.html


----------



## Riverderwent

Gray Goose said:


> IMO the grafting and queen rearing in "some" comercial queen operations "Can" render this trait out of the gene pool. if 8 or 10 generations of bees were grafted then the "attempt" at raising their own queen has not been tested in a long while.


Gray, that is a fascinating thought, particularly if there were uninterrupted, multigenerational artificially inseminated queens. I would think that queens from local feral bees would have a genetic edge on the finer points of returning home safely and successfully from their nuptial adventures.


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## Gray Goose

Riverderwent said:


> Gray, that is a fascinating thought, particularly if there were uninterrupted, multigenerational artificially inseminated queens. I would think that queens from local feral bees would have a genetic edge on the finer points of returning home safely and successfully from their nuptial adventures.


David, exactly my point. you do not find many because you likely do not buy queens. I have picked up 10 or so packages in the last 4 years, they all end up queen less or winter dead out. many I have seen with no queen and cells built, then still no queen, so the "attempt" failed some do not even attempt, or the queen was on break and passed. 
In the wild any "tree" failing to requeen is basically dead. they get replaced by a swarm perhaps in the next or even same year but the bees that are poor at requeening do not really last in the wild. However one of those type queens could be grafted from, F1s F2s etc.

On a side note My kids all were taken C-Section, either their heads were too big or Moms birth canal was to small. " long stressed labor, OK let's cut them out" I was there for both. So In a pure nature, or 3000 years ago, it is likely neither child would have made it and maybe mom would have not made it either. Many females died in or around child birth. So large heads and/or small birth canals were "trimmed" from the gene pool. Today as long as medicine stays as is, or better, those two traits are likely to expand, for obvious reasons they can and do survive and will reproduce. 

With the queens being grafted for several generations we may or may not be influencing "traits" that grafting would allow.
Ability to properly to supersede could be 1 of several.

GG


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## Riverderwent

Merry Christmas!


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Merry Christmas!


Merry Christmas, David. Here is sincerely hoping that this year to come is prosperous to overabundance for you and your family.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Thank you!


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## Riverderwent

This thing I do is do all I can to avoid unnecessary stress to the bees that live in my hives. Most manipulations kill at least a few bees. They also interrupt their daily comings, goings, and hangings aroundings. Things as minor as an alcohol wash of half a cup of bees to ten colonies add up. Pests take advantage of stress to their prey. First do no harm.


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## JWPalmer

Primum non nocere is really good advice. Goes real well with the idea that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.

One of the reasons that I use the DDC after performing a treatment, oops, a dirty word here, instead of the alcohol wash is that 1/2 cup of bees times 24 colonies equals 12 cups of bees, or the equivalent of an entire package. Not to mention the possibility of accidentally scooping up her majesty and unceremoniously dumping her in a a jar of alcohol. Not a good idea at any time, and a death knell for a hive in the winter.


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## Riverderwent

JWPalmer said:


> Primum non nocere is really good advice. Goes real well with the idea that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.


----------



## Litsinger

JWPalmer said:


> Primum non nocere is really good advice. Goes real well with the idea that sometimes the best thing to do is nothing.


Makes a lot of intuitive sense to me.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year to you both!

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Location. Genetics. Management technique.


----------



## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> Location. Genetics. Management technique.


my view as well, and pretty much in that order.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> my view as well, and pretty much in that order.


Mutable and interrelated.


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> Mutable and interrelated.


indeed. although the heartiest pedigree under expert care would likely not fare well on the north pole nor in the middle of the sahara desert for example, and vice versa for the least hearty pedigree.

i also agree with the point you have previousy made david that finding locally thriving unmanaged feral or wild type colonies is a good place to start, along with applying management methodology that emulates the feral condition as closely as possible.


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## BernhardHeuvel

Why bothering at all? Skip the beekeeping part and go honey hunting in the wilds. :lookout:

Can't be more natural.


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## BernhardHeuvel

Sorry for that. But management and feral in one sentence seemed contradictory to me. :scratch:


----------



## GregB

BernhardHeuvel said:


> Sorry for that. But management and feral in one sentence seemed contradictory to me. :scratch:


Meanwhile, Apimondia 2021 will be in Ufa, Russia - one of the few remaining places where the management of the feral forest bees is their bread and butter.
Read on.
https://www.facebook.com/apimondia2021/


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## Litsinger

GregV said:


> Meanwhile, Apimondia 2021 will be in Ufa, Russia - one of the few remaining places where the management of the feral forest bees is their bread and butter.
> Read on.
> https://www.facebook.com/apimondia2021/


Thanks for the update, GregV. I noted they have a website set-up too:

https://apimondia2021.com/


----------



## Riverderwent

Picked up my first swarm of the year yesterday.


