# Large scale treatment free beekeepers



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

I'd like to know what treatment free beekeepers are keeping more than 500 hives and what their management and beekeeping looks like. I'm aware of Chris Baldwin in South Dakota and east Texas, the Weavers in Texas, Frost Honey Bee Farm, Dardanelle, Arkansas, and, depending on how you count nucs, Kirk Webster in New Haven, Vermont. What particularly large scale treatment free apiaries are there, and how do their proprietors manage their bees?


----------



## Marcin (Jun 15, 2011)

Dee Lusby in Arizona.
Not sure how many hives Sam Comfort of Anarchy Apiaries runs now, but he might qualify.


----------



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

I think Webster is out of VT not CT
Sam Comfort in NY 
Dee Lusby in AZ
edit lol you beat me to it.. according to the nov 16 bee culture write up Sam runs 600 full sized hives and a few hundred mating nucs


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

msl said:


> I think Webster is out of VT not CT


Doh. I've visited him there. I edited to fix it. Thank you.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

I thought about Sam and Dee but wasn't sure how many hives they have.


----------



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Roland is treatment free but is largely ignored cos he's a commercial beekeeper, buddies with other commercial beekeepers, and not part of the trendy crowd.


----------



## msl (Sep 6, 2016)

a lot of 2013 reffreances to Dee Lusby being the 700 range


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

Oldtimer said:


> Roland is treatment free but is largely ignored cos he's a commercial beekeeper, buddies with other commercial beekeepers, and not part of the trendy crowd.


Good catch. Roland Diehnelt, Linden Apiary, Menomonee Falls, WI.


----------



## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

I think the Russian bee breeders association requires a 200 hive minimum. Several of them are probably big enough to qualify.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

bentonkb said:


> I think the Russian bee breeders association requires a 200 hive minimum. Several of them are probably big enough to qualify.


I don't know if they are treatment free or which of them are. Their site says:


> Colonies will have some varroa mites, but usually at levels that do not require massive treatments of hard chemicals. A treatment once every year or two with a soft-chemical miticide is usually all that is necessary. Examples of soft-chemical miticides are products containing either formic acid, thymol, essential oils, or HopGuard®. It is important to monitor varroa mite levels and trea"t hives as needed; otherwise, viruses may become a problem, even when mite levels are not excessively high.


You or others may know.


----------



## Richard Cryberg (May 24, 2013)

The president of the Russian Queen Breeders Association told me he monitored mite levels routinely in his hives. Any hive in his queen production yard that starts showing high mite levels gets moved to a production yard and promptly treated. He said, "I am not going to allow any hive to die simply because that hive has high mite levels" as part of a talk he was giving. I do not know how many hives he runs. He probably said, but if he did I do not remember the number. He makes his living from his bees so it must be a fair number of hives.

So, consider his breeding program as a model.
1. He has a lot of hives and monitors for mites and keeps records of mite counts.
2. He has a lot of yards where he keeps bees for production purposes.
3. He has a queen production yard where only those hives proven to maintain low mite levels are allowed, thus drone flooding his mating area.
4. Per the Association by laws he must provide queens to others to test and maintain genetic diversity within the breed. Likewise he must accept and incorporate queens from others into his own breeding program.

The Association is careful about who they will allow to join. It is not you pay dues you are a member. The Association has members from many climates, thus are not breeding a bee that can just survive in one geography.

They are also breeding for honey production, gentleness and lack of swarming. This is a model of what I would consider a real breeding program that has some realistic chance of providing queens that might someday be reliably TF or at worst only require occasional treatments. But, realism also says if you take such queens and allow them to mate with local drones you will almost for sure see everything they have worked for gone within two generations or less. Allowing such queens to mate with local drones is much like crossing a world class Holstein milk cow to a beef cattle bull. You will get young that are crappy at producing milk and producing meat that is not particularly good to eat.


----------



## Riverderwent (May 23, 2013)

> Allowing such queens to mate with local drones is much like crossing a world class Holstein milk cow to a beef cattle bull.


Here maybe more like crossing a Kalmyk with a Pineywoods.


----------



## Oldtimer (Jul 4, 2010)

Richard Cryberg said:


> 1. He has a lot of hives and monitors for mites and keeps records of mite counts.
> 2. He has a lot of yards where he keeps bees for production purposes.
> 3. He has a queen production yard where only those hives proven to maintain low mite levels are allowed, thus drone flooding his mating area.
> 4. Per the Association by laws he must provide queens to others to test and maintain genetic diversity within the breed. Likewise he must accept and incorporate queens from others into his own breeding program.


Sounds like a pretty good plan.

[Breed from the best, without losing the rest]


----------



## bentonkb (May 24, 2016)

Bob Brachman is a member of the Russian Breeders Association. He overwinters some colonies here in VA. When I bought a colony from him he told me that he doesn't treat but that he does make a lot of splits with ripe cells, so that produces an extended brood break.

Now that the Russian genes have mixed in with the local feral population, I only see that the Russian defensiveness is gone. The mite resistance of that colony and its daughter's was no better than the ferals. I get stung a lot less now.


----------

