# Constant mite removal management



## beepro

Hi, All!


The day time temp. was around 55ish and night time was frosty lately.
Today was another mite cap brood clean up day. Starting around noon all the small patches of the cap brood frames got
moved into the mite bee bomb nuc hive. After brushing off the attaching bees and finding the queen to make sure she is in the new brood
nest, the remaining 4 cap brood frames got transferred over to the mite bee bomb nuc hive. Make sure to find the queen inside before moving on. I only overwinter 4 frames nucs for easy mite management. This will result in a cleaner nuc hive in the parent hive since they only have 4 frames of bees to manipulate with. These are the big fat winter bees from the Nov. hatch waiting to explode on the earliest of Spring. After this 3rd cap broods removal this hive should be 99% mite free.
And taking advantage of the long live winter bees should do the trick for this nuc hive. To replaced the removed cap brood frames, I 
have 4 old drawn frames of the small cells size swapped in.
The top box of the mite bee bomb nuc hive should be clear of cap broods by now. I then removed 5 drawn
frames from the top box that have very little bees attached. They all had moved down to the bottom brood box after the
cap broods from Nov. had already emerged. So all the clean drawn frames got put inside another deep hive 
box stacked on top of the parent hive which is 99% mite free for the coming Spring expansion. And rotated in are the cap brood frames from the parent hive.
The parent hive is a VSH hive with a Cordovan laying queen. If I remove all the cap 
broods again in another week or so then it will be 99.9% mite free since not all free running mites will be inside the cap broods per any cap cycle.
What do you think about my cap brood frames removal strategy to clean up the hive a bit?
In the process I found a glass like young Cordovan bee emerging. Have never seen such a light yellow almost transparent 
bee before. Should be good to take some graft from this queen in the coming queen rearing seasons. They like the sugar loaves that they recognized instantly (more sugar less subs.)


Found the queen in new brood nest (laying):


----------



## beepro

Munching on sugar loaves, transparent Cordovan bee and small size cap brood frames:


----------



## jbraun

I'm assuming this is only on your nuc sizes? What do you do for your full sized colonies assuming you keep them to over winter? This seems like a great way to get mite free colonies for you. Keep us posted mid season in 2017 to let us know how it turned out please.


----------



## Dan the bee guy

Look like a good little trick you can do in your warm climate.


----------



## beepro

The reason for keeping them in small nuc frames is for easy mite management. They don't use much
winter stores along with more queens too overwinter on.
On a full size hive this is not that easy unless you have another similar size mite bee bomb full size hive for all
the frames taken out. For making the booming full size hive in a hurry you can combine the brood frames while
leaving the nuc as is on warmer Spring time. They will be the small size 5 frames nucs to support the full size production hive. 
During the winter time all the mites are in with the clustered bees and the mites will be in the cap broods if they have any. With more mites emerged along with the new young bees this will lead to an early Spring hive crashed. More mites less bees build up on expansion mode. So I will have to think about how to handle the full size production hive first. Make them small during the winter and combine them on the warm Spring days. There might be an answer after doing more mite and bee experiment like filling all the drawn frames with sugar syrup before putting them to rest in the cold snowing days. No new cap broods equal less mites. If the production hive have 7 frames of the cap broods then it might be manageable using this method.
Keep in mind that this is a delay tactic so that the bees can build up during the early Spring expansion phase without much mites to interfere with the brood nest vs a 
leave it alone ft hive overwinter approach. A prolific 3 months after the solstice mated queen will be able to out run the mites. The mites will ever be present in a tf hive that I'm attempting this season. What to do with all the mite frames inside the cap broods in the warm Spring time? Put them all in the mating nucs and give them a ripe QC or a virgin from the cell incubator. That will give them a mite break until the new virgin is mated again. This is exactly what I did to make the mite bee bomb nuc hive in the late Autumn time.


----------



## beepro

The fast results are finally in. The removed cap broods in smaller patches have zero mites that I can see. That means the
hives are gradually having less mites in them. One smaller hive have no more free running mites on the newly emerged bees check. They have
majority of the adult bees now without any new bees emerging after the last batch. So 
I will be consolidating this nuc hive with less frames and also put in more clean young nurse bees from
the stronger 4 frame hives. This should help with the population growth at the same time give 
the queen a chance to lay some new eggs. Once I'm satisfied with the mite level achieved in the hives then it will be a big combine
to have the strongest queen build up much faster. By this time the warm Spring days should be here. In the meantime, I will put more cap brood frames in the mite bee bomb nuc hive stacked up to 3 boxes high. This should increased the cap brood mite frames to 15 or more. After the bees emerged, all the clean frames will
be rotated out for another cycle of the cap broods manipulation. Thanks to the long live winter bees that made this possible. Without a control method the adult
mites will increased by 3 time per new bee cycle overwhelming the hive and its ability to build up leading to a hive crash for sure right around the initial hive expansion
phase. Waiting until the early Spring time is too late for me as the queens continue to lay up to that time. Wish I have this piece of information 3 years ago that could of prevented the hive crash on my only hive back then. Without any treatment so far achieving this level of mite control in the hive is amazing! 



More new winter bees, less mites now:


----------



## beepro

A quick update:

Today is sunny in a low 50s. Did some mite check on the young nurse bees and could not find any.
Maybe they are inside the cap broods already. Still there is a very low mite count at 4 to 6 mites per 150 bees on the last check.
Would like to continue with this method into our warm Spring days at brood up time.


----------



## beepro

Another update:


Another bee emergence cycle today. A nice sunny day after almost 2 weeks of constant raining. Good to know we're
not in a flooding area. All hives are still alive so far and building up nicely with the big fat winter bees. Some 4 framers have 3 frame of bees back to back and the cap broods too. The Cordovan hive has an average mite level while the mite bee bomb hive have plenty of healthy flying bees today. Not sure why the mite bee bomb hive survived this ordeal so far. Not many crawlers on the ground. All hives are growing gradually under the constant feeding of the homemade sugar loaves patty subs. See it here at https://youtu.be/P0IwvQS2TEw Sorry about the blurry vid.
This year our Spring time is here earlier than usual with the daffodils and paperwhites already blooming. The strong colony take advantage of the early blooming orange pollen somewhere. Our early Spring build up will be starting within another week or 2. If the bees can co-exist with the mites then you're right on. Now is the challenge on every hives to out run the mites. Can they all keep up!?
Pre-spring build up time:



surviving alright.


----------



## Dan the bee guy

Are you going to use any treatments or just use brood removal?


----------



## beepro

At this moment the mite population is still manageable.
I'm not going to treat if it does not interfere with the early Spring 
build up in another month or so. This will allow me to find out
which hives have the most resistant traits. When there is a high
mite load then I'm going to move the frames into the mite bee bomb
nuc hive. So far the mite bee bomb nuc hive seems to be holding well. Of course,
you can always transfer the mite frames into a mating nuc when it gets warmer or use that hive for your queen cells starter hive. I have no issue with queens emerging and mated in a high mite load hive. Going the tf route you cannot treat just have to find another way to manage the mites. Then find compatible resistant traits to complement your local area with the good drones.


----------



## jwcarlson

Interesting treatment method.


----------



## beepro

O.k. if you like to call it "treatment" method. I prefer to call it mite management method.
Yes, this hive is the smallest of all with only 2 frame of bees left after
consolidation though still in expansion mode a bit trying to keep up on the winter bees. Inside there are 3 frames, one is nectar only, one is cap broods on one side and open broods on the other, and the 3rd frame have some cap broods with plenty of developing larvae and nectar with a bit of pollen from the eucalyptus bloom. Then there are plenty of foragers and young nurse bees on the bottom floor feeding on the loose sugar and fallen patty subs. 
So the question is should I remove this remaining cap frame into the mite bee bomb hive now? After all the mite bee bomb hive is full of healthy mite free young nurse bees now.
Of course, it is time to get the last of the remaining mites out of there after sampling that there are not many mites left on the young nurse bees in the original hive. I'll bet only a few on the bees and plenty inside the cap broods still.
So all the young fat nurse bees on the cap brood frame got brushed off onto an empty natural drawn SC frame that was placed inside the original hive. The cap frame after it is clear of bees is inside the mite bee bomb nuc hive now. The original hive still have many foragers and the clear mite reset button is on. Not seeing that many mites on a bee count, this hive is good to go without any treatment for another 3 months or bee emergence cycles. This is how I treat the hive that has low or high mite level to give them a chance to expand without the mite interference for awhile. Whether or not they have the resistance built in is another story that I will find out later on in the season. 



Hope you can follow along:


----------



## beepro

More bees off pics and the mite bee bomb nuc:


----------



## beepro

Yippee! Today is a nice sunny day in the mid-50s.
All surviving hives are flying to collect our early of the year unofficial Spring
wild mustard pollen. Thanks to the mite bee bomb mite frames
removal method to give my vsh (uncap pupa w/ a young yellow mite in pic) hives a fighting chance. Although they are
still a small nuc hive now the prolific bees are extremely healthy coming out of winter. They
don't skip a chance in this nice weather before the rains come again to gather more resources.
Took a vid for all to see this workable tf method should you adopt it for future ipm strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p9Y6nHFd1g&feature=youtu.be
For now the mites are still in there with the bees though not a lot to affect this early Spring build up. From now on there are 2 options I can see.
One is to make grafts at a later date to put the mite cap bees with the virgin queen in a mating nuc hive. Another is to get 
the mite biting/mauling bees for the I.I. process hoping to improve them more. Anybody has a 3rd option or other one?


Healthy bees that survived:


----------



## dlbrightjr

How many survived and how many did you lose?


----------



## JConnolly

Bee pro, just curious what you think of this idea. http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...veyor-and-continuous-treatment-drone-hatchery


----------



## beepro

In this experiment I started out altogether with 8 nuc hives. One is the mite bee bomb nuc.
Two queens disappeared from the nuc hive and one got balled when she ventured in to the other side with a 
different colony. So lost 3 queens total. Why the 2 queens disappeared just before the winter time it is still a
mystery to me. All 5 still surviving including the mite bee bomb nuc hive. 
Three hives are growing into 4 frames now. They have the vsh genetics so they can keep the mites in check
better over the winter. The mite bee bomb nuc and the Cordovan queen nuc have a
high mite count today though still surviving. The Cordovan queen nuc have 4 frame of bees while the
mite bee bomb nuc is down to 2 frames now. 
Your drones removal idea many have tried before. It will work for awhile until the bees started kicking the
drones out before the winter sets in. Then the worker bees will be infected with a high mite count hindering the
hive's ability to make some big fat winter bees. Because of this, without taking the mites out of the hive along with no treatment, the
entire hive will turn into a dead out, some will be before while others are right in the middle of winter. Many new beekeepers wanted to know why their hives are dead all of a sudden. It is because of this spiked in the mite levels that did them in. My method is a bit different in that I keep majority of the cap worker broods in the mite bee bomb nuc. At the same time I plan to use the mite resistant drones to I.I. the less resistant virgin queens. This is a good way to bring some resistant fast in to your apiary. Remember that drones removal is only temporarily that it will not cure the mite issue over time. Only way to go is to find the resistant bees in order to survive with the mites. Many are seeing this possibility for the future already! Somehow we are still behind on the I.I. process as other countries are doing it already. The secret is no
longer guarded as you tube have many such vids. Do a search on instrument insemination on you tube to see the other foreign vids too. You might get a better idea of how to improve your bees including the mite resistant bees.


----------



## BEES4U

The fast results are finally in. The removed cap broods in smaller patches have zero mites that I can see. 
Does this mean that you are doing just a visual mite check?

Regards,
Ernie


----------



## beepro

Yes, the results are in that I still bees to play with for another year of hive expansion.
Here is what I've found out so far using a small tweezers to either flip the young bees or
catch them entirely. Today is another bee cycle that the young bees are emerging. This is also a
good opportunity to catch the newly emerged bees to see how many mites are on them. When I see
the young fuzzy bees on the comb then lifting it up with a small tweezers for a mite count is not an issue. This
is consider a random sampling of X number of bees. You can keep track of how many mites you have pick up from
the young bees. So it is both a visual mite check and random sampling at the same time. After catching 50 or so bees you'll have
an idea how many new mites have emerged within this new mites and bees cycle. Oh, with the small tweezers you can even snap
on the mites while picking them up from the bee too. Crunch!


----------



## shinbone

How long do the mites stay on a new bee after it emerges?


----------



## beepro

In my observation there are 3 level of mites--The mature mom and 2 sisters, sometime a brother.
Mostly only a mom, 1 mature sister and 1 premature (yellowish) sister on every hatch cycle.
After the 2 mature mites went into the cap bees on the 2nd bee cycle, the premature sister mite 
linger on waiting for her opportunity, maybe on the 3rd cap bee cycle. That is why it is so hard to
get rid of the mites completely. While on the new bee the mites will hold on for as long as they can sometime
up to the time of the bee turning into a big fat nurse bee or a forager. So it may take a few weeks. And some will
fall off the bees during the grooming process. There isn't a predictable pattern of how long that a mite will stay on an
individual bee. Once you start counting your bees to know their life cycle along with the bees then you will learn some
more about them. Another interesting education to know them all!


----------



## BadBeeKeeper

There is always a brother. The brother is needed to fertilize the two sisters (may be more in a drone cell). Without the brothers, there would be no more mites.

All you need to find is the brothers, and use your tweezers to pull their little cojones off and then you will eradicate the mites.


----------



## jwcarlson

BadBeeKeeper said:


> All you need to find is the brothers, and use your tweezers to pull their little cojones off and then you will eradicate the mites.


The males don't leave the brood cells. At least not alive.


----------



## beepro

He is right, there is always a brother. If not then the whole specie will go extinct unless
they can reproduced like the camodo dragons. So I have read that the brother will fertilize
the sister while still inside the cell, I'll bet the first sister that is the mature one not the yellowish one. Who knows?
Sometimes I saw the male (brother) still alive on the deformed bees. So there is a male inside somewhere.
In that case the females will outnumbered the males 3 to 1 or 2 to 1. In any case, you or the bees need to keep the
mite levels low enough coming out of Spring in order for the hive to build up and not crashed the hive likes it did to me 3 seasons ago.
Today I found 4 frame of bees with one cap brood frame remaining. This is a quick build up hive that is very responsive to the
homemade patty subs. Seeing that the adult bees have low mite level, I transferred the cap broods frame to
the mite bee bomb nuc hive. This will keep the nuc going while the donor hive has a chance to build up more without the 
mites interference for awhile. We are now in an unofficial early Spring time as the bees are more active than before. I don't know how many mites are inside this cap broods though glad to get them out of the donor hive without the attaching adult bees. Out of 4 frames, this frame should be the last one to emerge that harbored all the yellowish sister mites from a prior hatch that matured at a later date while feeding on the innocent young bees. This removal should clean up the hive for awhile. These vsh hives will never have a perfect broods pattern. This is how far I can push this hive without it going down hill. Overall, very low mite count today from the last hatch. 

Last pic is the mite bee bomb nuc hive from last mid-Oct. still have many bees in there! 



Another cap broods frame moved to the mite bee bomb nuc hive:


----------



## beepro

An early Spring expansion update:


It is now almost Spring time here (2 weeks to go) with many flowers blooming including the almonds and peach trees.
All hives have survived coming out of winter and on their way to an early hive expansion. Miraculously, the mite bee bomb nuc hive is still alive too.
One Cordovan queen hive has expanded from 4 frames (going into winter) to almost 7 frames of bees now. Going to graft some 
queens on queen rearing time from this one. Hope there won't be a cold snap to set them back. The mite level is at their lowest 
that don't seem to interfere with this Spring expansion. What else is there after you have removed them from the cap frames?


Almost 7 frames now on expansion:


----------



## 1102009

You have such a nice style here, beepro!


> that harbored all the yellowish sister mites from a prior hatch that matured at a later date while feeding on the innocent young bees.


Since you do such nice picts, can you take one close to brood in your nuc mite bomb hive just for me?
So I see what happens in the brood area?
Thanks.



> I have no issue with queens emerging and mated in a high mite load hive.


Interesting! Is it your experience that this will be no problem?


----------



## beepro

Yes, was going to take some mite bee bomb nuc pics this morning on a hive check. Then the 
neighbor's dogs interrupted the whole process. They got through the fence hole after the recent storms and got close to 
my bee hives to check out the bees. Luckily it did not get sting placing its nose right next to the
open bee frames because foragers rarely sting though I got the gentle type bees now. Thanks goodness for that! 
Will try again to get you some mite bee bomb nuc pics tomorrow. I can document it here. It is interesting to see them still alive and sending off new bees. As always, my plan for this season is to requeen all hives with the mite biting/mauling bees for better resistance. After the I.I. apparatus is set up along with the QCs incubator, I should have more options to speed up the mite resistant process. Cordovan queens I.I. with the mite biting drones. 
Yes, it is my experience that grafting QCs and having them emerged in a high mite infested builder/finisher hive full of pollen and nectar will not
have any issue. Because the QCs are constantly being clean by the workers the mites rarely infect these cells. So far I have no issue duplicating this process. Though you have to use all pollen and nectar frames for your cell finisher. This process I already posted here last time. Drawing from the experience that one beekeeper that I got contract with purposely infected his QCs with the AFB to make some resistant queens, this process of raising queens in a highly mite infected hive had worked for me. When I saw the mite on the virgin queen, I just closed up the hive and let her take the mating flights. They still got mated in the end. I would like other beekeepers to repeat my process to see it work for them too. How I use this is that for the cap brood frames with the mites, they are perfect for the virgin queen. One is to clean out the mites a bit for a brood break and the other is to allow the bees to get used to the mites here. I have read Michael Bush said he would like his bees to coexist with the mites since the mites are here to stay anyways. So combining the I.I. process and choosing bees that can live with the aggressive mites here is part of my tf method. I have already proven that by removing the infected cap brood frames, the hives headed by a young queen to overwintered them will work here. I will show you more about the expansion phase brood frames with minimal mite level to interfere with the bees. It is really interesting how the queens did it as I saw them today.


