# Can bees truly survive with zero interventions?



## cavscout

I have been researching treatment free bee keeping and have come to the conclusion that hives cannot survive without some form of interventions. For the record I am a new beekeeper and now have treatment free queens in my hives. My goal is zero interventions but as the hive grows and matures it will eventually succumb to mites. In the wild hives split and have brood breaks or just die out and new swarms move in. My hives will continue to grow and if I do not provide brood breaks or split them the mites continue to grow as well. Wont the mites eventually win even with the best treatment free genetics? I would love to hear from any of you seasoned treatment free beekeepers.


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## Oldtimer

Not a treatment free beekeeper but would have thought if they are truly TF bees they would live indefinitely. I think Squarepeg may have some of those.

Other bees I read about are somewhat TF and as you say will do 2 or 3 seasons, this may be due to genetic changes that occur with each queen supersedure or there could be external factors that are favourable or less favourable. A wild population of these may be self sustaining as a population, rather than as individual hives.

The latest survey found survival from treatment free respondents was around 50%, or in other words a TF hive averages 2 years.

What I can comment on from experience is what happened pre varroa, and pre any form of chemical treatment. In my country anyway hives were essentially immortal. The only thing that killed them was the beekeeper, their house rotting completely, or some external event such as someone spraying nasty old fashioned poisons on their crop while it was in flower.


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## rwurster

The feral population here is booming. Seems like if you don't migrate to a place where there's a bunch of other hives with "purchased" queens and are inoculated to the gills your bees will do quite well. If I migrated to Cali I would treat for everything under the sun before I went, but I don't, so


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## cavscout

I live in a rural setting in the TX hill country. Most of our feral population dates back from my German ancestors that brought there own black bees with them. I don't know of any major bee and honey producers in this county. I do trap for ferals and add them to my yard. Most of the ferals look like Carnis (dark) to me.


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## Oldtimer

I have worked with these bees. (Not in your area, but I mean old style German AMM). How do you find their temperament?


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## Harley Craig

Oldtimer said:


> Not a treatment free beekeeper but would have thought if they are truly TF bees they would live indefinitely. QUOTE] Really? name any other living creature that lives indefinitely? The question is not if they will survive, because all living things die The question that should be asked is how long will they survive? That answer is subjective to a whole slew of other things besides treatments.


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## Oldtimer

It's in my first post.

As stated, pre varroa in my country, a beehive was essentially immortal, barring the kind of accidents I described.

Name any other creature that lives indefinitely? Sure. The anemone that lives in my marine aquarium is immortal. That's unless I kill it.


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## texanbelchers

Harley Craig said:


> Oldtimer said:
> 
> 
> 
> Not a treatment free beekeeper but would have thought if they are truly TF bees they would live indefinitely.
> 
> 
> 
> Really? name any other living creature that lives indefinitely? The question is not if they will survive, because all living things die The question that should be asked is how long will they survive? That answer is subjective to a whole slew of other things besides treatments.
Click to expand...

I'm sure he meant the hive as a whole, not the individual bees. In "the old days", were bee trees and other feral locations occupied continuously or did they abscond often like they do now?



Oldtimer said:


> The latest survey found survival from treatment free respondents was around 50%, or in other words a TF hive averages 2 years.


This is a difficult relationship. It could be the same 50% surviving every year. That would leave some TF hives 100% survival and others 100% loss. Has anyone accounted for that in their survey?


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## ToeOfDog

cavscout said:


> Wont the mites eventually win even with the best treatment free genetics?.


I am small cell and TF. A question for you to ponder: Where did the varroa come from and what is the difference in here and China? Were those bees able to survive and live with varroa over there? Have you read Kirk Webster?


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## ChuckReburn

cavscout said:


> I live in a rural setting in the TX hill country. Most of our feral population dates back from my German ancestors that brought there own black bees with them. I don't know of any major bee and honey producers in this county. I do trap for ferals and add them to my yard. Most of the ferals look like Carnis (dark) to me.