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## gww

David
That branch looks a little hard to shake but nice.
Cheers
gww


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> View attachment 53911
> Picked up my first swarm of the year yesterday.


Nice swarm, David. How's everything else in your apiary running so far this year?


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Nice swarm, David. How's everything else in your apiary running so far this year?


When I dropped that swarm off at one of my two main beeyards Tuesday, things were abuzz at the entrances of each of the five production hives in that yard. So it came through winter well. I haven’t done a drive by inspection of the other main yard in some weeks. I’ll likely do an entrance check there next week some time. Someone asked me awhile back how my bees were doing. I told them, “What’s left of me is still taking care of what’s left of them.”


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## Riverderwent

A run on toilet paper has caused a run on toilet paper. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Years from now, some folks’ children will inherit their toilet paper supply.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> “What’s left of me is still taking care of what’s left of them.”


David:

i am glad to hear that all is well in your apiary, and I look forward to reading about your adventures this year.

I do appreciate the help and advice you've offered me over the past year, and I sincerely hope that this year is one of your best yet.

...and now that you have your beekeeper friends trained to do all the hard work, you can focus on being the straw boss .


----------



## Riverderwent

When I capture a large early swarm cluster, I like to first put them in a swarm trap with frames, including at least one frame of drawn comb. I use an entrance disk turned to the queen excluder setting. I try to rehive them into a couple of eight frame medium boxes after a week or so. I am not concerned with how near or far the beeyard is to the location where the cluster was captured. Secondary swarm clusters are a little trickier than primary swarms because a virgin queen will need to be able to take mating flights. For those, I typically don't use a queen excluder, and I do give them a couple of frames of drawn comb. I don't feed spring swarm clusters when I hive them.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> When I capture a large early swarm cluster, I like to first put them in a swarm trap with frames, including at least one frame of drawn comb.


David:

If you please, remind me- do you use foundation?


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## Riverderwent

We checked our hives yesterday. Once again, they surprised me. We have eighteen production hives coming out of winter. (Our goal is twelve.) And a lot of honey in the boxes. This was a good winter. 

We also have one swarm in a trap on a tree that needs to be hived. It was too wet to get a truck in to where it is, and too heavy to carry out. We also transferred the swarm cluster that I caught the other day into a hive. One hive is a little on the irritable side and will be requeened. I took a sting under the eye. Turns out my bees insist on social distancing.


----------



## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> If you please, remind me- do you use foundation?


We generally don't use foundation in the bottom three (eight frame, medium depth) boxes. I do often add drawn foundationless frames to new colonies if they are handy. We use standard plastic frames above the excluder, which is over the third box. That is a relatively small brood chamber, by the way.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Turns out my bees insist on social distancing.


David: I had to chuckle when I read this. I suppose as a super-organism, honey bees have to be rather strict about disease spread... must crimp their style to practice social distancing being social insects and all.



Riverderwent said:


> We generally don't use foundation in the bottom three (eight frame, medium depth) boxes. I do often add drawn foundationless frames to new colonies if they are handy. We use standard plastic frames above the excluder, which is over the third box. That is a relatively small brood chamber, by the way.


Thank you for reminding me- so if I understand you correctly, you are using mainly foundationless in the broodnest and mainly plastic in the supers.

Glad to hear that you came trough winter in good shape, and best of success to you this season.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Glad to hear that you came trough winter in good shape, and best of success to you this season.


Thank you, Russ. More honey, more problems.


----------



## Riverderwent

Small brood chambers (twenty-four medium frames), even (importantly) during the boom, high humidity, few inspections or intrusions below the queen excluder, no killing bees to sample for Varroa, frugal and disease resistant feral lineage, cedar boxes, foundationless frames (so natural cell size) in the brood chamber, no artificial requeening (other than pinching queens in aggressive colonies and letting the bees naturally requeen), year round small entrances (⅜" x 13¾"), no feeding, leaving sufficient honey all year (including during mid and late summer), no treatment, and reasonably sized beeyards. Low impact and efficient in terms of man hours, leave 'em bee-keeping. Has worked well for me. Your mileage will vary. You be you.