----------



## beepro

So this is the mite bee bomb nuc hive. They have close to 4 frames of bees presently.
Many new fuzzy bees emerged today. The mite level is still manageable not more than last Autumn though I don't
know how they did it. Expected to see a hive crashed soon. That did not happen so they keep on
expanding now. The other nuc hives have a rather healthy expanding bee population also. Maybe my constant frames removal had 
interrupted the mite cycles a bit. Still not so sure why the hives survived. Is it the mite fighting ability or my removal of the cap brood frames?
When the weather is warm enough for queen rearing, I'm going to turn this mite bee bomb nuc hive into
a cell builder/finisher with more frames of bees added to it. This will be a repeat experiment from that of last year on queen
rearing days. Temporarily donate all the pollen and nectar frames from the other hives to it for cells rearing.
Then split it out for the mating nucs later on to hold the I.I. queens for the colony to grow. The cells builder will not have any open broods just the emerged bees and the cap broods donated because the queen will be confined in the bottom nuc box. Continue to make splits by taking a frame of bees from each growing hive to expand
faster. Let's see if this will give the hives a good mite brood break too. 


Mite bee bomb at a glance--early Spring time:


----------



## 1102009

Amazing, thanks for sharing.
Is the mite bomb nuc doing some VSH? 

What are your future plans? When do you start to test hives without all the comb shifting?
Or will you stay with this strategy?


----------



## beepro

Really, this strategy is only for winter time use. During the winter time when the hive is at
the contraction mode it is easier to control the mites. At full Spring expansion phase it will be
too much work and too many bees to manipulate. By then I should be switching to the I.I. process where the mite biting bees will
be used. Without a method for the bees to overwinter on, many hives will not see their new Spring days. 
All of my hives now have some degree of the vsh mix into them. How much vsh I do not know though during this process I'm able to single out a few potential breeder queens for my I.I. process. I look at Cordovan color bees, gentleness, resourceful, winter hardiness capability, laying pattern and of course, mite fighting ability after the frames got removed. It is really a test of their ability to cope with minimum bees resources. In the future I hope to improve my bees with the I.I. process gradually shifting away from this strategy. For this experiment I only use 8 nuc hives so this will work for the many new beekeepers here. 
Since our night time temp is in the low 50s right now I can do further manipulation by combining the weak hives with the strong production hives. This way the foragers can collect me some honey before the Spring flow is over. I'll be choosing the hives that have the lowest mite level to combine into one. The extra queens will be in their 2-3 frames nuc hives continue to expand through early summer. Using this consolidation method I don't have to treat to get me some honey since the local trees are blooming at this moment. This weekend will be a 
fun day for me to spray paint all of my assembled 6 frame nuc hives. After that is the combine into full production hives!


----------



## beepro

With our high in the low 70s today, I cannot resist the urge to do a hive combine using strong bee frames from the
growing nuc hives. These nuc hives got the mite frames removed and they have rebuilt since. So found 2 growing nuc hives with very low mite level to donate to the one strong expanding (future production) hive.
Got 5 frames of bees in there to make it a double nuc hive--10 x10. And we're not even at the main Spring days. This double up should provide more resources for them to expand faster with minimal mites to interfere at this early Spring time. Will be tracking the nucs and production hives progress. When it is time to expand you have to help them along!


----------



## beepro

beepro said:


> ....When it is time to expand you have to help them along!



A little update: Don't be stingy on the feeds!

Found another vsh hive (production) with low mite count other than the 2 frame breeder queen nuc hive. To this hive, I have added more bee frames from the
other nuc hives to increase its colony strength. Saw many foragers collecting light pale yellow and orange pollen today from this strong hive. The yellow pollen maybe from the wild mustard and orange is from the popular. Boxwood will be blooming within another week or 2. Now is the time to help them along with more
patty subs feed. More sugar less subs. Within a week they have gone through 90% of the first patty. Seeing this early build up has started I added 3 x more
subs into all the hives. If they continue to expand into early April I will double up on the patty subs even though there are natural pollen out there. You cannot be stingy on the initial early Spring build up as they're very hungry. So feed them well! All hives have the subs in them including the mite bee bomb nuc hive which is growing into almost 5 frames now. The mite count is a bit high but not interfering with the build up. That means no hive crashed yet. Still monitoring for it though. If the weather holds then in 2 more weeks I can start test grafting from the breeder hive. Going to use the nicot queen cage for that as a test first. Yes, that will transfer all the mites into the mating nucs too to give it a brood break early in the season. Should see some new queens in early April if everything goes well. Let's bring the fridge QC incubator online! Can you see the almost glass like looking Cordovan young bee? Those are what I'm looking to raise this season along with the I.I. process mite biting/mauling bees later in the season. Can you see the vsh queen too?


3x more subs for early build up:


----------



## beepro

beepro said:


> ...other than the 2 frame breeder queen nuc hive.



About the breeder queen 2 frame nuc hive, another round of new bees are emerging today. So I did a manual mite count with a small tweezers on the newly emerged young bees. Before the count, I have high expectation that some bees will have mites on them like last time. Don't expect them to be 100% clean of the mites at all. And certainly don't know that a change has occurred this early on to get rid of the mites. If the bees won't clean them up then this hive will not be chosen for the breeder in the future. Thanks goodness that they are able to clean up the remaining free running mites somehow from the last bee hatch cycle. Maybe through their vsh hygienic expression or the will to survive on an early Spring build up. Or a low bee population (only 2 strong frame) that affected the mites' ability to find a suitable mate causing their population to go down hill. Remember that I said before there will always be some mites remaining inside the hive. Now they are able to get rid of them. If keeping a low bee population during the pre-Spring days build up can have an affect on the mite population coupled with the mite fighting bees, then this might be my little secret in keeping the hives clean before the flow. 
Overall, this breeder hive is good to go for grafting now. This is their 2nd seasons without any type of treatment. The queen is rather young only 5 months old. Once the queen has laid up the remaining open cells then she will be put inside the nicot cage to collect some eggs in the plastic queen cells. The other nuc hives including the mite bee bomb nuc are still fighting the mites. I have also stop transferring cap brood frames out of the other hives into the mite bee bomb nuc hive. Time to do a hard bond method since I have found the mite fighting colonies for future breeding already.  This will eliminate the colonies that cannot fight against the mites from my breeding program--Expecting a hive crashed soon from the weaker colony. Also any future drones will be eliminated as well that do not carry the mite fighting traits. Either they will crashed or survived!



100% mite free is achievable now:


----------



## tech.35058

I realize that I missed this thread when it was current, but let me get this clear ...
You are removing frames with capped brood during the winter, collecting them all in one hive, for the purpose of removing the mites in the capped brood from the hives.
Does this not seriously weaken the "production" hive?
I don't understand, do the mites in the collection hive not drift back to the other colonies?
Logically, we could just destroy the capped brood, & destroy those mites.
Please continue your work, & updates, but for now, I guess I am just confused.
Thanks ... CE


----------



## beepro

I realized that this is a long thread to read over many long months already. Don't expect you to read them all. We all know that with beekeeping time will tell whether or not an experiment is successful. Running parallel to this experiment is another one using the mite bee bomb nuc hive to raised the QCs on all pollen frames (collected from all the strong hives) into a nuc hive. I also made another post relating to this pollen frames raised QCs method. Going through the 1st season without any hive crashed I knew that there is something worth posting. Imagine a heavy mite infested nuc bee bomb hive raising the QCs that once split into their mating nucs, the virgin will have a chance to experience with the mites after she emerged. This reminded me of the AFB resistant QCs experiment. So the mite bee bomb nuc hive served 2 purposes. Either one will work to get rid of the mites somewhat. Since last winter, I am a bit disappointed that the mite bee bomb nuc hive that overwintered did not have any mites in there anymore. Zero mites on a hive check last week! I was hoping to repeat the pollen frames experiment inside this hive to raise some QCs from. I'm not sure what to do now without the mites for my future little bee experiment. Though it is expected for this outcome already from previous year's experiment. The local mated daughter queens all have this resistant traits mixed in from the tf allogrooming, vsh and now what I called the sonic bees. Yes, some bees do shake their bodies vibrating like a sonic toothbrush so that the mites cannot land on their bodies. Saw this behavior on a newly emerged bee. Surprised, surprised! 
So to answer any question you have to take the confusion out:
"Logically, we could just destroy the capped brood, & destroy those mites."
This is exactly what I am doing in my little experiment going into 3rd season now. This is the Spring mite management now.
You can only understand what I'm trying to explain and clarify after you have spent a season or 2 learning about the mites and bees cycles through the 4 seasons. Why this method work better during the winter months? We all know, if you follow the bee cycles, that during the winter months the brood nest contracted and expand again during the early Spring time. Going the tf route, along with them are the mites that overwintered with the big fat winter bees. That was why my hives crashed on the 3rd season without any treatment even when they had a summer brood break before. Overwintered bees with overwintered mites that will never go away. At Spring expansion time the mites crashed all the hives because 1) The bees have no resistance because I did not order queens from the resistant stocks back then. And 2) I did not know when or how to remove the infected cap brood frames in the winter time. So to answer your thinking, yes, many mites and cap broods died inside the mite bee bomb nuc hive because during the winter brood contracting phase there isn't enough bees to keep the cap broods warm enough. Many mites will die with the cap broods! The lucky cells that emerged with the new bees will repopulate the hive without much mite issues. Do you know what the typical winter brood pattern on the comb look like? What laying method that the queen uses to keep the winter broods alive with minimal bee resource? Even during the winter time to keep up with the hive population the young after the solstice mated Cordovan-Italians queens will produce some winter bees just enough to keep everything warm and cozy inside. After the mites are inside the cap broods I then removed the frames without the attaching bees to the mite bee bomb nuc hive. After 4 days the new larvae will develop from the laying queen. Remember that there is a post about keeping bees in smaller cluster here somewhere. So I did just that by limiting the hives to minimal bee resources over the winter months. 
Does this not seriously weaken the "production" hive? A: Since all hives are the nuc hives that will expand fast with proper patty subs and sugar feeding, they go in with 2-5 frames of bees only. These are the big fat winter bees, see the bee pics on each emergence cycles above, that will live longer in the winter time. By removing the mite infected cap broods, the next 2-3 cycle of new bees that emerged during the winter time will be healthier and stronger to overwinter. So the opposite is true that instead of severely weakening the hives, this method will give you more overwintered bees. The reality is my newly mated queens do not shut down during the entire winter months. All cap broods are in smaller patches. After the mite frames got removed the empty drawn frames will replaced the removed frames in the same hive position. Spare empty frames can be easily obtained from a contracted brood nest in late Autumn time. I have all deep boxes with 10 frames per box. So less mites equal more winter bees making the hive stronger. Some will say that going out of winter they have more bees than before. This is possible with winter feeding both the high protein patty subs and sugar.
I don't understand, do the mites in the collection hive not drift back to the other colonies? This manipulation was done during the winter time. We are fortunate enough to have more rains than usual during this winter. So the weather is in my favor since they will not drift back in the rains. Also, there are no attaching bees on the removed infected cap bee frames either. Without the bees there is nothing to drift back to. Of course, initially you have to use attaching bees from the minimal mites hive and cap frames to make up your first mite bee bomb nuc hive to start this process. So zero fly back!


----------



## Mason Rice

Dan the bee guy said:


> Are you going to use any treatments or just use brood removal?


I am new to beekeeping and since you mentioned brood removal, is it a good idea to buy green plastic drone comb for varroa mite control. I have heard that you freeze the drone comb when the bees have capped the drone and after 24 hours of freezing you scratch the comb open and put it back in the hive for the bees to clean out the dead drones and mites. I have researched and read books trying to figure out good mite solutions without using chemicals.


----------



## beepro

An update: 


So far I have not seen a single mite in the mite bee bomb nuc hive. The vsh bees took care of that for me over our mild winter. The original hive that I removed the cap mite brood frames from has grown to 4 deep. I then condensed them down to 2 deep (the top deep is for honey super) over a QE for honey collection since our flow is on now. The queen is at the bottom with only 2 open cells frame to lay and the rest are the pollen/nectar frames. So far there are a lot of bees without any swarming. New young forager coming out everyday to collect. 
Your idea of using drone comb for varroa control is a good one. I have though of that and also removed 2 natural wax comb frame full of cap drone larvae into a second growing nuc hive (not the original vsh mite bee bomb nuc hive.) The reason for putting the removed drone frames in there is to see how many mites are inside when they emerged. This also allow me to have an idea of how many mites are inside the now 2 deep production hive. There are mites inside the cap drone larvae but not enough to pose any threat to the growing colony. One by one I will test each surviving colonies to see how much vsh they have. From this I can choose my breeders that have the most resistant traits against the mites. Since the queen is at the bottom deep any little broods made there will be full of mites inside once they are cap. I can even go further to remove these frames and freeze them all. Then what is the purpose of my little mite cap frames removal experiment. Yes, using drone frames is an excellent idea that will work for you. I plan to do many more mite experiment so at least keep them there under control for now. Have more queens on order with the right vsh and bee color in June to complement what I have now. Everything is at your finger tips as long as you don't kill off your colonies completely.


----------



## costigaj

Mason Rice said:


> I am new to beekeeping and since you mentioned brood removal, is it a good idea to buy green plastic drone comb for varroa mite control. I have heard that you freeze the drone comb when the bees have capped the drone and after 24 hours of freezing you scratch the comb open and put it back in the hive for the bees to clean out the dead drones and mites. I have researched and read books trying to figure out good mite solutions without using chemicals.


My bees wouldn't draw on the green comb. Then when they finally did, it was all honey.


----------



## Mason Rice

costigaj said:


> My bees wouldn't draw on the green comb. Then when they finally did, it was all honey.


thats weird


----------



## beepro

On the flow right now you have to monitor the drawn drone comb frame weekly. If you don't take the frames out after
they are drawn then the bees will deposit nectar into the cells. If the queen lay into the cells then they will deposit nectar
on the outer edge. I usually wait after a week to check on the drawn comb then
removed them out. This is usually done on a weekly basis. Also make sure to put the drone frame in the middle of the brood nest.

To avoid swarming I removed the 7 months old queen from the 2 deep into a nuc hive. Took out the QE, all the cap and uncap brood frames into other hives without the attaching bees. All the attaching bees got brushed into the 2 deep hive. For the 2 cap drone frames with majority of the mites still inside I put them inside a small homemade fridge incubator at 94F. I posted here over last winter on my homemade small fridge incubator. Now is the time to test it before using it for the cap QCs one week from today. Then gave this hive 12 accepted graft QCs. And brushed in 8 frame of young nurse bees from the other booming support hives. This will instantly free up all the foragers to collect more. Making this 2 deeps hive a very robust honey collector and a cell finisher at the same time. Also give this booming hive a brood break to further reduced the mite level. The mite level is still manageable with all the mites inside the cap drone cells. I will continue to brush in more young nurse bees from the other strong supporting nuc hives to see how much they have collected over the next 2 weeks. Then return the original queen and maybe take out a few frame of bees to make some mating nucs for the new daughter queens if they are successful in the incubator. It is also perfect weather to plant for them through our yearly summer dearth. So I've prepared some garden space for the bee plants too. At any given time, as more and more foragers are mature, there are 70 bees coming and going. They carry more nectar than pollen since earlier there are more pollen frames in the bottom hive box. It is quite a scene for that many bees, indeed!


Home made fridge incubator and cap drone frames with mites:


----------



## beepro

Quick update:


It is amazing! In just one day they have gathered almost 50 lbs of nectar in the supper super. It is very heavy. And draw out 11 QCs in just
one day about 1/2" already. I lifted the honey super and took out the developing QCs from the bottom box to put them in the middle super. And then added another honey super on top. Right now is also a very good time to put in the foundation frames for them to drawn them out.
Within 1 week they can draw out a frame of foundation and maybe cap the honey too. At night time there are almost 2 lbs. of bees resting outside on the landing board. The other nuc hives are full of bees too. I will brush in 2 more frame of attaching bees this coming weekend from the supporting nuc hives. In a normal hive you cannot do this because back filling with a restricted brood nest will cause them to make the QCs. So without a queen they cannot swarm but to make more honey and QCs. 
In the homemade incubator, many drones had emerged over night too. Hundreds of them emerging all over the fridge inside. I have to use a plastic bucket to put them in after cleaning out the mites off them. About 50 mites found so far on these emerged drones. Then dumped 100s of them into a strong nuc hive. The advantage is this nuc hive no longer have to make more drones. Majority of these are the carnis vsh drones. If it works for incubating the drones then the QCs should not be an issue. At 94F it is a perfect temp. Finally, I have a working homemade QCs incubator. More updates coming....


Drones and developing QCs:


----------



## beepro

One more:


Today some QCs are cap about 6 of them. It is almost 7 days since the graft. Of the 10 cells built out, 4 are still uncap. Maybe by tomorrow or the next day after. Our daily low-90s temp. the entire week really have an effect on these developing cells. They are growing faster with more young nurse bees added and cap sooner. So today I added 3 1/2 frame of bees into this deep hive to maintain the hive population. I can barely remember that these were the tiniest larvae on the graft day. I have to use a magnifying glass to graft them. I'm sure the bees know which youngest one to pick for the QCs. With the right timing they should emerge next week either by Friday or Sat give or take. I will take out the drone frames in the homemade fridge incubator preparing for these QCs. And returning the hive back to a queen right state soon while the flow is still on.


