# Theoretical TF apiary management



## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

I'm going to buy some 50 odd nucs from a commercial beekeeper in the coming weeks when he brings his hives down from mountain pastures to hibernate on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. Most of the local beekeepers move their hives to follow the various flows, basically going uphill as it gets hotter and moving back down to the plains in as it cools down. I'm a hobbyist so that's not an option and I will be working with three permanent apiaries all within 20km of each other and one of which is near my home. The two outyards are in the back of beyond with no hives (commercial or otherwise) within miles. The home apiary, on the other hand has a few hobbyists nearby with treatment-dependent hives.

My objective is to develop into a sideliner and use TF to produce and sell nucs in the future. The only honey I will be taking off the hives for the forseeable future will be for my own consumption and to compensate the landowners so it will be negligible. Given the mild winters and availability of forage, no feeding should be required.

I will be acquiring treatment-dependent stock of the local iberian bee with contaminated wax and big cells. The intention is to move to natural wax, small cell and no treatments with a minimum of losses. In order to do this I had thought of the following apiary management:

Home apiary: Sorting apiary where I identify those nucs with TF potential. These are then transferred to Outyard 1. This apiary will be using treatments (OA dribble, sugar dusting, brood breaks) to keep TF failures alive as production units.

Outyard 1: Treatment-free apart from sugar dusting for mite counts. The better nucs are moved to Outyard 2 and the failures go back to the Home apiary for treatment.

Outyard 2: Treatment-free apart from sugar dusting for mite counts. Further selection to isolate the nucs from which I will breed queens. Failures go back to Home apiary or Outyard 1 depending on level of infestation. The interesting thing about this outyard is that bees have survived and thrived for four years in three abandoned hives (the owner fell ill and gave them to the landowner who hasn't gone anywhere near them) which I will also be managing.

Basically, I want to keep my nucs/hives alive as production units until I can produce TF queens to requeen them. Meanwhile I will be phasing out the big cell frames for natural wax frames and using the home apiary and Outyard 1 to prevent infested hives from potentially overwhelming healthy ones.

I will be using Langstroth mediums with top entrances and trays in the bottom board for mite counts. If I can find a supplier of reasonably priced timber I will be using 8 frame hives on the Michael Bush pattern otherwise it will have to be the standard 10 frame boxes.

I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism or suggestions.


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## Andrew Dewey (Aug 23, 2005)

I wish you well - I'll let others who have been successful with TF speak to your strategy.

Starting TF from treatment dependent stock is hard - most who have done it experienced heavy losses along the way. Small cell is a fringe concept with some swearing by and others at it. I am starting to mix in some foundationless frames to avoid the contaminated wax issue and to let the bees draw whatever size cells they want.

This is a grand exercise for a hobbyist. Whatever you do please don't take on debt that depends upon the bees ultimately making a profit for you.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Snowhitsky, it sounds like everyone around you treats. There could be a reason for this.

Can you find anyone at all local who does not treat? If so, this would be a much better starting point. Not just from the bee type etc but also to establish it can actually work where you are, plus see what they are doing that works and follow that.

The abandoned hives you mentioned that are thriving, the harsh reality is you do not know if they have really thrived, or if they are the same bees as the originals, so their existence should not be taken as proof that you can bet the ranch on your endeavour financially. 

I would echo what Andrew said about money. 50 hives plus plant is a big investment. If your treatment free ideals do not result in a profit financially, you could actually lose a lot of money. I talk from experience, I tried treatment free beekeeping in an area not suited to it and it cost me quite a bit.

All the same, I encourage you very much with your endeavour and will follow your posts to see how it goes. But to me it would be important to be financially aware, plus attempt to find and make use of a local TF beekeeper if one exists. If none exist at all, be doubly careful about how you invest.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Thanks for the replies.

Nobody does TF around these parts as most beekeepers are commercial and move their hives around a lot. It just isn't feasible. The hobbyists don't do TF out of ignorance. They literally haven't heard of it and a fair number of them just look blank when you mention the Internet...

The two outyards are isolated. I've checked. Most of the commercials have their apiaries around 20km further north on the other side of a mountain range.

I'm trying to hedge the risks of TF by maintaining on apiary as a fallback for those hives that can't deal with TF. As soon as I detect a risk of failure they will be rotated back from the outyards to the home apiary for treatment. This hopefully will save the hive for future requeening, spare successful TF hives from massive re-infestation and allow for artificial selection of succesful bees.