----------



## Riverderwent

Did a cutout today. New small colony. Got the queen. She's locked in with a queen excluder on the bottom and top. We intend to pull off the bottom excluder when they start bringing in pollen. Never gets old. We also moved three full sized production hives to a new nursery and sales yard tonight. Never gets easy.


----------



## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Has worked well for me. Your mileage will vary. You be you.


David:

Thank you for your contributions here on Beesource- I've learned a lot from you. Keep up the good work, and I look forward to hearing more from you.

Russ


----------



## Riverderwent

I just ordered Swarm Commander. Don't judge me.


----------



## AR1

Riverderwent said:


> I just ordered Swarm Commander. Don't judge me.


Been trying to buy some for several years. My boss keeps vetoing the purchase as I have spent my hobby allowance already. Let us know how it goes.


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## JWPalmer

AR1 said:


> Been trying to buy some for several years. My boss keeps vetoing the purchase as I have spent my hobby allowance already. Let us know how it goes.


Tell tell the boss it is a long lasting air freshner. Spray a little in the house to prove it. Hope he/she likes a lemon scent. When the boss objects to the smell , say "well, I guess I could always use it as a swarm lure".


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## clong

JWPalmer said:


> Tell tell the boss it is a long lasting air freshner. Spray a little in the house to prove it. Hope he/she likes a lemon scent. When the boss objects to the smell , say "well, I guess I could always use it as a swarm lure".


My boss likes the smell. Plus she has recently become reliant on beeswax skin products. Once they're hooked on beeswax and local honey, you get a bit more latitude.


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## AR1

JWPalmer said:


> Tell tell the boss it is a long lasting air freshner. Spray a little in the house to prove it. Hope he/she likes a lemon scent. When the boss objects to the smell , say "well, I guess I could always use it as a swarm lure".


She. Definitely she.


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## Riverderwent

I pulled three swarm traps with bees off of trees today.


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## squarepeg

Riverderwent said:


> I pulled three swarm traps with bees off of trees today.


:thumbsup:

it's been consistently cool and wet up here on the ridgetop which i believe has held back swarming just a bit. i've managed to get my 4 traps set over the past few days. 

i am optimistic about my chances with the upcoming warming trend. the few hives i've been into recently were just starting to backfill the tops of the broodnest with lots and lots of solid capped brood in them. i went ahead and artifically swarmed them. 

(still have a few more to get into for their first spring inspections, will update my thread after having a look at those, fingers crossed no efb showing up so far!)


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> i am optimistic about my chances with the upcoming warming trend. the few hives i've been into recently were just starting to backfill the tops of the broodnest with lots and lots of solid capped brood in them. i went ahead and artifically swarmed them.
> 
> (still have a few more to get into for their first spring inspections, will update my thread after having a look at those, fingers crossed no efb showing up so far!)


There are a lot of folks that want you to have a good year, Squarepeg. I’m one of ‘em.


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## AR1

Well, I rather optimistically put out a swarm trap, basically an empty deep with a medium full of comb on top. Lemongrass only. The scouts are checking it out, but this early I suspect they are looking for a free meal rather than a new home. It's on my front porch so I often check it from the front window.


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## Tigger19687

AR1 said:


> It's on my front porch so I often check it from the front window.


Lol, easiest way. I tried this the other year (I don't have bees yet) thought that if I caught some, Great Free Bees, if not then when I am more ready. I am ready this year but will buy first then next year do the same thing, front of house area so easier to move


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## AR1

Tigger19687 said:


> Lol, easiest way. I tried this the other year (I don't have bees yet) thought that if I caught some, Great Free Bees, if not then when I am more ready. I am ready this year but will buy first then next year do the same thing, front of house area so easier to move


All my current bees are from one swarm that came to my front porch last May. That was a good day.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> There are a lot of folks that want you to have a good year, Squarepeg. I’m one of ‘em.


I too wish you all the best of success this year, Squarepeg. It's hard to keep a stiff upper lip around here without our fearless leader frequently posting his exploits.


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## Riverderwent

Today I transferred the three colonies from swarm traps that I had moved yesterday. One of those swarms had overwintered in the swarm trap. They went into a regular hive, and I expect to harvest honey from them this year. The other two colonies were farm fresh. They were particularly big swarms and were building out quickly and stocking their larders.