----------



## beepro

A little more:


Today is the day that all 9 cells are cap. Somehow they had rejected 1 more so I end up with 9 instead of 10. It is still good consider I'm rushing through this process. After cleaning out the drones and drone frames, today I put all 9 cap cells inside my homemade incubator inside a food dehydrator plastic casing that I pull out the heating element for the heater with 2 small PC fans for heat air circulation. The cell is inside a small glass jar about 1.5" tall. I drilled 3 holes on the plastic lid, two for ventilation and 1 larger for the QC in each jar. Some are quite large cells full of RJ inside in which I'm quite satisfied with their development so far. Also had returned the 2 deep finisher into a queen right setting by giving it a fairly strong nuc hive on the top deep. The queen along with 6 frame of bees all went on top of the 2 existing deep boxes. I also caged the queen temporarily inside a natural comb frame along with some young nurse bees. After she is laying and her queen scent spread out a little I will remove the window wire mesh screen that is covering the entire frame. This is for her safety since bees added from different supporting nuc hives might become aggressive toward the queen with all the excitement going on that they found the queen. No balling this time since Spring queen is scarce right now!
Should see some new queens in a week or so if all went well.


----------



## beepro

QCs update:


So yesterday just after 4 day of being capped I saw the bottom of the plastic cell cups RJ starting to dry out. It is no longer
a solid deposit. To me that means the larva had eaten up the bottom RJ and starting to turn into a grub. Either 4-5 days later the changed has began. Is this the right observation according to the queen rearing calendar pics? So if my observation is correct then either on Sat or Sun they will emerge from the cells that will be 7-8 days after being capped. Also, there is a possibility that the RJ has dried out because of not enough humidity. If this is the case then the larvae will not be very well fed. I don't have a humidity sensor this time. Maybe will get one on another cell batch.
With a fridge observation incubator you can enjoy this queen rearing experience even more. I tried to play with different temp. settings to get the optimal temperature for these QCs. My guess would be around 92.8F and at one time the temp. spiked to 94.4F on a hotter day last week. Figured that some cells might be cooked already? Luckily our entire week is in the high 70s now. 


At 92.8F constant:


----------



## aunt betty

Have also noticed how a hive that's made queenless for queen rearing goes into intense honey production mode.
Bored bees with nothing to do but make honey. 50# of nectar in a day. 
It really is amazing.


----------



## beepro

Thanks for joining me here. Yes, on the flow they can surely packed in the nectar. I made a slight adjustment to one of my production hives today. Instead of
leaving the queen in the top box I put her in the bottom box. This way the bees can move the nectar to the top super boxes. She is in a bottom QE deep with 5 pollen/nectar frames and the rest are brood frames. Put in 3 more wax foundation frames for them to drawn on. Then super up 2 honey boxes making this 26 framer a super bee bomb booming hive at 3 deep tall. Also brushed in 8 frame of bees from the supporting hives to increase the foragers population. You can remove 2 frame of bees to make a small mating nuc without making a dent in the hive population. The honey frames are almost 1/3 to 2/3 capped. Let's see by next week how much they can really pack it in. 
What about the mites? Majority of the small mite population got removed from the hive in the cap drone frames almost 2 weeks ago. So far the worker bees population is unaffected by the mites. Very little crawlers and DWV. The vsh is doing its job alright! After the honey harvest I will break down this hive and give them 4 mated queens with mite fighting power from an isolated mating station in each nuc hive. With supporting hives the potential to have a bountiful honey harvest in a short amount of time is quite possible!


Still a booming hive:


----------



## beepro

Cells inside a fridge incubator:


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

beepro said:


> After the honey harvest I will break down this hive and give them 4 mated queens with mite fighting power from an isolated mating station in each nuc hive.


_Isolated_ mating station?

How far apart is the isolated mating station from your other hives?


----------



## beepro

It would be at least 2 hours one way driving distance. No, I don't have an isolated station right now. Maybe someday I will find one. I just
have the I.I. apparatus to do queen insemination with drones from my vsh hives locally. The 4 queens with might fighting power are from the
isolated mating station. They also use I.I. to stabilized the mite resistant traits first. I will follow their foot step to use the I.I. process also. These 8 virgin queens will be my little I.I. experiment to see how things work out. Already 3 queens emerged today in the fridge incubator. I scramble to make mating nucs thinking that by this Sunday they should emerge. Some emerged earlier than usual somehow they don't like to be on a schedule like we do. All QCs still have 1/4" of remaining RJ at the bottom of the cell cup. So they are well fed and very healthy prolific large queens. My small fridge incubator can hold 141 QCs inside the inch tall small glass jars. By this Sunday all QCs should emerged. Yes, they all have the typical yellow legs Italian version that I like. My I.I. process will focus on Cordovan bees only. By this late Autumn the local DCAs should have some of my drones dominate over them.


----------



## beepro

Here are the emerged queens. Mighty healthy and full of yellow color too. Trying to maintain the temp. inside the fridge at
constant 93F is not easy. I finally managed to program the controller unit to maintain it around 92.8F constant. Finally, I am able to
mass produce the QCs and queens. After the cells are cap I'm able to return the finisher hive back to a queen right 
state one week earlier using the homemade fridge incubator.
I'm still trying to set up my I.I. process when time is running out everyday passed. Will post some pics after a successful attempt at
I.I. the queen. The learning curve will be very steep since I'm exploring it along by myself without any tutor. In the mean time enjoy these


Pics:


----------



## beepro

Another queen update:


O.k., here are some pics of the newly mated queens. I did not set up my I.I. station in time for this process. Though the mite resistant Cordovan queens are coming next week so there will be plenty of time to test out this method later in the season. These queens are too motivated to mate in
8 days post emergence. So they went open mating instead. Emerged on the 11th, mated on the 19th and eggs on the 23rd of May. With a fridge incubator the hive can return to a queen right state one week earlier. I put one newly mated queen in the booming 3 deep hive and removed the old queen to a nuc hive as supporting colony. Now I know they are prolific and desperate to build up the nest. From the above you can see that queens emerged in the fridge incubator are all well fed, large and plump. A well fed queen will make a healthy laying queen. On hives inspection last week 80% of the frames got eggs in them already. Coming from the vsh background adapted to the local carnis drones environment is the first step to make these mite resistant bees. The next step is to put them in a high mite infested hive to test their mite fighting ability. Happy to see the mites on hive inspection so that I can carry on my test for another day. Hope I still have some mites left over for this experiment. Way to go on the fridge incubator queens!


What vsh hybrid is this?:


----------



## beepro

Finally, I've added another super making this hive 4 deep now. There is an explosion of bees using Roland's move broods up to
the 2nd box method. The new large cells, 20 drawn out wired foundation frames are really handy on this process. The laying queen is confined in the bottom deep with a QE on top. Then more open brood frames are added from the other supporting nuc hives making this colony with a newly mated queen a super strong hive than what it was before. I did not see a single free running mites in there. Though even with some mites in there the extra added bee frames should be able to out compete the mites. I have vsh bees in all of my hives now. Almost all of the honey frames are 50-60% cap now. And the privet trees are starting to bloom because of a delayed summer with the change of bee environment this year. Because of so many hungry bees now I put in almost one gallon baggie of locally sourced homemade high protein patty subs with more sugar less subs. Do they like it? See the pics below. All hives will receive either a small or large baggie patty subs feed regardless of the flow. I want to plump up the young nurse bees preparing them to go through our yearly summer dearth now. 



Extra high protein patty subs feeding Plump bees and cap honey:


----------



## beepro

Update: Got the queens out of the UPS hub.


I got the mite fighting Cordovan queens from the UPS hub yesterday and installed them right away into the nucs made 
3 days ahead. This time I'm testing out a little queen cage experiment. I took a piece of #8 window wire screen to cover the entire 
drawn comb frame on one side. Then put duct tapes and aluminum tapes around the edges to secure the bees in. After the attendants and queen are inside the cage, each cage received about 30-60 young nurse bees and newly emerged young fuzzy bees. They went to take care of the queen right away--no balling. One cage has all empty cells, one has open cells, cap broods about to emerge and pollen/nectar. Another one has cap honey/nectar and the last one has a nicot cage embedded in an old black drawn frame. So this part will take the impatience out of me because the queen can lay all she want inside the cage fending off the older guard bees trying to ball on her. After the queen is laying I can gradually make small hole on the cage so that more bees can have access to her. This way her chance of being accepted will increase to 100%. I also intend to graft from these mite fighting bees as one nuc hive still have an average number of mites inside. And the nicot cage also serve as an introduction cage with young nurse bees in it will help with the non-graft part. Now is the time to train the new queen to use the nicot set up. Using a half frame introduction cage is better than the candy plug method. Saves a lot of time and you know the queen is safe inside and laying too without any delay. Now is the time to give the mites a good beating using these I.I. stabilized open mated isolated station mite fighting bees. Do you think this will work on the mites? Another thing I don't understand is why are these queens half smaller than the ones I raised? Perhaps they are using all small cells, huh. 


Half frame caged queen intro method:


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

beepro said:


> Now is the time to give the mites a good beating using these I.I. stabilized open mated isolated station mite fighting bees.


:scratch:

For most beekeepers, *II* means _Instrumental Insemination_ by a beekeeper (equivalent to AI - Artificial Insemination in other animal industries.) And *open mated* means _drones_ mate with virgin queens on the wing in the traditional way. And *isolated mating station* means that virgins are open mated with drones in an area where the beekeeper floods that area with their preferred drones to improve the odds that preferred drones are the ones that actually mate with the virgin queens.

So I'm puzzled as to what "I.I. stabilized open mated isolated station" _actually means_ with respect to the queens that were shipped to you. Instrumentally Inseminated or not? :s


----------



## Brad Bee

Rader Sidetrack said:


> :scratch:
> 
> For most beekeepers, *II* means _Instrumental Insemination_ by a beekeeper (equivalent to AI - Artificial Insemination in other animal industries.) And *open mated* means _drones_ mate with virgin queens on the wing in the traditional way. And *isolated mating station* means that virgins are open mated with drones in an area where the beekeeper floods that area with their preferred drones to improve the odds that preferred drones are the ones that actually mate with the virgin queens.
> 
> So I'm puzzled as to what "I.I. stabilized open mated isolated station" _actually means_ with respect to the queens that were shipped to you. Instrumentally Inseminated or not? :s


Just make up your own answer Graham, it will technically be as correct as his.


----------



## AHudd

How many Buzzwords can fit in one sentence? :scratch:

Alex


----------



## shinbone

What is the sound of one hand clapping?


----------



## beepro

Perhaps I should clarify these confusing term a bit. I know linking the terms will confuses us all. It is as simple as the queen breeder uses I.I.(instrumental insemination) at first over many generation to stabilized the Cordovan trait that can withstand the mites. I call it with mite fighting ability. So at one time the seller did use the I.I. process to make these bees. The daughters are then open mated in an isolated environment meaning no other bee species are around the local area. So I.I. + traits stability + open mated + isolated area. Yup, a mouth full isn't it. 

Another update:

Today is the 3rd day since these queens got caged. I accidentally crushed one queen under the cage frame. Ouchie! Thought she would make it but died anyways around 1 a.m. Poor little queen  Of the other 3 still buzzing, one is laying inside the wire cage so I took the screen off today. The other one is still inside the cage with the hole open so that the other bees are able to get in. Funny how they are guarding the small entrance. Inside the cage there are about 500 bees with her majority are the young nurse bees while some are the newly emerged bees. So I combine this nuc hive with the dead queen nuc hive 5 X 5. Have a good feeling that they will accept each other. No sign of eggs yet.
The 3rd queen got balled for 2 days now because I tried to released her too soon by giving a patty sub plug into the small nicot cage hole. No eggs in the nicot cells. So I took her out of the cage and she almost flew away. Luckily she drop on the ground because too heavy. The young nurse bees do their job of feeding her well plump and fat. Too heavy to fly! I then put her back into the cage that the dead queen used and put new young nurse bees in with her from the same hive she came from. There are about 1000 nurse bees with her. Only 2 are the newly emerged ones that I put in on day 1. 
Outside the screen there are other nurse bees half converted and many aggressive older guard bees. If one get slip by into the cage then the whole process has to start all over again. All it takes is one single aggressive bee to get a hold of her leg or any other body part and the game is over. Balling resumed again! After adding a certain number of young nurse bees I have to shine a small flashlight into the cage to check on the balling if any. Luckily this time no balling yet. So I think this queen will make it too. I'm afraid of the older aggressive bees so will keep her in the cage for another day for observation as these are the most expensive queens I've ever bought. Once she's laying the other guard bees will leave her alone like the 1st queen mentioned above, hopefully. Half way progress made. What is done in a traditional way of releasing the queen candy plug method I can do it within 3 days with new eggs laid too. From these many more I.I. queens will come once I have everything set up and the learning curve mastered. 
So my question is what is required in order to make this half frame cage a success? 


young nurse bees
Some pics to enjoy:


----------



## beepro

Hi, All!


Another good news today. The 2nd queen got released from the most populous hive almost 3 deep of bees and half
cap honey/nectar super. This is the most blonde queen I've ever seen almost peach/yellow like. I'm going to take some
graft from this one first. And then evaluate the daughters later on.
The 3rd queen in the double nuc got released but got balled by the other foreign bees right away. Found her inside a small
ball of bees today. So I took her out and put her inside the nicot cage along with 30 young nurse bees caring for her instantly.
Then put the top 4 frame of bees into the 2nd queen's hive far opposite of her and her accepted bees. And finally pulled back the introduction net from below to allow the other 2 deep's bees to intermingle. The other bees have been with this queen since the beginning so they might get used to her already. Hopefully they will all accept her in one big happy family. Already there is one half frame of new fresh eggs laid by the peach queen. Since the bottom deep out of the 3 have the most young nurse bees I'll put the accepted cells into it to be drawn out for one week. Then will fire up the homemade small fridge incubator on these cells for another week until they emerged. I'll try to select the most plump and bright color queens to keep this time.

Look at those big fat young nurse bees:


----------



## beepro

Humm...


On today's hive inspection on the 3rd queen they are not being hostile toward her anymore. Many are too
excited to see her released from the nicot cage, finally. Many bees are still surrounding her and grooming her at
the basic acceptance stage. Some are trying to ball on her being too over protective or aggressive. Restricting the 
queen's movement is no good I think. Either they have not completely accepted her or being overly guarding her. Only time will tell. I'm too tired to put this queen back into the cage anymore so will let things happen as natural as can be now. If they balled on her then I'll leave it that way. But why? Here is the good news. While inside the nicot cage in the last 3 days, almost 101 plastic brown cups got eggs in them. Now her genetics can be propagated in case she cannot make it this time. Too many older bees in there. Still o.k. though as the other 2 queens got accept, one into a 3 deep hive. Old queen into a nuc hive and growing everyday. The other into a fairly populated 5 frame nuc hive growing too. The next round of the Cordovan queen in the homemade fridge incubator will be very exciting experiment. 
** If you look closely on the pics, you will see the cage holes got waxed in to reduced the hole size a bit. I waxed them all. Thanks to a member's tips on drone eggs laid in the big cage holes.


Here are some pics of the nicot cage eggs:


----------



## beepro

Finally, a hive check today showed that the 3rd queen got accepted and laying away. She was not too beat up on the
wings just some fuzzy hairs messed up from the many balling before. So glad that they finally accepted her to be the
new queen. The 2nd and 3rd queens went into the 10 frame deep box for expansion. I put in more frame of
bees from the 3 deep hive. The 3 deep hive will be converted to a cell finisher later on when the nicot cage eggs are
hatch out. I've read that the bottom box can be use as a cell finisher while the top box with a QE on can be use for the laying
queen. To be safe for the QCs I will temporarily removed the queen until the cells are drawn out first. Then put the queen back to allow the cells to be cap in one week time. This way the cells can continue to develop while the queen in the upper box can still lay away. In the middle box is where all the honey frames are. Tomorrow I will be making the cell bars for the up coming 96 brown cell cups.
An exciting time to further my little bees experiment.

Edited to include: 
This is the 4th days for the nicot cage eggs to be hatched anytime now. I transferred all 24 cups with an egg in it to 2 graft bars. At the same time put the laying Cordovan queen inside the nicot cage for her to lay some more. This time I find the most yellow/peach looking queen I can out of the 3. One heading the 3 deeps is such a candidate since no balling now. There should be more eggs within another day or so. My plan is to make as many queens as I can to fit the incubator to see how many queen cells it can handle at one time.


Last accepted queen:


----------



## beepro

An update:


Through this ordeal I have lost 3 Cordovan queens through my mismanagement again. This is a costly experience alright considering these queens are rather expensive. The last remaining queen is a hardy one heading 3 deeps after consolidation through our summer dearth right now. I have also clean up the infected emerged new Cordovan worker bees from the converted small fridge incubator. More than 90% newly emerged bees have been clean up. I have to keep some mites in the newly consolidated hive to see if they will show any resistant later on. Within another month or 2 I will find out for sure. Still have high hopes that these are the resistant bees as claimed by the sellers.

The hive is 90% converted to the Cordovan bees now:


----------



## JRG13

Where'd you get them and how much were they?


----------



## beepro

They are under mite resistant evaluation right now. Because the sellers thought they have a unique type of bees I cannot give
any conclusion yet so all infos withhold. I'm in a special position to graft these with the local carnis drones to create a gentle type honey producing production
queens. That will be another season after this. Interesting that 2 hives combined into one without any newspaper used. The strong queen still alive no need to do it any other way. Only strong queen I can do that. These are very productive bees even in the dearth right now the honey supers are still getting filled. Thanks to the 3 deeps combined (2 hives into one) and the open fields of chicory nearby like a sea of blue flowers. Wish I can move my hives on these fields. The worst is they are inside an open top tent on a very hot weather. Our neighbors don't want to see any bees or hives so I hide them in out of sight and focus. There is a huge market demand for pure 100% local wild flower honey. More customers than honey production supplied. 