Thanks for your concerns over the financial risks but to be honest, I can afford to lose the investment. I wouldn't be jumping for joy if I did but I have the cash and what the hell, what's the alternative? Head for Las Vegas and a have a wild party? Hmmmm, thinking about it that doesn't sound like a bad alternative!


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## cristianNiculae (Jul 2, 2013)

> I talk from experience, I tried treatment free beekeeping in an area not suited to it and it cost me quite a bit.


Oldtimer, how would you describe an medium infestation of 3% at this time of the year? Is this suitable for TF?

I haven't treated since last Autumn and even then I only used OAV... not much of a mite fall. I'm asking as I have only 2 seasons experience. I don't necessarily aim to go TF but plan to go with a very minimalistic schema - one OA dribble in Autumn. It seems my bees tolerate high infestations in my area (?): I have one nuc with high % - 20 that is thriving and has lots of honey. Anyway... I treated it . So far I don't see varroa as being much of a problem; at least there are so many ways to avoid them(thanks to this discussion forum).

The only problem I see is the amount of time/gear/money dedicated to treatments.

Regards,
Cristian


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Sounds like you covered all your bases as much as you can Snowhitsky looks like you will be in for the long haul. Hey, trade my bees and bee time for a party in Vegas? Me, I'd take the bee time it does me a lot more good.

Cristian, I just can't answer your question, as my own TF venture eventually failed I don't have the qualifications to answer, especially how it would pan out long term. However last autumn ='s 1 year ago? If so 3% infestation is a pretty good effort thus far on your bees behalf and hives can function reasonably well at that level. Pleased to hear it's going well for you hope those queens are doing good .


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## cristianNiculae (Jul 2, 2013)

Oldtimer said:


> However last autumn ='s 1 year ago? If so 3% infestation is a pretty good effort thus far on your bees behalf and hives can function reasonably well at that level. Pleased to hear it's going well for you hope those queens are doing good .


The "Mother" is also doing great: starting from a 3 frame nuc in May, has almost filled the whole box by now using only foundation less. I think it's also the locality factor involved here. I'm lucky to have only stationary beekeeping around and a great unpolluted area right at the bottom of the mountains.

... yes a year ago


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

:thumbsup:


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

It sounds like a reasonable plan.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

I am wondering if you have expanded your search for stock as much as possible? Are feral hives in your locality or from a similar environment available? Abandoned or neglected hives that have some of the first culls already done?


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Saltybee said:


> I am wondering if you have expanded your search for stock as much as possible? Are feral hives in your locality or from a similar environment available? Abandoned or neglected hives that have some of the first culls already done?


Feral hives are hard to come by largely due to local agricultural practices. Imagine acres of almond and olive groves kept "clean" by ploughing and herbicides in an arid climate similar to California's. Basically , apart from the odd oasis of uncultivated land like my patch most ferals would die of starvation before varroa had a chance to get at them. You are more likely to find them up in the mountains but the park rangers take a rather dim view of people taking anything out and the fines are rather hefty.

I currently have hives from two local commercials that are doing OK with minimal treatment and two swarms from a neighbour's apiary that are doing quite well (probably due to the brood break). The ones that really interest me are the hives at Outyard 2 which have been continuously occupied for 4 years without anyone so much as opening them. The landowner lives about 60m away and has never seen them without bees so I see it as a hopeful sign of a varroa resistant strain. My first inspection revealed plentiful stocks honey, comb filling every available space and plenty of the aggresive iberian bees. I didn't have the tools to do a sugar shake but i didn't spot any mites nor DWV bees so I'm keeping my fingers crossed until the next visit.


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## Slow Drone (Apr 19, 2014)

You might consider raising queens from the abandoned hives, might be your only source of treatment free bees in the area. I think you have a good understanding of what you are trying to do, good common sense way to go about it in my opinion.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Snowhitsky said:


> Feral hives are hard to come by largely due to local agricultural practices. Imagine acres of almond and olive groves kept "clean" by ploughing and herbicides in an arid climate similar to California's. Basically , apart from the odd oasis of uncultivated land like my patch most ferals would die of starvation before varroa. . . .