I doubt they have much black bee genetics in those feral bees, Alamo Area Beekeepers is pretty active in that area and buy enough bees from BeeWeaver that they deliver by truck in the spring.

I've encountered strong 4 and 5 year old colonies that were left unmanaged - in most it's obvious they have requeened themselves.


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## squarepeg

my oldest colony has survived 6 winters, and the guy i got my bees from has a couple that are almost 20 years old. on the other hand most of the colonies in my yards are pretty young so i can't claim personal experience with getting consistently long lived colonies.

part of this is because i have culled several colonies even after surviving 2 or 3 winters off treatments because they weren't very productive and/or too swarmy.

another part of this is because i had some really nice colonies that were made up in 2013, set up in an outyard, and split up for 2014 nuc production with grafted queens. 

after seeing the error of my ways all colonies will be considered for honey production until proven otherwise and only nonproductive/swarmy colonies and caught swarms will be used for splitting into nucs.

cavscout, it sounds like you may be in good location there. i wouldn't assume that your bees will eventually succumb to mites. some colonies might and others might not. i would consider giving them a chance and having a plan in place for making increase from your best ones to replace any losses.


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## Oldtimer

texanbelchers said:


> I'm sure he meant the hive as a whole, not the individual bees.


Oops, if he thought I meant individual bees I apologise for not explaining myself properly.



texanbelchers said:


> In "the old days", were bee trees and other feral locations occupied continuously or did they abscond often like they do now?


This is arguable I can only say that in my OPINION they were pretty permanent. I can say for sure that managed hives were permanent, barring beekeeper stupidity, poisonings etc. Pre varroa I worked for an outfit with 4000 hives and losses could be counted on your fingers, nearly always starvation (beekeeper stupidity). Winter queen failure was pretty much unknown till varroa showed up.



texanbelchers said:


> This is a difficult relationship. It could be the same 50% surviving every year. That would leave some TF hives 100% survival and others 100% loss. Has anyone accounted for that in their survey?


Excellent point and I am sure you will be correct. The "average" may be misleading in that regard.


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## cavscout

Oldtimer the ferals have an easy temperament. Chuckreborn my queens are Beeweaver. I plan on adding Anarchy lines in the spring. I dont think anyone has answered the question about non interventions. Can they survive without our assistance?


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## beeware10

from a lot of the posts I read most bees would benefit from less beekeeper assistance. lol


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## squarepeg

cavscout said:


> I have been researching treatment free bee keeping and have come to the conclusion that hives cannot survive without some form of interventions.
> 
> My goal is zero interventions but as the hive grows and matures it will eventually succumb to mites.
> 
> My hives will continue to grow and if I do not provide brood breaks or split them the mites continue to grow as well.


i think you will find that some do report having this experience while others do not.

since you are just starting out i'm assuming you don't have a surplus of drawn comb yet which will make swarm prevention challenging and your colonies will likely split themselves by swarming. this was my experience in the first years, but now that i have been able to prevent swarming in a number of colonies i haven't noticed any difference in survival.

as far as brood breaks go those can happen naturally depending on the weather and nectar flows. at my location winter usually provides about a 3 month brood break, and the summer dearth usually provides another 1 month brood break. mites appear to be more problematic in areas that support year round brooding.

some strains of bees do a better job at brooding up and down in response to the nectar flows, whereas other strains do not. providing syrup can confuse a colony into thinking that there is a strong flow on which in turn can affect their brooding behavior and i suppose the mite population as well.

i'm not sure what you mean exactly by 'intervention', but i am not using splitting or forced brood breaks as part of my management scheme, and i have not 'yet' seen indications that my colonies cannot survive due to my failure to incorporate these interventions. only time will tell how your bees will do in your location. 

as an aside, one almost common denominator among those having success keeping bees off treatments is that they avoid feeding syrup except when absolutely necessary. the thinking is that a natural diet bolsters immunity against viruses and the bees have a better opportunity to brood up and down in response to the natural flows.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

bees will reproduce,die, abscond, return and much more. Any beekeeper who wants to work and "keep" bees will Keep bees. Otherwise just plant forage for pollinators. It would be easier and cheaper to buy seed for plots and honey from a beekeeper than to buy or build it all and let the bees do their thing.