Mite evaluation bees:


----------



## beepro

Little queen rearing experiment:

Hi, All!


Since the 3 deeps still have plenty of young bees and 8 frame of cap broods with mite level at its lowest, I decided to do a little queen bee experiment. 
This Spring I had good success of making 7 healthy QCs on a frame in the bottom box using the same method described below. Now at summer time I'm trying to 
duplicate the same process hoping to make some quality QCs too. This will really test the local bees gentleness once the queens start laying their first batch of eggs. Like every summer of queen rearing this is a bit of a variation using other member's strategy.
Basically I just confined the queen on 2 frames of eggs in the top deep filling it to 10 frames max. The queen is allow to roam on all 10 frames. The bottom 2 boxes are for making the QCs. 
Choose 2 frames of fairly new comb filled with eggs and larvae at various stage of development. All this time the queen is confined in the bottom box only to lay eggs. Thanks to C_Roland's method of all cap broods moved to the 2nd box I now have more bees to experiment with. Put some pollen frames next to these larvae frames. Then put the 2nd deep full of young bees and cap broods on follow by the 3rd deep on top where the queen is in. Confined the queen using a QE along with a piece of large net leaving about 1" or so on the QE open so that the bees can still get to the queen. No need to use another hive entrance on top. This will let the bees intermingle at the same time spreading minimal queen scent to the bottom 2 boxes. Also under the top box is a 2" shim made out of cheap pick fence board. This way less queen scent will travel downward making the hive desperately QL (queen less) at least that is what they're thinking to start making some QCs. 
Both the 2nd box on the frames and the top box where the queen is in have about one lb to 2 lbs of high protein patty subs. To make good quality QCs during the summer time where there is no more flow you have to supplement feed them. Instead of using syrup to feed, the Spring extracted honey can be use with water mixed in. This will make more RJ for the young nurse bees to feed the developing cells. What I don't understand is why the girls have black eyes that are smaller while the drones have brown eyes instead of black eyes. Have never seen this genetics before in Cordovan bees.
Do you think they will make make me some big QCs this time? Going tf, what is your summer mite management practices and method of making QCs at the same time?



With brown eyes drones too:


----------



## jwcarlson

This has been a great thread, I hope it continues.


----------



## beepro

Hi, All! 


To m0dem: I have made some changes to include the production hive to expand on this little experiment to see if it will work or not. So far it is working and the hive population is still maintaining as new healthy young Cordovan bees emerged. Even bee genetics can be changed without affecting the production hives. Without the mites to bother them that much they are healthier and living longer too. On average they can live up to 7 weeks without a decline in hive population. With supplement high protein patty subs feeding they can devoured a fist size subs within 3 days. Now that is a lot of hungry bees! We are still going through our normal summer dearth. At this rate I can even make a little nuc split too--maybe. 


To jbraun: #3 "I'm assuming this is only on your nuc sizes? What do you do for your full sized colonies assuming you keep them to over winter?"
This is my tf method that reduced the mite level to less than 1% right now. At anytime you can give it a brood break under your control by controlling where the queen lays. It works for both the nuc hives and the 3 deep full hives. 
The 3 deep all full of bees I use the same method of confining the queen temporarily on the pollen frame until she is back to laying again. Since the 3 deep is less than 1% mite now I will keep it growing until winter time. I may have to do another round before winter when they reduced the brood nest in late Autumn again. Or an option to do one in mid-winter too. Adjusting according to how wide spread the mites are later on. But if the mite fighting bees are doing their job which is part of this experiment to evaluate the Cordovan bees then I don't have to repeat anymore. I'm already seeing less DWV and 2 crawler bees on yesterday's new bees orientation flight. So far it has been proven to work from last winter and this summer almost all triple digit temp. in July. Another Autumn, winter and Spring to go so I can confirmed my little experiment on nuc hives and production hives for the 3rd year in a row. Because this is an ongoing little experiment I'm hoping that others with 3-6 hives can repeat it as well.
Remember that I still have to keep some mites in there for future little mite and bees experiment. Don't want begging the local old Russian beekeeper for some of his hard to get rid of mites. He'll charge me for it for sure.

See: #51 and #52 Not only I can raised some new hybrid gentle bees but can also be able to harvest some honey and raised some new queens while exploding the hives to 3-4 deeps into the summer dearth. Simply amazing! The bees that are able to handle the type A mites and viruses. 

To Dan the bee guy: #9 "Are you going to use any treatments or just use brood removal?"
For now I'm continuing the tf option. Seems like the hive is growing so no need to use any other form of treatment for now. Thanks to the hardy long surviving bees from a few years of selection they are growing along fine now. 


dlbrightjr: #15 "How many survived and how many did you lose?"
I got all of them surviving. None is lost because it is only a temporary method to consolidate all the mites into 2 cap brood frames. The queen and the hives will not be affected by this manipulation since they all stay inside the same hive. You can only do this when there are many bees to cover the cap broods and larvae. If you know how to graft queens then you will have a sustainable apiary per Michael Palmer's you tube vids on growing one.


JConnolly: #16 "or you already do that and I'm a numbskull for not thinking of it sooner?"
Your idea is clever though I've improved on mine a bit for all seasons mite removal method. You see after the mites got removed from the cap broods, the next cycle of new cap drones are all free of the mites. This will provide you with many clean disease free healthy drones to graft your next round of queens. Without regard to any season of the year the mites are all under your control. Also, during the winter time there are no drones so only by removing the cap broods that you can achieve a low mite level at anytime. Do let me know when you have found a better way to: 1) Test out the resistance of the bees. 2) Reduced the mite levels in all seasons. 3) Keep all the healthy newly emerged bees from the 2 cap frames that got removed. I don't want to discard the healthy young Cordovan bees either. Killing 2000-3000 newly emerged bees is too much for me. 

BEES4U: #18 "Does this mean that you are doing just a visual mite check?"
Nope, I use a small tweezers to count the newly merged bees for mites from the fridge incubator. Somewhere in the process I've lost track of counting. But more accurate on an estimate that there are about 400-500 mites total including the new young and adult mites. So the sellers said these are the vsh + mite resistant bees. I have not yet totally confirm this until the 2nd phase of testing for re-infestation. To get an accurate count I have to wait until late Autumn time when they started reducing their brood nest somewhat. Or else they might get crashed before then. Then the sellers are lying to me about their resistant bees.


shinbone: #20 "How long do the mites stay on a new bee after it emerges?"
A very good question here. It depends. You see some adult mites stay behind in the cell. Perhaps it got brushed off while the newly emerged bees got squeezed through the small cell hole. So they it got left behind and catch a ride on the next arrival bee. Another situation is some newly emerged bees only has one adult mite either a male or female. Maybe they are the young greenish/pale yellow mite that are from the last of the hatch that did not get matured yet. And now they are riding inside the cap brood hoping to mature and they did while inside the cell for another cycle feeding on the developing larva. I also saw 1, 3, to 5 sometime on a newly emerged bee. For these the 2 new immature mites will stay on the newly emerged bee while the mature adult mites will find another host to attached to. On many occasion I will see an adult mite accompanying an immature daughter mite on a single bee that emerged. It is a rather complex situation but I don't think it is random. The mites have plan or a preset of mite behaviors that they follow to ensure their survival for sure. 


jwcarlson: #23 "The males don't leave the brood cells. At least not alive."
This is not true. What I've seen was that there are fully matured adult male mites on each bee that emerged. My conclusion was that these are the left behind greenish/pale yellow (immature) males from the previous hatch cycle. They don't have a mate in the cells while still trying to mature by feeding on the current cycle of the new bees. It is interesting when you get this close to the mites and bees to observe what they are. Consider how fast the new bees matured within the week, these greenish immature mites have to find a place to continue to grow. That is by finding their new hosts (newly cap broods asap) to continue their mature cycle. Once the bee's exoskeleton has harden then these immature mites cannot hind under it anymore. Either to find a new host or perished.

Humm, still have 4 frame of cap broods on yesterday's hive check. Still a 3 deep growing hive. The Cordovan genetics taking over 98% of the hives now. What an interesting bee year!



Don't worry still have more bees:


----------



## beepro

Some update:


Hi, All!


I went to retrieved the mean 3 frame nuc hive on the open field last night around 9:45pm. Yep, I'm a 
night time beekeeper alright. This was my first time checking on them thought that they are already dead by now one month + later. Instantly with a bright miner's LED light on I can see that I've placed this nuc hive under a big tree right on an ant hill again. These are the nectar gathering fast running small carpenter ants. The same ants that completely destroyed my 2 aggressive hives on my 1st season 5 year ago. What a bummer I though after brushing the glob of ants off the landing board. Oh well, might as well take this nuc home to enjoy the wax worms damaged frames, I thought. To my surprise the bees started oozing out. Yep, the same aggressive bees that got them there the first place. I don't care much at that point and just pick up the nuc to place it into my open truck bed. 
After I got home I did a thorough inspection but cannot find the old queen or any queen. Though I did saw some double and 
single perfectly laid egg on the bottom of the cell in the middle. Humm, that was strange I thought without a queen but have eggs. Might be a long abdomen LWs I thought. So I put the hive back as there are still a substantial amount of bees almost 3 frame of them. No cap broods just the new eggs along with these aggressive bees. Now it is a perfect opportunity to combine these hardy yet aggressive bees with my queen right Cordovan nuc hive as I try to get some larvae to graft from. So I put the entire hive over a net to combine them. 

This morning I check on the aggressive hive again as some already made their way out and reoriented. Apparently there is a small gap in the homemade LP composite chip nuc hive allowing the bees to come out. And I thought I had already plugged up the small gap in the front entrance side last night. Then on closer inspection I saw a queen, a darker queen that was laying all these single eggs. She's noticeable darker maybe 80% carnisX20% Italians. I'm thinking now that the aggressive queen was dead and the new queen take over open mated with the local gentle carnis drones, there is a chance that these will not be as aggressive as the previous generation of workers.
So after everything got put back together, I took the new carnis queen into the 2 day queen less 3 deep hive. They did not make any QC at all with so many eggs and open larvae.-- So disappointed. Anyways, after I put the new queen in instantly I heard a loud buzzing sound growing louder within the minute that the little bees have started roaring (fanning) with butts as high as they can get. And then I saw many workers squeezing through the QE. This is a direct released to see if they will balled on her or she is really that strong like her mother to handle the situation. Surprisingly, they greeted her with a welcoming roar! Direct released work only when you have a very strong young queen.
Now I know that the queens coming from this commercial operation have some hardy good genetics only if they are the gentle type to keep. Sometimes I wonder maybe that is why the commercial operation don't like to sell to us small hobbyist. They only use the strongest out of thousands to graft. This way their operation is ensured.
After a 1 month of brood break I only saw a single mite. This is already tested and proven that the vsh trait is working at least from this operation. Promptly I have my cam out to take a vid of the queen introduction process. Such a strong queen is worth a try if you don't mind the aggressiveness of them. Maybe the 2nd generation is better, maybe. Look at them squeezing through the QE. The strong scent of the new queen. Wow, what a roar!


Can you spot her?:


----------



## beepro

Found some QCs:


Hi, All!

Today, on the 3rd day after the 3 deep hive went queen less, on a quick inspection I found 7 QCs made. Everyone of
the cells has a tiny larva in them. Lucky 7 for me again! I made several frames swap of the QC frames with the existing queen right booming nuc hive combined with the mean aggressive bees from the field nuc I took home the other night. Shook out all the mean bees before putting the frames back to the 3 deep hive. Then took the Cordovan queen into the 3 deep hive and took the newly mated 80%/20% carni queen into another new nuc where she will stay to overwinter in. 
Anticipate that they will not tear down all the QCs maybe save 4 cap cells for me. You never know what they would do next perhaps make me more QCs than what it is now. The local carnis are excellent at QCs making and honey gathering. I also give them one quart jar of honey water and 2 fist size of the homemade high protein patty subs along with 2 frame of pollen/nectar. I'll pull the QCs out of the nuc hive several days before emerging to put inside the homemade fridge incubator. This way I can choose the most biggest and prettiest blondie Cordovan queens I can get. And then make up the mating nucs depending on how many virgin queens there are. 
Looks like we have 2 version of the blondies genetic mixed in. One type is the almost glass like no bands smooth all the way through yellowish abdomen blondie and the other is the darker orange/peach pink like color. I like to keep both versions to preserve the genetic diversity here. So the II process would be to mix the glass like yellow drones to the peach pink virgin queen as soon as my II station is set up. This way the 2 lines will be more pure as time progressed. By next season my hope is to flood the local DCAs with these Cordovan drones. Still a long way to go. The mite level is now less than 1%. These Cordovan workers also exhibit the high allogrooming behaviors I've seen before. 


Almost a bomb CB nuc:


----------



## beepro

4 nucs made ahead of schedule:


This Saturday will be the day that these cells will emerge. So last night I made up 4 mating nucs by breaking the 3 deep down. It is amazing to see that many bees inside. Some are 4 framers while some are 5 in the nucs. I have to cut 2 cells out one of which got crushed on the end. This morning the bees had hollow out this damaged cell. Oh well, one lost but I still have 6 more cells. I plan to make 2 more mating nucs for the remaining 2 cut out cells. Cannot do this in the day time as the already oriented bees will fly back to their original location. I want them to hang out in the new nucs for a few more days and then reorient to their new location inside the 10x10 metal tent. Have to wait until after the sunset using the LED miner's light to do that. 
I have to put 2 mated queens in the same hive by confining one queen over a net above. Since both are strong queen I don't worry about balling. It will be a temporary holding place for the queen until the other queens are mated and laying. One thing I've learned was that if you don't cut the QC all the way down to the other side of the comb then you will damage the cell. So on the 2nd cell I took out a good chunk of the old comb all the way to the other side. Don't forget to cut all the way down if you don't want to damage any cell. Over all, it is a promising nucs experience so far. The next step is to see how many got accepted and then mated. Two more week to go!
Believe it or not I don't use any treatment this season. The mite load is less than 1% now that I cannot see any on the newly emerged bees. No DWV either. I don't even have to use my tweezers or incubator to get rid of the mites anymore. Either the bees got rid of them or they still inside some of the cap broods in these mating nucs. Either way I'm giving them a brood break this time. This is their 2nd brood break only this time without confining the mated queen on the pollen frame. It is all brood break with a cap QC. The mated queens will only have the open broods and eggs. Tackling the mite issue from many different angles without the need to treat. I still have doubt though about the seller's claim that these are the resistant bees.


Mating nucs and cut out cell:


----------



## beepro

All the mating nucs are maintaining their bees load. I have to use the half frame confined excluder because
I've ruined 4 good cells by cutting them out. So no more cutting out cells for me from now on. I got the half
frame nicot grid to help me along now. Somehow the bees and queen don't like the plastic grid since I took out
the wax on it last time. Should of leave the wax on. Oh well, still learning about this nicot set up. Here is the
link http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?340175-Nicot-and-its-improvement


----------



## beepro

Quick update:


I tried to find some free running mites on the bees on a hive check today. But cannot find any of
them even though the broods are more than 98% emerged now. I still cannot decide whether or not 
it is the bees causing this low mite load or that I've taken them out too much. Once the new queens are 
laying in the early Autumn then I will know for sure. And speaking of the queens, now I have 2 Cordovan
virgin queens. One just emerged earlier today. Not bad for 2 out of 7. Found 3 more QCs made on one of 
the frames. So I took them to a booming queen less cell finisher hive. With luck I will have 3 more queens to
II with. Hopes the drones can keep up in a week or 2!


----------



## beepro

One last mite frame removal mgmt: One month earlier than last year (mid-Oct.) approaching early Fall time!


For the last month or so I've been busy making II queens. Through all these ordeal I have made 2 queens, one is
laying well and one is still waiting. The first II queen laid lots of drone eggs in the drone frame I gave her. The first 2
frames are the worker broods that she laid. Then I elevated the 2 frame of broods to the top nuc box and confined her
to the bottom box over a QE. Now the drone frame have both the drone eggs/larvae and worker eggs along with other developing larvae. As she continues to lay I will be removing the 2 cap brood frames into the mini fridge incubator after the sugar bricks are done. For the not laying II queen I will combine her with the new laying carnis queen that I brought back from the open ant field. This will serve 2 purposes, one is to have the carnis queen to lay up the big fat winter bees. Secondly, is to try to stimulate the II queen to lay too since the hive population is getting older somewhat. The carnis queen also have 2 frame of newly emerged bees for replacement. So it will be a 2 queen set up in a single nuc hive after the combine to overwinter in. 
Let's talk about mite mgmt: After the production 3 deep hive got turn into these mating nucs for the new laying queens, their mite level is still at below 1%. I only found 2 mites on the first wave of the newly emerged carnis bees. Only saw 1 DWV on a single emerged bee. I did not see any mites on the other 2 mating nucs with the II queen. One have no more cap broods left and the other have 2 frames of cap broods which I will put in the incubator later on. There are still many young nurse bees left in all of the nuc hives. These are the 3-5 frames nuc hives that I will be overwintering this season. I've selected 3 nuc hives for this experiment because this was what the original 3 deep production hive can provide. It is also to show that the nuc hives in early Spring time can be easily converted to honey production hive with a strong overwintered laying queen. And during the early Fall hive reconfiguration time with a reduced brood nest preparing for the winter, a growing mites laden summer production hive can be converted back to these nuc hives as well with new late summer mated queens (or II queens) added. And so the cycles repeated itself season after season. During these broods expansion and contraction phases, the mites can be easily interrupted for better management (removal.) With the mites finally under control, growing these early Spring bees and late Fall bees is not an issue. Going into my 3rd season of tf and mite management now. This is not the end of this experiment yet because of the new II resistant queens added. The potential for better mite management through the II genetics selection process have not develop yet. Have tried to go back to the same queen producer for some more but they are sold out early pre and post season as usual. For now this is my findings. 
For the sake of my little bee experiment, with so many Cordovan drone larvae, just wondering what if there is a way to continue to II the graft queens through out this winter? What do a carnis daughter queen workers look like II with the Cordovan drones? In future II session I will know!