Uhh, and why do you think this region will support a new concentration of bees?
You are going to need a whole lot more than a "patch" to keep three 15-hive drops happy.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

The two outyards are situated on land at the foot of mountain ranges with good pasture except from June to September. My own land is on the terraces of a wide and deep dry river bed which due to difficulty of access and building restrictions has been largely uncultivated for a couple of generations now so there's enough wild flowers to keep a fair number of hives. It's not as good as the outyards but it will do. So basically, no ferals in most of the plains except along the dry-river beds and these are mostly from managed treatment-dependent hives. Ferals exist in the mountains but the few access roads are regularly patrolled by park rangers.

Also, bear in mind that apis mellifera iberiensis is well adapted to the arid conditions and produces abundant honey from seemingly nothing.


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## Saltybee (Feb 9, 2012)

The only place to begin is the beginning. Will follow your efforts if you keep posting.


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## JWChesnut (Jul 31, 2013)

Beg, steal or borrow some old brood frames and put out some boxes as swarm traps. One old frame per box. The rest empty (but wired) frames. See what you get.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

"I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism or suggestions."
For my goals and level of risk aversion, I would pursue two tracks: Quickly breeding as many queens as practical from the three survivor hives in outyard 2 and placing swarm traps near the foot of the mountain range in the outyards. I would rather build up than build down, and I would not try to be part treatment free and part treatment, particularly if the goal is to sell treatment free stocks to others. Others would disagree with me. I hope that what you decide to do works for you.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Riverderwent said:


> "I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism or suggestions."
> For my goals and level of risk aversion, I would pursue two tracks: Quickly breeding as many queens as practical from the three survivor hives in outyard 2 and placing swarm traps near the foot of the mountain range in the outyards. I would rather build up than build down, and I would not try to be part treatment free and part treatment, particularly if the goal is to sell treatment free stocks to others. Others would disagree with me. I hope that what you decide to do works for you.


 why not? As long as he can keep them separated, if he can keep them alive on treatments elsewhere as production hives it's diversifying his investment. If he treatment free yard fails his whole enterprise wont go under.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Those 3 hives if as strong as you say could probably be split into 10, 15, or perhaps even 20 nucs. Or, you could study up queen raising techniques and actually raise queen cells in those hives to put into nucs made from hives you buy. They should be mated at the site where the 3 hives are, if you can get permission to do all that.

Other than collecting ferals from the forest that is the most likely route to achieve your goal. Commercial bees? Frankly I don't fancy your chances of success. Commercial beekeepers don't spend large sums of money on treatment just cos they feel they have too much money. They do it cos they have to.

I use a "low treatment" regime so I can identify the most mite resistant bees, sadly, when I find one I consider mite resistant it is nearly always an aggressive one. However you are breeding for yourself, not for sale, so once you have a resistant bee strain, you can then start selecting for other traits such as gentleness.

Having said all that, I still think your venture is high risk, in terms of achieving TF bees, because of what is going on around you, and because the exact circumstances of the 3 hives are not certain plus may not be able to be duplicated on a larger scale. But your plan is solid and worst case you will also not lose everything, so all the best with it.


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Harley Craig said:


> why not? As long as he can keep them separated, if he can keep them alive on treatments elsewhere as production hives it's diversifying his investment. If he treatment free yard fails his whole enterprise wont go under.


That's how I would "use TF to produce and sell nucs in the future." Others would do it differently.


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## Harley Craig (Sep 18, 2012)

Riverderwent said:


> That's how I would "use TF to produce and sell nucs in the future." Others would do it differently.


sorry wasn't trying to be arguementitive , I realise everyone's thoughts are their own I was genually curious as to why your approach would be different. I seems to me getting a buch of dirt cheap hives pinching the queens in them and giving them queens cells raised out of the unmanaged hives would be the quickest route to accomplish his business model. I thought maybe I was over looking something ?


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Oldtimer. 

Thanks for your comments. I'm under no illusion as to the difficulties I will be facing given my limited experience and nor do I expect to be making any money in the short term. I'm in for the long haul and if all else fails i know from previous experience I will enjoy the actual learning process. 

As for varroa resistant bees being mean, that's not really a problem over here as apis mellifera iberiensis is mean and aggresive by definition. I like to describe them as Killer Bees without the sense of humour! I remember watching in horror a youtube video of a German lady in shorts and a T-shirt demonstrating the sugar roll procedure. I can guarantee you she wouldn't have dared do it with our local bees without a full protective suit and a couple of layers underneath as well! You may consider aggresive bees as unsuitable but since it's all I've ever known, I just see it as part of the job to pile on the layers and sweat a lot.