One of those fresh colonies was caught in a trap that we had put up beside a new bee yard before we put any colonies there. I moved it at midday yesterday about forty feet to its new hivestand. No brush or reorientation obstacles in front of the entrance. The bees did not skip a beat. I did not leave a capture box at their original location because I think that confuses them. We will wait a few days to put another trap on the tree where that swarm trap had hung, but today we did set another trap on a cultivator not too far away. I’ll be curious to see if it will catch another swarm in the next week or so.


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## Riverderwent

We pulled seven more swarm traps with bees off of trees Wednesday and transferred them into nucs yesterday.


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## squarepeg

nice!


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> We pulled seven more swarm traps with bees off of trees Wednesday and transferred them into nucs yesterday.


Now that's impressive, David. Sounds like you've got your hands full down there.

Happy Easter to you and your family.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Happy Easter to you and your family.
> 
> Russ


Thank you. Happy Easter to you and your family as well.


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## Riverderwent

Yesterday, I moved another swarm trap from the tree it was on to a bee yard and captured a swarm cluster that was thirty feet up in a tree. I used a four section aluminum pole with a swiveling five gallon bucket on the end. I was at my physical limits. I was using my face mask under my bee veil to keep from getting stung (more) when when my chin touched the fencing style veil screen when I was looking up. I was able to knock about a third of the bees into the bucket and transferred those into a swarm trap on the ground. I put a Qtip with a small amount of lemongrass on one end and Swarm Commander on the other, into the trap. I stirred up the rest of the bees still on the limb as best as I could and left the trap on the ground. The owner said that the rest of the bees swarmed into the box a few minutes after I left. I picked up the box of bees at dusk and put it in a bee yard. 

Next planned tasks are to put together some nucs, assemble some foundationless frames, and do a cutout.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Yesterday, I moved another swarm trap from the tree it was on to a bee yard and captured a swarm cluster that was thirty feet up in a tree.
> 
> ...
> 
> Next planned tasks are to put together some nucs, assemble some foundationless frames, and do a cutout.


You are the man, David. If you're not careful, you'll need to get more hired help when the time comes to collect the rent.

I enjoy reading about your exploits.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Concrete and small hive beetles. We now have three principal bee yards. Two are on large cement pads, and the third is on an old roadbed.


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## Riverderwent

Today, we assembled foundationless frames, rehung some swarm traps, and had a fun cutout. It was chock full of bees and brood in a relatively accessible (with a prybar and a reciprocating saw) floor space between the 1st and 2nd floors on the outside wall of a townhouse. Good (well behaved, healthy, and prolific) bees; about ten swarm cells. Probably not a mated queen or even a virgin. (We picked up a swarm from the colony two days ago.) Also, saw three more of our swarm traps with bees.


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## Riverderwent

I'm hankering for a convenient and easy trapout.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> I'm hankering for a convenient and easy trapout.


Looks like you need to plan a trip to Pennsylvania...


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## Riverderwent

Where to put swarm traps. We have a lot of success along tree lined bayous and river bottoms where woods transition into fields. Those who “follow the bees” ala Dr. Seeley would know a good bit about how bees navigate between hive and food. Folks do say “beeline” for a reason. Whether bees register potential hive locations while foraging or strategically canvas the area on single purpose scouting missions, or both, I’d like to know.


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## Riverderwent

I'm pondering whether there are any lessons to be learned yet from the pandemic and applied to treatment free beekeeping, or vice versus.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> I'm pondering whether there are any lessons to be learned yet from the pandemic and applied to treatment free beekeeping, or vice versus.


Isolation (i.e. social distancing) seems to be a watchword in both the current pandemic and in TF circles.


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## Riverderwent

Moved a couple of big hives this evening and pulled five more swarm traps with bees off of trees.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Moved a couple of big hives this evening and pulled five more swarm traps with bees off of trees.


You are the man, David. With all these swarms and cutouts you are doing, what is your approximate hive count at now?

If you're not careful, you are going to have to quit your day job and become a full-time beekeeper...


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## Riverderwent

We generally sell nucs as they become well established, but every year is different, and our time is the biggest variable. This is a different year in a variety of ways. Seeing what the effect of COVID-19 is on the level of interest in bees will be interesting. We’ve been doing a lot of “homesteading” as we call it in my family, this year.