----------



## beepro

Bad news today: 


I tried to find the recent (3rd) II Cordovan queen but she was gone. Don't know why. No eggs, no larvae. Shouldn't have combine the hive with the carnis queen. Back to being a queen killer again! So I rearranged the carnis queen frames to the bottom box. For the rest of the 3 remaining frame of bees from the carnis hive, I just put them in with the 1st II laying queen. They fed this II queen so plump until the eggs are running out of her butt while she's scrambling to find a cell to deposit them. What a waste of my II efforts throwing away those viable eggs like that. Should of stick with the 10 ul II volume instead. But again, she's still new at this laying process. There are so many cap drone cells also. And many are still in their eggs/larvae development stage. This queen doesn't know that she should not be laying in the queen cup made either. After her 4th attempts, she finally able to put an egg in it. Her laying position is very different from that of laying an ordinary worker egg. Perhaps it is the angle of the queen cup causing her body to turn side way when she lays. For sure, it is not that easy trying to lay in a cup in such a twisted angle body position. After each laying attempt she would circle around back to the same cup to inspect it while fighting her way through the many workers trying to stack on top of her. Is such an II queen so strong? And after the 4th attempts with each laying cup re-inspection, she finally got an egg deposited. Fine then I'll just have more virgin to practice my II skills on. I don't even know if she is that smart or dumb? Should of stick with that deep orange virgin to start my II process in the beginning. Have you ever seen a queen laying into a queen cup before? With so many cap drones now we'll see what will play out later on into the season. 



Humm, one beep _ _ _ _ _ blondie queen?:


----------



## MikeJ

I know these are older posts but -



Rader Sidetrack said:


> :scratch:
> 
> For most beekeepers, *II* means _Instrumental Insemination_ by a beekeeper (equivalent to AI - Artificial Insemination in other animal industries.) And *open mated* means _drones_ mate with virgin queens on the wing in the traditional way. And *isolated mating station* means that virgins are open mated with drones in an area where the beekeeper floods that area with their preferred drones to improve the odds that preferred drones are the ones that actually mate with the virgin queens.
> 
> So I'm puzzled as to what "I.I. stabilized open mated isolated station" _actually means_ with respect to the queens that were shipped to you. Instrumentally Inseminated or not? :s





Brad Bee said:


> Just make up your own answer Graham, it will technically be as correct as his.





AHudd said:


> How many Buzzwords can fit in one sentence? :scratch:
> 
> Alex





shinbone said:


> What is the sound of one hand clapping?


Strange - I knew exactly what he meant.

For a back yard bee keeper I think he has done pretty well (proof is living bees and growing hives). Maybe not the way I or you would go about it, but for *most* back yard beekeepers it isn't about industrial standards or accepted science - it is about enjoyment. He sounds like he is enjoying his bees (thumbs up).

And maybe, not doing it the way we do, he may come up with something new.... possibly a better chance at it than doing it the same way everyone else does.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

Well, _MikeJ_, nobody said that Beepro wasn't enjoying himself, and his bees.

But Beesource is a "word based forum" last time I checked.

And if one does not use common words and phrases to mean the same thing as others understand them, communication, and learning, _suffer greatly_. 

'Instrumentally inseminated' queens are *not ever* 'open mated'. Those two terms have _opposite_ meanings. :scratch:


----------



## beepro

You both got your points across very clearly. Both are correct just different viewpoint. I respect all
feedback given here. It is the feedback over the years that enable me to grow as a person and a better
beekeeper. Finding my own self-deficiency with this new hobby is the biggest contribution in improving
myself. So far, Rader and the rest of the members here have helped me in many ways for this self-improvement life journey. Without their help I will never realized my shortcomings with the many correction needed and still finding more everyday. I can only say that if everybody understand each others then this world will be a better place for all. Too bad we can only type here which limit our communication somewhat. Maybe in the future we can open up a bee communication forum where everybody's voice counts. Some members told me that because of poor English grammar and the mouth can speak better than their typing skill, they are off this forum for good. Realizing my own deficiencies, it is this constant feedback and self-improvement that I stay around for all these years. And the learning experience for beekeeping that is invaluable to say the least. Having different opinions, knowledge and contribution will enable us to see things at a different angle. With different angles, our minds will grow as well fulfilling our lifetime journey of a richness in learning. For that, realizing my deficiency as a person and willingly to make the necessary changes through life and on these forums will enable my horizon to grow more. As always, I'm forever just a learning student!


----------



## MikeJ

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Well, _MikeJ_, nobody said that Beepro wasn't enjoying himself, and his bees.
> 
> But Beesource is a "word based forum" last time I checked.
> 
> And if one does not use common words and phrases to mean the same thing as others understand them, communication, and learning, _suffer greatly_.
> 
> 'Instrumentally inseminated' queens are *not ever* 'open mated'. Those two terms have _opposite_ meanings. :scratch:


"Now is the time to give the mites a good beating using these I.I. _stabilized_, open mated (isolated station), mite fighting bees."
Would that have been clearer?

It seems to be a common monolog on the forum - the need to "protect" new beekeepers/information/the forum itself, from "bad" information. The "protection" usually comes with derision, mocking, and haughtiness though, which kind of dissipates the idea it is to "protect". How were all the comments helpful?

I would suggest that if there is a need to "protect" it would better be placed at the point of personal protection rather than terminology (and no derision needed). Not too long back the "forum" had some teenager down an entire bottle of Benadryl to "protect" him from stings - he slept for 24 hours - - THERE is where protection could be used.

I think anyone using any unbiased judgement would realize that this forum is filled (all 1.5million posts) with misinformation. I would say if a person accepts everything they find in a forum as the truth, they may need more protection than the forum can provide.


----------



## shinbone

Originally Posted by *shinbone* 
What is the sound of one hand clapping?




Yes, that was me. I still stand by that statement, too.

If Beepro is happy making these posts, then that is fine and he should be free to continue. I am sure Beepro is a smart guy and capable beekeeper. No offense intended to Beepro, but, to me, it is page after page of incomprehensible gobbledygook with no coherent explanation of the method and no useful evidence presented whether it works. 

It is a chaotic stream-of-consciousness barfed out into public space with no effort or care about actually communicating to others. It is as productive as one hand clapping.

JMHO


----------



## MikeJ

Forget I said anything. I should have realized that any attempt to correct meanness would only result in evil malice.
I even see that shinebone edited his post to add even more spite.

In the end, we reap what we sow.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

MikeJ said:


> "Now is the time to give the mites a good beating using these I.I. _stabilized_, open mated (isolated station), mite fighting bees."
> 
> Would that have been clearer?


Clearer??? Really?

Uh ... in a word ... NO! 

II queens are not open mated. They are "Instrumentally Inseminated" - by a _beekeeper_, with tools. 
"Open mated" means a queen is mated on the wing, by multiple drones, just as _Mother Nature_ set it up. Those processes are not compatible with one another!:no:

Or, perhaps *you* would care to explain to us how a queen can be both instrumentally inseminated AND open mated.


----------



## Rader Sidetrack

MikeJ said:


> Forget I said anything.


Well, you have up to 24 hours from the original post timestamp to edit your earlier post. While you cannot completely delete a post, within that 24 hour period, one can remove the original text and replace it with something like "Changed my mind" or "Removed" or even just ".."

After 24 hours members can no longer edit posts.


----------



## MikeJ

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Clearer??? Really?
> 
> Uh ... in a word ... NO!
> 
> II queens are not open mated. They are "Instrumentally Inseminated" - by a _beekeeper_, with tools.
> "Open mated" means a queen is mated on the wing, by multiple drones, just as _Mother Nature_ set it up. Those processes are not compatible with one another!:no:
> 
> Or, perhaps *you* would care to explain to us how a queen can be both instrumentally inseminated AND open mated.


Anyone who isn't out to pick at people's words, possibly to inflate their own egos?, figure it out.

I understood what he meant (as well as a few other people who also have said such about his other posts) - before you had to have an explanation.

It was *you* who assumed he was speaking of the *same* queen throughout his sentence. On the other hand - those who have enough decency to adjust for people who may not have *always* had English as their first language, could understand he was saying his stock was from II queens (i.e. the traits were "stabilized" through II), then the daughters were open mated at isolated stations (the natural way God created it to be). Very simple - unless we wish it not to be, because we can use it as a target.


----------



## MikeJ

Rader Sidetrack said:


> Well, you have up to 24 hours from the original post timestamp to edit your earlier post. While you cannot completely delete a post, within that 24 hour period, one can remove the original text and replace it with something like "Changed my mind" or "Removed" or even just ".."
> 
> After 24 hours members can no longer edit posts.


 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. [2] For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, [3] unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, [4] treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; [5] holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these. 
2 Timothy 3:1-5 (NASB)


----------



## shinbone

MikeJ said:


> Forget I said anything. I should have realized that any attempt to correct meanness would only result in evil malice.
> I even see that shinebone edited his post to add even more spite.
> 
> In the end, we reap what we sow.


I'd love to learn a new way to control mites. How about doing a mean guy like myself a favor and provide a coherent explanation of the method?


----------



## MikeJ

-changed my mind- been pulled into another one


----------



## shinbone

There was no pulling. You eagerly jumped in with both feet on your own volition.


----------



## MikeJ

shinbone said:


> There was no pulling. You eagerly jumped in with both feet on your own volition.


Maybe you should go re-read what I posted (#75). You *might* notice I didn't attack anyone (I don't get thrills by trying to hurt others).
But true to form, instead of letting a person enjoy beekeeping, some have to entertain themselves by attacking others.

Seems to me BeePro is using his own method of transferring brood to create brood-less conditions, while at the same time using VSH stock. No - I don't understand everything he is writing about, but so what? The world doesn't revolve around me.


----------



## beepro

* shinbone, I already said that beekeeping is not easy for me from the start dealing with those aggressive and mite crashed hives. Now dealing with the mites are even more headache. Even more so is sourcing the vsh, allogrooming, and mite biting bees to add to my apiary. In 5 years many have spent more than a few thousand dollars but have not even come close to my level of bee understanding and breeder stocks that I have now. Why? They have not have the time to do a lots of little bee experiment like I have done. How many are willing to pluck mites off their newly emerged bees for a natural count with a pair of tweezers? What's more adding to the complexity of perfecting this ongoing, never ending mite removal management (IPM) method will confused beekeepers even more. And at the same time trying to learn the various new method, techniques and terms to put everything into perspective is even harder. Through the many PMs with fellow members I'm able to get my education and continued with this little experiment. All these need time! So I apologized for not able to explain my little bee experiment any clearer. I do not blame you because of the complexity involved through this process. And yes, to the moderator:

* Rader, I know this is not an easy task for you. After all, nobody has ever published an ongoing, what seems to be a no ending experiment here. It is hard to give a conclusion yet when this is a little experiment over 3 seasons already with this year being the third of it. Remember, this is an ongoing tf experiment over all these seasons so far. No conclusion yet because it is still working--a work in process. If not then all the bees are dead by now and I have no choice but to end this experiment sooner. Many members are wondering, what if there is no available treatment one day that can take care of the mites? Now they should have an answer!

* Mike, you are on track, well almost. With this little tf experiment, I don't have to spend the thousands of dollars chasing after the dream mite resistant bees. All I needed to do is to find one source of the tf operation to begin with while continuing the honorable process of what the queen producer had left off. They have sourced the resistant bees from a bee lab. And through the II process have stabilized this traits. Then put all their hives in an isolated area to propagate their bees. At an expensive price, now I got their bees and follow their footsteps to continue with the II process here http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?340312-My-ghetto-II-station 
I tried to put everything into a few sentences but that did not work out so well. Yep, the moderator, being ever more dutiful of his job, got very very confused indeed. I don't blame him for the confusing words I use. When the moderator is confused by all the new twist and turn terms I've used, I know the rest of the members might get confused also. Poor shinbone has no clues of what I'm doing so far. Others, like you Mike, got it just like that. One member that I have to give thanks to even gave me the corrected term as just another form of IPM. This is what I'm doing all along without the need to treat for 3 consecutive seasons. If I can do it then any members looking for another tf option can do it too!

Waiting for a chance after all these reactions and feedback, this is what I wrote at around 4:30pm today:
Reading that 17,000 mites drop post really got my attention. I just thought that many beekeepers like to keep their gentle but mites laden hives. So I've develop the IPM of removing the cap brood frames to another hive. This method will work for both the might fighting bees and the non-resistant bees in general. In doing so instead of treating 2-3 hives you are only treating one that is
full of the mites. In late June we have our summer dearth lasting until Oct. leading to the Autumn mini flow. I'm tailoring my mites removal method along with making a new late summer queen to give the nuc hives a chance of minimizing the mite re-infestation. Besides, most of us are just beginners with a few hives in the backyard to see what beekeeping is like. That is why instead of using 7 hives like last time I'm using 3 nuc hives now for this overwintering experiment. It is not a lots of work when you have a few hives to begin with. By doing so, you will have a chance to sourced the more resistant stocks early next year when you have the overwintered hives. Using this IPM method you will really see the hives growing by next Spring time. There is no other method other than this one if you're going the tf route.


----------



## 1102009

Interesting is, that parts of this BeePro management is done here in germany with the treated hives.
That, because treated hives need too many treatments already and still are not mite free enough to prevent losses.

beepro, do you really believe your mites are more ferocious than others? Why?


----------



## beepro

Silko, simply blaming on the mites will not work. You have to look at the bees or how resistant your bees are also. Many are blaming on the mites when their bees do not have enough resistance to begin with. So it is a challenging task to see which one is more capable either the mites, the bees or both at equal level. At equal level I call this co-existence which is hard to find. Maybe Michael Bush and others have accomplished this task already.
Why? Because if left alone the mites here will sure did the hives in like 3 years ago when I had a mite hive crashed situation. If the mites had left me some bees to overwinter in and not completely killed off my remaining 2 hives during the initial Spring build up then they are the type B mites. As I know type B will not kill off a hive like the type A do. During that time my queens are from the resistant source also. Maybe they do not have enough resistance back then, I really don't know. Somewhere I read that there is the more aggressive type A mites that I believed are the ones we have here. After that I don't care which type of mites I have just that the hunt is on for a workable solution.


----------



## 1102009

I once thought like you, it was not long ago. I was influenced on BS and u-tube about the A and B.

I have only survivor bees left after my crash. But this month I realized that it´s the mite level which starts the outbreak of virus disease and the decline no matter which mites.

This shows in the two beeyards which are 25km distance and have different races. With the resistant bees the mite thresholds should be higher but differ in the locale.

A...B one can only be sure of that with checking in a laboratory. I see virus in the high infested, no virus in the others, it´s as simple as that. So monitoring levels it is and trying to find the VSH and mite biting strains which do prevent the mite numbers to raise.


----------



## beepro

You are correct and this was I've seen so far here. With the heavy mites infestation so came along the
DWVs and EFB. Manually removed the mites and everything came back to normal again. Gave the infected frames to a healthy yet more resistant hive and they will disposed the deformed bees and diseased broods. Somehow the resistant and hygienic hives know how to keep those unhealthy bees out of the hive. It could be a combination of all the good traits combined. This was my recent experience a few days ago. Still my goal is to find enough resistant to keep my hives healthy without the need to removed the cap frames in the near future. Sourcing the more resistant bees along with the II process, trying to duplicate the successful beekeepers that are already tf is my next battle. This is the hardest part for me so far!


----------



## 1102009

The EFB?
Interesting. The weakening of immune system? Never had EFB so far. But sac brood once which is a small crisis, not dangerous. And paralyze virus in one hive without DWV observed. 

My respect to you beepro. Much work done and to do. I wish you well.


----------



## beepro

It is not really EFB but the symptoms look like it. In reality it is actually the PMS or what I called the 
mite foul broods syndrome. Overly excessive mites infestation causing the hives to crashed almost like
they are killing the bees and leaving the open broods to dry out. Not a good sight to be in that situation!


----------



## 1102009

Never saw that, but my hives crashed in winter and people would call what I saw CCD. Only 2 hives had a floor board full of bees, crippled bees and mites.
The other had empty combs and a handful of bees left.dead queen.
Thanks for explaining.


----------



## dudelt

beepro said:


> Silko, simply blaming on the mites will not work. You have to look at the bees or how resistant your bees are also. Many are blaming on the mites when their bees do not have enough resistance to begin with.


I must disagree. The issue is mites, not resistant bees. Placing the blame on the bees is like blaming the antelope for getting eaten by a pack of lions. I believe creating permanently resistant bees is never going to happen. Humans have been exposed to smallpox, influenza, measles and a host of other diseases and parasites since the beginning of our existence and never developed a permanent resistance. Yes, there are a few individuals that show resistance but not the entire population. You may get a few hive that show resistance but carrying the resistance to future generations is very unlikely. Non-resistant hives will always move into your territory and mate with your stock and negate whatever progress you make.


----------



## MikeJ

dudelt said:


> I must disagree. The issue is mites, not resistant bees.
> ...
> I believe creating permanently resistant bees is never going to happen. Humans have been exposed to smallpox, influenza, measles and a host of other diseases and parasites since the beginning...