I have a hunch that agression may just be one of the requirements for pest resistance. No facts to support it, just a hunch. Also bear in mind that the asian wasp has caused serious damage to apiaries in France and is spreading into Spain. The drier parts of Spain like my area seem to be an unsuitable habitat for the asian wasp but should they adapt I suspect mean bees may also help keep losses to a minimum.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Harley Craig said:


> sorry wasn't trying to be arguementitive , I realise everyone's thoughts are their own I was genually curious as to why your approach would be different. I seems to me getting a buch of dirt cheap hives pinching the queens in them and giving them queens cells raised out of the unmanaged hives would be the quickest route to accomplish his business model. I thought maybe I was over looking something ?


I'm with Harley on this one. My basic business plan is to go for TF which I do see as the future of beekeeping however I am also aware I may fail at TF for any number of reasons (locality, bad luck but most probably my own incompetence) so I will use treatment as a back-up. 

The reason I do not intend to solely use the apparently mite resistant hives to build up my TF business is that I do not want to put all my eggs in the same basket. Only actual mite monitoring over a period of time will prove whether those hives truly are resistant or whether they've just been lucky. While I attempt to establish the facts I prefer to start selecting commercial hives for TF characteristics in parallel.


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## cristianNiculae (Jul 2, 2013)

I'm pretty sure that this can work just that you have to aim for at least 50 hives. You have probably read Kirk Webster articles, if not do it.
Strength is in numbers and young queens. I would aim for 100 hives. However it's quite a work and as I'm too lazy I intend to go on a less radical way - apply an OA dribble in Autumn. That way I can easily reset the numbers.
It's not hard to keep TF bees. The hard thing is to also make honey.

Another hard thing is the mental attitude, avoid getting fixed ideas(talking from my own experience).


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## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Harley Craig, your question was not argumentative at all to me. I'm flattered you asked. My response sounded snippy when I read it again. I would go all in on the treatment free approach rather than trying to use a dual track. I don't want to treat for several reasons. Unless I become convinced that it is necessary, I would not enjoy doing it. With some treatments, I would have concerns about chemicals in the honey, wax, and equipment. I think that treatment may result in the increasing need for more and harsher treatments. Over time, I believe that bees that are not treated will develop resistance to Varroa, and I would like to be part of that solution. I don't want to control what other people do in this regard, and I believe that they could be right and I could be wrong. If I am wrong and the only way that bees can be raised is with treatment, there appear to be plenty of people who will use treatment as long as it is economically viable to do so. In that case, I will either treat bees or start raising free range chickens. Thanks for asking. Cheers.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

I like the plan, aside from the treating part. If it were me (I started out in a way similar to this, 20 packages though) I'd focus on rapid splitting (sounds like you have an excellent climate for it) and recombining rather than treating. Split every hive multiple ways that shows promise, and combine every hive that doesn't. Pretty quickly, your comb inventory will build and you'll have larger successful hives that are treatment free. 

In fact, what you're trying to do, nucs, is quite a bit of what I do. Honey is a somewhat secondary product. I found that I could make nucs a lot more reliably than I could make honey. Nucs were already done when there was no honey to be had. It led me to learn the most efficient ways I have found to multiply and led to the development of what I call "Expansion Model Beekeeping." Check out my website for some ideas. http://parkerfarms.biz/


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Solomon. I read your website from A-Z a while back. Nicely laid out and informative, thanks for sharing the information and your thoughts.

The local climate allows the bees to work almost continually throughout the year. Snow and frost are kind of abstract concepts over here. The hives might take a well earned rest for a couple of weeks towards Xmas and the start of January before the almonds bloom. Then we have a two or three weeks of 80-130 kmph winds in February and that is pretty much it in terms of no-flying weather. From mid-June to September there is a "dearth" due to drought but that means the bees aren't accumulating stores, they usually bring in enough nectar to keep the hive ticking over until the rains return in the autumn.

Frequent splitting is definitely the plan but I'm not sure about the reason for the combining. Is it to free up nucs or make stronger hives for honey collecting? I'd prefer to make use of the workforce and requeen.

Honey harvesting isn't my goal in the short term as it would require too much investment (extracting equipment, honey house to meet stringent EU regulations...etc) and depending on my employment status, too much time. For now, I'll leave it for the bees and once the business is actually starting to generate some cash, I'll reinvest it into honey production.