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## Riverderwent

You know how sometimes you have to learn things the hard way. Anyway, this is how I carry my smoker (now):


















View attachment 55121
View attachment 55115


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> We generally sell nucs as they become well established, but every year is different, and our time is the biggest variable.


Thank you, David. I appreciate your reply, and I apologize for my delay writing back. It has been a hectic couple of weeks in the beeyard and this in addition to my day job makes it hard to find time to get in front of the computer.

If you don't mind me asking, I am curious as to how you go to market with the hived swarm stock? I only recently became aware that this is a 'thing' and that there appears to be a lot of interest out there for hived swarms. As an example, I saw a post on a local Kentucky Beekeeper Facebook page that I follow where a guy was advertising that all his equipment is full and that he has some swarm trap bees for sale- and he was getting a lot of interest.

Further, I find myself dangerously close to the same predicament he is in as I only have three bottom boards left and three or more weeks of swarm season to go here.

Specifically, I assume you might use similar criteria to that of a commercial nuc in that you confirm that you have a laying queen and a good brood pattern and you put a few frames of brood and some stores in a cardboard nuc box and give this to your happy customer in exchange for their money?

Do you tell them that they are 'swarm bees' and if so, does that make a difference to your customers either way?

If my questions are prying, please feel welcome to say so- you won't hurt my feelings.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

It’s a hotch potch. We do cutouts, catch swarms in swarm traps, catch swarm clusters, and once in awhile make splits. For all of them, we wait till there is capped brood and good bee count. Depending on when it is in the season, I often don’t know the provenance of a particular nuc. We tell folks that our nucs have capped brood and good population from feral cutouts and trapped swarms and swarm stock. That seems to be what our customers are looking for. Our increase and replacement stock comes from the same bees we sell or the “leftovers”. A number of our customers are repeat or word of mouth and are familiar with our stock and practices. I tell folks that once the bees leave our yard, it’s on them if there is a problem, but I suggest that they let me know if there’s a hitch, and I’ve made a practice of making good on any problems that folks have in the first month or two. That’s good business in the long run. Once or twice, we’ve done a cutout and then sold those bees or another nuc back to the same client that we did the cutout for.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> e tell folks that our nucs have capped brood and good population from feral cutouts and trapped swarms and swarm stock. That seems to be what our customers are looking for.


David:

Thank you very much for your reply. As I have considered this over the past several days, this seems to make a whole lot of sense, especially when one considers that there is a market out there for 'mutt' bees- I suppose until recently I hadn't even really considered there be a lot of folks out there looking for 'non-pedigreed' bees.

I do appreciate your help and the good information you share on this forum.

Thanks again for the feedback, and have a great day.

Russ

p.s. I enjoyed the story of you selling the cut-out bees back to the homeowner- at least they appreciated the value of the work and skill required to get them out of there.


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## Riverderwent

The thought occurred to me that the way we keep bees is not only low maintenance, but also low cost. We don’t feed, so we don’t buy sugar or HFCS. We don’t treat, so no equipment or chemicals. We use foundationless frames in the brood chamber and we use plastic foundation in the honey supers, so no wax foundation, and we reuse the frames in our supers (of course) so we don’t buy plastic foundation anymore. We use wood shavings from our woodworking for smoker fuel, so that’s free. 

We built our own bee vac, and built and stockpiled our own hive boxes, bottom boards, inner and outer covers, and bee escapes (largely out of culled lumber and scrap wood). We allow our bees to naturally supersede, so we don’t buy queens or have expenses associated with queen rearing. I’ve started resharpening my reciprocating saw blades myself.

We buy gasoline for our trucks, honey bottles and lids, waxed cardboard nuc boxes, foundationless frames to replace the frames in the nucs we sell, a few ounces of lemongrass oil, the occasional bit of replacement protective clothing, and some Beequick. I’m sure that I’m forgetting a few random expenses, but it’s a pretty low cost operation.


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## gww

David
You have described my bee keeping almost to a T, except for all that wasteful cost of plastic foundation. 
Cheers
gww


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## Litsinger

gww said:


> ... except for all that wasteful cost of plastic foundation.


Couldn't help chuckling at this one... sounds like a pretty lean operation.


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## Riverderwent

gww said:


> except for all that wasteful cost of plastic foundation.
> Cheers
> gww


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## Riverderwent

I don’t particularly have issues with swarming. I wonder if not feeding syrup anytime, but particularly in late winter, and not treating for varroa mites (and keeping bees that can handle that) relieves some of the spring population buildup or pressure that contributes to swarming.