I generally agree with that.
There has never been any *real* proof for "natural selection" - that is, the theory that if A's are better than B's, and A's mate with A's; eventual A's rule and B's die. Just not proven or logical. (no it isn't how breeding works - breeding takes strict human guidance to get any results (as queen/etc. breeders will tell you), and even then it isn't 100%. The theory is called *natural* selection (i.e. happening "naturally") - if that were the case, we would all be better than when we were created - no proof of that.

If the treatment free breeders *truly* produce mite resistant bees (themselves go so far as to say they do nothing for mites) then why is there no guarantee? I mean the breeding can't change in the mail. If *they* do nothing to stop mites with the bees, then *my* doing nothing with *their* bees should produce the same results.

Not saying to give up Beepro - you may find something that works for you and possibly others - but it is not something that will continue "naturally" it will still require guidance and intervention or it reverts to "natural" - but that is how ALL breeding functions.


----------



## baybee

> There has never been any *real* proof for "natural selection" - that is, the theory that if A's are better than B's, and A's mate with A's; eventual A's rule and B's die. Just not proven or logical. (no it isn't how breeding works - breeding takes strict human guidance to get any results (as queen/etc. breeders will tell you), and even then it isn't 100%. The theory is called *natural* selection (i.e. happening "naturally") - if that were the case, we would all be better than when we were created - no proof of that.


"Natural selection" is not a theory, you are correct! It is a process fundamental to evolution. One can't just come up with his own definitions of or change well-established terms! Besides, proofs are only used in math and in distillation of alcohol. Science works in a different way.


----------



## gww

Mikej


> If the treatment free breeders *truly* produce mite resistant bees (themselves go so far as to say they do nothing for mites) then why is there no guarantee? I mean the breeding can't change in the mail. If *they* do nothing to stop mites with the bees, then *my* doing nothing with *their* bees should produce the same results.


Thats sorta like a breeder telling you he has calm bees while not knowing if you have a pet skunk. He knows if he treats or not and you either believe him or not but nobody really gives garrentees on any queen that you will have a certain result. To many veribles. There are those out there not treating and having success and yet some don't. It might be like bee pro thinks and it is differrent type mites or it could be some other thing. They don't even know how olixic kills mites. I do get your point that you don't believe it is possible. I do believe the guys that say they are doing it though and are happy with thier results. You ask too much when asking for a garrentee as none give one and why would threatment free be differrent. The guys that have queens that they change to and no longer get chalk brood know it happens but probly would not give you a garantee that it would happen for you under your management.

Just a differrent way of viewing the possibilities. Every body has hives that die and usually are happy when that rate of dieing is low enough for them to consider it successful for what they want to do. That includes those that treat.

Cheers
gww
Ps I bought my bees from a guy that does not treat. Member oldtimer told me once that if I kept bees like the guy who sold them too me that I should have the same success as he does. In other words, If I consider what he is doing as a success, I should be able to get the same. Every one will not measure success in the same light. It is a subjective term.


----------



## 1102009

dudelt said:


> The issue is mites, not resistant bees. Placing the blame on the bees is like blaming the antelope for getting eaten by a pack of lions. I believe creating permanently resistant bees is never going to happen. You may get a few hive that show resistance but carrying the resistance to future generations is very unlikely. Non-resistant hives will always move into your territory and mate with your stock and negate whatever progress you make.


The issue is the beekeeper who changed the bees by breeding and the global world which spreads pests too fast.
So you must work on the livestock bees without relenting.

Nature would already have done the selection after 30 years if beekeepers had left it alone. 

You US imported honeybees once to use them as livestock. Now there are areas with ferals which survive. In europe it´s the other way around, ferals are not tolerated after the wild honeybees crashed, which are now extinct. Only in scientific programs they are accepted.


----------



## MikeJ

baybee said:


> "Natural selection" is not a theory, you are correct! It is a process fundamental to evolution. One can't just come up with his own definitions of or change well-established terms!


My own definitions?
World Book encyclopedia (not that I think WB is any good) "The theory of natural selection was first explained in detail in the 1850's..."

The logic is even incorrect. If evolution is a theory (I assume we will not argue that), then something fundamental to it, that also is unproven, can not be anything but a theory. It may be a *theoretical* process, but a theory none the less.

My emphasis:


baybee said:


> Besides, proofs are only used in math and in distillation of alcohol. *Science works in a different way.*


We agree here.


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> Mikej
> ...
> You ask too much when asking for a garrentee as none give one and why would threatment free be differrent. The guys that have queens that they change to and no longer get chalk brood know it happens but probly would not give you a garantee that it would happen for you under your management.
> 
> Just a differrent way of viewing the possibilities. Every body has hives that die and usually are happy when that rate of dieing is low enough for them to consider it successful for what they want to do. That includes those that treat.
> 
> Cheers
> gww
> Ps I bought my bees from a guy that does not treat. Member oldtimer told me once that if I kept bees like the guy who sold them too me that I should have the same success as he does. In other words, If I consider what he is doing as a success, I should be able to get the same. Every one will not measure success in the same light. It is a subjective term.


Problem is we are not talking about asking a guarantee that the queen produce bees that make a min 100# of honey per year, or that will not swarm, or are calm, etc.. That is reaction to treatment of bees. We are talking about a very specific thing - bees that do not die because of mites if I do nothing. If the breeder claims they do *nothing* - then I should be able to do *nothing* too.
Even if a guarantee is too much - how about the breeder at least not telling the buyer that these TF bees may not work for you?! If a breed does not replicate its trait is it even a breed?! And not even asking it to replicate its traits in new TF queens - I just want that specific queen to do what the seller says it did for him.


----------



## gww

Mike
However if creation is a theory and yet virus can become resistant to antibody then wisdom or evolution still has been proven past theory by sience. Maby the honey bee and nature has the tools to come to some kind of equilibrum for bees and mites. Even when treating some mites survive in the hive and there are people not treating that have success also. My whole previous post has to do with holding certain parts of a equation to having to give a garrentee like they are bad if they can't give such even though there are no garantees expected in almost any other area. I myself don't know how things work but also don't go so far as to say that I don't believe someone is doing something that they know they are doing even if I don't know why it is working for them. You have to find what works for you but that doesn't mean something is imposible when someone is proving it is possible. 

If a person does not know why a study of wild hives say that 20 years after varroa that thier life span is what it was ten years before varroa, you may only make guesses of how that success is coming about but you can not say that it is not happining.

By the way, I am not a purist. I don't care if you treat or don't threat. I just don't believe hard statements on things that I can find antidotal eveidence that prove those statements as not the whole story. I don't really even fault you for having that type of belief as long as I can put my type of belief out there also.

Cheers
gww


----------



## 1102009

MikeJ said:


> We are talking about a very specific thing - bees that do not die because of mites if I do nothing.


No breeder of resistant queens gives a guarantee or advise to do nothing because even introducing a queen into a colony which would have raised their own is doing something.
Putting bees into a box is doing something.
They give a guarantee they use no chemicals and/or select for resistant traits.(hopefully)

What you make of this and how much you pay for such is your own freedom to decide.


----------



## Fivej

Please look up the definition of scientific theory. Some are conflating the way we use the word theory in every day talk with the way scientists use it. This is why the words we use on the forum are important. The theory of evolution is a fact, not speculation as we commonly use the word theory J


----------



## gww

Micheal


> Problem is we are not talking about asking a guarantee that the queen produce bees that make a min 100# of honey per year, or that will not swarm, or are calm, etc.. That is reaction to treatment of bees. We are talking about a very specific thing - bees that do not die because of mites if I do nothing. If the breeder claims they do *nothing* - then I should be able to do *nothing* too.
> Even if a guarantee is too much - how about the breeder at least not telling the buyer that these TF bees may not work for you?! If a breed does not replicate its trait is it even a breed?! And not even asking it to replicate its traits in new TF queens - I just want that specific queen to do what the seller says it did for him.


Again you listed all the things that a bee might do and be bred for but you held the seller of tf bees to a higher standard. What you should maby be doing is believeing the guy is keeping bees and not treating and decideing if that might help you or have in your mind that he is lying. He is going to do the proving in his own yard just like all the other things you listed IE: making 200lbs or not being swarm prone or are calm yada yada yada. If he is raising them and they are not dieing in unreasonable numbers from mites and he is telling the truth then you will be the one thing in management that changes and how could he garantee that any more then the other things people breed for. You can't say his bees are not resitant and need treatment to live because if you take the fact that he is telling the truth then it is already a proven thing.

It is sorta like if me and you go out on a cold day and you catch a cold and I don't. We were both in the same condition but your resitance was lower then mine at that point and it might not even be something that we could find of why you had lower resitance to the cold at that time. You would be the varible. You can not say he is the verible or that his bees are not resitant when he is not treating, they are living and that does make them treatment free.
When you get that far then you can see it they work for you, he knows they work for him. I have been on this site for a couple of years and seen too many thread where poeple kept bees and did not treat and are doing ok enough for them. I have also read the horror stories. I don't know the why of the differrances. I don't know yet what will work for me to make me happy in the time frame I give myself to become what I consider sucessful in my eyes but I don't tell those other guys that because I can't do it that it is imossible when they have been doing it all along. It might be impossible to me cause I might not care enough to persue it if I find doing something else is easier or that I just like it better. I don't think the guys could give me any garantee that I can do what they are. I might not want that most.

Cheers
gww


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> Mike
> However if creation is a theory and yet virus can become resistant to antibody then wisdom or evolution still has been proven past theory by sience. Maby the honey bee and nature has the tools to come to some kind of equilibrum for bees and mites. Even when treating some mites survive in the hive and there are people not treating that have success also.


I believe that is called adaptability. Adaption is within all living things to be able to adapt to life within a *restricted* boundaries. Why do coconut palm trees not grow up here in Maine? It is beyond the natural adaptability boundaries that God gave those trees. Now can man change the boundaries through very careful *guidance* - somewhat. I won't wait to be growing my own coconuts.

I believe the behavior was commandeer by science so they could claim some kind of evidence - that is my opinion though. This is not evolution. Evolution goes well beyond a set restricted of boundaries, it even goes into creation of entirely new species (again never proven).



gww said:


> My whole previous post has to do with holding certain parts of a equation to having to give a garrentee like they are bad if they can't give such even though there are no garantees expected in almost any other area. I myself don't know how things work but also don't go so far as to say that I don't believe someone is doing something that they know they are doing even if I don't know why it is working for them. You have to find what works for you but that doesn't mean something is imposible when someone is proving it is possible.


The entire point of a guarantee is that it gives the buyer some kind of evidence that the seller actually *believes* in their sale's statements. I can sell a flying pig with no guarantee it will fly.  



gww said:


> If a person does not know why a study of wild hives say that 20 years after varroa that thier life span is what it was ten years before varroa, you may only make guesses of how that success is coming about but you can not say that it is not happining.


What study was this?
Also - I think most understand, studies are not fact. Wine is good for you, wine is bad for you. Butter is bad for you, butter is good for you. Coffee is bad for you, coffee is good for you - all studies.

I don't think I argued that someone can't develop a queen that resists mites (or possibly live with mites) without help (i.e. treatments) - my point was that it obviously hasn't happened yet. If a breeder produces a queen that can resist/tolerate mites, and yet that same exact queen fails to do so 100 miles away - - They do not have a product. They have a happenstance - in *my opinion*. Unless the queen replicates bee-havior  what good is it? 
If I buy an oven and get it home and it keeps things at 40F it isn't an oven.



gww said:


> By the way, I am not a purist. I don't care if you treat or don't threat. I just don't believe hard statements on things that I can find antidotal eveidence that prove those statements as not the whole story. I don't really even fault you for having that type of belief as long as I can put my type of belief out there also.
> 
> Cheers
> gww


I don't know of any actual evidence. Someone saying they do something is fine, but not what I thought we were discussing. I thought we were talking about viable TF queens as a product. That only happens if the queen reproduces behavior (no I wont do it again  ) at its new location.

I would be happy to hear of evidence for viable TF queens as products.


----------



## MikeJ

Fivej said:


> Please look up the definition of scientific theory. Some are conflating the way we use the word theory in every day talk with the way scientists use it. This is why the words we use on the forum are important. The theory of evolution is a fact, not speculation as we commonly use the word theory J


I assume you mean 'it is a fact that there is a theory of evolution'?? If a theory is a fact - it is no longer a theory. Science, according to some, has no "facts".
"Scientific fact" is simply a theory they feel has been proven enough.

I have now looked it up (again - just to be sure I haven't forgotten).
"A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena"

Encycl.
"When a theory is supported by so much evidence, it becomes accepted as a scientific fact. Almost all scientists consider the theory of evolution to be a scientific fact."

This is not a fact, as we normal people consider a fact (i.e. something that can not change). It is simply more jargon that is saying "We REALLY believe it is true". "Facts" (if we call it this) in science can change if *new* "evidence" becomes known. Of course that new "fact" may change later.

One of the big problems is "science" has been elevated beyond a religion to that of a god. If "science" say jump - we ask how high.


----------



## gww

Mikej


> I would be happy to hear of evidence for viable TF queens as products.


Mike
All the guys that have posted on here that they are treatment free are viable. 

My bee club had treaters and non-threaters lose hives all around the guy who sold me my bees who does not treat.

There are at least two treatment free beekeepers in Mo on this site. They got there queens from somewhere and have made many more of thier own. I bet there is somebody around you that is keeping bees treatment free and not losing all their bees every year. I bet that because the only study that tracks yearly deaths say that like 50 percent of the bees in america are not treated and if you take the fact that probly the majority of bee numbers are probly comercial bees that most are treated, that probly puts the percentage of non-treaters as individuals at close to the 90 percent range (my guess).

Some of it might be just the attitude of the beekeeper and his management style as much as the actual queens. There was another study where they took comercial queens and kept twenty hives around a comercial operation and except for the first year of big loss they had min loss from then on in that location. 

So if a treatment free guy has sold several queens and 50 percent of those he sold to had bad luck but 50% had good luck, are those queens viable tf queens. They were for 50%.

This answer from SiWolke is probly the best answer to what your expectations should be for a tf queen just like a calm queen or nonswarming queen.


> No breeder of resistant queens gives a guarantee or advise to do nothing because even introducing a queen into a colony which would have raised their own is doing something.
> Putting bees into a box is doing something.
> They give a guarantee they use no chemicals and/or select for resistant traits.(hopefully)
> 
> What you make of this and how much you pay for such is your own freedom to decide.


Anything else and you are just saying that anyone who say they are selling tf queens (queens they have not treated) is misrepresenting what they are selling which is just wrong.

Cheers
gww

Ps Why would someone who is selling treatment free bees be responcible for teaching you all you need to know about raising bees so that you can be successful doing what they are doing. You wouldn't pay enough for those kind of lessons to go with a queen.


----------



## clyderoad

MikeJ said:


> I assume you mean 'it is a fact that there is a theory of evolution'?? If a theory is a fact - it is no longer a theory. Science, according to some, has no "facts".
> "Scientific fact" is simply a theory they feel has been proven enough.
> 
> I have now looked it up (again - just to be sure I haven't forgotten).
> "A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena"
> 
> Encycl.
> "When a theory is supported by so much evidence, it becomes accepted as a scientific fact. Almost all scientists consider the theory of evolution to be a scientific fact."
> 
> This is not a fact, as we normal people consider a fact (i.e. something that can not change). It is simply more jargon that is saying "We REALLY believe it is true". "Facts" (if we call it this) in science can change if *new* "evidence" becomes known. Of course that new "fact" may change later.
> 
> One of the big problems is "science" has been elevated beyond a religion to that of a god. If "science" say jump - we ask how high.


You certainly are not on Bee Source to discuss bees! Post after post of yours even fails to mention bees.
Oh, it starts off innocently enough but it appears your motivation is to find that little crack in the door to sneak in and philosophically rant about anything but bees. Since rejoining the BEE FORUM after a long hiatus nearly every contribution reads like The Black And White World According to MikeJ.
Are you sure you are on the right forum? How is that hive of bees of yours doing?


----------



## MikeJ

clyderoad said:


> ...


Not again mr pope.

I try in every way to live what I believe (I fail often - but hopefully never permanently). If you dislike who I am and what I bring feel free to ignore my posts/replies. I have no further plan to respond to you unless you have *constructive* statements.


----------



## clyderoad

MikeJ said:


> Not again mr pope.
> 
> I try in every way to live what I believe (I fail often - but hopefully never permanently). If you dislike who I am and what I bring feel free to ignore my posts/replies. I have no further plan to respond to you unless you have *constructive* statements.


"I try in every way to live what I believe (I fail often - but hopefully never permanently)." Good for you, many people do also.

Has it occurred to you that I may actually like who you are :scratch: and may indeed agree with *some* of what you you argue?

But the topic of my post and the issue I bring up is the lack of much contribution by you on the topic of BEES in a BEE FORUM.


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> ...
> Cheers
> gww
> ...


Let me try a fast/clear explanation.
A viable product is one that does what the seller claims. Am I buying a TF queen or just a queen that the seller says *seems* to work for him/her? If I am buying a TF queen then I do not need to treat - it should reproduce that behavior in my hive. If the latter, it may work for me or may not.

Why do we buy bred queens? Because we are buying their traits.
If I am buying a TF queen - advertised as such, I am buying that trait.

If I buy a bred german queen, and receive a golden bee - I am not getting what I bought.
If I buy a bred TF queen, and the mights over run the hive killing her and her offspring - I didn't get what I bought.

Now - we of course need an allowance for *some* variableness (i.e. something odd happened and she just wasn't up to it. Something odd happened and the mites just got to great an upper hand) - but if that variableness is 50%, that is not variableness that is *chance*.

My **entire** point is that to have a working alternative to treatments, one needs a true TF viable product (that is, one that repeats its behavior when sold to someone else).

We were not discussing you getting your hives to be TF, or me, or Beepro, or anyone else doing so for themselves - in their specific situation (I said *that* is probably possible). We were discussing TF queens as products (i.e. I buy one, you buy one).