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## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Some of the reasons for recombining are the following: It adds brood and drawn comb to hives that are already growing, strengthening them so they don't have to do as much work to grow further. It also is a quick way to remove a certain queen (set of genetics) from the gene pool. For me it has been a very effective way to grow nucs rapidly into full size hives, giving hives that show promise the opportunity to show their full potential in a short timeline.

I understand your stance toward requeening, but when you requeen a small hive, it's still a small hive for a significant amount of time while the new queen's brood slowly grows and expands. It takes time for that queen to get that hive back into workable shape. I find recombining grows hives much quicker without the issues inherent in requeening. But if you find something that works well for you, by all means, do it.


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## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Snowhitsky, please take some pictures and post them as you proceed. We don't see many spanish photos on this site, and as winter will be here soon it will be a visual feast for us cold-bound northerners.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Hello everyone, here I am again with an update.

After a few "issues" with the supplier (the less said the better, it gets my blood pressure up just thinking about it) I finally took delivery of the 50 Langstroth hives with 6 deep frames of bees at the end of April. I only just had enough time to set them up before I had to head off to France for work. This weekend has been my first inspection and here are the results:

HOME apiary: 30 hives of which 9 nine were delivered with virgin queens. Six still aren't laying so I'm adding frames with eggs from other hives until I can produce queens from the TF apiary. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aiem07cclwepm78/Home Apiary 002.jpg?dl=0

RIVER apiary: 6 hives.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtf1x91xlkulb45/River Apiary.jpg?dl=0

GOAT apiary: 12 hives. Two still aren't laying so I'm adding frames with eggs from other hives until I can produce queens from the TF apiary.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q87yobbyc4hlq9w/Goat Apiary.jpg?dl=0

HILL apiary: 4 hives.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b9ri05gf97qrca0/Hill Apiary.jpg?dl=0

TF apiary (no photos yet): 2 hives that have survived 4 years without treatment or management. Given this is a Treatment Free apiary run on a sink or swim policy I didn't go back and check on the hives from October to February. When I did, I found one Layens full of honey from 2014 and 1 frame of bees, one Langstroth with minimal stores and 1 frame of bees and one Layens empty and robbed of stores. I managed to salvage the wax frames for later use as there was no wax moth damage. Since then both hives have grown reasonably but the Layens in particular is a bit behind population-wise. However, it has been strong enough to deal successfully with a wax moth infestation. The Langstroth was strong enough to split into two 5 frame nucs. Hopefully I should be able to get a few extra (grafted) queens from the queenless nuc.


All but the HILL apiary have access to rosemary, thyme, orange trees and wild flowers as nectar sources. The HILL apiary has no orange groves in range but is 300m higher up than the other apiaries so wild flowers last a couple of weeks longer than in the valley. The flow starts beginning of March and ends sometime in June depending on when the last rains fall. The next flow is in October and November when we get most of the year's rainfall and it is usually sufficient to get the bees through winter.

Other than the TF apiary, all hives with be treated with oxalic acid (OA) dribble: once during brood breaks in autumn and three times four days apart after the harvest in June/July. I'm considering OA vaporization as most comercials seem to prefer it to the dribble. 

Any spare queens from the TF apiary and mated there will be used to re-queen failing hives in other apiaries and come the autumn these hives will be moved to TF apiary. The intention is to boost the numbers in the TF apiary as quickly as possible without compromising the genetics.




Problems encountered so far:

1. The local bee population expansion is slow and steady and wholly dependent on the flow. Feeding has little or no effect on the queen's laying. This is characteristic of the local bee which is well adapted to the local climate and flora which can be harsh and unpredictable. The downside is that the foraging population is way too small to take advantage of the rosemary in February/March and the thyme/orange in March/April. Commercial beekeepers have tried every type of feed and supplements to coax the queen into early laying but to little or no effect. I've tried syrup only with zero results. I'd like to hear from anyone who knows of the magic ingredient to solve this issue. Changing to another type of bee is a no-no. A collateral issue is that each hive will produce one to three deep foundationless frames a year so we're looking at three years or so before hives are entirely foundationless.