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## Riverderwent

“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.


_"I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them”. _

_"Just as bees make honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so do the wise profit from the most difficult of experiences."_


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## JWPalmer

Russ, thank you for sharing that quote from Plato. I had not heard it before, yet espouse it's tenents.


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## Riverderwent

I already like this colony.


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## Riverderwent

This is one of our swarm traps.


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## Riverderwent

Animal husbandry is not for the faint of heart.


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## Riverderwent

We use three eight frame medium boxes for brood and food. Everything above the third box that is capped is harvested in spring and again in mid-summer. We put a queen excluder above the third box and leave anything below the excluder for the bees. We don’t feed. These days, anything the bees add in the fall from goldenrod or aster they keep over winter regardless of whether it is above the third box. So the bees may winter in three, four, or, occasionally, five, eight frame medium boxes.


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## Riverderwent

I pulled five more swarm traps with bees off of trees tonight.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> I pulled five more swarm traps with bees off of trees tonight.


Sounds like it's been a good swarm year for you, David. Congratulations. 

Russ


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## Riverderwent

Transferred bees from swarm traps today and rehung the traps. This swarm season has been interesting because of patchwork weather we have had. I pulled two more swarm traps loaded with bees and honey off of trees tonight. Walking up to a trap full of bees has not lost its wonder for me.


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## Riverderwent

I don't see marked queens in the swarms that we catch in swarm traps. I catch more swarms in areas where there are relatively fewer managed hives. For example, I just pulled two empty traps from otherwise good locations that are within half a mile of at least forty managed colonies, including a dozen or so of my hives with little feral mutts. I have not caught swarm in that area in several years despite reasonable and repeated efforts. Other swarm traps of mine in areas with fewer managed hives within a mile or so of the traps produce multiple colonies per year per trap.


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## GregB

David,
At least someone is having it good - you.
Clearly, fully hands-off operations are really possible in some places.
That much has been demonstrated, no IFs, no BUTs.


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## Riverderwent

Take steady light handed care of each hive you have. Split when swarm avoidance warrants it. Don’t work your bees to make increase; work with your bees to make increase. Your real stock in trade is your experience and the equipment that remains after you’ve gotten rid of what doesn’t work for you. Take care of your bees, and they will take care of you.


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## Riverderwent

Being treatment free is largely about not artificially stressing bees.


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## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> Being treatment free is largely about not artificially stressing bees.


Per my experience so far - TF is largely about "location, location, location".
First and foremost.


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## Riverderwent

GregV said:


> Per my experience so far - TF is largely about "location, location, location".
> First and foremost.


A viable location is necessary, but not sufficient.


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## GregB

Riverderwent said:


> A viable location is necessary, but not sufficient.


Of course not sufficient.
What I mean is - a certain population of some specific resistant bees attached to a locality is the key.
Certainly you seem to enjoy a scenario similar to this.
I don't.

I feel the local population is what will make or break you.


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## Riverderwent

28 swarms in swarm traps.


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## Greeny

Riverderwent said:


> 28 swarms in swarm traps.


I'm clearly doing something wrong.
Or nothing right!


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## GregB

Greeny said:


> I'm clearly doing something wrong.
> Or nothing right!


I would not worry about it.
To each his/her own location (and whatever comes with it).
Just do your best.


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## Greeny

GregV said:


> I would not worry about it.
> To each his/her own location (and whatever comes with it).
> Just do your best.


I'm not worried about it. Slightly amused, mildly curious, somewhat amazed. I can't handle 28 swarms. It will be cool to catch one, some day. 
I set up two empty hives on my property, one with my 3 hives, one at the opposite corner of my property. So, extremely minimal effort on my part yielded no results. No surprise or worry there.


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## GregB

To be sure, I wish I was situate at such a location - no chems are needed/swarms are a plenty.
It is a beekeeping paradise.


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## Riverderwent

Greeny said:


> I'm not worried about it. Slightly amused, mildly curious, somewhat amazed. I can't handle 28 swarms. It will be cool to catch one, some day.
> I set up two empty hives on my property, one with my 3 hives, one at the opposite corner of my property. So, extremely minimal effort on my part yielded no results. No surprise or worry there.


Where in Minden are you located? What size is the entrance to your swarm traps?