As for the idea that the seller can't guarantee because "putting bees in a box is doing something" - what did the breeder keep them in?

In the end, if I buy a few TF queens which can not produce the advertised behavior in the hive - I will simply buy the cheaper queens and have to do what I had to do to the TF queens.


----------



## gww

Mike


> - but if that variableness is 50%, that is not variableness that is *chance*.


If you go by the numbers of the national data per year of hive death for all kept bees, it is close to that 50 % death rate and so I guess bee keeping is chance.

If you measure beekeeping success, one member here says they have never lost a hive but they also don't take honey, use quilt boxes treat feed, insulate. You have another bee keeper that does not treat, insulate or feed and does take honey 3 times a year and has a twenty percent death rate. Both make increase and after all is said and done both end up with more hives the next year then they had the year before. 

I am worse then you in that I don't intend to buy a queen no matter how cheap or expensive. I also don't know if everywhere can be treatment free. I do know the published average hive honey prodution is not the same everywhere and so I am not sure if you took a good queen from the highest production state and put it in the lowest prodution state that you could expect the two hundred pound of honey that that queen has the potential of making but the potential is surly reconized as something the queen has. 
There is no place in america that does not have mites. Surely we can agree on that. Mites make more mites as bees make brood. Surly we can agree on that.

If we can agree on those two things and agree that the honey producer has the potential to make honey then surly we can agree the treatment free bee has the potential to live with mites. We can not say there are no mites where the tf bee is. You see where I am going with this yes? Isn't it better to start with potential and also look for other factors to see what is possible. Now my money is on that if you had a record honey producing queen that produces record harvest above those others in a record producing place and you moved her to a location that did not give those records and she lives through all the other changes that come with that, my guess is she will still produce more then the average bee in that new location. She still won't produce what she did in her origional location.

So in the end it still might come down to having to learn enough of the other varibles involved to be successful where you are and no queen breeder can be responcible for that. In the end, if we can agree that there are mites everywhere and that some bees are living with mites in more then one place and many had big die offs before becoming stable populations. Then maby a tf queen is a step closer. There may be areas that the bees have to mostly die off so that a differrent strain of virus dies off or the bees develop resistance before things even out and that it is really not the queen or mite that is the problim. Sorta like some bees are more suceptible to chalk brood then others are because genetics have adjusted in some to be more resistant. With chalk brood, the management of the bee keeper can also affect the outcome. Even resistant bees if they get food stressed or too cold or weakened in other ways can still get it, that does not mean they are not more resistant then some other bees.

I know this, I would not keep buying bees every year just to be treatment free but I also would not say it is not possible while others are doing it. I might decide it is worth it to give their queens a go and see if it helped or I might change my bee keeping practices. If I did not want mites to kill my bees or not want any of my bees to die, I would not get bees cause the published data says having bees live at all is chance by your reasoning. I will say this, Some places at some times are harder to keep your bees alive no matter what you do. If you look at countries you might see germany lost 50% of all hives and sweden lost 12% and the bee keeping practices could be close to the same. If I gave ten hives to ten brand new bee keepers in my area and 80% of them died but my hives all lived. How many people would be running around saying my bees are no good?

I understand your point that the magic bullet is not invented but since so many people keep bees in so many ways and for so many differrent measures of when they have reached success for them selves, I doubt the magic bullet is ever found but the guy selling treatment free queens has proven they are what they are unless you want to call them a lier and try and prove that they have been treating them when no one was looking. I am not of that belief.
Cheers
gww


----------



## shinbone

Please don't feed the troll.

Even better, put the troll on your "ignore list."


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> ...
> Cheers
> gww


I have *no problem* with people trying to get to TF - I've tried.
My results were initial about 3-4 years of survival, then declining to where hives would not last 1 full year. It should be noted that the initial hives did not get mites until about end of year 2 (yes, I think there are places that initially can start mite free, but once honey bees are there mites come as well).

As far as I know there are *no* TF beekeepers anywhere near me - but that also is a guess. In Maine law states we have to register our hives & location -but plenty of people ignore the laws. I asked the state apiarist a while back if any beekeepers were near by, said not that he knows of. I am very remote. The mites showed up in the 2nd year.

This is simply my own experience and has no real baring on TF - I do not consider myself a *good* beekeeper. I rely on the bees doing what they were created for - and my meager knowledge to try to help.

I don't personally believe in chance, but I used that word to get my point across.
A "snap shot" of percentages are not very telling. If one country experienced 50%, another 12% - that snap shot doesn't say a lot. What is the average over 10 or 20 years? Does it get close to 50%?

gww - I have no problems with TF. If someone can do it I think it is great - I would like to.
My *entire* conversation was not about *possibility*, it was about how is it useful to breed a TF queen for sale - if it does not perform as a TF queen in the buyer's hive?

thanks-


----------



## MikeJ

shinbone said:


> Please don't feed the troll.
> 
> Even better, put the troll on your "ignore list."


As I have said before. When someone suddenly begins belittling others for no apparent reason, I have learned to look at the slanderer not the one being slandered.

We have had a pretty good conversation on TF queens (I think at least), and a few other topics got tossed in (as they do in just about *every* post on this forum) - so where was I trolling? Or is it just because you do not like what I said?


----------



## gww

Mike
And my whole point was that it seemed disparaging to demand of a TF seller more then you could demand of any other trait besides color from a seller of any other queen in this world. You have to take them at thier word that they are selling what they say and decide for yourself if you want to try it. From the very beginning, old time beekeepers have been picking traits from best of those hives that have those traits, trying to make those traits they like even better. I know miller in his book fifty years with the bees says that he wishes he would have consintrated on bee calmness rather then putting all his efforts into honey production. 

I am not a purist and am not treating now due to lazyness and knowing it might be possible cause others are having success. I may change my mind tomorrow and start treating. I don't want to be the first to call someone a charliton because they sell a bee that they say is treatment free. I will let those that actually buy them make that decision and then listen to thier buyers with a skeptical ear and figure that that is how the truth will come out. Those that buy and like will spread the word. I bought from a guy that doesn't treat and would have bought from one that did treat but found this guy first.

I don't prejudge that I will have hives alive come next spring but can say I had bees alive this spring.

But I don't think that guy had to give me a garantee, cause he really didn't even want to sell local cause he said sometimes hives die and I don't think he ment due to mites. I think he ment due to brand new bee keepers. He wants people to respect him at the bee club where there are a lot of new bee keepers. I think he gives some time trying to help them including helping them look through thier hives but does not want to sell them his bees cause a lot of bees die and he probly figures he chases enough of thier problims with out them thinking he is part of thier problims.

So if I can see he is keeping bees for 20 years with out treatment and it doesn't work for me, I am going to have to come to the conclusion that it was me that sucks as a bee keeper and not his bees. He only live 1.3 miles from me as the crow flies and so I can't blame the area. So, I am not going to say or expect an unfair garantee from him for my bees that I bought from him. I will have to take the blame. Now thats fair isn't it?
Cheers
gww


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> Mike
> And my whole point was that it seemed disparaging to demand of a TF seller more then you could demand of any other trait besides color from a seller of any other queen in this world.


Disparaging? I hope I wasn't.
For myself - I would expect a queen to repeat a specific trait if I am being sold a queen advertised as such. No matter the trait. At the same time buying 1 is not a fair test.
Others, of course, buy by their own standards.



gww said:


> You have to take them at thier word that they are selling what they say and decide for yourself if you want to try it.
> ...
> But I don't think that guy had to give me a garantee, cause he really didn't even want to sell local cause he said sometimes hives die and I don't think he ment due to mites. I think he ment due to brand new bee keepers. He wants people to respect him at the bee club where there are a lot of new bee keepers. I think he gives some time trying to help them including helping them look through thier hives but does not want to sell them his bees cause a lot of bees die and he probly figures he chases enough of thier problims with out them thinking he is part of thier problims.
> 
> So if I can see he is keeping bees for 20 years with out treatment and it doesn't work for me, I am going to have to come to the conclusion that it was me that sucks as a bee keeper and not his bees. He only live 1.3 miles from me as the crow flies and so I can't blame the area. So, I am not going to say or expect an unfair garantee from him for my bees that I bought from him. I will have to take the blame. Now thats fair isn't it?
> Cheers
> gww


If I have to talk someone into selling me queens, then no I would not expect a guarantee. He is doing me a favor of sorts.

Too often when I have taken a seller for their word, I definitely paid.

It would be very interesting to know if those that buy the queens that are thousands of dollars get any guarantees as to traits and such? Maybe I will post that question in the breeding forum.


----------



## gww

mike


> It would be very interesting to know if those that buy the queens that are thousands of dollars get any guarantees as to traits and such? Maybe I will post that question in the breeding forum.


Sounds good to me.
Cheers
gww


----------



## 1102009

MikeJ

The sellers all have websites and blogs where you can see what they do and nobody forces you to buy their products. If you don´t trust them and need guaranties for all your actions than it reminds me of the case when:

"A hot coffee was purchased at McD and taken away and later McD was sued because the person burned his lips on the coffee never thinking the beverage could be hot."


----------



## MikeJ

SiWolKe said:


> MikeJ
> ...
> If you don´t trust them and need guaranties for all your actions than it reminds me of the case when:
> 
> "A hot coffee was purchased at McD and taken away and later McD was sued because the person burned his lips on the coffee never thinking the beverage could be hot."


I do not see the similarities in your comparison?
The person ordered a hot coffee - got a hot coffee. They should accept their own clumsiness, but the fact they got burned proves they got what they ordered.

Imagine it is 5am. You really *want* a hot cup of coffee. You pay for your hot cup of coffee only to find it is as cold as ice tea - - are you going to hand it back and ask for a "hot" cup of coffee (as advertised) or just accept that advertised hot coffee may not actually be hot?


----------



## MikeJ

gww:
I think I am seeing why we are not in agreement.
When you say TF queen - you are basically referring to the environment the queen was raised in?
When I was speaking of TF queens (as in becoming a viable mite control), I am not speaking on its breeding environment - but on its traits that it will produce bees that either overcome mites or live with them. That is why I would expect some form of assurance (I will not call it a guarantee ).

Maybe it just me (though from seeing people's reaction in the forum - read Consumer Report posts), I think a seller (important part: making special claims of his bees) should have something at stake in the transaction. If I buy a queen and it is not at all as advertised - my lonely complaint is not likely to deter his business. -- But again - I am referring to TF queens as a trait for sell, not its breeding environment.

( http://www.beesource.com/forums/sho...f-buying-breeding-stock&p=1581318#post1581318 )

So far interesting responses (only 2 so far).



Beepro:
Thank you for your patients while I/we kind of "overran" your thread.


----------



## gww

Mike
Did you notice (how I took it) that even the queens that go for big bucks do not still seem to garrentee what your results will be? They are tested but it seems they are tested in thier yards and not in yours. 
Cheers
gww


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> Mike
> Did you notice (how I took it) that even the queens that go for big bucks do not still seem to garrentee what your results will be? They are tested but it seems they are tested in thier yards and not in yours.
> Cheers
> gww



I concede. Obviously I was wrong with the idea of guarantees, there appears no good way to expect that.

I would still say if *I* were planning to pay big money for queens - I would want to visit the breeder's yards and seeing proof of how their stock is performing in their hives. Obviously no guarantee, but that in a way is proof.


----------



## gww

Mike
I agree in that I like to build relationships with people that I deal with so I have some basis for making up my mind. It is one thing that made me wait a year after I had equipment built before I got bees. I just could not make myself be on call after I paid to drive 70 miles, meet in a walmart parking lot and pick up a package and also why I put a little presure on the guy close to sell me some bees. Then I did my best to make him feel ok about what he had done even though I did abuse/use him a little. I think I made up for it by giving him a big swarm from my hives this year (my first swarm ever). I wanted some one to deal with locally even though I hardly ever listen to him, I want his imput but only so much cause I am the one keeping my bees in my way. When I do ask for his imput (even if I don't listen to him), I hope to have created a situation that his answers are given with my best interest at heart.

Only time will tell but when dealing with bees that can have a mind of their own, I see no other way.

I hope you have enjoyed our discussion and hope we both get a little out of it.
Cheers
gww


----------



## MikeJ

gww said:


> Mike
> ...
> I hope you have enjoyed our discussion and hope we both get a little out of it.
> Cheers
> gww


Indeed, plenty of information shared.
Thank you.


----------



## beepro

An update: No more free running mite!



With the recent cap drones larvae in the first and only frame that the II Cordovam
queen laid, there are zero free running mite in this 10 frames (5x5) double nuc hive that I sampled.
Seeing this now is a good opportunity to make another 5 frames nuc split with a compatible genetics mated bought queen. So last week I made a split from this hive. Instantly, without much open larvae to feed even though the queen is still laying in the drone frame, the foragers are taking advantage of the beginning of the mini Autumn flow here. With luck the late mustard flow will meshed in with the very late October Loquat flow as we have many such blooming trees here. This is without fail a mini harvest that these small nuc hives depended on for the last 5 years. Whatever they stored is theirs for overwintering. I already see lots of new nectar and wild mustard yellow pollen in the hives today. Even before the cap drones the mite population in this 10 frame hive is dwindling, less than 20 mites because I started my brood break early at the end of June. In addition to the mewly II queen and open mated carnis queen online, this natural extended brood break has further reduced the mite population in there. I say between the new nuc split and the II Cordovan queen hive there are less than 10? mites in there now. The first 2 cap brood frames got moved to to the carnis hive already. If I really want to have a zero mite going into winter then I have to take the drone cap frame out to put in the homemade incubator. This should eliminate 99.9% of the mites in this II queen hive. The late split nuc hive I don't worry much because there is no mite in there now only the foragers and the new young nurse bees. 

For the carnis queen mated in mid-August, she never stop laying even expanded to the 7 frames that I gave her. Seeing a new flow she's taking advantage of this to further expand her dwindling 2 frames hive too. Now she has 7 frames of broods and bees. The mite population in this carnis hive is a bit more. I'd say somewhere between 10-15 because some are the cap broods still. To get rid of the mites for this hive I have to divide the cap broods and the newly emerged workers into 2 nuc hives. One is for the carnis queen and the other is for the newly bought mated queen. All the remaining cap broods and eggs will be for the carnis queen. And the brushed off worker bees are for the bought mated queen. The process to get rid of the mite is the same by trapping cap brood removal in a single frame (IPM.) So this little experiment has expanded to 4 nuc hives now. Let's see if I can make more II Cordovan queens after the drones emerged and continue to make new nuc splits out of them.

This time on the 2 frames of cap broods from the II Cordovan queen I don't have to put them in the mini fridge incubator. Because there are not that many mites in there to mess with the incubator. So I just allowed them to emerged inside the carnis hive. That is why the carnis hive have more mites than what it was originally. I think in a normal process, an average person can take care of 3-7 small nuc hives going into winter following this process to get rid of the mites. Following along? Hope I don't lost anybody in this process!



Mini Autumn flow has started:


----------



## gww

beepro
I have wanted to say this for a long time and in a way that it is not taken as bossy or too picky and also with the point that if you do what you want, I would not think bad of you. To prep, I say I love pictures. I also say that I am a slow information processor.

So here goes. You type really a lot of words with no breaks (white space) and I have a hard time processing that much info all at one time (it is me that is slow). I get lost in the middle. I type long stuff with no breaks also cause you want to get it all in while it is on your mind. I sometimes hit enter a couple of times here and there and don't even alway do it where a good writer would.

This might even be hard to do if from a mobil device, I have never used one. So, I know the problim is me and not you but thought I would tell you that I would (maby) be able to follow better with a small space here and their.

I hope regaurdless of what you end up doing that you take this as friendly cause if not, I wish I would not have typed it. Again, I make no demand that my suggestion be followed, it is just a suggestion.
I will try and keep up either way.
Thanks
gww


----------



## beepro

After my typing BeeSource squished everything in. It is not my fault for this.
I can only use a double space between paragraphs for you. Sorry for the mobile phone users.
You can make the words bigger though.


----------



## gww

beepro
I thought it might be something like that. Even if it wasn't, I don't consider myself anyones boss and that is why I was hopeing that my comment would not be taken as bossy or picky cause I have too many faults of my own for that.

Anyway, keep typing and I will read some of it.
Cheers
gww


----------



## Gino45

Just skimmed through this thread. As usual, there are some interesting comments.

$1,000 queens. I'm remined of the famous quote, ''There's a sucker born every minute.''

There are places in the USA where bees are supposedly kept successfully without mite treatments. At least, there are 'keepers' who make that claim. IMO, what doesn't follow from this is that a queen of such miraculous bees can be transferred to another area and there will survive without any treatments.

I'm thinking of the differences in length of active bee season and perhaps also of places where Africanized bees are kept. To summarize my thoughts., the shorter the bee flying season and the longer the winter season, the more likely the bees can be left untreated. The exception to this may be the southern states which indeed have Africanized bees which have abilities not posssessed by most European strains of bees.


----------



## Dan the bee guy

Gino45 said:


> Just skimmed through this thread. As usual, there are some interesting comments.
> 
> $1,000 queens. I'm remined of the famous quote, ''There's a sucker born every minute.''
> 
> There are places in the USA where bees are supposedly kept successfully without mite treatments. At least, there are 'keepers' who make that claim. IMO, what doesn't follow from this is that a queen of such miraculous bees can be transferred to another area and there will survive without any treatments.
> 
> I'm thinking of the differences in length of active bee season and perhaps also of places where Africanized bees are kept. To summarize my thoughts., the shorter the bee flying season and the longer the winter season, the more likely the bees can be left untreated. The exception to this may be the southern states which indeed have Africanized bees which have abilities not posssessed by most European strains of bees.