2. Legislation. In order to register as a beekeeper I need to comply with the local council laws on hive placements. To summarise, they have to be 300m or more from any house although you can halve that distance for every 2,5m height difference between the house and the hives. Unfortunately the local council has decided to double distances specified in the national legislation which basically makes it impossible to place hives anywhere in its territory. I am now looking for a suitable apiary in another district so I can get the requisite papers. Meanwhile all my hives are officially illegal although nobody cares as they aren't bothering anyone. So basically it's a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" situation.

3. Firebugs. The very next day after installing hives on my land my neighbour decided to set light to 5 huge piles (3m wide) of dry wood on some uncultivated land on the other side of the dry river bed which separates our respective plots. He didn't bother cutting back growth around the piles, set them all alight at the same time with petrol and promptly left for town. Predictably the fires spread. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1byissd6ozip8z9/Firebugs.jpg?dl=0

Fortunately, a neighbour with a building business had a bulldozer handy and with the help of other neighbours we were able to cut a fire-break through the brush and limit the damage to some 2000 m2 or so. We were fortunate in that there was no or little wind. When the landowner turned up again he was read the Riot Act and left in no doubt that the next time we'd call the firefighters who'd call the police and he'd spend the next few years in jail. His only comment on seeing the extent of the damage was: "I didn't think the fire would spread, the grass was green." And here is a word of advice to all budding pyromaniacs: green grass doesn't burn well but the layer of dead grass underneath does and it spreads faster than you can walk with no wind. With moderate wind, you're toast. Anyway, the hives were covered in ash but the bees took it in their stride.

Any helpful comments, thoughts and criticsms are welcome.


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## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Wow, fascinating report.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

As this is the TF forum I will now only update information on the non-TF hives as and when they become relevant to the TF apiary.

To summarise, the two hives at the TF apiary have been abandoned for a period of years but have been in continuous occupation. As the landowner knows little about bees my suspicion is that rather than being varroa resistant the hives have been repeatedly reoccupied by swarms once the original occupants had died off. In order to see if my theory is correct, I am checking on the hives weekly to note their progress but they will not be treated and the only manipulations will be temporary splits to get queen cells.

Here are some photos of the TF apiary:

This is what the background to the apiary on three sides looks like, the fourth side leads out into the valley with citrus groves within 300m. The apiary is at the bottom of a bowl surrounded by abandoned olive and almond groves on the terraces which are covered in rosemary, thyme and wild flowers.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcbuyh0ky4pwypk/TF apiary background.jpg?dl=0

The next photo shows the original Layens and langstroth hives + a langstroth nucleus I added last week to split the Langstroth.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4oha490swf4qajc/TF apiary.jpg?dl=0

This photo identifies the delinquent responsible for the hives being surrounded by cement blocks.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lg94gn9tmekjosa/Naughty horse.jpg?dl=0

And now for the results of this weekend's inspection:

Layens hive: The wax moth infestation is now over. The three frames of capped 2014 honey are intact and there are a couple more frames with open nectar and bee bread. The population is still small and the eggs/larvae area is reduced to a total of 4 square inches! Varroa count after a sugar shake of more or less 150 bees (it was hard to find more nurse bees due to the reduced nest area) was 2 mites. All mites in the hive are phoretic as there was no capped cells so overall that is quite a low level of infestation.

So, the question now is whether the queen is failing or whether she stops laying regularly when infestation gets too high. Either way, at the current rate of egg laying this hive will become very vulnerable to robbing when the flow ceases in a couple of weeks.

Langstroth hive: I did a walkaway split with a nuc last week to get queens for my queenless non-TF hives as I didn't have time to graft. The result was a dozen supercedure cells on the one frame with eggs. I have now combined the two hives and taken the frame with queen cells with adhering bees to the home apiary. The queen kept on laying but significantly less than previous weeks which may due to flow coming to an end or the split and the consequent loss of resources. There is almost no capped honey and some open nectar so once the flow is over I suspect this relatively much stronger hive is going to plunder the weaker Layens hive. Due to the split and combining I've delayed varroa testing until next weekend.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

Snowhitsky said:


> I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism or suggestions.


Snowhitski,

You have a good plan in my view. I'm doing something similar, but with feral cutouts and swarms as source genetics.

As well as following your lines, I'm working on foundationless brood (so they can choose their own size) and unlimited brood nests (so the most vigourous can raise large numbers of drones).

I have about 60 hives, a promising feral environment, and not too many treated hives nearby (I wish there were fewer)

I'm having no difficulty maintaining numbers with my own increase and swarms, and could probably double them this year if I wanted to. But I'm taking rest from expansion now to fine tune the operation overall. The next move is to get the spring crop off, then raise queens to replace to poor performers - and raise a few nucs too.