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## Greeny

Where in Minden are you located? What size is the entrance to your swarm traps?[/QUOTE]

I hesitate to call them swarm traps. Two mediums with the small opening in the entrance bar. They are in my backyard, so I don’t have much coverage. When I get really motivated I’ll build a couple boxes dedicated to traps.
They’ll be in or around Doyline.


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## Riverderwent

Pulled four more swarms off of trees last night and put them in our nursery yard. That brings the total to thirty-two this year. That's a little more than two per trap. I still have one more swarm in a trap on a tree, I believe. By this time of the year, we've stopped using lemongrass oil. We've lost a higher than normal number of trapped swarms this year, but still a good year. We will do our second honey pull in a few weeks.


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## squarepeg

many thanks for the update david.

during the honey flow is a queen excluder placed above the 3 lower boxes that you leave undisturbed for the bees to use as they wish?

looking ahead i am leaning toward a similar management approach to yours (somewhat by default) with the exception of having 10 rather than 8 frame equipment.


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## Riverderwent

squarepeg said:


> many thanks for the update david.
> 
> during the honey flow is a queen excluder placed above the 3 lower boxes that you leave undisturbed for the bees to use as they wish?


Yes. We keep an excluder above the third box and stay out of the bottom three boxes. Our second, and generally last, pull of the year is between July 4th and Labor Day. Later within that time frame is better because it leaves less concern for stores during the dearth. After we pull, we put wet supers on starter hives to bring them up to three boxes. We may or may not add an empty wet super back on a production hive depending on the number of bees in that hive and depending on whether we already left a super with uncapped honey on the hive. The hives are generally packed full of stores from goldenrod and aster by All Saints Day when we pull off the excluders for winter. I like a tightly packed hive for winter. 

We add the excluders back around the Ides of March. If there are four boxes on the hive at that time, we smoke the bees down and add the excluder above the third box. They have their space, which we try to leave alone, and we have ours.


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## Riverderwent

This has been a low nectar year due to unusual weather In our area.


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## Litsinger

David:

Glad to see your post this morning- been wondering how you've been doing.

Went to your website and your FB page- impressive.

I do hope to read more about your efforts in the TF arena. 

Have a great week.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

We had been using all eight frame medium boxes and placing a queen excluder above the third box. We’re now starting to use eight frame deeps rather than mediums as our bottom box on a few hives.. By adjusting the location of the excluder between being above the second box versus being above the third box on these hives, we will be able to look at the effects of minor adjustments in the size of the brood chamber. These changes in maximum brood area size can affect the ratio of phonetic mites to bees during the later summer contraction in breeding and affect colony survival.


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## Riverderwent

Thank you, Russ. I hope all is well with you.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> Thank you, Russ. I hope all is well with you.


We are well by God's grace- and glad for a little downtime from bee wrangling. It was a busy spring around here, and ironically we have had an exceptionally good nectar year.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> By adjusting the location of the excluder between being above the second box versus being above the third box on these hives, we will be able to look at the effects of minor adjustments in the size of the brood chamber. These changes in maximum brood area size can affect the ratio of phonetic mites to bees during the later summer contraction in breeding and affect colony survival.


Insightful observation. While it is a small dataset over the past few years, I have noted around here that the colonies that build-up especially well in an unlimited broodnest management approach and I am successfully able to forestall swarming tend to turn into mite factories and portend bad things.

Have you settled on a nest size/configuration that seems to confer the best long-term survival while balancing surplus gathering?


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## Riverderwent

Litsinger said:


> Have you settled on a nest size/configuration that seems to confer the best long-term survival while balancing surplus gathering?


We haven’t. But the three medium depth eight frame brood area has worked well for us. I’m sure that mites actually help prevent swarming. If we want more honey, we add more hives, not more brood boxes per hive.


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## Litsinger

Riverderwent said:


> But the three medium depth eight frame brood area has worked well for us.


Thanks, David. I have been following your general principles in this regard based on previous discussions we have had to good effect so far here in Western Kentucky.

Glad to see you posting around here again.

Russ


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## Riverderwent

What happened to the tallow flow this year?


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## Riverderwent

Just checking in. We had a really good year for honey production. We still don’t feed or treat. I get that what we do doesn’t scale up or down well. But for a dozen or so production hives and a few starter hives to sell or use for increase, it sure has worked for us.


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## jim lyon

What was your primary nectar source this year?


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## Riverderwent

jim lyon said:


> What was your primary nectar source this year?


Tallow trees.


----------