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## Harley Craig

How would you know what caused a bee tree to die without cutting it open. They could survive 10 yrs and one eaten queen on her mating flight and they dwindle away after about mid June here I get about a 50% return of queens from their mating flights.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

Harley Craig said:


> How would you know what caused a bee tree to die without cutting it open. They could survive 10 yrs and one eaten queen on her mating flight and they dwindle away after about mid June here I get about a 50% return of queens from their mating flights.


Exactly the point is bees are small and YOU can't help the bees if you are not checking and managing your bees. 

They are not like cattle or anything else for that matter.

Man either improves the bees chances of health and survival or he helps or causes them to crash. Beekeepers are not to be abusers but partners with the bees. They provide income, healthy food, pollination ect. We provide them with a dry suitable home, decent locations, food if they dearly need it, queens if they have an emergency, we split hives to follow the bees natural tendency to reproduce and we should avoid excess chemicals when possible.


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## squarepeg

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> Man either improves the bees chances of health and survival or he helps or causes them to crash.


i do try to stay out of their way in most respects except when it comes to swarming. letting them do that (as would splitting) pretty much defeats the purpose of trying to get a decent honey crop. 

for most colonies here that basically means checkerboarding the supers in late winter and then harvesting as much honey as possible while leaving them enough for their own needs.

i don't feel as though i'm either helping them to survive nor causing them to crash by doing this, and that what i'm doing and not doing is pretty much 'survival neutral'.

helping the colony that ends up hopelessly queenless become queenright again is different matter. trying to improve stock by rearing queens from the strongest colonies may be another example, but that's debatable.

i'm also watchful and prepared to deal with a problem hive before it can cause trouble for neighboring colonies, but that rarely comes up.

for this year's starter colonies, i provided a little syrup after the new queens got mated because that coincided with our summer dearth and i wanted to facilitate brooding. a quart or two did the trick and most of them have now built up to wintering size and are likely to get a super filled for overwintering on the fall flow.

keeping bees off treatments doesn't necessarily mean not checking and managing the bees or not expecting them to be productive.


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## lharder

If you only have a couple of hives going into winter, no matter your techniques, you are likely to have a complete failure at some point, treating or not. Beekeeping in this day seems to require more backup than it used to but its doable. Michael Palmer's video on the sustainable apiary is important viewing, treating or not. 

At this point, with unproven genetics (I found the best I could), I have gone from an increase of 1 to 8 nucs the first year, 28 the second to go along with the 6 full size hives I have from my overwintered nucs. Point is, is that I can have 50 % losses, and still increase the size of my apiary. The gems that shine through the testing process will be valuable. Eventually the genetics will settle and I'll know the ratio of nucs to production colonies I will need. You also need to look at failure differently. A dead or weak hive provides resources to surviving ones. 

Finally, there are all sorts of examples of success. Why ignore them in your analysis?


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## mike bispham

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> Exactly the point is bees are small and YOU can't help the bees if you are not checking and managing your bees.
> 
> They are not like cattle or anything else for that matter.
> 
> Man either improves the bees chances of health and survival or he helps or causes them to crash. Beekeepers are not to be abusers but partners with the bees. They provide income, healthy food, pollination ect. We provide them with a dry suitable home, decent locations, food if they dearly need it, queens if they have an emergency, we split hives to follow the bees natural tendency to reproduce and we should avoid excess chemicals when possible.


Making increase via a systematic health-seeking selection scheme is another, and more fundamental form of management, and will make a vast difference compared to the entirely unnatural practice of making splits more or less at random. In this bees and cattle are no different.

Mike (UK)


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## mike bispham

squarepeg said:


> after seeing the error of my ways all colonies will be considered for honey production until proven otherwise and only nonproductive/swarmy colonies and caught swarms will be used for splitting into nucs.


... using only selected genetic material SP? I'm harping on here I know... but all the time this idea is left out, beginners are forming the view that bee husbandry entails only 'splitting'. 