I try to do nothing that wouldn't happen in nature, and help things along when I can. For example I don't support weak hives with donations - I want them to stay weak if they can't grow on their own. I pay a lot of attention to recording the sorts of details that allow me to select the most promising mother hives for increase. The focus is tightly on the flow of genes through the population.

Best of luck with your plans,

Mike (UK)


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Thanks.

I'm using foundationless too except for foundation sheets on the outside frames to make sure the bees draw the foundationless frames straight. I assume the two TF hives started from foundation but over the last four years the bees have worked them over quite a bit

The only manipulation I'm considering is moving one or two frames of honey from the failing Layens hive to the Langstroth hive to balance out resources. It's going to happen anyway in a couple of weeks when the flow stops and the robbing starts.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

Snowhitsky said:


> Thanks.
> 
> I'm using foundationless too except for foundation sheets on the outside frames to make sure the bees draw the foundationless frames straight. I assume the two TF hives started from foundation but over the last four years the bees have worked them over quite a bit


I usually include one or two old combs with the middle cut out to help them get it straight. The rest is fragments of starter comb cut from old wired foundation, so generally triangular, from nothing to 1/2" projection. They very rarely build across. 



Snowhitsky said:


> The only manipulation I'm considering is moving one or two frames of honey from the failing Layens hive to the Langstroth hive to balance out resources. It's going to happen anyway in a couple of weeks when the flow stops and the robbing starts.


I keep all entrances minimal to needs. So small and weak hives often just 2 or 3 bee spaces to get through. It doesn't seem to do any harm and stops mass robbing. And I can see at a glance what sort of population is in the hive without looking at a record. 

I'm slow feeding weak hives, because it seems a good idea, prior to requeening soon. 

Mike (UK)


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## jonathan (Nov 3, 2009)

I totally agree with your decision to go with the local bee and develop that.
We are losing the different subspecies due to the proliferation of just 2 or 3 commercial types of bees, mainly Buckfast, Carnica and Ligustica.
What part of Spain are you based in? I lived in Andalucia near Huelva for a couple of years and I know the Basque country a bit as well. In July 89 the temperature was over 40c every day for the entire month. Challenging conditions for bees.


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## mike bispham (May 23, 2009)

Have you come across Eduardo yet? He's doing similar stuff somewhere near you I think..

Mike (UK)


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

I'm on the east coast of Spain halfway between Barcelona and Valencia. I'm in touch with Eduardo who lives due west of my place, about a 1000km away! 

It's never quite as hot as Andalucia nor as humid as the Basque country. Bar a few weeks a year, the bees can fly most of the time however the limiting factor is the summer drought. In a couple of weeks nectar sources are going to dry up until September or even October depending on when it next rains (last one was nearly a month ago). The local bee will survive in these conditions but harvesting honey becomes a bit of a challenge unless you can migrate your hives to mountain pastures. At the moment that isn't much of an issue as I'm more interested in increasing the number of hives than harvesting honey and I have neither the time nor transportation to move large numbers of hives.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Update: 

The Layens hive is no more. Probably down to a old and failing queen as she was laying paltry amounts of eggs. I transfered two frames of honey to the Langstroth hive in anticipation of its demise and the rest of the honey was robbed out.

The Langstroth hive is certainly getting interesting as the queen seems to be creating artificial brood breaks every now and then. A sugar roll test at the beginning of July showed "only" 6 varroa mites so around 4% infestation rate. Overall the hive is doing OK in that it has survived so far although it's population isn't as big as I'd like (6 frames of bees). 

Next update in August.


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## Snowhitsky (Mar 1, 2014)

Sorry for the delayed update.

The langstroth hive was robbed out in between two visits in November. I'm not sure whether the bees absconded or were overwhelmed by robbers but either way it is no more. The hive certainly got weaker over the autumn which was fairly predictable due to the frequent brood breaks so just like the Layens hive it's demise was just a question of time. 

Given I have no source for varroa resistant bees (feral or otherwise) this ends my TF experiment for now. Importing such bees from abroad would be plan B but I want to stick to the locally adapted variety of apis mellifera iberiensis. TF remains my goal but for now I will stick to improving my skills as a beekeeper and let more advanced beeks see if they can breed super bees from local stock.


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