Warm weather beeks seem to think a long winter break in brood rearing helps and it is the opposite. Viruses make a bees life short and the attrition of bees during the winter before new bees in the spring kill colonys. We have to keep the mite level lower than beeks in the south if we want our bees to live till spring.


----------



## MikeJ

Dan the bee guy said:


> Warm weather beeks seem to think a long winter break in brood rearing helps and it is the opposite. Viruses make a bees life short and the attrition of bees during the winter before new bees in the spring kill colonys. We have to keep the mite level lower than beeks in the south if we want our bees to live till spring.


(just thinking it out loud, because I too was told brood brakes helped and simply took it to be so... this is actually the first time I really considered it)

The brood brake we are told helps because - no brood means no new mites can be produced. Problem is it also means no new bees. Since mites can live a good while waiting for brood so they can reproduce (was it as much as 3 months? - say half that), that usually will mean *no* real change in ratio (some mites may die off, but is it enough to change anything). 
The only real change is the bees continue to weaken because the mites still feed off of them.

Does a brood brake because of swarming help either? Isn't it reasonable to guess that about 1/2 the mites leave with the swarm - again the ration remains basically the same - and again no new bees will be produced for about 30 days, yet are being fed on. The new queen may be able to out produce the mites for a while and so appears to be helping.

Maybe my logic on this is flawed (missed something that should have been obvious?).
The only real help (according to the above logic), is that it does offer a opportunity to treat.


----------



## John Davis

Mel Disselkoen (spelling?) Makes a point in one of his presentations about the cause and effect of brood breaks on varroa population. The adults do live longer than the length of the break so the death rate does not really lower the varroa population. It only makes a pause in the rate of increase. His observation is that as the queen starts to produce brood after that break all the mites are on bees instead of under cappings on pupae. The first available brood for them to infest gets so many mites that they die and the mites die and are removed. Mel says most of us miss seeing this because we don't get in the brood nest to see it happening as it does not last long. Also if the brood break is not long enough for all brood to emerge it is not as effective.


----------



## beepro

An update: So the carnis queen is finally dead!


Two days ago I though to swap out the carnis queen with the newly bought no treatment queen. So I put both of them inside the small wooden cage. The tf queen has 4 attendants with her while the carnis queen, originally from this nuc hive did not have any. I figured that because she is from the same hive that her bees will take good care of her but they did not. Somehow she was dead inside this cage. Not sure why her bees didn't take care of her.

For the tf queen she is still alive with her attendants inside the cage. I put her inside the 2 frames laying cage along with 80 young nurse bees from the same hive. And then combine the carnis hive with another nuc hive next to it. Now 2 hives into one without any cap broods except for the cap drones is a fairly strong 3 frames nuc hive. 

Today, after 3 days inside this 2 frames laying cage, I finally took the chewy foam off the gap in between the frames for the
bees to intermingle. The mite population is at less than .1% when last check. Because right now all they have are the young nurse bees and the older foragers in there. Also, there is a cap frame of the Cordovan drones donated from the first II Cordovan queen hive last time. Yesterday on a hive check I saw many Cordovan drones emerging and along with them are the mites with them. Why would I let these mites from the emerged Cordovan drones to reinfect this nuc hive?

Now is the best time to test out the new tf queen. If she got accepted then this experiment will open up a new page in handling the mites. Of course, the mites are not that many from these new drones. I can also do another experiment of
grafting the II Cordovan queen for anther set of queens to II with these drones too. Maybe get the queens from the new tf queen for the II with these Cordovan drones also. Not sure what direction to take next or do both?



Do these look familiar?:


----------



## Dan the bee guy

MikeJ said:


> (just thinking it out loud, because I too was told brood brakes helped and simply took it to be so... this is actually the first time I really considered it)
> 
> The brood brake we are told helps because - no brood means no new mites can be produced. Problem is it also means no new bees. Since mites can live a good while waiting for brood so they can reproduce (was it as much as 3 months? - say half that), that usually will mean *no* real change in ratio (some mites may die off, but is it enough to change anything).
> The only real change is the bees continue to weaken because the mites still feed off of them.
> 
> Does a brood brake because of swarming help either? Isn't it reasonable to guess that about 1/2 the mites leave with the swarm - again the ration remains basically the same - and again no new bees will be produced for about 30 days, yet are being fed on. The new queen may be able to out produce the mites for a while and so appears to be helping.
> 
> Maybe my logic on this is flawed (missed something that should have been obvious?).
> The only real help (according to the above logic), is that it does offer a opportunity to treat.


Usually when northern beeks have a brood break its to cold to use OAV. But useing Mel's method before swarm season making new hives you can have a great chance to treat, a one shot deal with OAV before the new queen has capped brood. Of course the mother hive will not have a break unless you remove the queen or cage her for two weeks.


----------



## johno

I have seen some strange things with brood breaks, you would expect an OAV treatment to really put a lot of dead mites on the bottom board when they are broodless. I have found that when treating 2 hives side by side with one broodless and the other full of brood I would expect a large mite fall from the broodless and not so much from the normal hive but have found the opposite leaving me to believe that these crafty mites realize that there is declining brood and hitch rides out of there and try to locate a booming hive. So this leads me to the opinion that a brood break in one hive just moves the problem to another. However winter brood breaks would be a different story as would packages and swarms.
Johno


----------



## gww

Johno
Interesting obsevation. Never thought about that.
Cheers
gww


----------



## 1102009

johno said:


> I have seen some strange things with brood breaks, you would expect an OAV treatment to really put a lot of dead mites on the bottom board when they are broodless. I have found that when treating 2 hives side by side with one broodless and the other full of brood I would expect a large mite fall from the broodless and not so much from the normal hive but have found the opposite leaving me to believe that these crafty mites realize that there is declining brood and hitch rides out of there and try to locate a booming hive. So this leads me to the opinion that a brood break in one hive just moves the problem to another. However winter brood breaks would be a different story as would packages and swarms.
> Johno


Is this happening without OAV? I know thymol leads to some absconding. Does OAV too?


----------



## MikeJ

johno said:


> I have seen some strange things with brood breaks, you would expect an OAV treatment to really put a lot of dead mites on the bottom board when they are broodless. I have found that when treating 2 hives side by side with one broodless and the other full of brood I would expect a large mite fall from the broodless and not so much from the normal hive but have found the opposite leaving me to believe that these crafty mites realize that there is declining brood and hitch rides out of there and try to locate a booming hive. So this leads me to the opinion that a brood break in one hive just moves the problem to another. However winter brood breaks would be a different story as would packages and swarms.
> Johno


Interesting.
Was there a mite count (I know those aren't perfect) on the two hive to get an idea if they were close in infestation?


----------



## johno

This all came about when a new beekeeper asked for help in checking her 2 hives as one appeared to have no brood. After checking the hive with no brood and finding remains of supercedure cells I explained to her that there was probably a young queen in the hive and seeing there was no brood it would be a good time to do an OAV treatment as this would get rid of a high percentage of this colonies mites, but as I am treating one I may as well treat the other stickies were placed under the SBB's and they were treated. The next day I asked what the mite drop was like and was there more on the broodless sticky than the other hive. I was quite taken aback when she replied less than 50 on the broodless and hundreds on the other hive. This result was definitely against conventional wisdom and has given reason to much thought. In my home hives I have too many bees chasing too little nectar and robbing can start quickly resulting in dead hives so in a late summer dearth doing mite counts becomes challenging so I often do a round of treatments just to see mite drops and now when I see very few mites drop in a colony I try to do a quick examination of that colony and often find there is a problem with that colony due to queen loss or no brood for some reason or the other.
Johno


----------



## 1102009

There is the theory that mite infestation evens out between hives in a beeyard over the season, but I ( and my co-workers) found that it is not so, why this is we try to understand, because this could mean a better evaluation of colonies for us ( if those with less mites have some traits to be more resistant).

I believe in my case it´s the robber screens among other things, but it could be many reasons, behaviors of defense, how the colony was created, silent robbing, how prolific a queen is.....many.
Or just coincidence, foreign bees drifting in.


----------



## beepro

Another short update: 


Today is another happy day! I saw many new eggs laid by the newly released mated queen today. Yesterday I released her out of the 2 frames laying queen cage. Almost half of the frame got eggs in the cells already. 

At this rate of laying, I'm hoping by the end of next week the entire 4 frames will be all filled up. The other post where David mentioned about the daylight is getting shorter by the day, the newly installed queen will be very pressure to build up the hive population right now. No wonder she's laying like no tomorrow. I still have confidence that all this will work out fine!

The new queen pics are at the other post.


----------



## beepro

Another mini update: Last graft of the season!


Two days ago, I started my last graft in this season. Grafted 19 cells but only 4 took. Will be happy to
see one queen emerged from this batch. I'm trying to see if there is a possibility to do another round of the
II practice since there are so many new Cordovan drones emerged this week. 

If it is successful then I'm pushing my queen rearing days well into the late Autumn. If not then let this one
be a good learning experience to see what is the real cut off date for queen rearing here. These 4 cells, once they
are cap, will be put into the homemade mini fridge incubator to emerge. If I have too many virgins versus drones then
I will select the most biggest and yellow one of them all to II. Hopefully this will work out this late in the season!


----------



## beepro

A small update: Finally, not a single mite inside.



Been a long time to wait for a potential mite re-infestation on this small nuc
hive. I've check the hive again today and can never find one single free running
mite in there. With a reduced brood nest it should be easier to spot the mites. But
none at all with the latest round of new brood emergence cycle. There are plenty of newly emerged young bees as healthy as can be without any sign of a DWVs or mites attaching on them. All are as
healthy as they are. I was hoping to put the cap brood frames in to the small fridge incubator but seems like it is not needed anymore. Finally putting the small tweezers to rest.

The hive population had dwindled away quite a bit down to maybe around 2 frame of bees and a single cap brood frame because the foragers are still foraging now. With the supplement small heat pads on every day, they are still warm and cozy in the coldest night time temp hoovering around 70F inside. They should be picking up the temp after this new round of bees have all emerged. Two more week waiting for this to happen. With the heat pads on as insurance against any fluctuation in temp I believe it will work for them. As more new young bees emerged the hive temp should be more stabilized during the day and night time. During our ever so often off and on rainy days, more young bees will stay in to help with the next generation of developing larvae as the queen continue to lay away through out this winter. With no mites to bother the bees now I think the hive will continue to grow until the early Spring days. The rains and cooler weather should keep them inside more. I'll continue to monitor the feed and mites so that they will be fat and healthy through out.


----------



## beepro

Another update: The colony is still alive!

Background: A dwindling nuc hive with less than 2 frames of bees in a 20 watt small animal heat pads on 3 deep box set up. The heat pads are on 24 hours a day to see how such a hive will respond in a warmer than normal winter climate here.


After 2 weeks of waiting for the cap broods to emerge despite a dwindling hive, I went in for a thorough hive inspection today. What I found is nothing short of an amazement. The small patches of cap broods have all emerged. Now there are approximately 2000 new bees to replenish the already weaken hive. This is a good sign that the hive is recovering well at least for now. As soon as the cells are empty the newly mated robust queen quickly laid an egg in it. Sometimes there are more than 5 eggs in a single cell. Wonder how they are able to sort things out. More and more foragers that are past their foraging days, caught up with tending to the cap broods, are finally released to do their normal foraging activity. Got lock up in there as the mini-Autumn flow is passing away is no fun for them I'm sure.

As for the mites, I was expecting that these newly emerged bees are full of DWVs with mites all over. But contrary to my expectation there are none to be found. All newly emerged healthy bees have no mites on them! I don't know if this is good or bad as I have mixed feelings about it. In one way, it is good because the bees can continue to build up until mid-Jan. (new solstice) without any mite interference. But in another way, I have no more mites to continue my little oap experiment on next season. Guess I have to go back to the old Russian guy to buy some of his mite infested bees to continue with my mites and bees interaction mini experiment. So far it has proven that going the tf option you must removed the mites somehow to allow the big fat winter bees a chance to grow. Without that your hive will continue to dwindle away because the mites will collapse your colony. One member here asked me before when are you going to stop removing the mites off the hives? For this new bee emergence cycle I don't have to because there are no more mites for me to remove anymore. In a time when others are still battling their mites situation mine are under full control now. This will give me more time to tend to the bees' need. Don't we all want a healthy mite free hive? 

For those members especially the newbies here this is a real eye opener. This post is tailor to them with 1 or 2 hives. Don't allow a dwindling 2 framers to die anymore. Many do not know that in a mild winter environment with a 20 watt heat pads on even a dwindling hive can rebound that fast within such a small amount of time. Without the small heaters on this hive is a goner in mid-Oct for sure because the nightly temp dipped down to the low 40s for almost 2 consecutive weeks. All the cap broods without the heater bees will get the chilled broods already. I know that many are skeptics and critiques out there reading this thread. But nothing beats the evidence presented in my findings to this point. Because this is still an ongoing little heater experiment I will run it until next early Spring according to my local bee environment. We still have our yearly arctic chills to worry about so this is not a conclusion yet. Things are still holding good so far inside!

With the 20 watt heaters on, will they make it until early Spring hive expansion? For that you need to stay tune for the updates!



~2000 new bees added this emergence cycle:


----------



## beepro

They like it, they like it!

Hey, I don't choose for them they're the one who chose it. I just provide what is
critically needed in a most sensitive time like this. My hives build up not in April but after the
late solstice using Mel's method of beekeeping. Nobody glue their feet on the small heat pads. 
Chosen by my little smart bees! As the saying goes bees always know what is best for them.

What about us human? Still a skeptic?!



See the evidence:


----------



## MikeJ

"new solstice", "late solstice"? Maybe I am not getting what you mean? Summer solstice is always on the 20,21, or 22 of June - winter solstice is always on 21 or 22 of December...

Yes, it does appear that you may have been able to save the two framer. That is good (do remember that it isn't over yet though - 2,000 bees is far from a hive coming back to full strength - but it is a start).

But (you knew there would be one right?)...
The following is *my personal opinion*:
1) If I find 2 frames of brood in a hive going into winter - it is over. I do not have the weather to build that up. Even if I heat the hive (which would take a good deal more than a heating pad up here).

2) If I have more than one hive - the time and effort to do this (again my opinion) would be better spent combining the bees into another colony... then next summer split those hives to make up for the loss.


Of course I could be missing the entire point of your experiment.... if so - please post a summary.


----------



## beepro

I don't follow our normal set date on the calendar for the different solstices. It is the bees we're talking about so I tend to go with what they do inside the hives to update my posts and finding according to my local bee environment. Something will be off for sure if we compare the calendar solstice against the bee's hive arrangement. Because different locality will have different bee environment. I let the bees tell me when it is an early Spring or early winter for a particular year as they know what is best. This level of close inspection and observation nobody has done and posting the findings here before. This way everybody will have a chance to see the hive at close up through their normal 4 season bee cycles. Now come the little bee experiment trying to get rid of the mites-- the organic way.

Little bee experiment summary (IPM): For beekeeper with 1 or 2 hives to try. Trying to get rid of the mites using an IPM method to remove the mites while they're still inside the cap broods at any given time in the season. Doing so will distrupt the mites and bee cycles while still preserving the bees but not the mites. Most effective when the hives have gone into winter brood nest arrangement before the cold sets in. How to do that is by taking individual cap brood frames without the attaching bees into another small nuc hive. This is what we normally called the "mite bee bomb" nuc hive. 

After the mites got consolidated into a single cap brood or 2, these frames will be removed into a small homemade fridge incubator (free soda fridge on CL) for further mites removal after the bees emerged with a pair of small handheld tweezers. This way the emerged bees are not wasted and put back into the small colony. Personal opinion: Time is what most beekeepers don't have and don't want to spend on this process. For beekeepers with plenty of time this is another good option to try. At the height of this little experiment 7 nuc hives have been used successfully to remove the mites. The next season's hive numbers have been significantly increased without much brood re-infestation.


Conclusion so far: After 2 season of successful mite removal using this method, this posting is published in the 3rd season for the members who want to have a natural organic method of getting rid of the mites IF they don't want to treat. They don't mind to spend the time in managing their small apiary this way. It is better than letting the hive infected with mites while dwindling away without a form of treatment (either IPM or chemical) to die. Other than the normal beekeeper error on hive management (i.e. stepping on the laying queen, etc., no hives have been lost due to the normal mite removal management (IPM) using this method.


----------



## beepro

Mike, the small animal heat pads are use for another little bee experiment to find out whether or not a
small dwindling nuc hive can rebound with supplement heat. This is nothing new. On you tube vids the 
beekeeper living in the cold (maybe snow) country use 7 small red light bulbs to sustain his hives all winter
long. He's been doing it for several seasons now with good result so far.

Normally the new beekeepers or old timers will not try to save a dwindling hive like this. But if we know they are going to
die anyway when the arctic chills hit, why not give them a chance to rebound with supplement heat? This is my first attempt so far seeing the hive has recover a bit without the mites to interfere on the Spring build up already give me a peace of mind.
The 2 100 watt reptile ceramic black light bulbs are already here today. I will be installing tomorrow to bring up the hive temp to 80F day and night with a controller on. This little heater experiment already showed me lots of new bee infos and experience that I don't know before. The old timers already know but they will not disclosed their little bee secrets that easily. All they tell you is come to your senses and stop all this little experiment. Well, this is how I learn about my little bee world without a mentor here. Sometimes even a mentor don't know it all facing new bee challenges ahead!

Hive temp update: I have 2 temperature probes installed in the heater nuc hive. The 81.6F temp prob reading is the internal brood nest reading. And the 73.9F reading is the inside hive away from the brood nest reading. At one point the internal brood nest reading was 83.5F. What can you learn about the bees with these nightly temp reading?


Current hive temp at 10pm:


----------