Its critical that we scotch the widespread view that 'husbandry' entails 'looking after bees' and shift it to 'involves looking after bee genetics'

'Treatment free' is about not having to treat because you have been attending to genetic husbandry. Period.

Mike (UK)


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## squarepeg

the 'error' was determining in advance that one yard would be used for honey production and the second yard would be used for nuc production. the result was that some potentially productive hives got split up into nucs. 

i realized that using one yard for this and another yard for that was too arbitrary and what makes more sense is to give every colony a chance to be productive and deselect the laggards a la mike palmer's approach. 

had i done that last year i would have more colonies going into their third winter and the average age of my colonies would be a little higher. no huge crisis there but colony longevity is a metric that i am interested in and looking to see if i experience more problems with varroa as the colonies get older.


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## Richard Cryberg

squarepeg said:


> after seeing the error of my ways all colonies will be considered for honey production until proven otherwise and only nonproductive/swarmy colonies and caught swarms will be used for splitting into nucs.
> .


Splitting swarmy, nonproductive colonies is an excellent practice as long as you give them a queen raised from one of your best colonies. If you let those splits raise their own queen you are selectively breeding for colonies that are nonproductive and swarmy and in a few years will have nothing else. Never raise a queen from a swarm cell for this reason. Every time you raise a queen from a swarm cell you are selectively breeding for swarming.


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## squarepeg

agreed dr. cryberg. these splits are provided with grafted cells from colonies with proven survival and production, as well as having responded positively to swarm prevention measures. many thanks for following here.


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## 1102009

>providing syrup can confuse a colony into thinking that there is a strong flow on which in turn can affect their brooding behavior and i suppose the mite population as well.<

Interesting! What about leaving them some of their own honey the whole year through? This will be store, not nectar, is the effect the same?


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## squarepeg

SiWolKe said:


> What about leaving them some of their own honey the whole year through? This will be store, not nectar, is the effect the same?


i believe so. i tend to have honey on the hives all year round. when i make nucs/splits i try to give honey frames to them. going into winter i'll give honey frames from the heavy hives to the light ones. this is not only to ensure they have enough to keep from starving, but also because the reserves are used for brooding as they come out of winter thereby making the colonies stronger for the spring honeyflow. 

as mentioned, i gave some thin syrup to starter colonies this year because my queenrearing schedule put the new queen's getting mated just as we were entering our summer dearth and i wanted to stimulate brooding in order to get them building up for fall.

other than situations like that, i like to let the colonies brood up and down on the availability or not of natural flows. what i find is that changes in brooding typically preceed the onset of the flows and the dearths by a few weeks suggesting that these bees are programmed to anticipate those changes.


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## Harley Craig

lharder said:


> A dead or weak hive provides resources to surviving ones.


at this point I'm actually hoping to loose one or two this winter so I have the available comb to help prevent swarming with some of my stronger colonies come spring.


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## squarepeg

Harley Craig said:


> at this point I'm actually hoping to loose one or two this winter so I have the available comb to help prevent swarming with some of my stronger colonies come spring.


understood harley and lharder. while a loss is a loss, the resources can definitely be parlayed into strengthening the surviving hives. for those of us limited to a given number of hives the culling of the ones who can't make it also serves make room for more promising stock, and over time the overall vigor of the apiary may be improved. i'm just now at the point where i believe i am seeing that happen here.


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## jwcarlson

squarepeg said:


> i don't feel as though i'm either helping them to survive nor causing them to crash by doing this, and that what i'm doing and not doing is pretty much 'survival neutral'.


You're helping to limit the obvious "danger" or roll of the dice that is getting a queen returned from mating flights. 
Selecting for bees that aren't good at mating flights is what it sounds like to me.  

Kidding obviously.


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## Harley Craig

jwcarlson said:


> Selecting for bees that aren't good at mating flights is what it sounds like to me.
> 
> Kidding obviously.



I know this is in jest, but I don't think you can select for dragonfly resistance. LOL my have are 20 ft and less from a pond, when dragonfly population hits it's peak about mid june, my mating success drops big time.


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## squarepeg




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## ChuckReburn

cavscout said:


> Oldtimer the ferals have an easy temperament. Chuckreborn my queens are Beeweaver. I plan on adding Anarchy lines in the spring. I dont think anyone has answered the question about non interventions. Can they survive without our assistance?


Can they survive without our assistance? In general yes = bees can survive without our assistance. Can YOUR bees survive in YOUR box without assistance [indefinitely]? No.

I run BeeWeaver, Anarchy, and some very strong feral stock. I've worked hives with some of the TF gurus and they do intervene routinely with a universal panacea - they requeen when there is an issue (Poor brood pattern, DWV, aggressive, runny, etc.). If you do not requeen with young strong genetics then you have left them to work with genetics that are likely lacking.

Virgin queen genetics will vary within a line, drone genetics will vary and of course she breeds with multiple drones = There's a primordial soup of genetics amongst the bees in a hive and additional variation from hive to hive using sister queens. Starting with good genetics stacks the odds in your favor (more than you likely yet realize). But at some point even the best genetics will show signs of aging. I've had some hives handle a supercedure just fine and others go queenless. If you aren't going to breed your own queens then you need a queen breeder (or several) that you trust and believe in that can reliably provide you with replacements when you need them. 

When you move away from having "X" number of hives and begin thinking of them as a collection of resources, "intervention" becomes part of the game plan and "survive" looks a little different.


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## jwcarlson

Harley Craig said:


> I know this is in jest, but I don't think you can select for dragonfly resistance. LOL my have are 20 ft and less from a pond, when dragonfly population hits it's peak about mid june, my mating success drops big time.


That would frustrate me greatly. We have some a stone's throw from the Mississippi and haven't had any issue with them. Maybe they're too busy on the river eating whatever they usually eat.

I don't like seeing them buzzing around my yard, but on occasion there will be one or two. I'd have my mating nucs somewhere else if I had that situation.


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## lharder

I had a similar problem this year Harley. It could have been my lousy queens, but the wasps have built up big time this year and they were always around picking off crawlers and looking for an opening. They managed to take out one new nuc I put together and I'm sure they took out a few queens as well. The nests weren't on my property or they would have been gone. 

SP, I have a new yard this year and as its turned out, I put my nucs out there. So much easier to move. But there was some rationalization with that strategy. I don't have proven tf stock, though I brought in queens from programs that cared about varroa, so they can be considered resistant. My first hives are going through their second winter this year. If they become mite ridden, I don't want the new nucs exposed to them. Plus nucs tend to get beat up on in a dearth if they are around big hives. So at this point I will keep the age classes separate. 

Having any hive that survives its second winter will be a bit of a milestone for me. Managing a 2nd year hive will also be new to me. They will be my breeding stock for next year, I will also raise some daughters from queens I brought in this year.


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## Michael Bush

>I have been researching treatment free bee keeping and have come to the conclusion that hives cannot survive without some form of interventions. 

There are an awful lot of us doing it for it to be impossible. According to Tom Seeley's latest works, the density of feral bees in the Arnot forest, which he has been studying since the 1970's is the same now as it was in the '70s.

>Wont the mites eventually win even with the best treatment free genetics?

Genetics is important at least a little to everything--wintering ability, being in tune with the flows, hardiness, vigor etc., tracheal mites and probably somewhat in regards to Varroa, but in my experience it's not the deciding factor in Varroa issues.

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


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## Harley Craig

jwcarlson said:


> That would frustrate me greatly. We have some a stone's throw from the Mississippi and haven't had any issue with them. Maybe they're too busy on the river eating whatever they usually eat.
> 
> I don't like seeing them buzzing around my yard, but on occasion there will be one or two. I'd have my mating nucs somewhere else if I had that situation.



I think I'm going to load up some 410 loads with salt and do some house cleaning next yr. It's a very small " pond" it was originally a little duck pond about 30 ft diameter about 3.5 ft deep. Had goldfish in it but two yrs ago it dried completely up and killed them all. Maybe next yr I'll re- stock with gold fish or some small bluegills to help with the water bug population. Any given day I would see 40-50 dragon flies out there.............then again, maybe that is why everyone else around me freaks out about small hive beetles and I don't really see more than a few in my hives???? at some point I want to move my mating nucs to a yard about 10 miles away near my buddies place. He maintains TF bees for several years now and has a lot of feral bee tree colonies that have made it through at least 5 winters now, would love to run my queens under some of those drones.


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## rwurster

Harley Craig said:


> ... when dragonfly population hits it's peak about mid june, my mating success drops big time.


Around here it's the emergence of robber flies. My queen mating success goes from 85% down to about 40% when they come onto the scene.


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## Solarbeez

I have a question concerning a supercedure which I think took place inside this hive. 
http://solarbeez.com/2015/10/24/the-grand-kids-are-back/
The Grand Kids Log hive attracted a natural swarm on May 13. It built up natural comb without any help from me giving it sugar water, but then it stopped building comb sometime in June-July. In September I could see the traffic at the entrance was decreasing. Looking through the observation window I could see very few bees inside. I just knew this hive was going down, but in early October the number of bees started increasing and now there's a bunch.
Since I'm treatment/inspection free on this hive, I'm wondering if the queen just took a long brood break (possibly a natural mite control) or did the colony supercede? If the colony superceded, wouldn't the old queen have laid the new queen eggs? And the drones I started seeing, wouldn't they be the brothers of the new queens? So the virgin queen goes out to get mated, surely she's not going to mate with her brothers? And yet at this time of year, there can't be too many drones in a congregation area, or are there?


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## Harley Craig

Probably more than you think. Primary swarms usually have older queens so supercedure is not uncommon later on love your hives BTW

Edit : just looked at your linked blog post those drones could have been from anywhere in my limited experience when you see a lot of drone interest in a particular hive they typically have a queen getting ready to mate or just had one return


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

I was kind of raised that doing nothing was the same thing as killing the colony yourself. It is a waste of time and money to let a colony die when it can be helped. Do we breed from this colony no. A colony managed by a good beekeeper never really dies it just leaves its daughter to continue the work. Splits are the beekeepers and the bees best tool for survival.


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## Solarbeez

Harley Craig said:


> Edit : just looked at your linked blog post those drones could have been from anywhere in my limited experience when you see a lot of drone interest in a particular hive they typically have a queen getting ready to mate or just had one return


So the drones could be from another hive just checking out the prospective debutantes?


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## lemmje

Tennessee's Bees LLC said:


> A colony managed by a good beekeeper never really dies it just leaves its daughter to continue the work.


And if it is a weak-stock queen, you can always pinch the queen and give them a frame of eggs from a strong-stock hive, that way you keep the work force and the resources alive with a better bred queen.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

lemmje said:


> And if it is a weak-stock queen, you can always pinch the queen and give them a frame of eggs from a strong-stock hive, that way you keep the work force and the resources alive with a better bred queen.


Exactly, and both the bees and you benefit.


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## Harley Craig

Solarbeez said:


> So the drones could be from another hive just checking out the prospective debutantes?


drones are regularly accepted in any hive with enough food to support them.


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## julieandwadeshelton

What effect do dragonflies have on bee mating? Just curious..


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## DPBsbees

julieandwadeshelton said:


> What effect do dragonflies have on bee mating? Just curious..


They can eat your queen.


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## rwurster

Dragon flies and robber flies drop my queen mating success to less than 40% come mid-June - August.


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## Kamon A. Reynolds

rwurster said:


> Dragon flies and robber flies drop my queen mating success to less than 40% come mid-June - August.


Wow that is intense!


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## Fusion_power

Just noting for future reference that my bees are eventually going to die. Never mind that they have not died for 11 seasons now. Well, maybe I should say that the individual bees die but the colonies are still here and going strong.

If I can keep bees and produce a decent honey crop totally treatment free and Squarepeg can do the same and other beekeepers in the area are doing it too year after year, then it is not just a one or two year thing.


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## jadebees

I've never noticed dragonfly problems. We have something here called a scorpion fly. It will snatch an adult bee right out of the air while it's flying. Thankfully they're not selective they'll just get any bee that's moving slow enough to grab and suck it dry. And 2 or 3 just hang around each hive all summer. I don't think they can eat too many as they are hardly bigger than a bee.


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## WBVC

I have a couple of trees out back that bees swarmed into. Both tree hives had a lot of summer activity but none come spring. The first inhabited tree remained empty of bees the following year. It will be interesting if last years bee tree gets chosen again or not. I wish there were some way of having bees live out the winter in them.


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## RayMarler

Fusion_power said:


> Just noting for future reference that my bees are eventually going to die. Never mind that they have not died for 11 seasons now. Well, maybe I should say that the individual bees die but the colonies are still here and going strong.
> 
> If I can keep bees and produce a decent honey crop totally treatment free and Squarepeg can do the same and other beekeepers in the area are doing it too year after year, then it is not just a one or two year thing.


I'm thinking that Location pays a big part of that success, and not just that you flood the area with swarms either. I'm thinking it's the area's environmental character that helps a lot in whether treatment free works or not. Granted, many many other factors involved as well, but I think the environmental location has a lot to do with it also.


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## Riverderwent

RayMarler said:


> I'm thinking that Location pays a big part of that success, and not just that you flood the area with swarms either. I'm thinking it's the area's environmental character that helps a lot in whether treatment free works or not. Granted, many many other factors involved as well, but I think the environmental location has a lot to do with it also.


I wonder what causes one location to be better than another for treatment free success.


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## RayMarler

Now don't get me wrong, Location is not the only factor, but I've had VSH bees here in central valley California and they did better, but I've not been able to go totally treatment free with any kind of success here. And since SquarePeg and Fusion_Power are both in Alabama, I'm just wondering if location must have a good amount of input to the equation of TF beekeeping. I seem to remember reading a report at one time that shows that some locations seem to work better than others for TF beekeeping. 

There is always the possibility that I myself, the management that I've used, is the problem. I know Fusion_Power has genetics, and runs 11 frames small cell, and seems to think that that is a good portion of his success. I'm just thinking that it is also his location that helps.


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## Fusion_power

The only significant difference in my location is that I am not flooded with commercial bees brought in by the truckload and I made a point to push as many swarms as possible into the trees in this area several years ago. I don't have to deal with an excess of varroa brought from who knows where and I am able to mate queens with consistent mite tolerant traits. It also helps that most beekeepers in this area are too lazy to treat for mites. This means they are inadvertently helping the process of keeping only mite tolerant bees. I sold colonies to 3 local beekeepers to get them started and since I don't treat, they don't treat.


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## RayMarler

Yes, that is a biggie for sure. We get hives from the entire nation coming here in the fall to over winter for the almonds, and what doesn't come in the fall, comes just before almond bloom so they arrive around the end of January and into the middle of February.

Also, what is the chemical composition in your area? I get aerial mosquito spraying for three months in late summer, do you? I think the entire central valley does. I live in farmland (rice) so get aerial sprays for herbicide and pesticide (mosquito sprays) and fertilizers.

What is your humidity averages in summer and fall? It's hot and dry here, I'm betting you are hot and more humid?

I'm sure there are other differences as well, such as the forage around the area for one.

I seem to remember a report I read sometime back that humidity in the hives or the surrounding area as well as heat plays a role in the strength of mite levels in hives. I'm sorry, I can't remember where I read these reports but I think they were posted here in the forums in the last year.


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## mike bispham

RayMarler said:


> Yes, that is a biggie for sure. We get hives from the entire nation coming here in the fall to over winter for the almonds, and what doesn't come in the fall, comes just before almond bloom so they arrive around the end of January and into the middle of February.


FusionPower is spot on: the critical factor to _treatment free_ is freedom from vulnerable genetics. Period. 

Of course you also need strains suited to your location.... and yes, freedom from poisoning...

Mike


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